| Author | Message | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Hardly read anything last year. Ended the year with a re-read of Course of the Heart. Again. But this year I've already read The Gospel of Judas. Cracking tale. Judas intuits that Christ hails from the Realm of Barbalos, Christ teaches him big cosmic mysteries, Judas turns Christ over to the authorities so that he can escape the kenomatic lair of the demiurge. Big applause. Everyone wins. Quite why he didn't relieve him of his physical form by twatting him with a gladius is beyond me. Anyway. Interesting commentary and witterings from various Coptic scholars. Now reading: The Lost Rivers of London. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Just re-read Course of The Heart, too. Now reading John Clare and MR James (not together). | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
My 2007 reading list was embarrassingly short. I'm hoping to make amends, and finishing school this month (FINALLY!) should free up some time to do so. But I imagine I'll still be reading a ton of academic stuff for my job and working 70 hours or so a week so my hopes aren't unrealistically high. I just applied for a new job too. If I get it, I'll be bogged down catching up on new areas of the literature. God, I can feel the literary parts of my brain shriveling up. Currently, I'm reading How The Universe Got Its Spots by Jana Levin and I have the following waiting for me on the nightstand: Texas Hold'em Odds and Probabilities: Limit, No-Limit, and Tournament Strategies - Hilger Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It)-Levinson The World Without Us-Weisman The Weight of Numbers-Ings | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Oh, and I'm reading a few books about Glacier National Park in Montana. My girlfriend and I are planning a trip there this summer. I want to stand on a glacier before they all melt. Looking at me list, I could use some good fiction suggestions if you guys have any. Maybe we should start a really nerdy book club. That'd keep me motivated and keep us all coming to the forum in '08. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Still intending to read Weight of Numbers. Maybe I'll take the first step and actually *buy* a copy of it. Actually, I'd rather like some fiction suggestions too. Wandered into a bookshop with the intention of buying a novel and nothing jumped out of the bookshelves screaming "buy me!" I'm sure there's a whole raft of stuff I'm meaning to read but I can never remember it - especially when I'm in a bookshop. Writing things down might be a start. Off topic: also starting painting again this year. Badly. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I read Conrad's The Secret Agent recently. Possibly the first of its kind; 'terrorists' and suicide bombers form its main subject matter. Edwardian London the background. Bleak descriptions of Islington, Soho and Whitehall. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Sounds interesting MJP. Did you enjoy it? Io, a thought: the yet-to-be-convened Empty Space reading group could start out reading Weight of Numbers. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Weight of Numbers" for sure. Io, don't hesitate: buy today! Here, it's been Bracewell's book on Ferry and Eno, "Remake/Remodel" (which includes an episode with EM Forster watching the first moon landing that deserves a place in WoN), a lot of Kipling's stories and Angus Wilson's biography of him, Silverberg's "Masks of Time" (aka "Vornan 19"), and Patrick Hamilton's "Slaves of Solitude." Light relief: Ray Lowry cartoons, collected in "Ink." | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Dave, I first read it about 20 years ago. This time round I found it more stylishly written - at times over written a little. But this has to be one of Conrad's most significant books. I am now reading for the first time Under Western Eyes, which broadens the canvas a bit but it seems slightly less convincing. Neither book paints what you could call a cheerful picture of the human condition. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
>>Neither book paints what you could call a cheerful picture of the human condition. No, but that's okay I think. When I read books that do, they inevitably ring hollow and end up making me feel quite alone in my own world view. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Weight of Numbers ordered from Amazon for 1p, plus £2.75 postage but it still seems wrong. Been a long time since I read Conrad. Shorter works at A level, including the inevitable "Heart of Darkness", and Lord Jim was part of one of my degree courses. Failed repeatedly since to finish Nostromo. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Also just reading Paul Morley's new book on Joy Division. There's some appalling over-writing, even by his own high albumenic alliterative arts-over-elbow tendencies - but if you tramp down the effulgence, telling stuff comes into view. One chapter's given over to last lines or paragraphs for books on JD that he's never written. Written out of context, a lot of them simply bristle with mystery: "Sometimes I regret not having bought that clown." Me, too. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
