Book 1

Clancy Martin says he's read the prologue to Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra more than a hundred times, and that if you're in a hurry, the prologue and Book One alone give you solid footing in the whole work. He names the speeches you can't skip, and one, On Old and Young Women, controversial enough to have inspired entire books. Then he slows down on the first speech, On the Three Metamorphoses, a thought experiment.

The parable moves from camel to lion to child. The camel wants to bear the weight of morality and truth; the lion roars "I will" at the dragon's "Thou shalt" and overcomes old values, but can't make new ones; only the child can forget and invent, and the child is the Übermensch. Martin's turn comes at the end of Book One, where Zarathustra tells his followers he can't teach them until they see that no one can be their teacher. Martin traces that idea forward to Hermann Hesse.