Book Review: THE WORLD AS I FOUND IT by Bruce Duffy

The World as I Found It by Bruce Duffy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world," famously said the Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein, he who studied language and misunderstanding after growing up in pre World War II Austria. If so, then author Bruce Duffy has created a universe unto itself, which every book is in some small way, but in THIS book is richly, abundantly true, with a depth requiring the James Webb Space Telescope to illuminate.

I'm shocked at how this book isn't more famous! There's barely anything about it on social media! Which is a crying shame, for in terms of craftsmanship, it is almost perfect! The language intelligently assured, the phrasing rhythmic and beautiful.. you wouldn't believe it was a first novel! In terms of plot, it was shockingly brave for its day: a reimagining of the lives and loves of three philosophers (Ludwig Wittgenstein, G.E. Moore, and Bertrand Russell) living through a shockingly uncivilized world war and its aftermath. If one questions EVERYTHING, is a happy life possible?

Every teacher knows about the limits of multiple choice exams. The more intelligent students are the ones in danger of overthinking. Sometimes, one needs to think "less intelligently," in order to ace lower order thinking tests.

And so it is with philosophers, Duffy writes... those suffering geniuses who envy us mortals capable of "eating and inhaling life like fire, not forever analyzing it like a gas."

The bulk of the novel centers around tormented Wittgenstein, unhappy son of a wealthy-beyond-imagining family, who gave it all up to live in solitude and teach, in pursuit of an ethical perfection no human is capable of attaining.

"Ethics could not be taught or expressed; it could only be shown through an exemplary life. And the whole point of his life and work was moral - otherwise what was the point of living?"

Being a teacher, the parts I appreciated the most were the portions about Beacon Hill, the school Russell put up, as well as the parts set in Trattenbach, where Wittgenstein sought to teach the most unfortunate. The success and failures of every teacher were also met by these two philosophers, and it gave me much to reflect on.

Teaching, ultimately, is the craft of passing on through words entire images and processes. It is demonstrating another way to be. It is the most magical, the most important thing in the world. The book will mean many things to different people, but for this teacher, it seemed to say: See how these souls sought to change the world for the better. See how they sought to reconcile the joys of private life and the pains of public conflict, of mundane petty daily trafficking, by actively forming the future through teaching. And I gratefully found it most encouraging, as well as edifying.

"Philosophy... was traditionally a case of weighing theft - the theft of assumptions and givens - over honest toil."

This was by no means an easy read, and the two weeks it took to get through it will stand out for me as a tumultuous period, both personally and professionally. But it is a book that leaves one feeling richer for having been steeped in the wealth of its many ideas, not always upheld by these same philosopher-men with human weaknesses, but held as a standard for all to strive for.

If I've learned anything from this book, it is that language fails, inevitably. So don't take this review as an accurate measure of the book! Go read it!

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