I haven't read Conrad in a long time either. Probably since high school. And those were some misguided days. Looking back, I think a lot of my enthusiasm for Heart of Darkness could be attributed to the fact that I liked feeling all angsty while watching Apocalypse Now. ;) | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I found Heart of Darkness one of the most comfortless books I have ever read. The Secret Agent is a bit like that. It doesn't mean that Conrad is never sentimental; he is a little loose sometimes. I don't know. He is one of those writers who bridge the old and new wherein the 'join' begins to show. He is a craftsman whose models are Turgenev and such; he can be reminiscent of Edith Wharton in creating very solid multi-dimensioned social scenes that are inherently reassuring but you can see in The Secret Agent how it is all coming unglued. Really it is quite horrible. On the other hand anything that registers the fact that you are alive and aware is to the purpose and satisfying to behold. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
The Weight of Numbers has landed with a thump on my desk. Boom. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Aw, c'mon - you're just tryting to make us feel guilty. Soon you, too, will be wondering which is the harder chapter to read - the predatory nonce or the African boy soldiers playing soccer. Personally, skillful as they are, I'm glad I was driven to write neither! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Curiously, I had to edit the above post as the F-word for that game which we associated with Beckham is banned on this board ... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Very much looking forward to it. It's been ages since I've had any unread Ings in the bookpile. He can be thoroughly hard work. Not because the writing is ever less than fluid or that the obsevation is ever less than solid but because of the emotional demands he can make of the reader. Anyone read his non-fic book on The Eye? | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Oh, and I'd forgotten about banning the F-word. Must've been a World Cup reaction or summat. | ||
| arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 |
I´ve been reading Ben Okri Starbook. I aproached the book with a lot of caution and for reviewing purposes. Much to my suprise I am liking it quite a lot. Very Oscar Wildeish in his short story mode. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Piece on the Guardian blog about Durrell and Avignon: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/02/a_differ ent_kind_of_durrell.html | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Ballard's autobiography: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miracles-Life-J-G-Ballard/ dp/0007270720 Written against the steady ticking of prostate cancer, which tempers any critical view. That said, for me there was rather too much on Shanghai and not enough on the writing: I wanted to know more about the imaginative impulse behind, say, "The Voices of Time" or "Atrocity Exhibition," and slightly less about the ground already mapped out in interviews for "Empire of the Sun" or "Kindness of Women." Surprising absence - Burroughs. Surprising guest star ( and fellow inmate of Lunghua) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wyngarde | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
The hairdresser just around the corner has a webpage. This is it. Please don't laugh. He has suffered, you know. http://www.cowboymod.com/modx/index.php?id=54 | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
And he also sells guitars! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Not that I care; but I did stumble on the tail-end of this affair. As I left work one evening, I had to dodge his red sports car. He was crawling down the road, pursuing a determined-looking woman on the pavement, who was walking as quickly as she could to get away from him. He kept yelling at her from the car: "Are we in a relationship or not? Are we in a relationship or not?" Three guesses, pal! | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
>>And he also sells guitars! Those prices are absurd! Io, please tell me that's not what you have to pay in the UK. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Even in Denmark Street you'll normally find better prices than that. I think the UK is a bit more expensive for guitars, especially US-built guitars. Unless those axes have special magical properties, I think he's being a tad optimistic about what the punters will pay. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I think you're really paying PoseurPrice here - this is a man who puts photos of hismelf with Paul Weller in the window (among the plastic toys), and (I'm told) once looked up as a customer came through the door and said: "You're ten minutes early for your appointment - f*ck off." Anyway: here's all you really need! http://www.twenga.co.uk/dir-Family,Childrens-creat ive-toys,Toy-guitar-1624 | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Circuit-bend it and it'll sound just like a minimoog on steroids. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Missed this digested read of the last Gibson novel when it came out. Painfully accurate: http://tinyurl.com/yp6r57 ""Node," said the voice in Hollis Henry's cell. She was in an LA hotel, talking to a boss she had never met and working for a magazine that might not exist. She looked across the room to get her bearings and relaxed when she caught sight of Odile's white Lego robot near the terrarium. Everything was just fine. It was the usual incomprehensible and pretentious start to a William Gibson novel." | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
