Book Report: Man's Search for Meaning

3. Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (1959, 2014) (1/22/26)

I've had this book forever, and when I arrived at M in my alphabetical approach to reading, I figured it was about time—but of course I couldn't find it. It's around here somewhere! But an online search of the library holdings said they had it, and it was in. When I got there, however, it wasn't on the shelf; as I was about to leave, feeling dejected, I decided to ask the checkout person, and she went and rummaged around among the recently returned books, and there it was! Another of those small miracles of life . . . which I suppose is appropriate for this particular book. You can find meaning in many things.

And so now I've finally read it. For some reason, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I might be. I guess I thought Frankl had an answer to the question of meaning (silly me). But I got something from it, and that's enough.

The edition I read features what I believe are the original two constituent essays, "Experiences in a Concentration Camp" and "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," as well as a few shorter pieces—a 1984 postscript, "The Case for a Tragic Optimism," and selected letters, speeches and essays. The book was originally published in German in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager (Saying yes to life in spite of everything: A psychologist experiences the concentration camp) and in English in 1959 as From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist's Path to a New Therapy. 

The section on life in a concentration camp—Frankl spent three years in four camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering, and Türkheim, part of the Dachau complex—was, needless to say, harrowing. He speaks of the suffering, the uncertainty, the deaths, matter-of-factly, always pointing to the importance of a responsible, responsive, positive attitude. As he puts it in the logotherapy section (logotherapy being an approach that he created, focused not on the psyche but on the mind), 

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves. 

And later he writes:

Man is not fully conditioned and determined [by external conditions] but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. . . . Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

He gives examples, including in his own experience, and throughout I marveled at his stoicism. Could I be so strong? So positive? I don't know, but surely such strength and positivity are imperative if one is to survive soul-deadening events—such as so many are experiencing right now, in my very own country, as they are being torn from their homes and deported to prisons far far away.

A key to all this is being able to get out of one's own mind, and orient toward others with love; to balance freedom with responsibility; to do one's best to be "decent"; to approach the world with "tragic optimism." By which he may have meant, as he put it at one point, "The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs." 

I confess I did not finish the last few little essays. They were getting rather repetitive and didn't seem to add anything new. I did enjoy the ten-page afterword, by philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst William Winslade, who gave us a short biography of Frankl, for context. He led a full and inspiring life. A worthy man indeed.

Milo

We're losing our boy. He's fifteen, and he's done. We took him to the vet today, and she gave us some appetite stimulant, but really . . . he's done. I'm not ready. He's our boy.

Whew. Anyway. I searched through the archives and found nine mentions of Milo. Here:

2016: Meeting Milo
2016: Teflon dog
2017: Sleeping Milo
2017: Milo!
2017: Milo! Again!
2023: Milo
2023: Milo!
2023: Milo's bindi dot
2025: Milo

And that's where we stand. I am taking pictures of Milo still, of course. It's hard to imagine him not being in our life, our lives. He's the best boy ever. 

Book Report: Logicomix

2. Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitrou, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, with art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna (2009) (1/9/26)

I've had this book quite a long time, so when I began searching for an L book, it jumped out and said, me me me! I'm entertaining, and since I'm mostly drawings, I'll be quick! 

Well, yes: quick, but also weighty, because this book covers some confounding mathematical—or rather, logical—foundations. It begins on September 9, 1939, three days after Hitler invaded Poland and on the day Britain declared war on Germany, with a lecture the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell gave on "the role of logic in human affairs." Though as he explains at the end, in the Q&A, in fact it's not a lecture so much as a story, "a story of a man who hoped to find a way of getting absolutely right answers." It includes meetings and conversations with major mathematical innovators, such as Gottlob Frege, the greatest logician since Aristotle, and Georg Cantor, the creator of the mathematical theory of infinity. He recounts the clash between Henri Poincaré and the German David Hilbert on the relative power of intuition vs. proof in mathematical thought. Wittgenstein and Gödel make appearances. It is also a story of madness, of conflict, of frustration, and ultimately, Russell said, of failure. And yet. 

It's a heady mix that I am ill-equipped to summarize here. The narrative also includes the very making of this book, in a wink at self-referentiality—the discussions the authors had as they walked around Athens hashing out the themes; and there's also a framing story involving Aeschylus's drama Oresteia, for a humanitarian twist. 

Doxiadis explains the project better than I can:

And here's a video about the making of the book:

It's a book I may pick up again—and slow down to really consider the philosophical components. I believe they're well explained. But this time, I just wanted to find out "what happened," and to admire the wonderful graphics. 

