Book Review: The Adventure by Giorgio Agamben

I was surprised by how cheap this book was, much cheaper than most philosophy hardbacks, so I actually ordered it rather than got it through the library like usual. Then I found out why it was so cheap: it's the size of a box of Pocky! I'm glad I do own it, because I started marking it up with my green pen instead of using my traditional Post-its for "stuff to remember." By the end of the book almost everything was green and I could write in marginalia like a medieval monk. I would eat this book (slowly) if I could.

The Adventure is not easy reading because Agamben's focus here is on medieval romantic literature (which I don't really know) and he connects it to writers like Heidegger and Goethe (whom I haven't really read), and then it's all translated from Italian so that there are some issues with specific words (I had to keep reminding myself that "demon" comes from "daemon" and is not necessarily a bad thing in classical lit!). Reading this book is like going on an adventure yourself. At first, you're bushwhacking through the trees and dodging wandering trolls, but then -- then you get to the mountains.

In the second half of the book, the questions are fascinating: Agamben asks why Dante never uses the term "adventure" in the Divine Comedy, and why in an early representation of the grail myth, the grail wasn't really important at all. That last point bowled me over because Agamben explained one of the central plot points of my favorite movie of all time (The Fisher King) in a way I had only grasped intuitively. That revelation was extremely meaningful to me.

Finally, at the top of the mountain is one of the Big Questions: What Does It Mean to Be Human? That's the exact question I'm asking right now and to find it at the end of this book was like opening a treasure chest (and, yes, finding it full).

This is one of the few books that I immediately flipped through and read my highlights again upon finishing, and that I have kept in my reading stack for reiteration and review. Word for word, it is one of the most efficiently mind-blowing books I've ever read.