Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot, by Richard Restak (3.5)

Finished this last night (March 30). (and I actually finished Faulkner’s The Mansion before that on Friday night, March 28; so that’s coming soon.)

First of all, is it just me, and if so what does this say about my brain, but I didn’t find any passage explaining the title in the whole book. Did I miss something? I mean, I get it. Both Mozart and fighter pilots have practiced their skills and so developed their brains to be quite different from each other; the brain is very plastic and has the potential for one or more of a vast array of “intelligences”... That’s what he meant, right? Or did is there a big old paragraph right at the
front that compares the right/left hemispheres of the brain to Mozart/fighter pilots?

Well, anyway.

The book is about understanding how your brain works in order to better facilitate learning and memory. There are many exercises he mentions to improve your memory and help you from being scatter-brained or attention-deprived (so just about all the current generation could sign up, especially me). There are exercises to use one part of the brain and then the other. etc.

The most illuminating thing for me in the whole book was the revelation that, if your brain is “tired” from too much reading, say, and you need a break, then what you need a break from is not just the book/screen but language in general, especially written. It’s a certain part of your brain that’s tired. Switching the tv on and watching a soap opera isn’t going to help. You’re still listening to language (albeit corny melodramatic language). (That would be like, if your eyes got too tired to read anymore so you decided to watch tv. You’re not giving your eyes a break that way.) What you really need to do is to close your eyes and listen to some music (without lyrics), or maybe do a puzzle, or, in short, use another part of your brain and let the language part catch
up with whatever it’s processing.

A break of just five to fifteen minutes doing something else, using a different part of your brain, and you probably can go back to reading and feel fine again. (Unless you were reading something really hairy, in which case, maybe you should take an hour off!)

A related bit of information was that there are two types of tired: one type of tired (mostly just kind of drowsy) should be dealt with different that another (cranky and grouchy). If you are getting cranky, the only thing that is going to help is to sleep (or, at least, lying down with your eyes closed and relaxing in that way for about 20 minutes, just as if you took a nap).

Another important thing I learned (which I already knew but this put it into perspective) is that you need to use all these different parts of your brain, not just once in a while, but all the time. Take time to listen to music, do crossword puzzles, play chess, play a musical instrument, do some exercise that requires balance; without getting technical, learn what different parts of your brain do and then make sure to exercise all the different parts of your brain.

Being “smart” or intelligent is not just about learning geometry or speaking 12 languages. There are all kinds of smart, and, the more you practice each part of your brain, the better your overall brain will function. This is because when you learn something or reinforce something you’ve learned through practice, then your brain is stimulated to create new synaptic pathways and reinforce old pathways, not only in that specific part of the brain, but in the entire brain.

Play on your strengths in life, to be sure. But also try and practice those areas in which you consider yourself to be average at best and weak at worst. Your goal is not to heroically overcome these weaknesses, but to encourage your brain to build more pathways and make things overall easier for you, even those things you’re not so good at. Never good at band? Try to pick up a musical instrument now. Try something different. Planning to go to Hawaii some day? Who knows? The ukulele might be your thing. But it’s just for fun, for a change, for the betterment of your brain.

Which reminds me that I am woefully behind in learning how to paint, how to play chess, how to speak Russian, how to make a birdhouse, how to balance with both feet on the ground much less do yoga or tai chi… But now that I know how all of this could work together to my advantage, I’m going to look at my schedule and see how I can revamp it to my benefit. Hell, I might even get something done.

He (a neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, and clinical professor of neurology) advises keeping a journal. I’m not great at that, although I have become much better since I started 43things (I’m on LiveJournal). You can sit down and look at an entry from, say, two years ago, and what you’re actually doing is looking at you two years ago and how you were thinking. Just reading the entry will jog your memory about other things that were happening in your life then. Also, it helps you to keep track of your ideas and how they evolve over time.

He also recommends doing a reading journal. _grins Yes, like mine, which I never thought of as a reading journal but that’s a great name for it. I have to say, I hadn’t really thought about it, but writing my thoughts down about what I read and reviewing what I read has lead me to be a more critical and involved reader overall. He recommends wide reading and also reading more slowly the important things, maybe reading them aloud or listening to audio recordings of the books. And I have to say, that listening to the audio lectures I have for the last two years or so has slowed down my reading so that I’m not just skimming through everything.

Ok well I shouldn’t just tell you the whole book; and I haven’t, I assure you. Restak explains the workings of the brain quite simply, with ideas and exercises to help you better develop your brain, and with resources at the end of the book to help you even further. It’s a quick read at 200 pages, and I enjoyed it.

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The Trial, Franz Kafka. 4.5

I finished this one a while ago, actually. 2nd of March.

This is a hard one to review… it seems so much has already been said about it. In fact, the introduction basically states that nothing more could possibly be added to the conversation revolving around The Trial, because it has been analyzed and discussed for so long among so many people, and because the novella introspectively analyzes itself.

