James Johnson

Let's hold on to the Great Books by advertising their value through social media, the same medium that is destroying interest in the Great Books.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

Two people competing for the same thing each boast that "failure is not an option."

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

@chaven ...and you made my week with your wisdom, especially how toward the end you wrote of "an 'interior exile,' taking leave of the 'mimetic giddiness' of the world..." In other words, there comes a point when we lay down our sword borne of envy and desire and let it all be.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

Just finished reading this excellent book. It is not your usual biography about a writer or philosopher that focuses on petty, trivial faults. The author Cynthia L Haven explores Rene Girard's books and intellectual progression, his mind, while making sure to include insights into other writers who influenced or were influenced by Girard. Ms. Haven herself is brimming with wisdom and vast erudition. I may have fallen in love with her!

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

@Larasvisusls Nastasya Filippovna is my favorite female character in all of literature!

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

@dianalokada Then there is Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale where a knight must find the answer to the riddle -- What do women want? He returns with the answer that women most desire sovereignty, or mastery and control, over their husbands and lovers.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

10 books that will destroy your faith in humanity:

-- Grendel -- John Gardner
-- Slaughterhouse-Five -- Kurt Vonnegut
-- Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad
-- Jude the Obscure -- Thomas Hardy
-- Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell
-- Native Son -- Richard Wright
-- Notes from Underground -- Dostoyevsky
-- The Tin Drum -- Gunter Grass
-- Blood Meridian -- Cormac McCarthy
-- The Painted Bird -- Jerzy Kosinski

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

I read Bloom's Western Canon a few months ago and so appreciated his appreciation of great literature as opposed to picking it apart because it does not reflect current political fads. Blank verse poetry has often gone over my head, but Bloom guided me through Wordsworth and now I am a huge fan of The Prelude. And of course there is always Bloom's love for Shakespeare and it is stimulating to read of that love, especially his romantic crush on Rosalind from As You Like It.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

Russian Proverb: He who remembers the past loses one eye. And he who forgets the past loses two eyes.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

I will continue to promote "Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman as the greatest novel of all time. The below article more than proves my case, as it also highlights Grossman's other writings under the duress of the Soviet censors. Grossman made fools of all future educated Anti-Semitic Americans. One quote: "For Grossman, Marxism was racism by class."

How Vasily Grossman Made Darkness Visible https://t.co/UtTQtaGPP0 via @commentary

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

@SchopenhauerNow Celibate.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

At first our lovers act out their heady romance high upon a majestic and almost unreal mountain. It is beautiful up there, yes, but dangerous, too, since each partner is just one wrong step away from falling off a cliff into an emotional abyss. Then the relationship is a process to together looking out to the safe and verdant valley below, and, hand in hand, beginning the slow descent to a more sustainable reality. Once living routinely in their domestic home with a working chimney, they must sit on the porch and gaze up at the mountain peak now shrouded in nostalgic clouds to remind themselves to go back up there from time to time to avoid stagnation and the loss of their love.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

@deewalkerbooks Both novels are a relentless study of political cant and how it is used to mask a government's will to power at the expense of its own citizens, though the cant tells beaten down subjects that everything is quite fine -- just keep repeating the pretty words!

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

The SYSTEM is not some guy with human agency and the otherworldly power to shape, on a whim, the lives of individual citizens. It is not even a thing. There are millions of people employed within a so-called System but none of them possesses the full knowledge and scope of the System. Thus, the person you need to rely on, or to blame for your misfortunes, is yourself, or the individual who shot you with a gun.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

@HimChatt Demons is his best novel -- and it foretells so much of today's revolutionaries.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

10. Lord Jim -- Joseph Conrad
9. The Bonfire of the Vanities -- Tom Wolfe
8. The Dispossessed -- Ursula K. Le Guin
7. The Red and the Black -- Stendhal
6. The Mayor of Casterbridge -- Thomas Hardy
5. In Search of Lost Time -- Proust
4. Invisible Man -- Ralph Ellison
3. Hamlet -- Shakespeare
2. The Brothers Karamazov -- Dostoyevsky
1. Life and Fate -- Vasily Grossman (Hands down!)

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

How can the stars fall from the sky onto our Earth if the Universe is expanding so that the stars are forever rushing away from us with increasing speed?

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

She was a left-handed hitter. I pitched a baseball to her with my right hand. She made perfect contact and drove the ball, with precision, directly at me so that I could catch it and throw another pitch into her sweet spot for yet another solid connection.

We got into a beautiful rhythm and all along we talked about Life, Love, and whether it was possible for a man and a woman to have a romantic relationship that endured past its passionate first pitch. The words flowed like poetry written by a sports columnist with a weak spot for Wordsworth. Each throw was followed by a bat hitting a ball and a ball being scooped up by a glove. Our minds and our emotional wavelengths and our athletic teamwork were all in perfect sync.

[James Johnson @CreatorJamesF]

Why do American affluent college students and their professors embrace Socialism? I answer this question in the blog below using my own experience in Harvard Square, 1986, while ridiculing Noam Chomsky, who got rich from criticizing capitalism:

My Youthful Flirtation with Communism https://t.co/aZFz2todkH