Sunday, February 18, 2007
Reading List for the Brokenhearted
...or for anyone interested in thinking about what it means to "be in love". In the wake of recently breaking up with my girlfriend of a year and a half, I'm feeling drawn to books which might help me think about the whys and wherefores of "love". The two titles into which I have dipped in the last few weeks are Against Love by Laura Kipnis and Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties. I have read the first 30 odd pages of the Kipnis book (a polemic which consciously eschews "fairness" for the sake of argument) and have found it resonating with some of my experiences and thoughts on the subject. So far one of the interesting issues she is discussing is the idea of love-relationships as being situations which inherently require a lot of work. This is an idea which I have found myself intoning more than once, but it comes in for some interesting critique by Kipnis. I picked up the Rilke book, flipped it open randomly, and found Rilke weighing in on how love required difficult work. I need to read more of both, and think more about how love-relationships should and should not be sites of work. Anybody have any favorite books which illuminate the labyrinths of love?
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_Love is Hell_ by Matt Groening. A quotation, listed with a bogus Nietzsche citation: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
Thanks guys. I've read lots of Rilke's poetry but have yet to read Letters to a Young Poet or any other of his prose. He was a strange character. He writes beautifully re. love but I'm not sure he is a person I want to be taking advice from per se. I'd be interested to know what biography is recommended on him. I sometimes forget about Matt Groening's pre-Simpson's career but then I'm always thrilled when someone reminds me of how great his work on the whole "...is hell" series was.
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