The children of a philosopher

After our reading hour yesterday morning the boys started playing a game in the living room, and working around the house, I was half listening to what they were saying. August was sitting on the couch with one of Courtney’s books, and William was directing the whole story, standing up on the other couch. As far as I could make out, the game involved an evil book, and something else scary, and as I walked past them, I heard William narrate, “and then you opened the *evil* book, and I said [here, he exclaimed in a different voice] “Watch out! Once you open that book there’s no turning back!" and you had already opened the book...” I glanced over August’s shoulder, as the story went on, and saw that he was turning to chapter one in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (skipping Walter Kaufmann’s Translator’s Preface). “Even if you put it down, it will keep reading itself!” William added with alarm in his voice, and I left the room, quite amused, as they kept playing.

When I told Courtney about what I had seen after he got back from work, he said he would let his students know about this; it should make them quite happy to hear that the book they’re assigned this semester will read itself.