To many good choices.
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To many good choices.
i got to say 'the fall' was camus' best and most underrated work. the narration made the way it was written unique, like it the stranger, but much different.
I will no doubt cause some groans, but I will nominate Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose if Lit Net has not already done it in whatever the time period is for exclusion. I read it once as a student years ago, and my Medeval Lit professor chided himself for thinking the novel would do for travel reading.
I need to get to it for a critical paper I want to write anyway, and did something I rarely do with read novels, and purchased my own copy. On one level it is a historical mystery, on another it is a lesson about the anxiety of knowledge, and more.
Would faulkner's A Fable or Reivers be considered philosophical?
I really need to nominate something from the Pulitzer list!
:D
Sche, the first author I thought of when I scrolled this thread was Musil, which your Wiki link lists, but I would imagine many challenging novels could be considered philosophical. Sometimes, these genre divisions get a bit frustrating, like Eco's work, which can fit into a number of slots.
I imagine some of Faulkner's work could be defended for this category, but the Germans and the Austrians and to a lesser extent, the Italians, have a leg up on England and America in this sphere. Maybe the Africans too, come to think of it.:eek:
]If I could nominate, which I can't, I might go for When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, by Lawrence Block. It seems to me -an old prof- that we hold philosophy to far apart from ordinary life. Block is good and wise, though cynical.
I'm going to be selfish and say 'Atlash Shrugged' - I'm half-way through and really need a push!
Kaufmann, in Nietzsche PHILOSOPHER, PSYCHOLOGIST, ANTICHRIST, is less dismissive of Zarathustra than Bloom, but suggests that Zarathustra contains most of Nietzsche's ideas in veiled and symbolical form - a good summary for those who know Nietzsche thoroughly, but hard to understand correctly for those who do not.
I disagree with Kaufmann, and agree with Bloom. I think the symbolism doesn't work, it's just "too much", so it isn't a good summary.
But, anyway, it's an advanced work and perhaps not a good choice as many will not know Nietzsche thoroughly.
I also think it's just painful to read. It's off my re-read list. Of the other suggestions - I've read Nausea, that's a good read. I'd read that again.
I'll withdraw Thomas Mann. It is a bit long, and I fancy reading some of the others just as much.
Nominations so far:
1. Thus Spake Zarathustra
2. The Fall by Camus
3. Jacques the Fatalist by Diderot
4. As I Lay Dying byWilliam Faulkner
5. Nausea - Jean Paul Sartre
6. The Name of The Rose
7. Atlas Shrugged
and i don't know who to vote: Faulkner or Nietzsche :)
Yes, thatis true; we read it last year (I was thinking it was the year before).
Nominations so far:
1. Thus Spake Zarathustra
2. The Fall by Camus
3. Jacques the Fatalist by Diderot
4. As I Lay Dying byWilliam Faulkner
5. Nausea - Jean Paul Sartre
6. Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
7. Atlas Shrugged