I've started reading again. This may only be a temporary aberration. Just finished Herman Melville's short story Bartleby (reading it for the Art Sheffield 08 Book Club, bizarrely enough). Wonderful stuff. Recently completed Alan Garner's "Thursbitch", Robert Irwin's "Satan Wants Me", and "King of Infinite Space", a biography of super-geometer Donald Coxeter. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
It's about time I read Thursbitch again. Great book. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I don't know if Garner's published it - but he gave a talk here in Oxford a couple of years ago on the events that inspired the book, the strangeness he found researching it, and what a generally bewitched piece of edge-ground the valley remains to this day. Only a Hyndley/Brady connection went missing: the place seems to demand it. Reading: Russell Hoban's "Linger Awhile" and "My Tango" - you have to admire his energy, but it comes overburdened with whimsy and wisecracks these days; Baudrillard's essays, "Screened Out" (whatever did happen to linear historical time in our culture?); and the travel pieces in "AA Gill is Away." | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
>>what a generally bewitched piece of edge-ground the valley remains to this day I've been there a few times now. It's definitely got *something*. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
He said far too much (and far too intriguingly) for me to paraphrase. Some of it was pure Arkham - farmers who wouldn't go outdoors after dark, vicars who were very reluctant to work in the parish, local folk who wouldn't say any more. But their attitude was summed up by one former resident who did agree to talk, very guardedly: "that place isn't right." | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
And what about the stone with the brass ring - and then no brass ring? I'm too much a rationalist to bleive it, really, but then Garner strikes me as supremely rational (if a little mad). What are we to make of it all? | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I made a lot of notes on that talk. I checked them again last night, and the episode of the ring was what Garner finished with - half jokingly, he said he'd "saved the worst for last." He gave a long analysis of stone features in the area which seemed to be tied to seasonal astrology, and aligned with the movements of Taurus. A polished ring he found hammered into a boulder could well be linked with this. He thought it resembled objects he'd seen in Spain, associated with bull baiting - but that sport has been outlawed in England since Victorian times. A local farmer professed to be baffled by it: "The news must have been a bit late reaching here, mustn't it?" When Garner and his wife returned the next week, however, the ring had vanished, and the surface of the stone showed no trace of it. He had slides showing "before" and "after" - but no explanation. In fact, Garner wasn't sure how to interpret much of what he'd found. He admitted he was telling "a" story, not "the" story of the valley - but certain things had been drawn together there by the "noumen of the place," and had then met up in his mind like travellers on the old Silk Road to form a narrative. So a sceptic might claim it was all a trick of pattern recognition and selective perception. But you were still left with the chapel, known locally as "the place where they marry the odd"; one interviewee who asked him straight out, "Alan, what's wrong with our valley?"; and a retired clergyman who came out with an untypical bit of gothic: "I think that valley wants feeding." There was a lot more than I can post here: Garner's lecture was a sober piece of folk archaeology, with a great deal of technical detail, and not an eccentric's rant designed to unsettle the nervous. I only hope he publishes a documentary book on the area, and lays out all of this (and more) in his own words - but for the moment, the mysteries remain. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
That chapel's certainly weird. And there's a farm at one end of the valley called Howlersknoll - there's a name for a ghost story if ever I heard one. Here it is: http://www.macccam.co.uk/DERBYSHIRE/Goyt%20Valley/ IMG_0090.JPG Thursbitch is the valley behind it. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
A place of wraiths and fetches, no doubt about it. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Could it be that Coleridge's translation of Goethe's 'Faust' (long thought not to have actually happened) was published anonymously and has now been rediscovered?!?!?! http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199229680 Apparently not: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/Publications/stc-faustus-revi ew.pdf Eheu! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
A case of "not so, Faust," eh? | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Indeed... Faust, then famine... *bdm tish* | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I've sent the link to an editor here: we'll see what happens! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Googling "Howlersknoll" brings up only one result: http://www.britishwalks.org/walks/1999/001.php "A nice short walk" - but "I take no responsibility for anything that may happen when following these directions." We've been warned. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