In this scene, Russell and a younger Wittgenstein compare takes on the world:

For me, for sure, Logicomix is better than reading Russell himself, who took 362 pages to prove that 1+1 = 2!

And if you want a real review of the book, I would send you to this one in the New York Times. 

77. Listening to podcasts while I walk Gen. Jim Moore Blvd. II

It poured rain this morning, but in the early afternoon the sun burst out—and so I had to go for a walk. As I do, I put in my earbuds, and headed down the street, up some stairs, and eventually onto the scrubland bordering straight-shot Gen. Jim Moore Blvd. I started by listening to Terry Gross talking with the actor Jeff Hiller, who's delightful in Somebody Somewhere, which was his first big role and earned him an Emmy. Then, just to stay current, I listened to the New York Times's Daily podcast, about the Venezuela incursion. And finally, it was on to Steve Levitt of Freakonomics, talking with linguist and philosopher Steven Pinker. 

I'd be hard-pressed to tell you just what I learned. I am so not good at listening. But I also enjoy listening. Go figure.

I took a few photos along the way.

A random pillow and... picture frame? along the sidewalk

A roadkill raccoon, not ten yards away from the pillow
(I apologize if this is too grisly for you, but... life is grisly)

One of the raccoon's paws (again I'm sorry, but I can't not look)

The Seaside cemetery (no raccoon graves here)

The view south from a small hill

Nearing home, and the eternal construction

Okay, I was being flip above. I did learn something today, while listening. About joy and hope, in the case of Jeff Hiller—he's such a delight. And the details of the Venezuela attack just hardened me even more (if that's possible) to the current "administration," with its utter lack of policy or plans, never mind interest in the American citizenry. What a travesty this country has become. But then Pinker reminded me that everything comes in waves and cycles, that change is constant, and what we need to continue to focus on is facts, and the scientific method, and not succumb to superstition and hearsay—because we now (as we did not a few centuries ago, before the Enlightenment) have that capacity, that understanding of the nature of things writ large. Obviously, not all of us have that capacity; but perhaps enough of us? We can only hope. 

Total steps for today: 14,320.

Book Report: Klara and the Sun

1. Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021) (1/4/26)

In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his banquet speech, he said:

The Nobel Prize, like many great ideas, is a simple one . . . and that is perhaps why it continues to have such a powerful hold on the world’s imagination. The pride we feel when someone from our nation wins a Nobel Prize is different from the one we feel witnessing one of our athletes winning an Olympic medal. We don’t feel the pride of our tribe demonstrating superiority over other tribes. Rather, it’s the pride that comes from knowing that one of us has made a significant contribution to our common human endeavour. The emotion aroused is a larger one, a unifying one.
     We live today in a time of growing tribal enmities, of communities fracturing into bitterly opposed groups. Like literature, my own field, the Nobel Prize is an idea that, in times like these, helps us to think beyond our dividing walls, that reminds us of what we must struggle for together as human beings. It’s the sort of idea mothers will tell their small children, as they always have, all around the world, to inspire them and to give themselves hope. 

These sentiments, in a reverse way, inform all three of the books by Ishiguro that I've read: Remains of the Day, many years ago; Never Let Me Go; and now Klara and the Sun—the latter two being futuristic, somewhat dystopian allegories.

In Klara, the various tribes include AFs, or artificial friends—androids—of which Klara is an exemplar, and in the human realm, "lifted" and "unlifted" people, the former—exclusively, though not universally, young people—having been subjected to (risky) genetic editing to enhance their academic ability and thus gain further benefits in society. Klara narrates, from her days in the shop where she and her fellow AFs display themselves in order to attract a potential buyer; to the time she spends with the sickly 14-year-old girl, Josie, who chooses her; to, ultimately, her time after Josie becomes well and goes off to college. Throughout all this, decisions are being made that affect Klara greatly, and of which she is only vaguely aware, or perhaps even wrong about.

Josie and her mother live on the edge of a prairie rather far from town, their only neighbors being Josie's good friend—and adolescent love—Rick, together with his mother. When they go into the city they encounter the strife of larger society: pollution, bigotry, fear; and they meet people from the mothers' pasts—so, memories, failed hopes, and the simple friction of different wills wanting different things. But everyone wants Josie to get better, to thrive. And Klara makes a deal with the Sun to ensure that happens. 

It's a simple story, really, and simply told, but here and there a keen observation or comment carries philosophical weight, about both "othering" and the universal and lingering connections of the human heart. When Klara says, "I believe I have many feelings. The more I observe, the more feelings become available to me," it makes me think of the necessity of travel, of wide experience, in becoming a more rounded human being—or, perhaps, of having a close family, for the same end. (I think of travel first perhaps because I don't have a close family. There are no doubt many ways to expand our awareness of this infinite existence.) 

