T-Pac Reading Log

The Fountainhead (1943) by Ayn Rand I may not agree with Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy in the sense that it positions man as his own god, but I admire its encouragement of the individual to actualize the greatest extent of their potential. And to do so with uncompromising integrity - a trait wholly personified by The Fountainhead ’s Howard Roark. Roark is an architect with the innate skill to design buildings which seem to exist, not as extensions of nature, but as a self-evident culmination of nature’s beauty. Roark - in his completely steadfast and, for lack of a better term, rigidly autistic devotion to his craft - stands against the worldly aspects of his field. Worldly aspects that Rand exhibits in Roark’s peer and former schoolmate, Peter Keating. While Roark is willing to fall into poverty and shame, refusing any commissions that undermine the sanctity of his work and withstanding misplaced public ire against it, Keating is willing to steal credit, blackmail, and manipulate...

Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Alcott Lately, the turbulence of the world has been getting to me. So I really needed something like Little Women to brighten my perspective. Louisa May Alcott’s two-part story follows the lives of four sisters in Civil War era New England, as they grow from adolescents to young adults. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy's experiences (victories and trials alike) imbue them (and by extent, the reader) with valuable life lessons. For the most part, each chapter functions as a sort-of parable, where the girls learn how to appreciate their blessings, mind their tempers, behave virtuously, and realize the benefits of simple, honest work. It may sound childish, but many of these lessons come from coping with war, death, and other tragedies. I’d be remiss not to mention Little Women’s unfortunate upholding of the “domestic role of women” in many cases, but the heart of its message still applies in our more progressive age. The last chapter even reflects on the com...

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson I wasn’t aware that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a novella, or even that it was written by Robert Louis Stevenson. But I saw it in my library and thought it would be a perfect Halloween read. Stevenson was known to write many of his stories from vivid dreams, and draw from his traumatic childhood fear of hell and damnation. Jekyll and Hyde is a telling example of this, with its fixation on morality and distanced storytelling style. Most of the plot is revealed at a degree of removal through Mr. Utterson, a lawyer and friend to Jekyll. And beyond that - many events are described by witness accounts rather than directly, lending to the dreamlike abstraction of the story. I appreciate how this also has the effect of piecing together the narrative, slowly through vague details, until the final chapter’s explicit “big reveal” in Jekyll’s own letter to Utterson. I found this “big reveal” much more disturbing than I ...

  The Prince (1532) by Niccolo Machiavelli  Machiavelli’s The Prince is essentially an outline of “best-practices” for a monarch to maintain their power, with supporting examples in historical and contemporary (European, mostly) rule. This may sound fairly harmless on the surface, but this book is infamous for its many tyrannical recommendations as far as “successful” reign is concerned. To be fair, Machiavelli was very much a product of his environment, in which the pragmatic Florentine government didn’t necessarily shy away from brutality for the sake of self-preservation. And historians debate whether Machiavelli even subscribed to his own beliefs in The Prince, considering his contrasting writings on republics which praised virtue and humanity. I think what it boils down to, is that Machiavelli is a realist in the most brutally honest way. And while I don’t respect The Prince’s “outcome over ethics” principles, I respect that the book doesn’t try to hide the true nature o...

Theories of Truth (1992) by Richard L. Kirkham When I picked-up this book, I was expecting a philosophical deep-dive into the meaning of truth, but what I actually got, for the most part, was a highly-technical examination of the semantics behind claims of truth. Kirkham analyzes several important theories dealing with truth. More specifically, he explains theories of truth as attempting to solve one or more of the following projects: the metaphysical project (identifying the conditions that make a statement true), the justification project (identifying a concrete characteristic to differentiate true and false statements), and the speech-act project (analyzing the grammar and actions tied to declarations of truth). As I see it - these boil down to a philosophical evaluation of truth, a practical evaluation of truth, and a semantic evaluation of truth. Many theories of truth are essentially a struggle against skepticism (the claim that there’s no such thing as a justified belief, regar...

The Vivisector (1970) by Patrick White This is another Penguin Classics book I found randomly on the “free-table” at work, and it turned out to be one of the most uncomfortable novels I’ve ever read. The Vivisector details the life of an Australian painter, Hurtle Duffield, from his childhood, adopted from poverty into a wealthy family as a prodigy-to-be, through his old age as an acclaimed artist, and ultimately (presumably) to his death by a severe stroke. What’s most striking about White’s novel is that he writes everything as Hurtle sees it - that is, through the eyes of a savant artist. So the reader parses Hurtle’s story not through concrete details so much as the artistic impressions and creative emotions that “paint” them. Hurtle struggles his whole life to commit these impressions to canvas - garnering critical success but not personal solace. He is endlessly troubled, and fails in most all interpersonal relationships from his inability to connect on a human level. Hurtle’s c...

  Dawn of the New Everything (2017) by Jaron Lanier This is a book about the development, and the ideologies behind, Virtual Reality. It’s also largely the story of the author’s own life, as Lanier was arguably VR’s pioneer in the 80s and 90s. And Lanier’s life is fascinating - as are his viewpoints on technology in general. He strikes me as a genius - and I mean that in the objective “prodigy of arts and academics” sense. But unlike most people in that category, he has a refreshing and inviting self-awareness that he brings to his creative and computer-science pursuits (which can’t be fully separated from one another). Granted, he vocalizes his cynicism toward the state of technology today, and not without warrant, but Lanier also seems to have sustained a certain childlike wonder about the world’s potential that has never left his viewpoint. The ideological angle he presents about VR is probably the most fascinating aspect of this book. I’d never previously considered VR as more ...