Kerouac, Damascus, etc.

In the past I’ve mentioned a few classic works I actively disliked. But there are a few others that simply leave me unmoved in every respect.

At the top of the list is Max Weber, “Wissenschaft als Beruf.” This piece is often mentioned in tones of awe, as if it were a work belonging to the intellectual pantheon. It’s always possible I just missed something (sometimes great works are lost on me the first or second time and only become wonderful a bit later). But I thought it was just a reasonably good set of pointers for young academics entering upon a career.

Another, I’m afraid, is Paradise Lost. Never did much for me, though I bought a new paperback version recently and need to give it a reread.

An author I was really surprised to adore, whom I read quite late and who on paper doesn’t seem like my kind of author, is Jack Kerouac. I’m not claiming he’s better than Milton, just that I enjoyed him more than Milton. Kerouac does have one annoying trait, which is that the narrator always seems to have a man crush on some masculine-heroic supporting character, one who is almost always less interesting than the narrator himself. (I find Dean Moriarty in On the Road to be uninteresting, but the narrator very interesting.) Maybe this has something to do with Kerouac’s brother. But I generally like all the Beats better than I expect to like them.

I also like Ezra Pound better than Eliot for some reason.

And, totally uncool though it is to say so, I generally like Tolstoy better than Dostoevsky. On paper I shouldn’t; in practice, I do. Two college classmates ridiculed me quite violently for saying so.

Similar occasions on which I was verbally assaulted (perhaps because it sounded, wrongly, like I was just being a contrarian, and professional contrarians are indeed annoying and deserve a few slaps) were when I expressed a preference for Aristotle over Plato during freshman year, and also when I openly preferred Damascus to Aleppo during a Cairo discussion among travelers returned from Syria. Oddly, the only person to agree with me openly about Damascus was my ex-Dean, a guy with whom I never agreed on anything else.

What’s so great about Damascus?

1. The best sweets of any city in the world.

2. The steam baths are nice.

3. The babbling brook running through the side of the Old City.

4. The fact that the Old City is walled means that you can wander with the aim of deliberately getting lost. Do that in Cairo and only a taxi can save you, because Cairo is so vast. In Damascus you’ll keep finding the wall every 10 minutes or so.