Here is something I began to write on Goodreads just now. This really begins to express the way Bobby D thinks, the paradigmatic postulate from whence he conceives of his Nietzsche:

I mean, Jeez. The man's unmitigated zest/zeal sheer engagement is grounds for promotion into the leagues of the angels, whether or not he would attend the wing bestowing ceremony, but it seems impossible to get around the fact that his 'mystic' genius somehow failed to take the full plunge, intent as he was on grinding his axes.

I am interested to see how this might change or develop. I'm also getting all kinds of interesting reflections from a creative point of view. This has done more to speak to my writerly interests than that class I gave when I went seeking that sort of thing, funny enough. That, and some of his jujitsu moves may be brain chiggers, that can be redeployed, which is cool. And that sarcastic, contemptuous streak is interesting to see again. I swear I have a theory that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche spent some time studying FN when he was in London studying at...what Cambridge? Like something rubbed off. But, the big concepts (eternal return, the ubermensch) seem to be the weakest and least useful part of his thought, if and when they are taken too seriously as some kind of solid things that he is promoting as real etc. They work well, I think, as nodes in his thought, pivots or functions that bring coherence to the whole, such as it is. Right now I like Nietzsche-as-Neo-Socrates. An amazing dancer, sparring partner, live act who could do anything. I just don't expect to take his craft all the way into the sun. It seems great for silent reflections in the hills and blasting the shadows in town, but not really for the fulfillment of the journey...

So we shall see. I really was enjoying part 2 and need to get back to it for fresher ideas. I confess that this question of 'going halfway' will be a fulcrum of my assessment/reception of TSZ and FN, I fear, for the duration.* I trust there is still much to learn from the righteous & wily germ and lest I sound too smug and self assured in my assessments here, I hereby bow to the extraordinary machinery of the mind of one Friedrich Nietzsche friend to the sun and destroyer of false worlds.


*even if I were not so inclined to this appraisal myself, it would have been thrust on me by the way my nearest and dearest (JD, SJW) once counted him as formative and have since...found something about the whole enterprise wanting, especially, if I may, vis a vis real thirst.