Joseph K, a high-ranking bank clerk, wakes up one morning to find that he’s under arrest. We never learn what the charge is, and neither does Joseph K. Yet he can live out his daily life (going to work, etc) as normal, and the court is very polite about accomodating his schedule as to when he needs to show up for interrogations. This entire court system, which is separate from the normal court system, is such an underfunded sprawling bureaucracy that the lower courts don’t know anything about the higher courts, the court magistrates confuse one defendant for another, and the entire process is carried out in the attics of the poorest tenant housing in the city, where the air itself is unbreathable.

All very symbolic of course.

Joseph K. progresses from completely dismissing the importance of any such trial (seeing the state of the courts), to gradually becoming so obsessed (and mesmerized) with it and the special court system that he willingly, almost mindlessly, accepts the fate they hand out as inevitable and desirable. Perhaps it is because they are so quiet and polite about it, while they are leading him to a barbaric end.

An exploration of the absurdity of the individual’s conformity to culture, and yes of life itself (the major statement), this book examines the main character as ruthlessly as it does the society.

Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes once drew a comic that would sum up Joseph K. Imagine Calvin here as Joseph:

You get the idea.

The bizarre and astonishing description of the trial procedure (what we can ever know of it, told through the character of Joseph K’s lawyer and also a portrait painter of the judges), (which sadly presages terrors in the real world later) is, unbelievable but true, completely outdone by a parable told by the court’s parishioner (since WHEN do courts have their own affiliated parishioners?), which could make one severely question the idea of blind faith in anything.

This is a book that will leave you thinking for a long, long while, and have you rereading it again and again to see if possibly you can get a better grasp on it this time around. You never will; it’s absurdity, and Kafka’s statement on the point of life.

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Never in Anger, by Jean L. Briggs: 4.5

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/BRINEV.html

this book might be alternatively titled: Misadventures in Anthropology.

When grad student Jean L. Briggs signed on for an extended stay in the Canadian arctic with the Inuit Utku (Utkuhikhalingmiut, in full), she brought entirely too much baggage with her, both literally and figuratively speaking. Her head filled with a strange combination of romanticized notions of the Inuit, horror stories of arctic cold and famine, and Western cultural predispositions, she found it increasingly hard to study, much less understand, what was going on in the camp around her. It was only after her 17 month sojourn as an adopted Utku daughter was over that she could look past her frazzled attempts to speak the horribly complicated language, learn necessary survival skills, eat frozen raw fish, scales and all, and type up field notes without the igloo (iklu) dripping on them, as well as past her burgeoning depression; and see how her inward refusal to actually adopt the role of daughter as the Utku saw it, her inability to conform (or even to see the need to conform) to the cultural expectation of calm, happy behavior, and her insistance on every bit of her overwhelming load of supplies being carried during every move, all played a part in making her a burden to the society that eventually ostracized her in response.

_{I think I need to put more clauses in that last sentence. it needs to be longer. :P brain not quite up to par today}

To be sure, Briggs was working between 1963 and 1965, when there were no standards of ethics so to speak regarding being up front and honest with the people you want to study… by telling them you want to study them. Briggs surely was more ethical than some of the kaplunas (the Utku word for, roughly, “whitey”) they encountered during her stay; but when she said she wanted to learn the Utku skills, it lead to misunderstandings when she did not follow through, when she later said she only wanted to write about the skills and ways of life, instead of practicing the skills herself. (It is much different to adopt a grown daughter who will be another helper around the house and lighten the workload than it is to adopt a grown daughter who is as helpless and moody in many ways as a child.)

Also to be sure, she learned much about the Utku that had not previously been understood, and in some cases, she would have had no way of knowing the egregious mistakes she was committing beforehand. (In other cases, however, she was blinded by misconceptions and her own biases.) Her most fatal misunderstanding, and, later, insightful revelation, led to the title of the book.

In a small, isolated community surrounded by a merciless environment, being angry serves no good purpose. Life is full of hardships and sorrows, but taking it personally is childish and absurd. The blizzard did not descend upon you because it was trying to get you. The starving dogs did not break into your cache of fish to flout your authority. Your sibling did not get sick and die because of anything you did. Life just happens. Raging at life not only doesn’t change anything for the better, but it makes your view of the world darker and less enjoyable. Also, anger at any of the few people who share your life can only drive them away from you, or cause hostilities between you, and cause you more grief and pain. In Utku society, where people depend on each other for life and death, disruption of society is an unacceptable risk. A person who cannot accept the ups and downs of life (including generously and happily doing the work that such hardships entail or incur, and laughing good naturedly at the disjointed humor of it all) is childish at best and a danger to other people at most.

The Utku way of gradually teaching children to control their emotions (so that nobody over the age of 10 would dare be caught crying even at a death or losing their temper over anything) and their way of dealing with aberrations (at least during the time the book was written) is impressive as well.

This is a fascinating book, both because of what went right and because of what didn’t. Definitely worth reading.