In the end, the book is perhaps about love, plain and simple. As Klara, in the final pages, "goes through her memories and places them in the right order," she comes to the conclusion that to truly know someone, it's not enough to know what's in that person's heart; one must also know what's in the hearts of those who surround them. Nothing—none of us—is separate. 

As with Never Let Me Go, I wasn't entirely sure where this book was going, or even whether I really liked it—Klara's voice, naive and childlike, gets tiresome. But having finished it, I feel richer. 

76. A walk (and dog) for peace

In October, nineteen monks who live in the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana in Fort Worth, Texas, began a 2,300-mile walk toward Washington, DC, their goal being to promote unity and compassion. The route will take them through ten states over the course of 110 days. In late December, they arrived in Atlanta. They expect to reach DC in February. You can follow their journey on Facebook and Instagram.

But the reason I mention them is that this morning we Howlers met, as we do each week, to discuss a poem. Somehow the subject of dogs came up, and with it the fact that early along their way the monks gained a fellow walker: a stray dog whom they named Aloka. Aloka is perhaps an Indian Pariah breed. He has (of course) his own Instagram page, "Aloka the Peace Dog." 

Here are a few photos:

And so it felt serendipitous when I opened the book that we work from, only to find the following poem, a sweet villanelle! It is dedicated to the author's goldendoodles:

Canine Superpowers

by Michael Kleber-Diggs

     Como Park, Woodland Outdoor Classroom—for Ziggy and Jasper

We stroll the grounds and stop at every tree,
at every chicken bone, each new coneflower.
Their noses lead to everything we see.

I'd be asleep if it were up to me.
Still slick with dew, this city park seems ours
as we stroll the grounds and stop at every tree.

Perils persist—real possibilities.
I scan the grass for things they can't devour;
their noses notice things that might harm me.

Sometimes we'll spot a fox, surprise a bee,
find trash, broken glass, have a sad encounter
on our daily rounds to check on every tree.

Three times we've come upon wild coyotes,
sensed before seen through canine superpowers.
All of them have smelled what I'm soon to see.

They stare. We stare. There's no anxiety.
Milliseconds transform into hours.
We stroll the grounds and stop at every tree.
Their noses lead to everything I see.

Here they are walking through Columbia, SC,
on January 11. They are attracting all the right
sort of attention, bringing peace.

75. Janet Fish, painter

A friend of mine on FB commented this morning, "Sometimes I find out about artists because they die. This is Janet Fish"—and a link to an LA Times obituary. Because I don't get the LAT, I went to the NY Times, and found their obit. And fell in love with this artist who painted still-lifes, and who became known for the exquisite way she captured light on glass. 

Fish was born in Boston in 1938, but lived from age ten in Bermuda, where she was surrounded by art and artists (her grandfather, who had a studio on the island, was Impressionist painter Clark Voorhees, her father was an art history professor, her mother was a potter and sculptor). After studying painting at Yale, Fish came to New York City in the 1960s when Abstract Expressionism was still going strong, but she wasn't interested in pursuing that direction—or the ensuing styles, Minimalism and Pop Art. Instead she headed into realism, painting the light as it moved over objects she arranged on a table near her window. As art historian Linda Nochlin put it in her 1988 book Women, Art, and Power, “She confers an unprecedented dignity upon the grouped jelly jars or wine bottles that she renders with such deference. The glassy fruit- or liquid-filled volumes confront us with the hypnotic solemnity of the processional mosaics at Ravenna, and a similar, faceted, surface sparkle.”

I tend to think of still lifes as being small, intimate, but Fish worked large. She was interested not so much in the "still life" itself, as in what it represented, energetically, connectively.  As she put it, "I see light as energy, and energy is always moving through us. I don’t see things as being separated—I don’t paint the objects, I paint one after the other. I paint through the painting."

Fish suffered a brain hemorrhage over ten years ago, which forced her to quit painting. She died on January 1, from another brain hemorrhage, at age 87. 

Here are just a few examples of her beautiful work. She was prolific. (Click to see them large.)

Bird's Nest/Apple Blossoms, 2004

Smucker's Jelly, 1973

Box of Four Red Applies, 1970

Yellow Glass Bowl with Tangerines, 2007

Fruit Juice Glasses, 2005

Five Tall Glasses, Afternoon, 1975

7 Glasses, 13 Pears, 2003

Painted Glasses, 1974

Basket of Shells, 2008

Mirror and Shell, 1981

Preserved Peaches, 1976

Bag of Tangerines, 2000

Here is a 2019 interview with Fish by a filmmaker interested in SOHO, the part of New York City where she once worked.