Tuesday, May 08, 2007

A fun little quiz

By Heraclitus

Okay, I'll post the famous opening to a well-known novel, and let's see who can guess or identify it. Whether or not anyone answers correctly (or indeed participates at all), I'll give the answer in comments sometime tomorrow. And I highly recommend this title if you're looking for any summer reading.

I am a sick man…I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don’t know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine and doctors. What’s more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. (I’m sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, sir, I refuse to be treated out of wickedness. Now, you will certainly not be so good as to understand this. Well, sir, but I understand it.

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posted by . at 12:21 AM

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7 Comments:

  • I read it in High School,within days of having read Catcher in the Rye I vastly preferred the latter and like Bill didn't inhale or enjoy it. I wasn't old enough to separate my dislike of a character from understanding of the book.

    I won't give the name so someone else can struggle with his memory.

    By Blogger Capt. Fogg, at 11:39 AM  

  • It's Dostoyevski.

    Notes from Underground?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:10 PM  

  • I was going to say Heraclitus's own as-yet-unpublished memoirs, but I suppose Dostoevsky is a better guess.

    By Blogger Michael J.W. Stickings, at 12:30 PM  

  • It is definitely the notes from the underground. Which German philosopher is your thesis on Heraclitus?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:44 PM  

  • Yes, it is indeed the opening passage of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. My diss is on Nietzsche, Anonymous.

    And very droll, Michael. Apparently this is the thanks I get for posting when you're sick, even though I myself am overworked and underslept. I see how it is.

    By Blogger ., at 7:09 PM  

  • Aw, you know we all love you, Heraclitus. (Note: I purposely did not use the first person singular.)

    Are you "overworked" and "underslept," though? Do explain.

    By Blogger Michael J.W. Stickings, at 9:14 PM  

  • Okay, the "overworked" and "underslept" part was just to gain sympathy.

    By Blogger ., at 11:11 PM  

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