Interview with David Damrosch, author of Around the World in 80 Books
David Damrosch, author of Around the World in 80 Books recommends a fantastic list of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out David's book:
Review from Book Depository:
Inspired by Jules Verne's hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard's Department of Comparative Literature and founder of Harvard's Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic's restrictions on travel by exploring eighty exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel prizewinners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan and Olga Tokarczuk, he explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways the world bleeds into literature.
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Around the World in 80 Books
To chart the expansive landscape of world literature today, Damrosch explores how writers live in two very different worlds: the world of their personal experience, and the world of books that have enabled great writers to give shape and meaning to their lives. In his literary cartography, Damrosch includes compelling contemporary works as well as perennial classics, hard-bitten crime fiction as well as haunting works of fantasy, and the formative tales that introduce us as children to the world we're entering. Taken together, these eighty titles offer us fresh perspective on perennial problems, from the social consequences of epidemics to the rising inequality that Thomas More designed Utopia to combat and the patriarchal structures within and against which many of these books' heroines have to struggle, from the work of Murasaki Shikibu a millennium ago to that of Margaret Atwood today.
Around the World in 80 Books is a global invitation to look beyond ourselves and our surroundings, and to see our world and its literature in new ways.
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Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
A student of philosophy becomes the most powerful man in the world, and then he has to deal with the limits of his power. In his compulsively readable Meditations, Marcus Aurelius reflects deeply on how to manage his sprawling empire and -- even more difficult -- his self-seeking courtiers. “Don’t expect Plato’s Republic,” he tells himself, even as he makes himself into a true philosopher king.
Review From Book Depository:
Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life.
Few ancient works have been as influential as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and emperor of Rome (A.D. 161-180). A series of spiritual exercises filled with wisdom, practical guidance, and profound understanding of human behavior, it remains one of the greatest works of spiritual and ethical reflection ever written. Marcus's insights and advice--on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity and interacting with others--have made the Meditations required reading for statesmen and philosophers alike, while generations of ordinary readers have responded to the straightforward intimacy of his style. For anyone who struggles to reconcile the demands of leadership with a concern for personal integrity and spiritual well-being, the Meditations remains as relevant now as it was two thousand years ago.
In Gregory Hays's new translation--the first in thirty-five years--Marcus's thoughts speak with a new immediacy. In fresh and unencumbered English, Hays vividly conveys the spareness and compression of the original Greek text. Never before have Marcus's insights been so directly and powerfully presented.
With an Introduction that outlines Marcus's life and career, the essentials of Stoic doctrine, the style and construction of the Meditations, and the work's ongoing influence, this edition makes it possible to fully rediscover the thoughts of one of the most enlightened and intelligent leaders of any era.
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Meditations
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Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
I recently read Keith Richards’ memoir Life, which gives one of the best accounts of artistic innovation that I’ve ever read. In the early chapters of the book, Richards gives us a master class in how he and Mick Jagger taught themselves to become revolutionary musicians, absorbing and transforming the lessons of Chicago Blues in their very different circumstances.
Review From Book Depository:
With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decades he lived the original rock and roll life: taking the chances he wanted, speaking his mind, and making it all work in a way that no one before him had ever done.
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Life
Now, at last, the man himself tells us the story of life in the crossfire hurricane. And what a life. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records as a child in post-war Kent. Learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones' first fame and success as a bad-boy band. The notorious Redlands drug bust and subsequent series of confrontations with a nervous establishment that led to his enduring image as outlaw and folk hero.
Creating immortal riffs such as the ones in 'Jumping Jack Flash' and 'Street Fighting Man' and 'Honky Tonk Women'. Falling in love with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the US, 'Exile on Main Street' and 'Some Girls'. Ever increasing fame, isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Mick Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Solo albums and performances with his band the Xpensive Winos. Marriage, family and the road that goes on for ever.
In a voice that is uniquely and intimately his own, with the disarming honesty that has always been his trademark, Keith Richards brings us the essential life story of our times.
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Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
From age 10 onward, the book of books for me was The Lord of the Rings, which I read ten or eleven times before I finished high school and which I still teach today at Harvard. No one has ever matched Tolkien’s ability to create an entire world, and Gandalf the Grey is a model of smart thinking, from his unraveling the mystery of the One Ring’s origins to the counter-intuitive plan to send the ring to be destroyed in Mordor -- the one strategy that the power-obsessed Sauron would never expect.
Review From Book Depository
Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power - the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring - the ring that rules them all - which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins.
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The Lord of the Rings
In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.
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Easons €24.20
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Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
All of the above! Always on paper if I’ll be teaching or writing about a text, and on Kindle for massive histories of World War II. I’m currently listening to the audiobook of The Lord of the Rings, performed by an excellent British actor who brings out Tolkien’s pitch-perfect ear for different voices of hobbits, elves, dwarves, Ents, and wizards.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
The Community Bookstore in my Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope is the model of a community-based bookstore (as its name suggests), perfect for browsing and filled with great staff picks. Even if we can’t have Plato’s Republic, we can have the Platonic ideal of a bookstore.
Many thanks to David for recommending a fantastic list of books! Please don't forget to check out David's book Around the World in 80 Books.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Penguin Books Ltd (Arond The World In 80 Books), Random House USA Inc (Meditations), Orion Publishing Co (Life), HarperCollins Publishers (The Lord Of The Rings).
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