_{Reading through, especially the last chapter where she explains in hindsight her snowballing faux pas, I kept thinking of Bren. Paidhis truly are a combination of anthropologists, ambassadors, linguists, and field agents.}

I am really losing steam now; I have to go to bed. It’s pretty bad if I’m falling asleep during my own review ;D

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

finished it last Monday, before the flu.

what an eye-opener. I’d think that if, in an effort to get rid of mosquitos, an area was sprayed, and then ALL the birds and fish and small animals in the area DIED of obvious chemical poisoning, and people got sick, and the MOSQUITOS WERE FINE… then you’d stop spraying and try something else, not spray again and again year after year with same results. that’s the government for you.

yes, I know, they’ve banned DDT. but the same attitudes and lack of scientific method prevail overall. and specifically, they still use chemicals on our food (to the extent of genetically modified roundup ready crops)and there are still chemicals in the water that we don’t even know the effects of… or, we KNOW that they’re harmful, which is worse… organic, anyone?

chemical mutagens indeed. and when the book was written, in the 60s, predictions of a substantial increase in children born with developmental problems and defects, which has btw come true.

thank god she got the ball rolling. it’s not rolling real fast, mind you, but at least it’s rolling.

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H.M.S. Surprise and The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O'Brian. rating = 5

what wonderful, delightful reads O’Brian provides! you get all the real-life accuracy a historical novel can afford, the in-depth character studies that are rarely achieved without stream-of-consciouness (unless you are O’Brian or Achebe and their level), all the action of a thriller, and the suspense, plot twists, and carefully deliberated story of a spy novel. with such living and colorful prose!

I feel like I can’t tell you what they are all about, though, more than that… what if I gave something away? some absolutely dreadful things happen, along with some normal yet brilliantly wonderful things, as happens in life. I thoroughly enjoy these books and am glad I’ve only read 4 out of the 21 in the series. so many more to look forward too!

and then I can read them all again! :)

here is one bit from The Mauritius Command, that can’t give anything away:

“A capital notion,” said Jack. “It has always seemed absurd to me, that islands should not be English- unnatural.”

_{and I had to smile about St. Jago on 134 of HMS Surprise.}

And Both Were Young, by Madeleine L'Engle. 4.5- 5

I finally got to this one yesterday, and once I picked it up, I had to finish it all the way through. Ok, I did have to actually make supper and such, but it was only reluctantly that I did so.

One of L'Engle's earliest works, this edition rewritten once the traditional taboo against mentioning things like death and sexual attraction in young adult literature was lifted, and basically restored to the original manuscript L'Engle had in mind. Truly a delightful story for young readers from a young writer. A young girl from Connecticut matures into her own self-confidence and begins to understand greater social realities through the loss of her mother, the finding of a soulmate, and a year in a Scandinavian boarding school, not long after the horrors of World War II.

Someday I will make it to Scandinavia; I just know it. And I might even learn how to ski without impaling myself on my own said skis. If Flip can do it, surely I can too.

(I'm a name nerd, and I love the name Philippa. Yet I wouldn't call her Flip, Flippet, and certainly never Pill. The appropriate nickname is Pippin! Oh, well...)

The Town, by William Faulkner. 5

Jefferson, Mississippi, meet Flem Snopes.

And yet, can it be that Jefferson and Flem might actually get along?

Faulkner's stream of consciousness style does wonders for realism. The story is always being told by one character at a time, and when it switches to another character's point of view we may get an amazingly different take on events, and yet no point of view is much more believable than another. Ah, the human mind, as it imbues the world around it with subjective meaning. As it fugues along sometimes in self-argument, so that the premise or action which was completely dismissed out of hand a page or so ago has now been accepted as a wonderful solution and why didn't I think of that before? (I am never like that ;) ) Indeed it wouldn't be far from the truth to say that we all live in our own little worlds sometimes, from the lawyer Gavin to his kid nephew Charles to the ubiquitous V.K. Ratliff.

I have to say that I am quite relieved Faulkner did not try to write from a feminine perspective in this book (I believe he did in As I Lay Dying, though I can't remember, that was ages ago). Mostly because of the opinions of his characters regarding women. I don't know (probably don't want to know) if those opinions were Faulkner's own, but I'm still relieved. I think it is hard for an author to write such a personal, in-depth point of view as stream of consciouness from the other gender's perspective, man or woman; such that it may only be possible if the character in question is quite slow or eccentric or sick. And I certainly don't want to know what Eula Snopes was thinking... she quite disturbs me!

The names, a word about the names. I'm not sure that Faulkner was thinking, because I myself have lived in the South and, um, yes, back out in the sticks there are sometimes names like this. Especially from people like the Snopes. Still... Flem and Eck as given names? First and middle combinations like Wallstreet Panic, Montgomery Ward, and Admiral Dewey? Plus the lovely sibling combination of Clarence and the twins Vardaman and Bilbo. or the sibs Byron and Virgil. Although we do get one lovely Russian name hidden in there, unsuspecting. Certainly never a dull moment in nomenclature...

