I’m tearing my way through Viktor Klemperer’s Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii
. Can’t put it down. I’ve been waiting to read this a long long time. When I stayed with Carrie in Belfast – (“Take a right after you see the mural of the chicks with the guns….”) I saw that her husband had it on his shelf. I didn’t even know it was published! So exciting because Klemperer references his ongoing project all the time in his diaries. It, to me, is why his diaries are so invaluable. Of course any first-hand perspective is invaluable – but as a philologist, a linguistically oriented person – also a Jew – married to an Aryan – living in Dresden … and he took to analyzing the language of fascism and totalism as well as he could – even without access to books and newspapers. (An example here and here but his diary is FULL of this stuff – and the Language of the Third Reich is his compiling all of that information into one book.) Anyway – it’s out, and I’m reading it. So good. So interesting. I’m taking tons of notes.
And today 2 books arrived from Barnes & Noble that I just ordered (I get a discount cause of my membership card):
a biography of James Madison and also a book about Madison and Hamilton and the Constitution.
Hmmm. I’m thinkin’ I’ll go with the Madison/Hamilton one first. After I leave the Third Reich, that is.
