The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios

I read an interview with the translator where he suugested that this might be a good place to start reading Junger. I disagree.First, this collection of surrealistic vignettes might reveal much, but is too cryptic and just too difficult to make sense of for someone new to Junger's work. The language isn't difficult or opaque lexically or grammatically, but rather the concepts are tough to pull out of the essays. The introduction is helpful to getting a handle on the essays, but perhaps not enough. I have, however, found the book, The Violent Eye to be helpful in understanding the Adventurous Heart. The Violent Eye had been gathering dust on my shelf for a few years until now. I almost always follow the rule of reading the actual work before even looking at the secondary esays work, but in this case I found it neccessary to change upMy second objection to starting with The Adventurous Heart would be that the reader would miss so much of Junger's important and yes, enduring ideas, layed out in his pre war works. It seems some people, uncomfortable with Junger's associations in the period, would rather ignore his early ideas than confront them. This is much like the Critical Theorists who try to ignore the troublesome aspects of the Frankfurt School. Junger's ideas did change over time, but many of the key themes never go away: Disassociation, peak experience, etc, and are understood best by reading the earlier books. His ideas change around those key concepts and if you miss those, you miss almost all of what he is saying.I see no reason why the the English speaking reader shouldn't start with Storm of Steel, then On Pain, followed by Eumeswil. I would put The Adventurous Heart on the Must Read list, but after the others I mentioned.I give the book five stars even though getting the most out of it will take some more work.

Like finding a treasure. Read slowly. I'm glad I found this book of prose.

A+

My son requested this as a gift and he loved it!