Or descriptions, as I said in The Hamlet, and will likely say again for every single Faulkner work. One long quote, permit me, please (and you can't know how perfect it is until you know the character and the situation):

There are stars now, just pricking out as you watch them among the others already coldly and softly burnin; the end of day is one vast green soundless murmur up the northwest toward the zenith. Yet it is as though light werenot being subtracted from earth, drained from earth backward and upward inot that cooling green, but rather had gathered, pooling for an unmoving moment yet, among the low places of the ground so that ground, earth itself is luminous and only the dense clumps of trees are dark, standing darkly and immobile out of it.

Then, as though at signal, the firelflies---lightning-bugs of the Mississippi child's vernacular---myriad and frenetic, random and frantic, pulsing; not questing, not quiring, but choiring as if they were tiny incessant appeaseless voices, cries, words. And you stand suzerain and solitary above the whole sum of your life beneath that incessant ephemeral spangling. 315

on Poetry:

But then, poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple natural instince are exalted and terrified by it. 88

on Berets:

... and a black thing on his head kind of drooping over one side like an empty cow's bladder made out of black velvet... 120

on Courtly Love (not Courtney Love):

"By Cicero, Gavin," Father said. "You're losing ground. Last time you at least picked out a Spanish-american War hero with an E.M.F. sportster. Now the best you can do is a Golden Gloves amateur with a homemade racer. Watch yourself, bud, or next time you'll have a boy scout defying you to mortal combat with a bicycle." 187

on Childhood (ok, this is long, too. so just part of it, then):

...when it occurs to you that maybe the sensible and harmless things they won't let you do really seem as silly to them as the things they seem either to want to do or have to do seem to you. No: it's when they laugh at you and suddenly you say, Why, maybe I am funny, and so the things they do are not outrageous or silly or shocking at all: they're just funny; and more than that, it's the same funny. 304 (& the rest of that paragraph)

A few last words (go read it yourself):

...that no man deserves love since nature did not equip us to bear it but merely to endure and survive it... 305

She didn't sound like a snake because snakes can't talk. But if dentist's drills could talk she would have sounded just like one. 180

The last little vingette of the story was really bizarre, and almost seemed like an add-on, but it was out-and-out Snopes for sure.

Oh, and, yes, this is where Snopes.com gets its name: from Faulkner's Snopes.

so in 2007 I read:

in order:

Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe (5)
Foreigner, C.J. Cherryh (CJC)
Invader, CJC
Inheritor, CJC
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Precursor, CJC
Defender, CJC
Explorer, CJC
Destroyer, CJC
Pretender, CJC
Deliverer, CJC (I was re-reading the series up to this new release here)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Shirley, Charlotte Bronte (5)
Villette, Charlotte Bronte
The Professor, Charlotte Bronte
A Rage to Live, John O’Hara (5)
Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories, Reinhardt Jung
read part of Orlando Furioso, Ludivico Ariosto/Guido Waldman
Hunter of Worlds, CJC
No Future Without Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (5)
Too Far From Home, Chris Jones
Rider at the Gate, CJC
Hammerfall, CJC
Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian (5)
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (5)
The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
The Stranger, Albert Camus (5)
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Arrow of God, Chinua Achebe (5)
The Hamlet, William Faulkner (5)
Post Captain, Patrick O’Brian (5)
The World According to Mister Rogers & The Mister Rogers Parenting Book
The Overcoat, and The Nose, Nikolai Gogol (5)
Rusalka, CJC

which makes a grand total of… about 35.

of those, 11 got my highest rating (5). it was a good year :)

Rusalka, by C.J. Cherryh. Be careful what you wish for...

Just ask Sasha Misurov. At five years old, he wished that his father would not beat him anymore. Soon thereafter, a fire burned down his house, claiming both his parents’ lives, and damning him in the eyes of the community of Vojvoda as a dangerous jinx- because nothing in Pre-Christian Russia ever happens by chance. That such a good-hearted innocent kid could be regarded as a danger is almost laughable, until you realize that his wish did indeed come true.

Not that Pyetr Kochevikov believes in such nonsense. Or that Pyetr had had a better relationship with his father, either. Born in the gutter to a notorious thief who kept trying to lose him, Pyetr had to rely on his wits and an uncanny ability to figure the odds in order to rise up to the social stratum he now enjoyed, befriended by youth of the nobility and, increasingly, wives of the nobility too.

But when one such wife needs to cover her own tracks regarding a suddenly and mysteriously dead husband, Pyetr goes from being her illicit lover to being the scapegoat. Charged with murder by sorcery, teenagers Pyetr and the practically complete stranger but supposed accomplice Sasha flee the city; Pyetr suffering from a horrid sword wound, and Sasha wishing they would make it safely to help.

The tail end of winter is no time to be running around Russia without so much as a coat, much less if you are bleeding to death and being chased by the tsar’s law. Taking a shortcut through a long-dead forest is probably not a good idea either. They don’t have much choice, however, and Sasha’s wishing pays off as they finally come across a cabin on the river, and the only thing that can help the dying Pyetr at this point: a sorcerer. A sorcerer with an even worse relationship with his father, and, oh yes, who was not such a good father himself.

(One does wonder about CJC’s relationship with her father, even though most likely she just took a theme and ran with it.)

