Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius

Rating:
Summary: Not too bad
Review: I read this book about two years ago in high school. It caught my eye because it was a completely black hardcover book with the title "Young Nietzsche" on the back (of course). Afterwards I had to skip a few classes to read the Hollingdale biography - so great was the inspiration this book provided. This was the first Nietzsche commentary/biography I read. I had struggled with the birth of tragedy and carried it around in an attempt to make myself look smart a few times but I was too lazy to do anything real, and only succeeded in impressing teachers, and I slowly realized that there was really no one to impress. Anyway, I remember the book as being fairly inspiring and very interesting from a purely biographical point of view (can I be more vague or ridiculous?). If you are perhaps a lowly high schooler living in the total darkness of American public education and would like to shine a little light onto you and your fellow prisoners, check this book out. I'm not sure I'd like it as much now that I have become less pretentious... but anyway it is worth reading and its not too long. I think the editorial above gives a good summary but is a bit harsh. The book develops what has become typical as far as hypotheses go, but it offers some sagacity for anyone who wants to learn or find out what it means to learn in that it provides the means - a step up from this is Monk's biography of Wittgenstein. The absolute worst thing about the book is that it leaves you hanging and so you had better buy the Hollingdale biography too (I don't work for amazon, BTW) and then read the real stuff. Well I hope you like the book if you buy it. I hadn't even thought of Harold Bloom until I read that editorial... You won't get a lot out of the book, but you might get a LITTLE, if you catch my meaning. It's the style the gets you out of the cave. The more scholarly person will turn a cold shoulder and avoid second hand ambition.

Rating:
Summary: This Book is about a Genius
Review: If there is a problem with this book, it is that its conclusion, "Redefining Genius" is still too vague to make any particular genius of much significance. Due to media influences, social thought now is largely a matter of public opinion, and I may have few companions in the belief that, of course, it was quite proper for Nietzsche to rise to an attack upon his own age, its public opinions, and all the ways in which people prefer to fool themselves. I am grateful to this book for its outlook; merely mentioning its title is often enough to convince others that I don't have to agree with them. The index doesn't have a listing for jokes, and the author seems to associate them quite closely with the scandalous life of the composer, Wagner. On page 120, we are told, "If that was not enough, there were Wagner's coarse jokes, which frequently involved Cosima." My own interest in developing the idea of a fetish involving Nietzsche's relationship with the Wagner family has relied on the information in this book, on that very page, that Isolde was born in April 1865, so she was four when Nietzsche first stepped into that family circle. Other sources indicate that Nietzsche stopped visiting the Wagners before Isolde turned twelve, when the composer began trying to teach Nietzsche something about religion. Things which may have been left out of this biography might not be helpful for understanding the nature of genius. Or maybe the worst idea of a genius would be someone who knew what all these people were thinking and wrote it down.

Rating:
Summary: This Book is about a Genius
Review: If there is a problem with this book, it is that its conclusion, "Redefining Genius" is still too vague to make any particular genius of much significance. Due to media influences, social thought now is largely a matter of public opinion, and I may have few companions in the belief that, of course, it was quite proper for Nietzsche to rise to an attack upon his own age, its public opinions, and all the ways in which people prefer to fool themselves. I am grateful to this book for its outlook; merely mentioning its title is often enough to convince others that I don't have to agree with them. The index doesn't have a listing for jokes, and the author seems to associate them quite closely with the scandalous life of the composer, Wagner. On page 120, we are told, "If that was not enough, there were Wagner's coarse jokes, which frequently involved Cosima." My own interest in developing the idea of a fetish involving Nietzsche's relationship with the Wagner family has relied on the information in this book, on that very page, that Isolde was born in April 1865, so she was four when Nietzsche first stepped into that family circle. Other sources indicate that Nietzsche stopped visiting the Wagners before Isolde turned twelve, when the composer began trying to teach Nietzsche something about religion. Things which may have been left out of this biography might not be helpful for understanding the nature of genius. Or maybe the worst idea of a genius would be someone who knew what all these people were thinking and wrote it down.