Either/Or
Notes
Also entering this note made me realize that while I've read Kierkegaard's Either/Or, and Dostoevsky's The Idiot, neither is saved here in ELK. Why?
Noted on July 18, 2022
This struck me as funnier and more delightful than the previous book. I cracked up several times, and generally found the whole thing great. On paper it's the same thing as 'The Idiot' - naive but very smart college student navigates life in the Ivy League, then spends the summer abroad. The college novel, Year Two. For some reason, I was ready for it this time.
Noted on July 18, 2022
This is a direct sequel to The Idiot, about which I said that if Batuman didn't name her third book after a Dostoevsky novel I'd be upset. Kierkegaard isn't that far off though! I'll take it.
Noted on July 18, 2022
Quotes
Unsurprisingly, the back of Either/Or didn't say which kind of life was better. All it said was: "Does Kierkegaard mean us to prefer one of the alternatives? Or are we thrown back on the existentialist idea of radical choice?" That had probably been written by a professor. I recognized the professors' characteristic delight at not imparting information.Quoted on July 18, 2022
I had just taken an enormous bite of peanut-butter sandwich, I wasn't like Riley, who always seemed able to leave a meal at any point, regardless of how much she had or hadn't eaten. Pushkin said that was the greatest good fortune: being able to leave the table before the wine was drained from the chalice. Not me; I was eating my sandwich.Quoted on July 18, 2022
What kind of cretins cared more about hammering out a string of inheritance than about discovering universal truths? Historians, that was what kind. They would only be happy when they had translated every miraculous book into a product of its historical moment.Quoted on July 18, 2022