Currently reading
Vineland (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
Tristes Tropiques
Richard III
The Dwarf
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Labyrinths
Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
Gravity's Rainbow
A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
I've spent 2-3 hours with this now, spread over a couple of days -- and I'm sorry to say I can't find anything very interesting in it. Maybe it's me... The only essay that grabbed me at all is "on a winded civilization". It has some fine insights on the meta-psychology (I'm just making up a word that doesn't really mean anything here) of cultural decay -- which he dates (Anti-Enlightenment guy that he is) from the end of the 18th cen.And even that very brief essay mostly bored me. A lot of it is just verbal fluff, I'm afraid.
But then again, maybe it's me...
One problem is, in talking about the decay of Europe, and the vitality of the Huns -- there's a not-so-subtle glorification here of the Nazis -- and this, long AFTER he's supposed to have given up that particular vice.... he predicts (1956), that the triumphant civilization of the coming century would be....
Russia.
How did that turn out, Cioran?
If he were a stock guru -- reading that -- I'd have to cancel my sub.
Anyway... I'll try the next one now (Trouble), which is a collection of aphorisms... maybe he does better with twitter-sized writing.