This sorcerer has spent the last hundred years trying to reconcile his failed relationship with his daughter, who was drowned trying to run away, and who became Rusalka: a vengeful spirit who desperately wants to avoid death, and who does so by draining the life out of those around her.

And of course it follows that Pyetr, who thinks there is a rational explanation for everything, and Sasha, who imposes no such qualifications on reality, grow increasingly more and more entangled in a struggle neither of them understand, in a place where nothing and nobody is what it seems, where no one can trust anyone else, and where someone must die for a wish to come true.

Indeed, a Rusalka is itself just a wish, a rather innocent wish, with very bad consequences: a wish to live.

Don’t worry; that’s just the set-up for the story, with no real spoilers. It’s just the beginning. I didn’t give away any of the rest, involving raising the dead, battles with river demons, a desperate attempt to escape, a climactic showdown between master and apprentice, and snake-handed elephants. :p

a few quotes:

”... aunt Ilenka came flying out of the kitchen waving her spoon and calling on the Sun, the tsar, and all his magistrates.” (pg. 1)

“He’s over all kinder than sane folk know how to be.” (pg. 39)

“Once at hours like this, Pyetr told himself, he had been lazing about in a soft, warm bed no magician was goig to chase him out of.” (pg. 252)

That being said, it’s really not so much of a ghost story as, er, a traditional ghost story. It just happens to have ghosts etc as characters. :D Case in point, the cover blurb:

A grim but warmly human story of courage, sacrifice, and desperate love between a tormented spirit and a mortal man.

And no, it’s not that kind of love. That’s over in the romance department, I’m sure. Look for the vampire on the cover.

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

The Overcoat, and The Nose, by Nikolai Gogol. rating =5.

Some have called The Overcoat the greatest short story ever; certainly it is one of the best from the Russian tradition. It vies in its own way with The Metamorphosis.

These stories are so short that you really need to read them; I’d hate to give more away than I already have. Gogol is prodigious at the absurd and the everyday; it is not only his wit, but the depth behind his wit, that provokes readers everywhere.

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The World According to Mister Rogers; The Mister Rogers Parenting Book. 4

There is more to this man than many people know; I invite you to investigate. He has a way of saying things that you might take for granted, but that in many ways go against the dogma of our modern American society: it isn’t a good idea to maintain a cheerful facade all the time; people feel freer to be themselves when they are assured of rules and boundaries than when they are allowed to do anything with no responsibility; every now and again you need to stop and recharge and rethink- you can’t keep going 100% all the time.

There are many things to stop and think about from a man who dedicated his life to helping future generations develop their potential to the fullest and recognize the connection between all human beings.

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Post Captain, by Patrick O'Brian. rating = 5

You know, when you read a really, really good book, you are quite afraid to read the sequel sometimes, for fear that it will not be as good. Not only is Post Captain as good as Master and Commander, some might say it’s even better.

Most of the book actually takes place on land, hopefully dispelling the myth that these books are only about sailors who like to drink and shoot cannons at other ships. Aubrey and Maturin are spending some time in the countryside of England following the peace agreement which ended the war, but an amazing amount of trouble soon falls upon Cptn. Aubrey, whose prize agent has run off (the modern equivalent of one’s tax preparer running off with money you owe the govt), making Aubrey responsible for an enourmous sum which he does not have. This blow comes at a particularly bad time for Aubrey, who has no ship during the peace and is not earning an income, and who has also fallen in love with a local girl and wishes to marry. To make things even more complicated, he ends up falling in love with another girl as well (oh it’s complicated I tell you ;) ), who has also caught the eye and heart of Dr. Maturin.

Fleeing England, only to arrive in France right before Napolean declares war again, and so forced to flee France incognito, they end up in Maturin’s holdings in Spain before making it back to a port where Aubrey can beg command of a ship, to help pay off his debts. That is only the first half of the book and I will not reveal more, just know that it twists and, yes, there are ships, and battles, and an attack in a dark alleyway, a betrayal, and more lovelorn twists to come. O’Brian sets up the romantic follies especially well (I am not one for romances much), and things are not always what they seem. Indeed, many people are not what they may seem, either.

a couple of quotes, but the entire book is worth quoting, line by line:

”... Oh, wish me joy!”

“Why, so I do,” said Stephen, wincing in that iron grip, “if more joy you can contain- if more felicity will not make your cup overflow. Have you been drinking, Lieutenant X? Pray sit in a chair like a rational being, and do not spring about the room.”
p.199

“There are days,” he reflected, “when one sees as though one had been blind the rest of one’s life. Such clarity- perfection in everything, not merely in the extraordinary. One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing; being is the highest good. However,” he said, guiding the horse left-handed into the dunes, “doing of some kind there must be.”
p. 350

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what a little gem

I’m the kind of person who can take a lot of stress, you know, and I seem fine with big, important matters, for a long time, and then something stupid sets me off, and people wonder how that could get me in a lather. and that’s what this is. it’s just the last straw for all the recent days, is what.

