Nathan Bick

  Second attempt at reading The Idiot - April 2023 Introduction I picked up The Idiot for the second time in 2023, starting it after I finished The Leopard at the end of January. School started again at the same time, so it took about two months for me to read The Idiot during free moments that I snatched here and there. The first time I read this book, I stopped after about a third of the way in. During that first reading, I couldn’t connect with the content due to its highly dated concerns (19th century wedding schemes and drama) and the antiquated language (in the translation) compared to that of Crime and Punishment , which presented as much more modern and relatable. However, I put down the book knowing that I would return to it later, and that time arrived recently. During discussions with Danette, we discussed the occult mystical concept of the fool archetype. I will expound on this more later in the essay, but this discussion reminded me of The Idiot and helped me realize ...

Legend of Korra is a successor to the very famous and well-regarded Avatar: The Last Airbender . Both are animated TV series from Nickelodeon meant to evoke the style of Japanese anime but made by and for Americans. Primarily geared towards young adults and children, the series nonetheless have garnered fans from more mature audiences, which is not so unusual for the “Hollywood” children’s shows since these are apparently designed with the parental viewer in mind as well. I watched Avatar as a child back when it was released in the 2000s, but just watched this successor with Nicole in the early 2020s, about ten years after its release.  As a refresher - Avatar takes place in a fictional Asian-inspired, mildly-steampunk world divided in four nations, each associated with one of the elements of fire, water, earth, and air. The nations each produce a fraction of people with a magical or mystical ability to “bend” their associated element, allowing a telekinetic ability to manipulate ...

  In the middle of 2022, I was listening to Douglas Murray on Lex Fridman podcast when I heard something that was astonishing - Murray quoted an unnamed “Persian friend” who proclaimed that there were only two truly great novels of the 20th century - Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate and The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa ( link ). This was humbling. I thought I knew something about literature, had read or was familiar with the great works and writers. I had of course closely read Vasily Grossman and wrote about it. But here was a work and a writer, ostensibly “obviously” among the greatest of the last hundred years, which I had not heard anything about? I was floored; I paused the video and researched. This was a sobering reminder to not be too high in one’s own self-estimation, and also a surprising joy. Putting aside any evaluation of Murray’s politics and ideology (which would be a long essay), he’s clearly respectable for his literary experience and perspective, and he...