Presence

I thought I'd start a new series of posts on the books in the banner; I selected each for a specific reason, and their order, in some cases, conveys something as well. There are some books that are left out, I suppose I will either redo the shot, or make a second edition.

First off, Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Although I've been into science fiction since high school, and actually had this book from way back then, I actually never read the Foundation series until recently. What I love about Asimov is the way his stories are all cleverly contrived logic puzzles; there is always an answer, it just takes some deduction to figure it out. The Foundation series, on top of the logic, is a well-crafted epic with great characters, always a little too confident in themselves (for all you Star Wars fans, Lucas stole Han Solo, both the name and the character, directly from Asimov). One other thing which the series does which is unique is convey how ideas and culture are passed down through the generations, how myths and legends are created, preserved and reconstituted. It presents, in my opinion, a plausible picture of how things may have happened in our own culture with various documents of significance. The whole Second Foundation thing is just too cool.

The Hungry Soul by Leon Kass is next. I actually haven't made it all the way through this book yet; the writing is quite tedious, and the content, at least in the beginning, is even more so. The last chapter (I skipped ahead), in which Kass presents his interpretation of the meaning of the kashrus system, is pretty good. After reading it, make sure to check out R. Meir Soloveitchik's article. As you may know, I'm just a bit obsessed with food and the role it plays in our culture, both from a religious and secular perspective. This book does a good job of addressing many of those issues. I am still looking for a good book on the history of eating, the meal, the restaurant, etc. If anyone knows of one, let me know.

And last for tonight, The Basic Kafka. The story of how I got this book is kind of funny. Shomrei has a big cache of books, many from R. Joshua Shapiro's library. Every once in a while, Marvin Diamond pulls them out of storage and runs a book sale. The last time he did this, several books were set aside as "kefira" by some overzealous individuals who had obviously not read what they confiscated. I found the pile, asked Marvin what he was going to do with them. He said he would just throw them out, so I gave him a dollar for each one. That day I picked up two Fackenheims, a Baeck, a Fromm and a few Bubers (not all of these were marked kefira, by the way). Many have R. Shapiro's stamp on the inside cover. Oh, how the times have changed.

Anyhoo, Kafka's writings, at least to me, seem like modern-day midrashim. They have that plausible yet impossible tone to them that forces your mind to step back and evaluate the story from a non-literal perspective (if I had to offer an example, check out some of Adderabbi's posts on various midrashim; that's the kind of thing I'm talking about). I'm not an expert in his writings, I've just found that I can return to them time and again and still enjoy them.