right now, though, it seems like the author is a troll. (so I shouldn’t let it get to me, right?) if it is trolling, then I can almost understand Discover magazine running it, but then Utne picked it up too? if Utne thinks that is balance… I used to subscribe to them, years ago, but they’ve got way too much crap lately. they used to do a better job, I thought. maybe I was just even more naive…

science fiction is obsolete

really, the author amazes me. stereotype, stereotype, stereotype… I’m surprised he didn’t finish the article with a round of wedgies…

oh, haven’t you seen it? well, probably that’s for the better. I advise you to avert your eyes, in order to spare you.

this is a jock VS nerd fest. he uses dripping sarcasm throughout, with no professionalism at all, and this is supposed to be made okay by the few instances in which he turns the sarcasm inside-out (re Jules Verne and the launch of the Columbia)(and aren’t we so impressed that he knows Jules Verne’s middle name?). Fictional Reality indeed, the man lives in a world of stereotypes and indoctrination.

has the quality of science fiction gone down since Wells and Verne? well, sure… when you average all the science fiction works of the year together! when there was only Wells and Verne, both masters in their own way, of course the median standard of the genre was higher than now when we have all kinds of things being published under the scifi umbrella. god save us all; math, did we learn math in school? now if you compared the works of two current masterminds with that of Wells and Verne, I think you’ll find the quality to still be much the same.

not that Maddox would probably know; once he gets past Wells and Verne, he draws solely on… Michael Crichton for examples!

Would we even be bothered by the proliferation of surveillance cameras if we didn’t recognize the phenomenon as “Orwellian” and know, therefore, that it is bad? Probably, but I think you see my point.

ok, the point of all science fiction is not to predict the future, but apparently he has missed this. he thinks that because Wells did not “correctly” predict the future of the Soviet Union (????) 1984, that the work was a failure. did he get nothing of the essence at all?

and ARE WE any different than the citizens in 1984? examples abound, people, they truly do. they had a propoganda division called the Department of Truth. because it was called the Department of Truth, well, it must be telling the truth, right? we have legislation that undermines the human rights of Americans and non-citizens, and weakens the framework for promoting human rights internationally. but it’s called the Patriot Act, so, well, it must be a good, wholesome thing designed to protect the citizens as long as they are patriotic. and if you argue against it, you must be unpatriotic. and yet, I don’t see Bruno Maddox bothered by this at all…

For one, it was around that time, the mid-1990s, that fiction— all fiction —finally became obsolete as a delivery system for big ideas.

this is along the lines of: “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899. it is as ridiculous and small-minded as almost anything I can think of, and I’d never be caught dead saying such a thing, much less attach my name to it and publish it across the country.

can you imagine anyone saying: Music is obsolete as a delivery system for big ideas. Art is obsolete as a delivery system for big ideas. ??? I hope not. and yet it’s the same stretch… how blatantly wrong and exacerbatingly ignorant can a person be?

Why would I spend my money on a book about amazing-but-fake technology when we’re only a few weeks away from Steve Jobs unveiling a cell phone that doubles as a jetpack and a travel iron?

yes, because scifi is just about predicting the future and blinding us all with technogadgetry.

the Utne article actually is shorter but has some different passages in it (?). among the first thing that upset me was his complaint that the convention was not being held in a futuristic pavillion, etc, etc, no; and he then went on to complain how the salsa was being served directly out of the jar… don’t think I am taking only those comments, but, to sum up, the whole mood behind it all made it clear that he honestly didn’t see the point of anything less than a phantasmagorical, materialistic, consumeristic display of wealth and priviledge and American-style corporate jet-setting… that anything less was a sign of failure. truly, he’s still entirely entrenched in the doctrines of the industrial revolution! the environment doesn’t matter, other cultures and people don’t matter, even the disadvantaged of one’s own culture don’t matter. that was the underlying vibe. plus an amazing misunderstanding of science itself and scientists as people…

this is exactly the type of mind that needs to be broadened by literature. the kind that eschews not only science fiction, but also fiction, and indeed even science itself. but he was never taught to appreciate it in school; and apparently there’s enough people all across the country to agree with him and give him an audience.

:\

ok I’m going to chuck e cheese now.
really I’m fine ;)

See more progress on: Post random thoughts, observations, and events of the day...

The Hamlet, by William Faulkner. rating = 5

I could go on, maybe I shouldn't. really, the man did not win a Nobel prize for nothing. I'm sure you already know why I liked it :)

but I've got to share with you some of this absolutely magnificent description! wow, what descriptions!

41. The horse made one swirl, it looked round as a ball, without no more front or back end than a Irish potato.

105. It was a forensic face, the face of invincible conviction in the power of words as a principle worth dying for if necessary. A thousand years ago it would have been a monk's, a militant fanatic who would have turned his uncompromising back on the world with actual joy and gone to a desert and passed the rest of his days and nights calmly and without an instant's self-doubt battling, not to save humanity about which he would have cared nothing, for whose sufferings he would have had nothing but contempt, but with his own fierce and unappeasable natural appetites.

205. He was not wild, he was merely unbitted yet; not high-spirited so much as possessed fo that strong lust, not for life, not even for movement, but for that fetterless immobility called freedom.