That'll be interesting! Originally came to me in an email from the University of London, and they're encouraging people to forward it: 'Since the article is published under Creative Commons, you are welcome - indeed encouraged - to send the link to anyone who might be interested, including posting it on other lists' Looks like they've got quite a bee in their bonnet about it! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Meanwhile, tv chef Delia Smith has just published a book of "cheat recipes," which are cheap to make but are supposed to taste expensive. "The Guardian" tested some in a Soho resturant. Chef's verdict: "This is like having a pig piss in your throat." Supah! http://tinyurl.com/39ocqd | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Currently reading Peter Ackroyd's bio of T.S.Eliot. Only just reaching the genesis of The Waste Land and I don't know if this is just Ackroyd's portrayal of Old Possum but I'm feeling a certain empathy for him. Should I seek help? A few weeks in Lausanne perhaps? | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Well, you could always clear off to Margate for the weekend - visit the shelter on the seafront where he wrote the early bits, before taking in a bit of the Tracy Emin heritage trail! Then hit the beach and impersonate Prufrock: http://www.margatecivicsociety.org.uk/images/Marga teBeach.gif | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
I'd probably find myself on Margate Sands with a Kinder Surprise: "On Margate Sands, I find myself incapable of constructing the semi-official Asterix toy, and I'm not entirely convinced about this white/dark chocolate combination." By the time it comes back from Ez it'll read like real vers libre. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Here he stands on Margate Sands All Obelix and desolate. Life is a waste. His hands Are full of Manichean chocolate - " Right: another 2 cantos and I'm off down the pub. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
- But why read anything? There are so many fascinating things to watch. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view= CAMPAIGN&grid=A1NoGoogle&pg=/ETHtml/content/promot ions/2008/04/04/thatcher/thatcher.jhtml | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Struggling with Pontypool Changes Everything right now. It's either great and totally over my head, or it's total trash. I'm beginning to detest authors who write about language. It's the trade equvilent of listening to a carpenter rant about how everything boils down to hammers. Seriously, first Auster's New York books, now this. I'm about to go back to nonfiction for a bit. Anyone read anything good lately? | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
News From Nowhere by William Morris was rather uplifting. Rather like a well-wallpapered version of Utopia with some deeply cosy romantic socialist armchairs to sleep in. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Tony Hancock" by John Fisher And dug up in a second-hand bookshop, Nicholas Moseley's novel, later filmed, "Accident": Oxford philosophy dons debate existence, fall foul of sexual politics, and stab each other in the back. How the place has changed, etc. MJP: I think you might enjoy it. See if you can find a copy! | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Those all sound better than Pontypool. I'm making some poor selections these days. But I'm waiting patientily for this one: http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Gaunt-Other-Uneasy-Encoun ters/dp/0809572494/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3Q 22BZZQKHAKC&colid=19S5LR75Y29DX I hear it's quite good. | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Re-read Alan Garner's Thursbitch recently. A serious contender for book of the century. Reading it feels like hearing Buckley's version of Hallelujah for the first time, if X-Factor had never existed. Other than that, mainly non-fiction. Programming books ("Beautiful Code" and "The Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook", in case you were wondering). Plus I was just given the New Scientist book "Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? and 101 other intriguing science questions", which is a lot more engaging than I'd expected from a list book. Also recently finished Marcus du Sautoy's "The Music of the Primes: Why an Unsolved Problem in Mathematics Matters", which was a lot less engaging than I'd expected from the new Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Martin, I'll look up the Mosley, thanks. I am towards the end of Obama's Audacity book, a well written informative but sometimes rather dry text on policy: but all the same miraculous for a President following on from the catastrophic Bush years - unbelievable really. He is going to make himself a big target for a lot of ill-will, especially on climate and foreign policy. Let's hope there are not too many slip ups. Favourite book at the moment is a poetic translation of the Aeneid by Sarah Ruden. Up to book 4; it's a marvellous version that joins two others. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
