scott mcvay

In considering Rothenberg's tenth book, it is important to hold in mind the range and originality of his explorations. The sixth and seventh books, Why Birds Sing, and Thousand Mile Song, tackle freshly big themes in a revelatory manner. David Rothenberg is a professor of philosophy and music at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Maybe four words by Seamus Heaney, one of his teachers in college, provide a clue to his approach to Wittgenstein whom he has been pondering and teaching for a third of a century. His approach is oblique and indirect in that he uses other artists who create works based on their takes on that American philosopher who studied under Bertrand Russell, writing the Tractatus, and then taught, ever discouraging his students from pursuing philosophy which infuriated Russell. My wife Hella lauded David "for not obeying the law of the Garden of Eden. You, obviously, ate the apple. You want to know, like Dr. Faustus, how 'things' work, can be reasoned, and understood." Each page of the book is conversational and inviting, sometimes witty. Thomas Bernard is quoted, "...we occasionally manage to count three or four people to whom in the long run we owe something, not just something but a great deal." This sets the reader to think of whom in his/her life had really counted. Reflection leads to a reordering of your first thought. The reader feels like a lucky intruder in the author's classroom catching nuggets Rothenberg has tossed out over the years. Then, he examines how a half dozen people used W to do their thing with vastly differing results. The sequence of films and writings and artworks reveal an evolution of thinking that pushes beyond philosophy to something poetic, ethereal, yet there. The last of these is Canadian poet Jan Zwicky who also teaches philosophy. Scott McVay author, Surprise Encounters with Artists and Scientists, Whales and Other Living Things, and papers on whales in Scientific American, American Scientist, Science, and Natural History.