Book-lover Denkpass has issued a challenge to Dialog to respond to a questionnaire that is floating through the blogosphere. I was unable to respond immediately, since I’ve spent most of the week in Las Vegas, a city with many bookmakers but no bookstores. So, here are my responses:
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Not sure I completely understand the question , but I guess I would pick Arthur Rimbaud’ s Une saison en enfer. The words would consume one before the flames could.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Since Denkpass brings up Fowles, I have to admit he is very effective in his portrayals of women (at least to the male sensibility). I have fallen in love with Alison in The Magus, Sarah Woodruff in The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Jane in Daniel Martin. However, it is Andre Breton’s Nadja that haunts my dreams.
The last book you bought is:
Through Amazon: Das Bett by Martin Mosebach
In the bookstore: Villages by John Updike
The last book you read:
Doubt, a History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy
of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily
Dickinson by Jennifer Michael Hecht. A great history of critical thinking and a good antidote to the nonsense of the American Taliban who are trying to create a theocracy in in the United States.
What are you currently reading?
Like Denkpass, I have to be reading several books at once.
Das Bett , by Martin Mosebach
LiteraturKritik by Kurt Tucholsky
Letters and Papers from Prison, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Five books you would take to a desert island:
Imagine having all the time in the world to do nothing but read….
The Bible (King James Version and Luther’s Translation)
John Keats: The Complete Poems – The most perfect expression of beauty in the English language.
Die Gedichte, Rainer Maria Rilke – Ditto for the German language.
Erzählungen und andere ausgewählte Prosa by Franz Kafka – Maybe I can finally think through Kafka’s parables.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville The great journey into the American soul.
Who are you going to pass this baton to (3 persons) and why?
Mike, in order to get a medieval perspective.
Hella, because she writes novels and admires Adorno.
erphschwester, because she must have some literary role models.
UPDATE: Carmen has some terrifice responses to the same questionnaire.
