Alexander's Afghan Campaign: Learning History from Fiction

The marriage of Alexander the Great with Roxana of Bactria (in 327BCE), painting circa 1670-1733 by Gerard Hoet (1648-1733). Photo: [CC0] via Wikimedia.

The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Steven Pressfield is one of my most favourite contemporary authors of fiction. I have read Gates of Fire and Tides of War and learnt much about history as a consequence.

The Afghan Campaign is a gripping read and it doesn't end how one might want it to. I respect the ending more so than if it had been Disneyfied (even though I secretly hoped it would). 

Pressfield does not offer a political commentary on the Afghan campaign, but, as in his other works of historical fiction, places a fictional individual in the midst of history's great people (in this case, Alexander III of Macedon). The format works well and gives enough creative licence to enable a ripping story to emerge from a background of recorded history.

Pressfield's historical research is admirable. I read Gates of Fire before I began writing personal notes about every book I read. But before reading Tides of War, I finished Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. This meant that  I was able to be reminded of key events covered by Thucydides in Pressfield's account of Athens' Sicilian Campaign.

While I have not done so yet, I intend to read Robin Lane Fox's Alexander the Great soon to see how this novel stacks up. But I don't think it matters.

Pressfield is certainly brilliant, and I must admit to liking the way he has worked hard to overcome his own demons. He gives me hope that I can do the same.

I also like that Pressfield is a bit of an underdog. His work is brilliant - I enjoy his work more than Wilbur Smith's (who has also written the odd historical novel or two). But there is something more philosophical about Pressfield that grabs my attention. On his website, he has this to say:

We can’t control the level of talent we’ve been given. We have no control over the nature of our gift. What we can control is our self-motivation, our self-discipline, our self-validation, and our self-reinforcement.

In 2012, Pressfield started his own publishing house, Black Irish Books, with his agent, Shawn Coyne. I have been critical of literary entrepreneurs in the past, but Pressfield is no "spring chicken", and claims to have written for 27 years before anything he wrote was published. This counters Einstein's view that:

A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.

Anything that goes against Einstein's view  is a winner for me. Although some suggest Einstein didn't quite mean it this way, I have heard so many others use Einstein's words (without acknowledging him) and even judgements about people based on their age, that Pressfield's example gives me some comfort. (Some studies suggest that the age peak is now much older because one couldn't even catch up with the existing literature by age 30, let alone discover new knowledge.)

So this book has it all: a gripping story from an author with a back story that defies the odds. And it is based on historical research that provides an increase in historical knowledge as a side effect. What more could one want in a novel?

Logocentrism and Deconstruction: What's the Différance?

Jacques Derrida on Writing and Difference.

Introducing Derrida by Jeff Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have a copy of Jacques Derrida's Writing and Difference sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to get to it. I also had this introductory text laying around. I am glad I went for the easy option first, as this text saved me from learning the hard way. I am not ready for Derrida - I have to start with Hegel and work my way through to Heidegger first.

I am not averse to reading introductory texts, but this one is a little different, in that it is more like a comic book. Or, indeed, it is very similar to the style Alain de Botton has adopted for The School of Life (but this book predates the YouTube series).

But the book is not too basic. Even after reading this introductory text, I am little the wiser.

I see Derrida's idea of "deconstruction" as an attempt to critique logo-centrism, where Western philosophy tends to privilege one thing over another in a binary either/or paradigm. For example, speech tends to be privileged over writing; philosophy over literature, men over women (traditionally), and so on.

Deconstruction is helpfully explained using the example of a zombie. Zombies are neither dead nor alive - their status is "undecidable" (see also the pharmakon, p. 73):

To embrace the curious logic of this writing, we have to be willing to sign up to it, to subscribe to it the task it takes on: the creation of destabilizing movements in metaphysical thinking.

Had I set out to read Writing and Difference, I would have been lost in Derrida's writing, which this text suggests can be "puzzling, infuriating, and exasperating"(p. 73). It would be better to tackle his three major works on "structuralism and phenomenology" in order: Speech and Phenomena, Writing and Difference, then Of Grammatology.

However, the reading list at the end of the text sets out a reading plan to ease into Derrida's work gradually, beginning with Peggy Kamuf's Derrida Reader: Between the Lines. Sound advice.

It would seem that I must also go right back to Plato for a closer reading of his work so I can engage with Derrida's Plato's Pharmacy.

What all this means is that I am completely out of my depth! Whereas with Albert Camus and even Nietzsche I was able to struggle through, with Derrida I will have to tackle post-modernism (Derrida didn't necessarily think of his work as "post-modern"). I suppose it is time.

