William Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950 * (My brief summary followed by the transcript of the speech.) Continue reading Summary of Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Speech
Category Archives: Literature
Summary of Tolstoy’s, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy’s short novel, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, provides a great introduction to connection between death and the meaning of life. It tells the story of a forty-five year old lawyer who is self-interested, opportunistic, and busy with mundane affairs. He has never considered his own death until disease strikes. Continue reading Summary of Tolstoy’s, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Alternative Lives
“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. Continue reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Alternative Lives
George Orwell’s 1984
Books of My Youth
The first books I remember reading as a child were baseball biographies Continue reading George Orwell’s 1984
The Meaning of The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Should we take life seriously or not? Should we think of it as heavy or light? Perhaps we shouldn’t take it too seriously, enjoy the pleasures it affords, and reject all heavier philosophies of meaning. But is this solution satisfactory? Continue reading The Meaning of The Unbearable Lightness of Being