>>Re-read Alan Garner's Thursbitch recently. Yes, it's marvellous. Reading it is now a required Winter ritual, along with listening to the Watersons and stuffing my fat face. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
One more winter ritual - HAPPY CHRISTMAS: and an exciting and prosperous 2009. See you all in it! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I am watching also lots of Jean Luc Goddard movies. They are often chaotic and the director shows little interest in plot, but they are fabulous. In the 60s and 70s he made an incredible number of key movies. Clearly, along with Bergman and Tarkovsky he is among the greatest of movie makers. Merry Christmas all. And a Happy New Year | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
Happy Christmas everyone. | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Alex, what happened to Morgan Fisher?  Happy Christmas everyone... It doesn't feel very much like it yet, even though we did have a big family meal (21 of us in my parents' front room) on Saturday, and Gill & the kids are staying here in London for a few days. I'm working right down to the line, and actually feel like keeping going - enjoying work so much at the moment that it's not really a chore. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Hey guys, Merry Christmas to you all! Hope you're enjoying the holidays. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
And you, Dave - keep warm over there! | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Martin, good advice: I'm going snowshoeing in the Adirondacks this weekend. It's been about -30*C above the treeline recently...with 80 kph winds. I'll bring a sweater. ;) | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Woolly mittens a fashion must-have, I'd say. Crisp and bright over here, and about minus 2 in the sun. Needless to say, for some papers this means the end of the world as we know it, etc. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1105053/At -10C-Britains-colder-Antarctic--experts-say-COLDER .html | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Sounds chilly Martin. The disturbing thing for me though, are all the people that confuse weather and climate when presented with such an unusual cold snap and think that, since things are colder than usual now, climate change must be bunk. Practicaly a Republican talking point that one. Are you getting much of that sort of thing over there? Anyway, stay warm. And if the government sends you extra cash for the cold, don't spend it on beer. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Hard to say, Dave. I think the tabloid press mainly treats it as either background radiation or a weird piece of Labour spin: the Daily Mail focusses its paranoia on your local council snooping on when you put your bin out in the street for collection, whether you've overfilled it, etc. Amateur psychologists might say this points to the Mail's Tory readership being paranoid anal retentives; amateur psychologists might well be right. Also, of course, you have to remember we're an island. To a lot of us, the rest of the world (and its climate) is OUT THERE. Nothing to do with us, guv - honest. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Name and all, this reads like a John Sladek routine, come to life. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/jan/07/ letter-harry-henry | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Light" makes the list, along with a backhanded compliment: "This is as close as SF gets to literary fiction, and literary fiction gets to SF." It's depressing, after all these years, that even sympathetic critics think those categories mutually exclusive. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/22/1000-n ovels-science-fiction-fantasy-part-one | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"How Your Brain Creates God" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126941.700 -born-believers-how-your-brain-creates-god.html?pa ge=1 | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
I'm reading W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. So far it reads a bit like a restrained Iain Sinclair, without the laughs. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I have read that, since it concerns Suffolk/Norfolk. An unusual writer, very intelligent, often seems lost in a profound melancholy. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
And got a lot of people reading Thomas Browne, which is always a good thing. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-C oyne/dp/0199230846/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid= 1234790504&sr=8-1 - Wonderful! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I take it you recommend this book, Martin. Something I find interesting with these sorts of books is the way they work as an aesthetic experiences: as a kind of poetry. Same with books about archeological finds in Kenya. As always however nothing is solved by these discoveries ultimately. That isn't their point. There is also a poetic justice about the way for example that that advert put up on the sides of London buses, "There probably is no God so stop worrying and enjoy life" has produced a counter response in the advert: "The fool hath saith in his heart, 'There is no God'". The debate is being conducted (as it were) on the sides of buses: quite rightly. Personally I can only +actually+ catch the 176 to Forest Hill. The rest is noise. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
