Do you seek warmth of me? Come not too close, I counsel, or your hands may burn. For look! My ardor exceeds the limit, and I barely restrain the flames from leaping from my body!
I've spent a lot of time reading the secondary literature on Nietzsche, and I keep coming away with the impression that there are two types of books on Nietzsche. I write that sentence with trepidation, because when someone begins a statement with, "There are two types of..." you can be fairly certain that whatever follows is false. So I don't really mean that there are only two types of books on Nietzsche, just that I tend to classify books on his work into two types.
OK, even that's not true. There are at least three types: really, really bad books on Nietzsche, and OK to good books on Nietzsche that can be classified into two types. The really, really bad books on Nietzsche are the most common type. For example, I just finished reading Prophets of Extremity by Allan Megill. It's an interesting book in its own way, I suppose, but as a book on Nietzsche (or a book with chapters on Nietzsche), it's awful. It's one of those frequent attempts to "postmodernize" Nietzsche, by focusing entirely on his immature aestheticism, and to make that aestheticism into some strange ontology that seems wholly alien both to Nietzsche and to anyone else writing before 1970. For anyone who's actually read Nietzsche, this sort of book is frustratingly bad. Then there's Heidegger's multi-volume series on Nietzsche, which again tries to turn him into a metaphysician, but this time relying almost exclusively on a book that Nietzsche didn't even publish (or write, even) himself: The Will to Power. For Heidegger, this Will to Power is the core of Nietzsche's metaphysics (volume III of the series is even titled "The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics"). When you make a concept that appears only rarely in a thinker's published writings the central component of his or her philosophy, you've If you read all four volumes, you will come away asking yourself, "Did Heidegger and I read the same Nietzsche, or was he reading some Bizarro Nietzsche who'd never written The Gay Science or Beyond Good and Evil?"
So when I say that there are two types of books on Nietzsche, I mean there are two types of books on Nietzsche that have some redeeming value as Nietzsche scholarship or independent philosophy. The first type is exemplified by Walter Kauffmann's dry, plodding, and conservative, but excellent and indespensible Nietzsche: Philosophy, Psychologist, Antichrist. This was the first book on Nietzsche that I read, and I've gone back to it repeatedly over the years. It is thorough, it is accurate if at times controversial, and it provides an excellent companion to Nietzsche's own writings, as well as providing excellent pieces of biographical information. This category thus includes books that are fairly straightforward attempts to interpret and situate Nietzsche as a philosopher (or a psychologist, or an Antichrist). They can be relatively dull, particularly when compared to Nietzsche's writings, but they're informative, and reading them can help you a great deal in making your way through an incredibly complex thinker's writings. In this category I would also include most of the more recent books by English-speaking philosophers, like Brian Leiter's book on Nietzsche and morality, the Richardson and Leiter edited volume on Nietzsche, Rudiger Safranski's "philosophical biography," and Danto's Nietzsche as Philosopher (I'd include Nehemas' book, but it's a sort of tweener).
The second category has fewer members, but I tend to enjoy them much, much more. These books generally don't get all, or even most of the details about Nietzsche right, or they focus exclusively on one aspect of his writing and therefore provide a highly incomplete picture. So they shouldn't be read in order to understand the content of Nietzsche's thought. What these books do, instead, is capture the spirit of Nietzsche, the spirit of the "gay science," of the eternal return, Nietzsche as Antichrist, of giving birth to a dancing star. The book I place most firmly in this category is Georges Bataille's On Nietzsche (which begins with the quote above, from Nietzsche's unpublished notes). In the preface, Bataille openly admits that his book is not an attempt at formal exegesis, but an attempt "to draw out consequences of a lucid doctrine impelling and attracting me to it as if to the light." It is written in his own blood, he says, as Nietzsche's works were. It is not merely a critical reading of Nietzsche, but an "experiencing" of Nietzsche, in an effort to work out what Nietzsche has wrought inside Bataille, and which is driving him to insanity. And it is absolutely wonderful to read. I discovered it in a library, years ago. I started reading it early in the afternoon, and became so engrossed that I read it from start to finish, leaving late in the evening. The next day, I went out and bought a copy of my own, which I go back to as often as I go back to Kauffmann.
Another book that I would place firmly in this category is Graham Parkes' Composing the Soul which, while fairly accurate in its description of Nietzsche's writings, is also extremely limited in that description. It focuses entirely on the psychological dimension in Nietzsche, arguing, to some extent accurately and to some extent futilely, that this is the fundamental dimension of his work. But more than an attempt at exegesis, it is a wonderful exploration of both Nietzsche's mind and the mind in general, and a joy to read. It is even moving, at times, as when it discusses Nietzsche's post-insanity letters. You wouldn't recommend this book to anyone starting out with Nietzsche, because it would certainly steer them in the wrong direction, but for those who like to read, and who are very familiar with Nietzsche, it's a must read. Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy is another example of this type of book, though Deleuze is hardly the writer that Battaile was or Parkes is. Reading Deleuze is a usually struggle (Difference and Repetition has to be the most frustrating book I've ever read), and this book is no exception, but it's still inspiring, if not entirely accurate.
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