Tomorrow night I will be defending Freud’s Totem and Taboo at the Boston Public Library in their annual retroactive book award event.  What would we do without the witch doctor from Vienna (that’s Nabokov), the man who gave us the horror of incest, the primal horde, the omnipotence of thought, as well as the Wolfman and the Ratman?  Any interesting encounters with the volume?

http://www.bpl.org/general/associates/events.htm

The Annual Meeting and Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award of 1913

Wednesday, November 6, 2013, 6 pm – 8 pm
Abbey Room, Boston Public Library

Following a brief Annual Meeting, the Associates of the Boston Public Library will conduct a Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award competition, weighing the enduring literary merits of best sellers published in 1913. Contenders for the prize are Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo, defended by Harvard professor Maria Tatar; Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, presented by TR’s great-grandson Tweed Roosevelt; and Scott’s Last Expedition (edited by Leonard Huxley), championed by mountaineer and author David Roberts. Radio Open Source host Christopher Lydon will moderate the irreverent debate, after which the audience will voted to determine the winner of the Book Award of 1913. A reception with the panelists will follow.