Faserland (1995) von Christian Kracht wurde von Vielen als ein Manifest von der Dandykultur, der Kultur von den reichen oberflächlichen prahlenden Jungen, gelesen. Obwohl der Roman über die Dandykultur erzählt, gibt es viele Elemente außerhalb dieser Kultur, mit literarischen Werten. Er gibt die Anspielungen auf andere literarische Werke, wie zum Beispiel, dass Thomas Mann und seine Werke besonders wichtig in Faserland sind. Der Ich-Erzähler versucht am Ende das Grab von Thomas Mann zu finden. Er sagt, dass Thomas Mann ihm gefällt, nicht Frisch oder Hesse. Es war Thomas Mann, weil Faserland parallel zum Der Tod in Venedig (1912) ist. Deswegen endet Kracht den Roman mit Thomas Mann. Die homosexuellen Erfahrungen des Ich-Erzählers können parallel zu der Zuneigung zwischen Aschenbach und Tadzio in Der Tod in Venedig gelesen werden und die körperliche Änderung des Ich-Erzählers ist auch parallel zu der Krankheit in Manns Venedig. Meine These lautet, dass Kracht dionysische Elemente vom Manns Roman von Kracht in Faserland recyclet. More: Read the rest of this entry…
4 days in Puerto Rico after a winter in Vermont was a real bliss from heaven. It was warm and humid, but occasionally cloudy. We never needed any coats or hoodies at any point. Beach was good, but if any one is going to Isla Verde, I think the beach on the right side, that is where Ritz Carlton is, is better than the other one. The beach that is closer to downtown is full of seeweeds, something that I don’t enjoy much.
Isla Verde
Our hotel was close to the airport. Bad side is that you hear planes taking off all the time. However, other big hotels around make it a real tourist place. The baseball bar near by, Lupi’s, has a very good Mexican/ American menu.
Old San Juan
Old San Juan is the downtown area inside the city walls. It is really lively when the cruise ships stop by. Many many souvenoir shops wait for the cruise travelers to shop in this area. Spanish style houses and narrow streets are really lovely. There are quite a few good restaurants in the area. There are also good bars and pubs but, nothing interesting happens before 11pm.
San Juan Forts
There are also two collosal forts around the Old San Juan. I think they are both worth seeing. They are big, old, but the most interesting thing about them is that they have great views of the ocean and the old city. Definitely very classy pictures can be taken. There is huge park in front of one of the bigger park. That park was full of people of all ages flying kites when we went there. It was really fun to aly down on grass watch kites and children after a long day full of walking and sightseeing. 
Looking at my blog, I noticed that it really doesn’t look like a blog at all. I will start putting in not-so-serious stuff after this point. This semester I have much more free time than I usually do, so all I just can spend time blogging. Next week, hopefully I will be writing a blog about Puerto Rico with some nice pictures. For today, I have two links to share: More: Read the rest of this entry…
here’s an interesting piece by Robert Skidelsky, a British economic historian, on the connection between macroeconomic and political instability:
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/20090221080457/Article/index_html
Once considered extremist marginal groups, the Islamic movements moved to the center of Turkish politics. If someone told my republican parents two decades ago, that in 2007 our industrial home-city, Denizli, would be in the American newspaper New York Times, they could never guess that it would be about Islamist power rising in the city[i]. The same year, in the parliamentary elections, 43% of voters in province of Denizli voted for Justice and Development Party. In light of these, a question that will guide this paper rose in my mind. On October 29th 1998, the 75th anniversary of the Republic, when a huge crowd was marching the streets of Denizli, chanting “Turkey is secular, and will stay secular”, many felt that their city was united under the ideas of Kemalism. Less than a decade later, Denizli, even wealthier and more industrialized after the export boom, voted for an Islamist mayor and 4 Islamist MPs. There was a movement taking place, one that almost nobody in the crowd of 1998 fully understood. They all thought the Islamist movements in Turkey were backward marginal movements that were bound to disappear in the process of modernization. However, the juxtaposition of religion and modernity, two very hard concepts to define, was to have very complex outcomes as well. Rather than backward anachronistic religious movements, Islamic social and political movements in Turkey are movements along the lines of modern world order that is defined by nation states, market economies and individual rights. These movements also effectively adapted to globalization and worldwide privatization of the post cold war era. More: Read the rest of this entry…
Since public consciousness is important for the effectiveness of a democracy, it is important to know the policies of the candidates before voting. Not only a superficial knowledge, but also a critical evaluation of the policies is essential. More: Read the rest of this entry…
In his best seller novel Underworld, Don Delillo comprehensively analyzes the American culture since the Second World War. The novel consists of random narratives that ultimately converge, showing both ugly and beautiful with full realism. This analytical narrative shows the characteristics and the origins of the American culture, by the prominent events in the recent American history and by the effects of those events on the lives of the ordinary citizens. The ideas behind the culture are given in the thoughts of the characters, tracing the philosophical sources of the American culture. The reader can see that the American culture is shaped by many European thinkers, as well as the American ones. Terminologies that Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Nietzsche have created are always in the language across the Atlantic from Europe. Especially Nietzsche’s way of thinking is embedded in American thought, thus in the thought of the characters of Underworld. Nietzsche discloses the realities hidden under the cultural illusions in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and also offers a mindset to deal with the heavy reality, a mindset that can be called the “religion” of Zarathustra. As the illusions in the American culture are uncovered by Delillo, it becomes clear that Zarathustra’s religion has settled in the minds of the American society. More: Read the rest of this entry…
Man is a social entity that needs to interact in a group for various reasons including survival. These social structures need some kind of governing, because they are not useful without any order. Since a good administrator is the one who governs according to the needs of others, it is important to understand what the human nature is, despite its difficulty. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the thinkers have made numerous assumptions on the nature of man, and thereby derived many superstructures to govern people. Some of those assumptions have been widely accepted, and the corresponding superstructures have been put into application. More: Read the rest of this entry…
