사진 일기, "Enlightenment Now," "Lost Names"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas Friedman, "Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's

Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations" (2016)

 

Thomas Friedman 이

지금 우리가 사는 2010년대의 세상을 좀 더 잘 이해하려고

많은 책을 읽고 많은 사람들과 이야기하고 나서 쓴 이 책을

커피 한 잔 값에 사서는 이렇게 편안하게 즐기며 읽을 수 있다니!

 

 

 

 

Willa Cather, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" (1927)

 

 

 

 

Steven Pinker, "Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason,

Science, Humanism, And Progress" (2018)

 

어떤 책은 읽으면서, 구구절절, 즐겁다.

마치 내가 응원하는 팀이나 선수가 계속 멋진 플레이로 앞서 가고

있는 경기를 관전할 때처럼, 즐거움이 즐거움으로 이어진다.

맛있는 것을 아껴 먹듯 한 번에 조금씩만 읽어도 뿌듯하다.

(재밌는 소설과 달리 그러기가 어렵지도 않다.)

아직 'Part I: Enlightenment'밖에 안 읽었지만

지금 읽고 있는 이 책이 내겐 그렇다.

 

What is enlightenment? In a 1784 essay with that question as its

title, Immanuel Kant answered that it consists of "humankind's

emergence from its self-incurred immaturity," its "lazy and

cowardly" submission to the "dogmas and formulas" of religious

or political authority. Enlightenment's motto, he proclaimed, is

"Dare to understand"

 

The first piece of wisdom ... is that misfortune may be no one's

fault. A major breakthrough of the Scientific Revolution -- perhaps

its biggest breakthrough -- was to refute the intuition that the

universe is saturated with purpose.

 

They understand physical things as having hidden essences

that obey the laws of sympathetic magic or voodoo

rather than physics and biology.

 

People see violence as moral, not immoral: across the world

and throughout history, more people have been murdered

to mete out justice than to satisfy greed.

 

But we're not all bad. Human cognition comes with two features

that give it the means to transcend its limitations.

The first is abstraction.

 

The second stepladder of cognition is

its combinatorial, recursive power.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*     *     *

 

위 사진의 네 책은 아직 읽고 있는 중인데

아래 사진의 두 책이 먼저 다 읽혔다. 역시 다 읽은

Tobias Wolffe, "This Boy's Life: A Memoir" (1989),

Annie Dillard, "The Writing Life" (1988) 와 함께 이 책들이

그러니까 더 '페이지를 넘기게 만드는' 책인 셈이다.

 

*     *     *

 

 

 

Ian McEwan, "The Children Act" (2014)

 

 

 

 

Richard E. Kim, "Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood" (1988)

 

한 살이던 1932년부터 1945년 해방을 맞을 때까지의 '나'의 이야기인데,

나중에 덧붙인 '작가 노트'에서는, 이 책이 자서전이 아니라 소설이라고,

 

아래는 책에서 두 부분이다.

 

And, the next day, I pass the examination.

My grandfather is beaming that evening and allows me

to have a dinner at the same table with him and ....

"If you are at all like your father, you should have a good brain,"

he says, downing rice wine from a small cup that my father

fills for him.... My father is expansive that evening.

He drinks much wine. "Your father was first

in his class in his grade school."

 

It is the middle of August, and although the height of the

rainy season in our region has come and gone, it is still

raining on and off, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in

the afternoon -- a sudden, quick downpour, with the roll of

thunder drumming and flashes of lightening bayoneting out

of billowy black rain clouds. Then , as suddenly it comes,

the rain will stop, and the dark clouds will drift away. The

brilliant, sizzling sun will appear in the clear blue sky, and

the air will be filled with the pungent odors of muddy earth,

wet trees, shrubs, flowers, and thatched roofs drying,

rendering our town steaming and shimmering in the white

heat of the sun. And, again, a black rain cloud will loom up

on the horizon, quickly seizing and gripping other clouds

in the darkening sky, towering up and up like a giant,

clenched first rising and rising, and, when it hovers around

our town, it will burst open and let loose a deluge so heavy

and thick that you almost think count each pellet of rain.