Book Notes: "The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession" by Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession by Leo Tolstoy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a well-planned and executed translation and companioning of Tolstoy's novella and his non-fiction Confession. Although the introduction and notes on the translation lean one towards such a conclusion, that it does what it says it will do makes it all the more satisfying. The novella focuses on vanity and death while Confession documents Tolstoy's grappling with the meaning of life. I am drawn to Proverbs 19:3 by this book: "The foolishness of a man twists his way, And his heart frets against the Lord."

I could hear Hemingway denouncing Fitzgerald for exposing his personal weaknesses in The Crack Up. Yet at the same time, it was interesting to read the inner ruminations of a literary great. That Tolstoy finds solace in aspects of Christianity should not take away from the different approaches to thinking about life and its meaning that he outlines for those who may be navel-gazing such topics. I couldn't help but think of my own way of, I suppose, finding peace in the way of Larry in Maugham's The Razor's Edge, in that I believe that without faith, there is no point. So without faith, life is meaningless. My thoughts here echo Tolstoy's in that he looks for a rational explanation but finds only 0=0, which is no explanation at all. Looking beyond the rational seems to be key, and reconsidering my own philosophical meanderings in the light Tolstoy's confessing was certainly food for thought.

This is an excellent pairing of the works of a master, post the glory days of Anna Karenina (which he later regarded as an abomination).



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Academic Insights from Literature

Professor B.F. Skinner. Photo: https://psychbehaviorism.wikispaces.com/CC By-SA

I use the website Goodreads to set annual ‘reading for leisure’ goals and to write reflections and reviews of the various works I read. I aim to read a book each week. This week, I completed Aldous Huxley’s (1957) Brave New World Revisited.

I thought I might share some reflections on my ‘reading for leisure’ program and how that influences my view of the academic life. Huxley’s companion to Brave New World (1932), reflects on his predictions 25 years after the fact. My review on Goodreads is reproduced below:

Huxley writes about the world in 1957, 25 years after his most famous novel, Brave New World. This is more or less an academic work where Huxley considers numerous scholars of the period (in particular, psychologists and behaviourists) and comments on propaganda, marketing, and social engineering of the day (noting John Dewey and B.F. Skinner a few times). I took the time to write down all the names and works that appear in the book, as much of Huxley's commentary is lost to earlier memories. Nevertheless, his companion book to his major work of fiction is no less prophetic. I couldn't help but wonder first, how Brave New World could have such predictive power in 1932, and second, that he could do the same again in 1957. I suppose this particular work is somewhat lost because it is not a work of fiction. But it has opened my eyes to how the issues of the present are rooted in the past.

After following up on the late Professor B.F. Skinner of Harvard, I discovered that he had written a novel, Walden Two (1948), a utopian work based on his research findings in psychology. (Walden is a famous work from 1854 by Henry David Thoreau, a transcendentalist. Huxley focused on mysticism in his later writing. By way of explaining the numerous ‘connections’ that fascinate me in literature, I am currently reading Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confessions. Tolstoy, too, had his own moral crisis after labelling his 1877 work Anna Karenina ‘an abomination’, and then went on to found the basis for non-violent resistance as practiced by Gandhi and later Martin Luther King.) Skinner’s work extended that of Ivan Pavlov, the Russian physiologist who focused on ‘classical’ or ‘respondent’ conditioning, which was to become the foundation for ‘behaviourism’ which is something some members of the School of Government and Policy at the University of Canberra have been interested in of late.

What struck me about Skinner was that he lost credibility with his colleagues after publishing Walden Two. While he went on to contribute significantly to what we now know as behaviourism, Noam Chomsky remains one of his most exhaustive critics (see ‘A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior’. In Jakobovits, L.A. and Miron M.S. eds. 1967. Readings in the Psychology of Language. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall: 142-143)

The above has led me to ask my colleagues the following questions: Do you read literature and connect it to your research? If so, how? And, does the writing of a novel reduce one’s academic credibility? How?

If you are interested in connecting via Goodreads, my profile is here: https://www.goodreads.com/ madepercy.

Book Notes: "Brave New World Revisited" by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Huxley writes about the world in 1957, 25 years after his most famous novel, Brave New World. This is more or less an academic work where Huxley considers numerous scholars of the period (in particular, psychologists and behaviourists) and comments on propaganda, marketing, social engineering of the day (noting John Dewey and B.F. Skinner a few times). I took the time to write down all the names and works that appear in the book, as much of Huxley's commentary is lost to earlier memories. Nevertheless, his companion book to his major work of fiction is no less prophetic. I couldn't help but wonder first, how Brave New World could have such predictive power in 1932, and then, that he could do the same again in 1957. I suppose this particular work is somewhat lost because it is not a work of fiction. But it has opened my eyes to how the issues of the present are rooted in the past.



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