This text was a good place to start. I also found the School of Life's video (below) useful. I must admit to being pleased to find an area of my knowledge that is so completely lacking as to require considerable thought - especially in approaching Derrida. At the same time, the task is quite daunting and it may have to wait until some time later next year if I am to do it any justice.

Learning About Values from a Potty Mouth

Echo and Narcissus, 1903, by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917) [Public Domain] via Wikimedia.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the end of the year approaches and I am on track to achieve my reading goals, I have been reading some pop psychology books. I do like Mark Manson's work, even though its crassness makes it somewhat less scholarly than most of the books I have read thus far.

Manson writes how I sometimes speak, so I am not taking the moral high ground here, but it does mean that I tend to take his content less seriously. As I approach 50 I can reflect on my own experiences from my twenties and early thirties, and I must say I am impressed by the depth of reading of the likes of Mark Manson, Ryan Holiday, and Paul Colaianni and their ability to explain how they think about values, virtues, and finding the logic to guide their daily practice and actions.

But I have some concerns about what I call "literary entrepreneurship", and whether my time would be better spent on the classics.

I have recently been thinking about the idea of "endlessness". During my long service leave last year, I experienced a sense of endlessness where there were no deadlines (at least until the next semester of teaching began) and I could do whatever I wanted each day. I chose to journal, read, and blog, and this enabled me to establish a daily routine which I maintain to this day. I started with Homer, and I have been slowly working through the great books and works by the likes of Camus, Calvino,  and Nietzsche. I often get nervous about wasting time on contemporary books when I have so much to learn from the past.

Because of my own reading program, Manson's examples from literature were all familiar, including Bukowski, Buddha, Tina Gilbertson's idea of "constructive wallowing", the Milgram experiment, and so on. But I wonder whether these pop psychology books (for want of a better term) have sufficient depth?

Many of the self-improvement books I have read refer to historical and personal examples, and there is much to learn from how others think about the same problems I face. For example, Manson's approach to determining one's values fits well with what I gained from my reading of Paul Colaianni and Tina Gilbertson.

But I also see how these books are commercial products with a particular aim in mind. I often get the feeling that the authors are reading as a form of "mining" for information, much like the approach I might take when writing an academic paper (sans the referencing). 

From my own experience, a complete, cover-to-cover, slow reading of each work brings to light much which is lost through simply mining the content. So I wonder how much value I gain from reading Manson, compared to, say, reading Benjamin Franklin? (Of course, Franklin had his own financial reasons for lecturing and writing.) But when I read Franklin, for example, there was much that escaped me in the detail, and further reading revealed much of what I could not gain from the original text.

When I reflect on my reading of the likes of Manson, I often wonder how much I can gain from such literary entrepreneurs. Not that I don't like the book, but I wonder if I gain as much from this book as I might if I had prioritised my reading of Plato's The Laws, for example. 

So when I sum up the lessons learnt from Manson, much of these are in the reiteration of things I already know: if in doubt, act (p. 157); achieving meaning in one's life requires the rejection of alternatives (p. 165); excess is not good for me (p. 165); but establishing boundaries is good for me (p. 174).

One part I enjoyed is where Manson discusses the idea of endless values (p. 151) and mentions the "honest expression" of Pablo Picasso. The idea of honest expression is to provide a metric (p. 74), or a way to measure the implementation of one's values, in a way that does not "end'. For example, if one wanted to achieve "freedom" through work, once a job that provided such "freedom" had been achieved, then there is a sense that the value is "accomplished" and there is no sense of motivation. An "endless" value such as honest expression  is something that can be achieved repeatedly - it never ends.

However, as I know for a fact that I don't know everything, I did learn some key lessons about defining personal values and better ways to measure (metrics) these values; the paradox of choice (and how this promises the good life, but leads to inconsistency and confusion); and a better relationship with the idea of death (Quoting Mark Twain, p. 202):

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

I also have a better understanding of "unconscious resistance", which often gets in the way of me doing things I believe I actually want to do.

My "struggle" (see "suffering" p. 208) with my reading is best summed up by Harold Bloom (How to Read and Why, p. 21):

It matters, if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments and opinions, that they continue to read for themselves. How they read, well or badly, and what they read, cannot depend wholly upon themselves, but why they read must be for and in their own interest... but eventually you will read against the clock... One of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change, and the final change is universal.

When I read the work of the present generation of literary entrepreneurs, I really feel that clock ticking. But after reading Manson, and despite my "unconscious resistance",  I think there is some value in reading about how others think about philosophy, and then applying that approach to my own thinking. Even if it is an exercise in thinking, rather than a definite plan for action.