Word: spinoza
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...many a Cuban home, it has a dusty attic quality, the poignancy of a well-cared-for poverty. The apartment's contents are fairly typical. A high shelf has been turned into a home-made altar, crowded with Catholic icons. Below is a shelf stuffed with the works of Spinoza, Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler. Between the two is a huge black-and-white TV set on which, boasts its owner, he can sometimes catch programs from the U.S. All through the place a ceaseless whine crackles out of a bright red Phillips boom box, bought under the counter...
...skepticism also leaves the author unmoved. A British journalist and former editor of the New Statesman, Johnson seems to have had a bellyful of bland uncertainty. Besides, the feverish riddles of Ezekiel and the prophetic agonies of Job make better copy than the Tractatus of Spinoza. Johnson singles out the 17th century philosopher as the sort of non-Jewish Jew who sacrifices the soul of rationalism to cold logic. He quotes Soviet Writer Isaac Babel's self-mocking definition of a Jewish intellectual ("a man with spectacles on his nose and autumn in his heart") and brands Marx and Freud...
...early 1945, Anton Steenwijk (Marc van Uchelen) lives under the shadow of the Nazi occupation of Haarlem. Despite the food and fuel shortages, the almost-defeated Nazis have a minimal effect on the lives of the Steenwijk family, who try to evade history by translating Homer, reading Spinoza, and playing board games...
...Steenwijk family plays board games, reads Spinoza and believes that a sound classical education constitutes an excellent preparation for life. Outside, in January 1945, the war is still going on. But aside from a shortage of food and fuel, it has not troubled this serenely bourgeois Dutch family. And with the Germans obviously headed for defeat, they may perhaps be forgiven the slightly smug aura that hovers about them. It seems as if their faith in the eternal values of liberal humanism has triumphed over the hurly-burly of modern history...
...Spinoza was wrong. Only some men are social animals. The best I can be labeled is "not an anti-social animal." If you don't know anyone here, and are shy and slow to make friends, the Big H will be a lonely place. One of the few valuable skills Harvard gave me is the ability to make shallow party chit chat with people I know nothing about, but the lessons came too late for the time I really needed them: Freshman Week...