C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.

Short. Moving. Not at all therapeutic.

Margaret Shepherd, The Art of the Handwritten Note: A Guide to Writing Heartfelt Notes for Every Occasion.

Encouraging. I need to improve my handwriting a bit before committing to the art. Favorite:

Once in a while, to spare the feelings of the giver completely, you must not only send prompt, handwritten thanks for the gift and keep the gift but also go through the motions of loving it and using it. It is masochism in the service of tact. You can learn to make this effort for those people—your own toddler or your great-aunt Susie—whose feelings you have decided are more important than yours.

Plato, Theatetus.1

I last read this probably 15 years ago. Reading this and The Sophist recently, I liked to remember all the little things Socrates and his friends think about types of people, e.g.:

SOC. Such is the character of each of the two classes, Theodorus, of the man who has truly been brought up in freedom and leisure, whom you call a philosopher–who may without censure appear foolish and good for nothing when he is involved in menial services, if, for instance, he does not know how to pack up his bedding, much less to put the proper sweetening into a sauce or a fawning speech…2

THEO. Such people do not become pupils of one another, but they grow up of themselves, each one getting his inspiration from any chance source, and each thinks the other knows nothing. From these people, then, as I was going to say, you would never get an argument either with their will or against it…3

SOC. The profession of those who are greatest in wisdom, who are called orators and lawyers; for they persuade men by the art which they posses, not teaching them, but making them have whatever opinion they like. Or do you think they are any teachers so clever as to be able, in the short time allowed by the water-clock, satisfactorily to teach the judges the truth about what happened to people…4

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend.5

As good as people say. What made it so compelling to me was the sense of how things come and go in a way that never quite makes sense as a child. Looking back you find that your memory, in trimming here and embellishing there, has worked to make the events more coherent than they were in fact.

Elena Ferrante , The Story of a New Name.5

One of the blurbs on the front cover hopes to compliment the book by saying, “Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you’ll have some idea of how explosive these works are.” It’s the opposite, and it sells the book short. This is so clearly written that, even if its characters might sometimes be angry, the book is not. To call an author angry is not a compliment.

Agnes Callard, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life.

An argument for a Socratic ethic standing in opposition to Deontology, Utilitarianism and Virtue Ethics. “Socratic” is not a “style” of ethics but is itself an ethical theory: the book “argues that people have overestimated the degree to which a Socratic approach can be layered on top of what we were doing anyways.”6

Interesting stuff on each page though I often found myself writing “NO!” in the margins. Most books which make me do this do not compel me to finish them.

It is strongest when focused on the Socrates in Plato. Xenophon is mentioned once or twice. But the reading of Socrates is knowledgeable, empathetic and earnest. Good. My favorite section here was where Callard argues against what everyone “knows”:

Over the decades, a lot has changed about how I read Plato, but the single biggest change is that I have come to see less and less ironic distance or detachment between Socrates and his interlocutors. Increasingly, Socrates seems to me to be putting all his cards on the table, and this strikes me as an act of great friendliness , openness, and humanity. Where I once saw Socratic irony, I now see Socratic love.7

Esoteric readings are, in some cases, a way for the reader to seize a little control from the author. Use with caution.

Callard invents a phrase: “Untimely Questions” are those questions which cannot be honestly investigated without overturning one’s life because the answers, already assumed, are used in the construction of that life. The description of this throughout is good and, I think, more humane and interesting than any talk of “sunk costs”, “blindspots”, “incentives”, “unknown knowns” or “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. This formulation is what I’ll remember most from the book.

A key part of the book which I did not find convincing was the argument that thinking or thought is “paradigmatically, a social quest for better answers [to untimely questions]”.8 I don’t dispute that “thought is conversational” is the Socratic position. From Theatetus:

SOC. And do you define thought as I do?

THEAT. How do you define it?

SOC. As the talk which the soul has with itself about any subjects which it considers.9

A page later she agrees the idea that thinking is sometimes conversational (as in the quote from Theatetus) but not social, i.e. that it takes place entirely within someone’s head. There is an argument in the book about this but I never felt my mind compelled to agree with it. There were claims and linkages but I met each one with a “Maybe?”. Whether this is my fault or hers it to be determined.

A good use of time, either way.

Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928.

Unfortunately, much can be done even in a very dysfunctional organization.10

A very interesting, detailed book on the early years of Stalin’s life, from Gori in Russian-annexed Georgia, through exiles, through revolutions and the civil war, and then Lenin’s death and Stalin’s successful attempt to become his, Lenin’s, successor.

Close readers of Kotkin will learn that the real difference between Trotsky, who represented the alternative, and Stalin, was the former’s inability to properly slam a door:

Trotsky exploded. He shot up, stated “I request that you delete me from the list of actors of this humiliating comedy,” and stomped out, resolving to slam the cast-iron door—a massive metal structure not given to demonstrative slamming. He could only manage to bring it to a close slowly, unwittingly demonstrating his impotence.11

Compare:

Trotsky rose, turned to the Georgian [i.e. Stalin], pointed his finger an exclaimed, “The first secretary poses his candidacy to the post of grave digger of the revolution!” Stalin flushed with anger and fled the room, slamming the door. The session broke up in uproar.12