The Decameron is one of my favorite works. I've always felt that Boccaccio was overshadowed by Dante and Petrarch- not exactly a hot take, I know, but I'm still happy to see him getting recognized.
Yay, thanks. Have never read Dante and Petrarch! Love how alive the Decameron feels, like you are really there in this society, which was composed of real people with real desires.
“What you believe politically ends up standing in for all the ways other people might once have had an impact on the world.”
If you’ve never read him, you might find Richard Sennett’s “The Fall of Public Man” interesting. I suppose he’s arguing something parallel to this, which is that the “public” persona has increasingly stood-in for what might once have been a rich and nuanced “private” self shared with family and close friends, and that these two selves have become hopelessly confused. But he connects this to mass politics as well.
I’m still reading it and it often blows my mind. He’s talking about something both so abstract and so I intimate you realize that we have a very poor vocabulary for addressing it. Although frankly sometimes he’s just too academic and you want a concrete example. He can be dense.
“As concern for questions of selfhood has grown greater, participation with strangers for social ends has diminished—or that participation is perverted by the psychological question. In community groups, for instance, people feel they need to get to know each other as persons in order to act together; they then get caught up in immobilizing processes of revealing themselves to each other as persons, and gradually lose the desire to act together.”
I forget which translation of the Golden Ass I read-whichever is available as an Oxford world classic! I loved it, and I was frankly shocked to know how far the picaresque novel goes back-Augie March and the Sot-Weed Factor as representatives of a genre that goes back 2000 years is quite a thought! And yes you’re absolutely right of course about not just millennials but zoomers too.
I don't know if enough zoomers are in positions of power for me to know. They do seem to hold their beliefs more sincerely than millennials do, and they seem to believe less in systems and the possibility of advancement. But their beliefs themselves are less coherent. Zoomers, like Gen X, are probably destined to be marginal and quickly superseded by the kids of the millennials
They're definitely more nihilistic and have lower expectations than millenials by and large, which in that sense does make them similar to Gen X. We'll see how it all pans out
Maybe the economics of audiobooks pays off in some way? I’ll look for the Naxos readings. Naxos is known for releasing quality “budget” recordings of classical music. I have plenty of their CDs on my shelves.
My current audiobook is Don Quixote; I listen to a little bit of it every night. I’ve had both The Golden Ass and the Decameron sitting on my shelves for a while now; this is good motivation to read them.
I very much enjoyed this essay. I think it’s a good example of how we stand to gain in perspective by reading ancient literature.
Thanks! Yes, in thinking about it, maybe there's something to be said for name recognition. This is the only english language recording of the Decameron, and I doubt that from now until the end of time, anyone else will ever release another one.
A lot of their audiobooks also seem to be from the back-catalog: they came before the Audible era and were initially put out on CD. I don't know, maybe school and library sales kept them afloat. The audiobook of my last book sold about 3,000 copies, which was about what they expected: maybe ten dollars per copy went to the publisher as revenue, so I don't think you need too too high sales to make it worth. Am mostly just grateful these exist, because I've done librivox (free, crowd-sourced) recordings of some classics, and they're really not ideal.
Don Quixote is a trip. The front story is really good, much better than the Decameron, but the interpolated tales are so boring. LMK how you like it!
I’ve always loved the term ‘noblesse oblige’ and in the past two decades felt like we needed more of it.
The Decameron is one of my favorite works. I've always felt that Boccaccio was overshadowed by Dante and Petrarch- not exactly a hot take, I know, but I'm still happy to see him getting recognized.
Yay, thanks. Have never read Dante and Petrarch! Love how alive the Decameron feels, like you are really there in this society, which was composed of real people with real desires.
"And he's like," ... Please consider not using "like" in this manner. Thank you. Otherwise I appreciate your interest in literature.
“What you believe politically ends up standing in for all the ways other people might once have had an impact on the world.”
If you’ve never read him, you might find Richard Sennett’s “The Fall of Public Man” interesting. I suppose he’s arguing something parallel to this, which is that the “public” persona has increasingly stood-in for what might once have been a rich and nuanced “private” self shared with family and close friends, and that these two selves have become hopelessly confused. But he connects this to mass politics as well.
That sounds really up my alley!
I’m still reading it and it often blows my mind. He’s talking about something both so abstract and so I intimate you realize that we have a very poor vocabulary for addressing it. Although frankly sometimes he’s just too academic and you want a concrete example. He can be dense.
“As concern for questions of selfhood has grown greater, participation with strangers for social ends has diminished—or that participation is perverted by the psychological question. In community groups, for instance, people feel they need to get to know each other as persons in order to act together; they then get caught up in immobilizing processes of revealing themselves to each other as persons, and gradually lose the desire to act together.”
I forget which translation of the Golden Ass I read-whichever is available as an Oxford world classic! I loved it, and I was frankly shocked to know how far the picaresque novel goes back-Augie March and the Sot-Weed Factor as representatives of a genre that goes back 2000 years is quite a thought! And yes you’re absolutely right of course about not just millennials but zoomers too.
I don't know if enough zoomers are in positions of power for me to know. They do seem to hold their beliefs more sincerely than millennials do, and they seem to believe less in systems and the possibility of advancement. But their beliefs themselves are less coherent. Zoomers, like Gen X, are probably destined to be marginal and quickly superseded by the kids of the millennials
They're definitely more nihilistic and have lower expectations than millenials by and large, which in that sense does make them similar to Gen X. We'll see how it all pans out
Maybe the economics of audiobooks pays off in some way? I’ll look for the Naxos readings. Naxos is known for releasing quality “budget” recordings of classical music. I have plenty of their CDs on my shelves.
My current audiobook is Don Quixote; I listen to a little bit of it every night. I’ve had both The Golden Ass and the Decameron sitting on my shelves for a while now; this is good motivation to read them.
I very much enjoyed this essay. I think it’s a good example of how we stand to gain in perspective by reading ancient literature.
Thanks! Yes, in thinking about it, maybe there's something to be said for name recognition. This is the only english language recording of the Decameron, and I doubt that from now until the end of time, anyone else will ever release another one.
A lot of their audiobooks also seem to be from the back-catalog: they came before the Audible era and were initially put out on CD. I don't know, maybe school and library sales kept them afloat. The audiobook of my last book sold about 3,000 copies, which was about what they expected: maybe ten dollars per copy went to the publisher as revenue, so I don't think you need too too high sales to make it worth. Am mostly just grateful these exist, because I've done librivox (free, crowd-sourced) recordings of some classics, and they're really not ideal.
Don Quixote is a trip. The front story is really good, much better than the Decameron, but the interpolated tales are so boring. LMK how you like it!