Art of Loving

Version 0.2

Two Minor Criticisms of The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm

Mostly an excellent book that I can highly recommend. This is a book that was published more than 50 years ago, but which is still in print and still in demand, even in Japanese. After reading the English version, I tried to reserve the Japanese version at the library, only to find more than 30 people ahead of me (even though the library has several copies).

The book ranged over a large number of topics and I felt that it was deeply insightful on almost all of them. Actually, my main reaction was to feel like we are become mental midgets compared to such deep thinkers. In particular, I think Internet is contributing greatly towards our shallow, unfocused, and overly fluid thinking.

Notwithstanding that, I felt there were two weaknesses in the book. One was in sections where he used the kind of vague language that afflicts medical diagnosis and astrology. Such language makes it too easy to fit people into categories that seem highly applicable, but are actually uncertain.

The other weakness was in his gender stereotyping. He took it as natural that children should change and evolve over time, but seemed to ignore the possibility that parents can also change. I felt that his thinking on these topics was even kind of rigid compared to other areas he discussed, but just now I'd excuse him on the basis of his dealings with the Freudians...

Labyrinths

Version 0.7

Annoying Errata in the 2007 edition of Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

The main reason for noting these errors is that this was supposed to be a corrected version of the book, and considering the late publication date, it's liable to be the long-term printed archival copy for many years from this... Ergo, my annoyance about these mistakes:

On page 64, it says "neither than nor later" when it should read "neither then nor later".

On page 92, on the next to last line of the page "tthe sergeant" should obviously be "the sergeant".

On page 110, where it says "and unforeseen wall" the intention must have been "an unforeseen wall".

Most seriously and egregiously, page 190 is an inserted reprint of page 188, with one inserted phrase: "and that man will destroy my world as I have destroyed the books." It isn't certain if page 189 properly continues to page 191, though it does read in a plausible way.

Having vented the spleen of my annoyance, I can still conclude that it was an interesting and thought-provoking book to read.