Munzenberg’s Viral Post: What is in your Antilibrary?
It’s a rare opportunity to be on the ground floor of one of these viral posts and to be able to watch how far afield it travels, so I am selecting my “tags” with great care:
UPDATE:
Younghusband opines on The Traveller’s Library
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Dave Schuler:
March 27th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Oh my. I’ll have to think about this one. I read practically every thing I buy (or am given).
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » The Traveller’s Antilibrary:
March 28th, 2008 at 12:07 am
[…] this is a brilliant concept (EDIT: An updated post here at Zenpundit) that Münzenberg picked up and got me thinking. I have a small stack of to-read […]
Valdis:
March 28th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Holes in your knowledge may be as useful as holes in your network! No, really, "structural holes" are good for your network… read anything by Ron Burt to find out why.Books I have, but have yet to read…"The Dreams of Reason" by Heinz Pagels" Ripples from the Zambezi" by Ernetso Sirolli"Identity and Control" by Harrison White"Einstein" by Walter Isaacson"Russia’s Economy of Favors" by Alena LedenevaStarted reading "Einstein" and thought about making a social network map of the people in the book…
Eddie:
March 28th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Sweet! I can’t wait to read these posts and watch the spread.
Fabius Maximus:
March 28th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Thank you for this post. Now I feel better about all those unopened books gathering dust on my shelves. Here is are some on the top of the list:
A History of Private Lives (the whole set)
A History of the Arab People, Albert Hourani (does it count if its started but not finished?)
On War, Clausewitz (does it count if we have skimmed it?, double-points if its very boring?)
John Adams, David McCullough
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Another question: list the books that you have bought, never read, and wondered why you bought it. Like The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman. Reading Tabbi’s review killed my interest in the book (reading Friedman’s NYT columns might also do so):
"The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman", Matt Tabbi, New York Press.
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm
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This has the all-time best ending line for a book review: "Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?"
zen:
March 28th, 2008 at 5:25 am
Hi Valdis,
Thank you for your swift response! I will check out Ron Burt.
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Hi Dave,
Just give it your best effort. If you have read all you own then I’ve even more impressed!
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Hi Eddie,
I’m curious too. Dave Davison tried to track down the last one of these but this time we have ground zero.
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Hi FM,
Heh. The World is Flat is part of my Antilibrary too. Intended to read it and it was unceremoniously bumped by something else, either the Sandra Mackey book on Iran or the Chiang bio. Clausewitz was speed-read 20 years ago for an undergrad German history class at the same time I was trying to read (and comprehend the transliterated gibberish of) Kant’s Prologue to a Critique of Pure Reason and Marx’s 18 Brumaire – I fear On War did not get the same level of attention that I’d have given it today.
James F:
March 28th, 2008 at 10:41 am
"What it Takes" by Kramer on the 88 Presidential campaign – supposed to be a masterpiece; "Neuromancer" after seeing it recommended here; "The British Empire in the Middle East" by William Roger Louis to see how an over-extended power dealt with all the problems in the post-war era; "The Japanese Art of War" by Cleary which Boyd was apparently a big fan of; "On War" by Clausewitz – I’m the same as FM above.
By the way, thinking about Munzenberg… if you haven’t then you should definitely read "Double Lives" by Stephen Koch which looks at the career of Willi Munzenberg. It’s one of the best books on propaganda anywhere.
Antilibrary « KuiperCliff:
March 28th, 2008 at 11:34 am
[…] Posted on 28 March 2008 by kuipercliff Off the back of a post by Zenpundit regarding Umberto Eco’s ‘antilibrary’, Soob posed the following question: […]
Fabius Maximus:
March 28th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
On War might be the most common volume in military antilibraries.
"A German friend has a first edition {of On War}; he notes, ‘It is in perfect condition. It was in a regimental library, so it was never touched.’” From William Lind’s "Strategic Defense Initiative".
http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_strategic_defense.htm
dave davison:
March 28th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I know you purposefully protected my ROA by delisting me from the carefully selected tagees – but I would be interested in following the virality of the antilibrary. My reference librarian daughter Susan Barb gave me The Black Swan for Xmas and I found Taleb’s arrogance a bit much, but the theme and contents of his book very practical.
On the shelf: The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam
Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim
The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker.