This is pretty good noise, MJP: for a simpleton generalist like me, it's as interesting to find out why the book lives up to its title as it is to discover the reverse - why, scientifcially, creationism/special design can't be true. And in an aesthetic sense, there's a palapable awe in discovering exactly how subtle and intricate the ecology proves to be. Anway: there it is. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
It is awesome to contemplate those things. My favourite reading at the moment - has been for years actually - is flight simulator manuals. Mainly combat flight ones but I can read a Microsoft FSX manual too. I read them for their technical rendering of clear facts that aren't in fact facts but fictional ideas that only appear to be such. Getting a grip on the 11 different kinds of radar for air combat in the Superhornet as a fiction is, for me, endlessly fascinating. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
>>>>>it's as interesting to find out why the book lives up to its title as it is to discover the reverse - why, scientifcially, creationism/special design can't be true. I do have a problem with its title. Not that I believe in Creationism, so much as it seems that the discussion it compels one into is too facile. For instance if you go about six comments up in this thread we find a discussion of the occult power of place, the strange feelings that it can give one, out and out mysticism in fact to which the criteria of true and false categorically do not apply. It is irrational not to see that these two things are connected and cannot be viewed as separate parts of the universe. The creation of the world and of the creatures in it - it seems to me - ultimately is metaphysical; these things cannot be boiled down to mere facts. I mean actually, rather than as a choice: they wont answer to fact. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
It is distinctively postmodern that the very thing that is to be identified with rationalism and science should be the subject of endless pseudo-scientific speculation. I am not commenting on the book Martin has read (it looks good as a factual account, whatever else it does) but on the way that 'Darwinism' (bracketed because I doubt that Darwin would be happy with being its sponsor), is being used. Just look at the newspaper headlines that come out virtually every day. In Sunday's Observer big article entitled: "We are just one gene away from defeating religion". Yesterday, front page of the Telegraph no less than two articles; one of which I forget, the other "Why men lose their keys and women can't read maps" (evolutionary biology). And again, today front page of the Guardian, "Think this will be more bad news? Depends on your genes." Frankly, it is all pseudo-science. The thing that most strongly indicates that we are in the realm of the metaphysical with any argument is shown by the underlying pattern of the argument itself: how it works regardless of fact in spite of the ‘reliance’ on fact - in spite of the vehement statements of ‘fact’ for one finds little point to the careful articulation of other further pieces of information or bodies of material for reflection that would go to modify these statements of ‘fact’. Certainty presides. There lies at the root of the so-called fact no fact at all only an endless vehement metaphysics without hope of modification. So, for instance, it would seem to be little to the point to suggest that human behaviour is also modified by decision-making (a 'gene' also)? History and so on. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
We are in the realm of 'final causes' and 'first causes' which have no actual, factual evidence, and can have none but can only be what we say they are. Really it is little better than astrology. How our sensibilities are being vulgarised vandalised and blunted by the media. Has anyone noticed how increasingly the so called quality papers unconsciously mimic the phrases of Hello magazine and such? As in "So and so talks about Hollywood, marriage and +that+ dress ..." Wittgenstein talks about aspect blindness, how somone can only see the cross pieces of a window as the components of a Swastika. Include here the authors of newspaper and New Scientist genetics. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
While we're on this area, I've been trying to track down exactly what it is that I dislike about the "There probably is no God so stop worrying and enjoy life" slogan. The opening is actually quite banal and even a little timid, but it's the assumption that the point of existence is to enjoying life and that one should stop worrying. The message is almost happy clappy: don't worry, be happy! The world is a good place, and our place is in the world. We're entitled to *all* of this and we are so deeply worth it that we don't need to worry about constructing a moral framework. We're all good, nice people here so enjoying our life is never going to result in crapping extensively on everyone else. Dawkins has swapped the notion that God is an Englishman for the notion that everyone is an Englishman. "There probably is no God. The world is a hostile place and it's getting worse. Get out as early as you can and don't have any kids yourself." | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