211. Geography: that paucity of invention, that fatuous faith in the distance of man, who can invent no better means than geography for escaping; himself o fall, to whom, so he believed he believed, geography had never been merely something to walk upon but was the very medium which the fetterless to-and fro-going required to breathe in.
(I wonder what the atevi would make of that remark...)

231. For an instant he saw it, spinning slowly. Then it splashed, not sinking but disintegrating amoung that shattered scurring of broken stars.

277. The pear tree across the road opposite was now in full and frosty bloom, the twigs and branches springing not outward from the limbs but standing motionless and perpendicular above the horizontal boughs like the separate and upstreaming hair of a drowned woman sleeping upon the uttermost floor of the windless and tideless seas.

Ah, the South. the story? the story is of a small little crook in the road really, in Mississippi, right at about the time of the beginning of the Great Depression. not that anyone there knew it was the Great Depression; they were too poor to tell. When your entire worldly belongings consist of one set of clothes to a person, one set of mismatched shoes for five people to share, a pot, a brush with no handle, and a hammer head with no claw tails set upon a stick of firewood... yeah, well, Wallstreet is nothing but a name to you. literally ;)

there is not really a main main character, but ostensibly one could claim this is the chronicle of the origins of Flem Snopes, a crusty frog-like individual who raises himself from an incredibly impoverished and common enough beginning to the highest possible level in that society, by way of his own bootstraps and heartless, almost soulless, manipulation of other people and their expectations. since the trilogy is called the Snopes trilogy, and since the last scene of the book includes Flem and his new wife and child leaving to set up in Jefferson, I'm pretty sure I'm justified in saying so.

oh, and yes I did pick up the accent again just by reading the books. I found myself saying "Sholy" several times in the past week or so. although this is not as noticeable as when, after a long stint of Bronte, I was cut off in traffic and shouted, "dog in the manger". /embarrassed to death...

70. "Here. Bring me a piece of pie while I'm waiting."
"What kind of pie, Mr. Bookwright?" the counterman said.
"Eating pie," Bookwright said.

Arrow of God, by Chinua Achebe. rating: 5

right now I have a fever and all I can say is, Chinua Achebe is awesome. I’ve read three books by him (Things Fall Apart, Anthills of the Savannah, and Arrow of God) and they are all first-rate, #5, everyone should read these books.

repeating myself:

the man is amazingly talented with words, world-building, and characterization. he can be very economical in his writing, straight to the quick and every word, every image is exactly what is necessary to convey his meaning and carry the story. he can also be very philosophical and soul-searching, when his characters are and when the situation calls for it. his stories are very human and real--- there's no real heroes or villains or any "correct" viewpoints involved (though a character might think of his viewpoint as supreme) or preaching of a moral. you feel as if you know the people personally somehow, as if they are quite real, and correspondingly complicated without being constructedly so. you come to understand the world they populate in a short time, as if you've been there, as if you could put the book down and find yourself there.

amazingly talented.

Arrow of God is told primarily from the viewpoint of a chief priest of an Igbo village (Umuaro; several villages as one, really), but also from that of the British man on the spot and his subordinates. the reality each person experiences (not only each side- ie, white/black- but also, yes, each person) is very different, and yet as they interact more and come to their own (often bizarre yet predictable) understandings of each other, their realities began to converge. not that either side ever really fully and truly understands each other, but they go from being separate entities to sharing in a common future.

Achebe's thorough discussion of the events brings the reader to realize many aspects of life and truth in the story. for just one example,the book documents the disintegration of the traditional religion (again, not total disintegration, but the toppling from its dominance in the community and taking a diminished and quite secondary or even forgotten role) , and in a way that makes total sense in the context of that religion (and the accompanying culture). not just, the Christians came and the Christians shone their truth forth and yeah verily we all converted. no, we get the real, complicated story of how the priest and even the god itself misstepped and fell from power, with the white religion as a context, but not as the defining factor.

he's such an engaging writer. I actually picked this book up after I had already started The Hamlet (see next), and I couldn't put it down. even though I had already started in on William Faulkner! yes, if I may be so bold, I think Chinua Achebe is the William Faulkner of Nigeria. truly great, truly great.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (4.5-5)

I’d read Jules Verne before (Journey to the Center of the Earth esp), but you think I’d have read the other author who founded the field of science fiction as well. but I’d never read The Time Machine, or The Island of Dr. Moreau, or The Invisible Man. good gravy, what have I been up to all these years?!

ok. I’d seen the movie. even the recent movie that by Wells’ descendant that scandalized everyone. but I’d never read the book.

it’s not the same (shock!) as the movie; of course I knew that, but I didn’t realize how much they added in the movies. I didn’t realize they’d added the clothes shop bit with the changing manequin. and I hadn’t thought about it, but of course they added the part where the stopped during a World War (can’t remember which movie, but the old one I guess)- the book was written long before the World Wars.

in the book, he doesn’t stop at all before he reaches the land of the Eloi & Murdocks.

