Conclusion

Wow, ok, this is it then. What can I say? It has been quite hard to read all the texts to be honest. I am a very slow reader, especially when I have to deliberate about the texts and need a dictionary at my side to even understand them like with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Communism isn’t one of my favourite topics to read about as well, which made it very difficult at some point between the two very long texts by Terry Eagleton and Henri Lefebvre. Especially the Lefebvre text. I still don’t know how I managed to read through it. But I have to say that I really appreciate the fact that we read these texts because I certainly wouldn’t have touched any of them by myself. Which would have been a shame, given the fact that I feel like I really learned a lot and changed my mind about some things, with Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ leading the way. I hated it at first because I just didn’t understand it. I thought why the hack doesn’t he just write it so that everyone can understand it. But the more often I read it and the deeper I got into researching things about it, the more I came to like it. Listening to the recording of Ginsberg reciting it played a major part in this process, as I thought the piece actually has a certain life, a spirit. I loved the Hickey text. Full stop. Loved it. And I really honestly hated the Lefebvre one. Nope, no conversion this time, sorry. Berman’s text about the Faustian story made me realised just how much I have actually gained from this blogs. Like I said, I knew Faust but realised, I actually didn’t. And then there was the Palladio-Corbusier moment when I realised that in fact the two buildings Colin Rowe was talking about had the same spatial relations. Never ever would I have compared anything of Palladio’s work to Le Corbusier’s. This really got me thinking which is good.  The texts really have been very different, from very hard to understand and a struggle to cope with to entertaining and pleasant. I realised that my preconceived idea of what communist writing would be like is in many aspects wrong and I feel that I have not only gained knowledge about various themes, I have also forced myself to see the whole picture and to not start a book by thinking ‘This is going to suck’ because then it usually does. Also, the very different style of writing at first was exceptionally difficult for me; I have never written a blog before and was stuck in this academic writing mode which I considered as being in my comfort zone. I didn’t think that writing in a non-academic way would be helpful at all but I was very wrong again. Having to speak my mind about themes that I was not comfortable with, that I did not really know anything about, was a real benefit for me I think, or at least I hope so. It helped to really concentrate on what is important to you and being able to write it down the way I think it would show my thoughts best. Being quite sarcastic myself I loved that I had the opportunity to express my eye-rolling moments in writing.