Thus Spoke Zarathustra

⚖The case for it

The book refuses to state its case. It preaches, circles, repeats, and a reader who came for a thesis can leave holding slogans. Yet no essay of Nietzsche's can put the weight of eternal recurrence on you, a life you would have to live again, every hour of it, forever. Here it lands as dread first and doctrine later, and it lands because the thing is sung. The prose carries what the reasoning cannot. Go elsewhere for the case laid flat. Come here for the teacher who has to carry it, a prophet with no listeners, walking down the mountain anyway.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Mock-scripture is a register that curdles over four hundred pages, and Part Four curdles fastest; by the Ass Festival the self-parody is indistinguishable from the prophecy. The biblical voice buries the arguments, which is why this book has launched more misreadings than anything else Nietzsche wrote. Arrive from the Genealogy already knowing the ideas; Zarathustra rewards recognition and punishes first contact.

— the honest librarian