I didn’t realize they’d cut out part of the ending, either. he actually goes further into time and sees the ultimate fate of the planet, in the book.

and Weena’s fate is a bit different, as well.

his prose is intriguing and engaging. here are a couple quotes to show you what I mean, and I’ll leave you with an urging to read the book:

(1) ”...there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision.”

(78) “Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into an unknown future.”

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

The Stranger, by Albert Camus (5)

from the back cover: “A terrifying picture of a man victimized by life itself”

wow. apparently the reviewer/publisher missed the point of the book. ???

the French philosopher (and great writer, btw) Albert Camus gives us a main character, the narrator, who feels no attachment to the world, no real emotions to speak of at all. he is a man that lives entirely in the present, with hardly any thought to the future, and no real thought to the past. he is very “in the moment”, or rather, caught up in the physical sensations of the moment, and, even though he is an educated, intelligent, hard working man- he does not reflect on his world or his actions or his own self.

and because of this, his life takes what at first seems to be a dramatic turn, leading to his ultimate undoing. looking back, however, it was hardly inevitable after all.

Camus is making a point. it is not enough to live “in the moment”. the moment is connected to the past and future; the moment exists in a greater context with all of time and with all other people in the moment. and emotions play a great role in this; they are our connections to the world.

Meursault (Mer-soh) _{(Camus= ca-moo)} is, from the start, a very odd fellow because of his disconnection from life, even as he is immersed in the sensations of the moment. what he is disconnected from, ultimately, is any kind of purpose whatsoever. he makes choices passively, not kenning moral issues or what most of us would call basic humanity. but he is not a victim. Meursault makes choices, and he faces the consequences of his choices and his actions. to think of him as a victim is to misunderstand as much of Meursault’s life as Meursault did himself.

this is a very thought-provoking piece; if it interests you, you might read also The Fall by Camus (wherein the main character reflects too much and is thus out of balance with his life ina different way). or look up existentialism in general :D

See more progress on: read all the books on my lists

The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad. rating=4ish

The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad (in same book as Heart of Darkness)

It is a good story, and good writing, if a bit heavily underscored. Joseph Conrad is a bit dark for my tastes (gasp!) but I recommend it :)

The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. rating=5

click above for story

or here: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/stories/kafka-E.htm

this is another 5 :)

it’s very short; not even a hundred pages. (and as such I don’t want to quote it much.) it’s a perfect example of the absurd, and of our absurd human tendencies in life.

the story is about Gregor Samsa, who, in the very first sentence, wakes up to find that he has been transformed into a hideous bug.

in fact, it is very like Nikolai Gogol’s story The Nose, in which a man wakes up to find that his nose is not on his face. The Nose is about the man looking all over to find his nose, because he just cannot figure where it has gotten off to, and we are never enlightened as to how this could have come about, really, only that apparently it could happen to anyone. and when the man finally does find his nose, it’s dressed in a uniform [etf freudian slip: I put it was wearing an overcoat; this was the title of another of Gogol's short stories!] walking down the street. the man says, in effect, “Hey, aren’t you my nose?!?”, but, poor fellow, he is of such a low station in life that even his own nose is of higher rank than he is, and it does not deign to stop and talk with him.

in The Metamorphosis, Gregor has been turned into a hideous vermin, some sort of monstrous beetley-cockroach thing, but keeps his human, travelling-salesman, dutiful son and brother mind. and we never know how or why he was changed into a bug, and it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose whatsoever. but Gregor, who has slept through the alarm, what with being changed into a different life form and all, is of course very concerned with the most pressing of urgencies: getting to work and apologizing for missing the early train. and, of course, Gregor is quite depressed and melancholy: about the rainy weather.

the scene where the manager comes to Gregor’s house to find out what’s going on is horrible and amazingly comic: here we have Gregor as a giant roach trying to convince his boss that he really is a good employee, and he’ll be back on the job at no time at all.

the second half of the work is perhaps a bit darker but all the more enlightenting and bizarre. for such a ridiculous prospect, Kafka makes very bold and enduring statements about family, self-identity, alienation, guilt, and literature/ being a writer.

apparently people have built careers around analyzing Franz Kafka’s work, esp this story, and I can see why. I say read it :)

this might come in handy later on --- longueur

The Word of the Day for September 10 is:

longueur \lawn-GUR (approximation -- this word comes from French and has sounds with no English equivalents)\ noun
: a dull and tedious passage or section (as of a book, play, or musical composition) -- usually used in plural

Example sentence:
“This production has its occasional longueurs, but glorious singing and energetic choreography quickly rope us back in." (Rick Rogers, _The Oklahoman_, June 28, 2007)

Did you know?
You’ve probably come across long, tedious sections of books, plays, or musical works before, but perhaps you didn’t know there was a word for them. English speakers began using the French borrowing “longueurs” in the late 18th century. In French, “longueurs” are tedious passages, and “longueur” literally means “length.” The first recorded use of “longueur” in English comes from the writer Horace Walpole, who wrote in a letter, “Boswell’s book is gossiping;… but there are woful longueurs, both about his hero and himself.”