I Am Dynamite!

August 15, 2018
A comprehensive biography of the philosopher who famously wrote that "God is dead!...And we have killed him."Novelist and biographer Prideaux (Strindberg: A Life, 2012, etc.) portrays the German author Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) as a writer desperately in search of an audience. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and Nietzsche believed he would become one, too. He was "unusually sensitive to music" and composed throughout his life. By the age of 12, he said, he started to "philosophise," and he went on to become one of the youngest to receive a professorship at Basel University. Schopenhauer's work was an early influence, but Richard Wagner, whom he first met in 1868, and his wife, Cosima--whom Nietzsche had a crush on--inspired him greatly. His closest female friend was his sister, Elisabeth. Prideaux chronicles in detail their often rocky relationship and how, after Nietzsche's death, she rewrote his works, infusing them with her anti-Semitism, garnering Hitler's enthusiastic approval. In 1872, Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, which Prideaux describes as an "impassioned attack on the cultural degeneration of his day." She does a fine job of explaining how Nietzsche's nihilistic philosophy developed, book after book--most self-published--while the texts grew briefer and more aphoristic. She dramatically reveals a man obsessed with writing. After finishing Twilight of the Idols, he began The Will to Power the next morning. Prideaux also describes in detail his lifelong battles with severe headaches and eye problems. Finally, there's her sad figure of an itinerant man still writing and dejectedly carrying around with him his entire wardrobe of personal possessions. Prideaux notes that Nietzsche has appealed to an odd assortment of followers, from Thomas Mann, Albert Schweitzer, and James Joyce to Eugene O'Neill, Jack London, and Mussolini. What an irony, she writes, since Nietzsche "expressed his horror at the idea of having disciples."Although a bit dry in places, this is a rich, nuanced guide to a complex and tortured man.

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Starred review from September 24, 2018
This scintillating biography of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche illuminates a man struggling constantly to reshape accepted ideas about society, morality, and religion. Drawing on close readings of his writings and on archival research, Prideaux (Strindberg: A Life) traces the outline of the philosopher’s life, from his father’s death when Nietzsche was four years old and his early education at his mother’s knee, through his days at gymnasium, where he excelled in languages, to his early and pivotal friendship with Wagner, his romance with the writer Lou Salome, and his slow and lonely descent into dementia. Even as a teenager, Prideaux shows, Nietzsche was developing his knack for striking language, and by the time he met Wagner, Nietzsche had developed his own style—one centered around the struggles between reason and instinct and “between life and art.” Given that ideas from Nietzsche’s later work—the need to overcome, the will to power, and the Übermensch—were later appropriated by Nazis, Prideaux is at pains to show that his philosophy focused on the “need to overcome ourselves,” not others. Nietzsche often compared his writing to dancing, and Prideaux’s invigorating study captures the joyous and often ebullient character of this writer’s deeply influential work.

October 1, 2018

Much has been written about German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and you might wonder if another biography is necessary. But Prideaux (Edvard Munch) takes a new approach by analyzing personal letters, specific life events, and individuals close to him to create an account that reads more like a thoughtful study of the man than an analysis of his philosophical theories. Through examining his life events, readers discover how Nietzsche's thought was shaped by his experiences and those around him. Prideaux also does a fantastic job of showing the complexity of Nietzsche's philosophy and his loneliness, madness, and independent spirit. Prideaux's skill at writing an entertaining biography that also delves into its subject's writings makes this an engaging read. VERDICT Anyone seeking an introduction to Nietzsche's life and how it shaped his work will enjoy this book. [See Prepub Alert, 4/23/18.]--Scott Duimstra, Capital Area Dist. Lib., Lansing, MI

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Starred review from September 15, 2018
When the Viennese scholar Julius Paneth met Nietzsche in 1884, he marveled at the cheerful amiability of the philosopher advancing ideas so explosive that they threatened the foundations of European thought. Carefully examining both human drama and conceptual argument, Prideaux plumbs the turbulent depths of spirit hidden behind Nietzsche's sunny affability. Readers learn how tangled personal relationships decisively affected Nietzsche's perspective. A long (though finally fractured) friendship with Wagner, composer of the magisterial Ring operatic cycle, impressed upon Nietzsche a conception of life as ceaseless recurrence. A series of frustrated romances with volatile women incubated a strain of misogyny. But beyond the impactful personal experiences, readers discern the restless intellectual voyaging that carried the German philologist out of the harbor of religious faith, beyond even the systemic clarity of Cartesian rationalism. With laudable lucidity, Prideaux explicates why Nietzsche hailed the emergence of the fearless Superman, who jettisons all metaphysical credos and scientific frameworks, discards established moral codes, to ecstatically affirm life's joyous meaning in a spontaneous dance of self-expression. Lamentably, the concluding chapters chronicle a double tragedy: Nietzsche descends into insanity, and a distorted caricature of his philosophy becomes a propaganda prop for Nazism. Compelling treatment of both the enigmatic man and his iconoclastic thought.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)