I just listened to the section in Crime and Punishment featuring the talk about Raskolnikov's article. (very minor spoilers) The article talks about what Raskolnikov calls 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' people, and their differences. The ordinary people, he says, are happy to be ruled and told what to do, and have not many exciting or interesting …
I FINISHED IT
I got to the end of the Glass Bead Game, finally! And boy... did it disappoint. The final 20% of the book is several poems and three short stories written by the character whose life we just got a long, tired account of. Two of the three stories were actually really good and I thought …
Magic vs facts
Ritual, magic, mystical powers--these things seem to comfort and guide people much easier than facts or science. One of the short stories at the end of the glass bead game features a 'rain maker', a sort of shaman type figure who is in charge of when to plant crops, and is supposed to warn of …
Women?
Do they exist? Not, apparently, in the world of 'the glass bead game.' There are no women of power or intellect. There are no mothers, sisters, daughters. There are no random women walking down a street. There are no instances of the word 'she' in the entire book so far. The only hint that the female …
Abstruse
I'm still working my way through The Glass Bead Game. 'Working' being the operative word. The author really likes the word 'abstruse' which, I had not heard before and took to be a combination of abstract and obtuse. I wasn't far off. Abstruse:Â difficult to understand; obscure That's pretty much the book in a nutshell, too. …
Jonas David 