>>We are in the realm of 'final causes' and 'first causes' which have no actual, factual evidence, and can have none but can only be what we say they are. Exactly. This is where both religion and science get locked into telling us stories about places and times that no-one knows about. Mythology and apocalyptic. What science and religion are good at is engineering. Making fixes for the present day. We don't really care if it's a botch job as long as it works today. And if it doesn't work one day: you can always get another god. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Dawkins is too simple and has significantly damaged the scientific community as well as significantly contributed to it with his sing-song oppositional ideas. He moves imperceptably from the "It is" to the "It must be" in countless instances. The fact remains that any assertion of "It must be" in the frame of first causes is not and cannot be factual. For instance, suppose the reverse - suppose that we did in fact come across God. A woman goes to see God and says: "She is female". A man comes back with the report: "No, He's male!" But maybe they are both right - and both wrong still. Despite God's factual existence sense and meaning have yet to be decided; so in a way discovering God's fact makes no difference & we are still at square one. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
But what makes you think there is a god? Any god? To suggest a divinity, we surely need some objective singularity which defies or undermines our existing knowledge: if you like, something to break the Dawkins paradigm. I'm not saying this doesn't exist, or can't exist: but such a singularity isn't known to exist, and there's no theoretcial compulsion that it should. So: if we're positing something which can't be seen, heard, tasted, smelt, or touched; detected by sensors working in non-human areas of magnitude or the spectrum; whose supposed existence isn't suggested anywhere within the arena of theory; and which isn't necessary for that arena of theory to function - then I'd conclude it doesn't exist, and the libraries of involved debate about its nature and the filial duties we might have towards it are a waste of time. I still love you, though. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Res ipse loquitur: http://londonersdiary.standard.co.uk/ | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Oh, I don't think there's a problem with gods existing. There are tonnes of them out there, and in here, and on the gateway between the two. And I am in principle as disinclined to give worship to a tribal deity such as Yahweh as more recent avatars such as Iggy Pop and Mickey Mouse. Saying that Allah probably doesn't exist is only really as meaningful as saying that Asterix, Jade Goody or Pi probably don't exist. I'm not enough of a devotee to suggest that Jade Goody created the universe or bestows any particular blessings but I probably haven't been trying hard enough. And besides the followers or celebrity demiurges are at least as fickle as physicists - they skip from Primum Mobile to Primum Mobile with the weather. All of them are as suspect in their claims for parenthood. The solutions of religious and scientific cosmologies are similar in that they both try to break down the reality of the present moment. The suggestion is that the primal moment and the end of the universe are both with us perpetually. Perhaps what they are both searching for is not when the world began and ended but when their own life began and will end. From the perspective of the present moment both are unknowable, and from the perspective of our consciousness these parenthesis are identical with the lifespan of the universe. I still love Jesus, but at the moment PG Wodehouse is better company. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Actually to bring this back to Winter Reading: I've been dipping into Sri Aurobindo's commentaries on the Gita, in between PG Wodehouse and Frank Belknap Long short stories. I have a huge amount of respect for Hinduism and in particular Upanishadic Hinduism. That's not to say that I agree with it altogether - it's far easier to understand the notion of god(s)-in-everything as an ascetic forest dweller than a as wanderer in the suburban jungle. The bipolar creator/destroyer, awesome/awful nature of Hindu deities is more suitable for understanding (grokking?) nature in its many faces, than it is for understanding the machinations and machineries of man. You sit on the tube for a half an hour and try to see the divine in every face, and every reflection, and the very pattern of the seats. Sometimes you get the slightest hint of the dance of Shiva, and then it's gone again, and you're at Kings Cross. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I don't think there's any problem with them existing objectively, either, but - they don't! Reading here, I'm afraid, is mostly down to a great many staff magazines and memoirs for a piece I'm writing for a history project, due in this June. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Well, I think Jade Goody will no longer exist objectively quite soon. She'll cross over the divide and then, taking her place in the pantheon, I will have as much respect for her as I have for Lady Diana Spencer. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
