I am writing this after 8 hours of standing up and doing nothing, followed by 45 minutes of thrashing around on the squash court, getting humiliated by a curly Italian 3 years younger than me. So my nerves and reflexes are understandably shaken. What I need now is a beer and a book, and tonight that book will be Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig (1974). I’ve heard bits and pieces about this book here and there, but when I read on the jacket that it was “the most widely read philosophy book in the world” I did a double take. I don’t fancy myself an experienced reader of philosophy, but I figured I’d at least heard more about it had that been the case.
I’ve only read about a hundred pages, but a pattern is starting to emerge. The narrator, his son and two of their friends are on a motorcycle road trip, going into the Northwest, and the difference in opinion between the narrator and his friends on the details of motorcycle maintenance gets him started on elemental worldviews, logic, hypotheses etc. So far, these wise words have been fairly banal, but ¾’s of the book have yet to be read. The really interesting aspect, as of now, is the use of the first person narrator, especially since it is revealed that he may have previously suffered from a split personality; his other personality was a university dropout in pursuit of… what? To be continued.
Coming off a road trip of my own, with dear friends, this novel/philosophy book right now is soothing to me, and is, at this stage, recommended.
Foregoing further news on books this week, ‘cause there really isn’t a lot of really interesting stuff to report, I’ve decided to briefly comment on two movies currently playing in Danish cinemas. The first one is Brüno, which most people seem to be wildly enthusiastic about. With this movie, and the current Outgames taking place in Copenhagen, flamboyant homosexuals seem to be everywhere. I enjoyed Brüno, but did not laugh as much as the rest of the cinema did. Why? It’s scary, and I’m not talking about the “pranked” people’s reactions to Sacha Baron Cohen’s insane display of homosexuality, but about the American people’s ignorance in almost every aspect displayed in this movie and in 2006’s Borat. I have absolutely nothing against homosexuals, but the degree of public inappropriateness practiced by Cohen as Brüno in this movie is completely unrealistic, and there were places in the movie where I could see the similarities to a minstrel show as mentioned by certain gay rights groups in the US prior to the movie’s premiere. The reactions of the people in this movie are outrageous, but they are also to a large degree forced. That being said, the movie is very funny.
So is The Hangover (bad Danish title: Tømmermænd i Vegas). This is a movie for anyone who has woken up without a clue what they did after 9 pm the day before. A friend of mine once woke up in a basil bush, curled up like a fetus. He smelled like pesto for the next two days. He will love this. This one comes highly recommended, and then buy your guys a round afterwards. Cheers.
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