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Once, when hitchhiking, I was picked up by a professor from some small college. He noticed a book in my coat pocket, and was curious. It was a Modern Library edition, in the limp bindings they used to have, which sold at the time for 95 cents. This one contained Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, and The Birth of Tragedy.
The professor was a pedantic man of limited imagination and seemed almost offended that I was reading such a book. Obviously I did not fit some category in which he decided I belonged, and when he dropped me off in town, I suspect he was relived to be rid of me.
He kept asking me why I wanted to read such a book. At first, he doubted I was reading it. Where had I heard of Nietzsche?
When I told him I thought it was in the preface to a book on Schopenhauer, he was even more disturbed and probably believed I was lying. Fortunately, there seem to be few of his kind, and my subsequent friendships with university professors have proved exciting, stimulating and fun. (en) |