Echoing Eco and Taleb – I propose a diverging vector to this virality party – why not list books you have read many times and still don’t get the full message – The Philosopher’s Stone by David Peat, The Hypertropic Mind by Stan Grof, Synergetics, by Bucky Fuller stare at me from my bookshelf.
Moon:
March 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
True to Taleb, I’ll suggest that library and antilibrary correspond to White and Grey knowledge, respectively. For me, the riveting library is the Black one, those tomes which you neither know should be in your White or Grey stacks nor know can be in your Black stack. What’s Grey can sting you, but it’s the Black that can devastate your world. By definition, even building out your Grey stack (by virally networking with the Grey stacks of your extended cohort) does not illuminate your Black stack. I think the Black stack may serve the useful Gedankenexperiment of deciding which books have not been written but should be. Do your best to expect the unexpected and feed your prospective Grey stack with your Black.
Lexington Green:
March 28th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
What Moon said is blowing my mind a little bit. So, White knowledge = books I have read. Grey knowledge = books I know about, or own, but haven’t read yet. BUT we also have Black knowledge = books I DO NOT YET KNOW I should want to read, or which DO NOT EXIST, but should. The deeper you get into the White and Grey areas, you start to see more and more "Black books" taking shape. Your research and reading of bibliographies shows you there is a gap. You ask yourself, how come nobody has pulled together this or that cluster of knowledge in one place for me?
I had a post on one example of this here:
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/4535.html
But aren’t there really two categories within the "Black"? The books you figure out should exist, but don’t. That is a known unknown. Or a known-to-be-nonexistent. But even more mysteriously, the unknown unknowns, books you do not even yet realize that you want and/or need to answer questions you may not yet even know you want to have answered? Of course this last category may consist in part of books which actually DO exist. You just don’t know about them yet. Or you just don’t know you need them yet.
This is all deeper than I initially thought … .
Dave Dilegge:
March 29th, 2008 at 1:16 am
I have two (one to reread – actually – really read – and the other to read beyond interpreation snippets), The Bible and The Koran. Why? Maybe someone here has the answer to that.
Moon:
March 29th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Lex Green, I think the known unknown is in your Grey stack, having been placed there from your Black stack once you mark out what it is, or someone informs you of it. The Black stack is all unknown unknowns, and you can’t see anything on your Black stack. You do, however, know that your Black stack is the largest of the three stacks.
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Another way to look at it is that each individual has a Grey stack that uniquely encroaches on the Big Universal Black stack. The Black stack is defined not by what is in it, but by what is not in it, i.e. the sum of all Grey stacks. Here’s a question for the folks with large brains who can better assist me and my median brain: does the Black stack have some amorphous locus, toward which we are driving with our peripheral Grey (and White) stacks? Or is it the Grey-White stacks that have the locus, and we are exploring radially from the locus toward the indefinite Black information horizon?
zen:
March 29th, 2008 at 3:48 am
So…many…topics…can’t focus…but must…try…..
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Hi Dave (Davison)
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I agree with you that Taleb projects considerable arrogance; I can tolerate that when it is conjoined with intelligence and something worth saying. My problem is running into guys in real life who try to combine arrogance with stupidity;)
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In terms of following the virality, Munzenberg has updated his post with linkbacks unrelated to those here. To answer your challenge, I find that it is fiction that has most caused me to re-read ( Lord of the Rings 4 times; Atlas Shrugged 3 times; The Master and Margarita, 1984, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Lord of the Flies 2 times each) but in terms of Non-fiction I’ve read through the entirety of The Gulag Archipelago and Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich twice. The enormity of evil is the hook, I suppose.
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Hi Dave (Dilegge)
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You can’t be fully educated unless you have read the Bible -aside from the spiritual interest for many ppl, the text is so heavily referenced or alluded to in other literature. The Quran I have heard is very difficult to read correctly because it is an alinear text and a lot of background context has to be provided to understand the relation or meaning of one sura to another. Maybe if Charles Cameron reads this comment thread, he can elucidate.
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Hi James F.
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Reading What it Takes explained to me why Bob Dole was never, ever, going to become President of the United States. There is an interview with Kramer by Brian Lamb in the C-Span Booknotes archives that is worth watching.
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Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » An Image of Martial Discord:
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June 14th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
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June 18th, 2014 at 2:48 am
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