New Stuff: Theodor W. Adorno

I have enjoyed this book in German and wanted to get the English edition to share it with my international friends. So you can expect some posts from this book in the near future.

Dream Notes

Ursula and I are on a vacation in a faraway country, it's like in the American South, maybe Louisiana, definitely not in Europe. We are staying at a hotel that very much looks like an old, but expensively refurbished plantation home situated quite isolated in the midst of a forest. Since this seems to be a place de haute volée Ursula urges me to see to it that I'm dressed properly at all times. Although it's annoying to me I agree to oblige, but then we notice that we seem to be the only guests at this hotel.

We rent a car and drive off for a day trip into the hills above the hotel. It's a lovely hot sunny day, and we enjoy the views we get from several stops on the way. It's a long drive, and Ursula is worried whether we will make it back to the hotel before evening. All of s sudden the road isn't paved anymore, but is now gravel with large dice-sized rocks, and the car has trouble moving on. Finally I can hardly get the car to move any further. We're in a clearance on top of a hill. There's a fantastic view over the valley, a vast, very swampy landscape, it's sundown, and black clouds are hanging low in the valley announcing a tremendous storm. That's where we're headed to.

Dream Notes

I'm chatting with one of our supervisors at what seems to be a dinner party. I explain that I have made it a habit to post a short blog notice on every movie I have watched, I try to include a poster and maybe one or two images from the movie, a one-sentence synopsis and a comment in not more than two sentences, just like in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Guide.

Nevertheless, although there is vast information on the internet, it does happen that I get stuck finding a singular image for some cases, but I very much enjoy the search. The supervisor says he's glad I'm such a film buff and asks me to help him search for a certain German silent movie titled 'Dr. Hauff', a title he has been looking for information about for a long time.

I get up from the table, go to my bookshelf and pick out my copy of Halliwell. The movie isn't mentioned there, which was to be expected, I explain, so I search my library for the book about German stars of the silent age, which covers a lot of movie titles from that era. I can't find the book, but am surprised to notice that I have meanwhile set the books in my shelves in double rows so that behind every row of books visible there's another hidden row.

Postscriptum:

Of course, the movie 'Dr. Hauff' does not exist (I looked it up).

2 days later Ursula and I got a visit from Tanja and Simon, and we also talked about movies. At one point I had to look up something, so I got my copy of Halliwell's out from the shelves. Tanja remarked to Simon: "See, there are still people who look up things in books and don't use the internet for everything."