No doubt some imagine her comforting Ivan Cameron in the great beyond, even as we speak. Everyone loves a happy ending, etc. | ||
| alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 |
I'm a bit pissed off by celebrities copying my style. First, I had to reconsider the grey goatee and bald head combo because of Gary Glitter. Now I'm wondering if people will think I'm trying to copy Jade Goody. Mind you, if shaved heads for women become fashionable, we'll know we really are in the sci-fi future, won't we? | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I've always found bald women very cool - but this may be due to teenage years among skinheads. Jade's image, obviously, will hang forever in the chapel of all our hearts - but who can replace her? Gail Trimble? Carol Thatcher? Or this lad, who get 7 tickets for illegal parking while he sat in his car, dead? http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090225/ARTICL ES/902250971 | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Her life was just that of another quasi-celebrity - a two-dimensional virtual existence with no higher purpose other than to copulate and consume; to wallow in Armani excess whilst patiently awaiting an invitation to stumble onto ‘Dancing on Ice’ ... Sounds pretty good to me. BUT: "Jade Goody was made in the image of God, and, like all images, she has inevitably fallen short. But she is an incarnation nonetheless, and her heart has discovered a belief that salvation is found in Jesus Christ. The one who took our human nature knows his creation, and he shall fulfil all of Jade Goody’s deepest needs as she seeks the breath of his life-giving Spirit." So that's all right, then. More here, if you can stand it: the "Cranmer" blog of former Tory candidate Adrian Hilton. See 21 Feb. for his remarks on Jade. http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/ | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Philip Jose Farmer, deceased. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/27/philip -jose-farmer-obituary - I was never a fan (and "Riders on the Purple Wage" seemed a wretched, Ivan Tors attempt at aping the New Worlds aesthetic) - but anyone who succeeded in nauseating John W. Campbell, Jr. must've done something right. | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Came to this thread late... skimming. I read The Secret Agent about 18 months ago, enjoyed it in a Conradian way: not so much at the time, rather over subsequent weeks as it mulched its way down. Definitely one to read & re-read. Currently reading Umberto Eco's "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana". Post-modernistically wonderful, in a 1940s sort of way. So many cultural references you could drown in them. I enjoy letting them all wash over me, then feed back into my everyday life. Have only read one Eco before - The Island of the Day Before - didn't enjoy it much at the time but (like Conrad) it's remained with me more as a feeling than as any specific memory. I like books which do that, which is why I picked this one up. Also read some short stories from a Nick Royle curated collection: "Neonlit" - some marvellous stuff, particularly Ian Critchley's "A New New Forest". | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Maybe you guys can help me. I have a friend in need: he thinks William Gibson is a good writer. How do you explain succinctly why Gibson is awful. I've barely forced myself through one of his books. I might not be up to the task. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Someone gave me "Burning Chrome," and said: "He's amazing!" But after struggling through it, I thought: no, he's not. So I can't help out, Dave. I side with you. Gibson's work joins that shelf of books whose appeal baffles me, either because of the lumpish prose or because of gaping wounds in the plot/credibility structure: "London Fields," "Girlfriend in a Coma," "The Prestige," and "Saturday," to name just a few. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
- But if you want to introduce your friend to a genuinely amazing piece of "fantastic" fiction: http://www.coldtonnage.com/?page=shop/flypage&prod uct_id=181196&CLSN_3127=123626897331270ec2aa11e1ea 0502cf | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
The Gibson of Neuromancer was great at the time. "At the time" was the mid-eighties as a teenager who had just upgraded from a Commodore 64 to an Amiga. I read the book in one sitting. Didn't have a clue what was going on but it had tremendous energy and style. At this distance from that early enthusiasm, his neologisms and street punkery feel about as authentic as Sonic Youth having a Teenage Riot in a hyperstation. More recent outings such as Pattern Recognition are dead in the water. I say that with all due reverence. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
This was the guy who read Neuromancer at the time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iotar/1113651545/in/s et-72157594581818283/ But, y'know I grew up into an intelligent, focussed reader: http://www.flickr.com/photos/strangeattractor/3316 677232/ | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
"The Arabian Nightmare" Martin? From the blurb online I can't tell if you were joking or not. Io, looks like you've been wearing the same glasses for years, man. Cool pictures. I think you're right on regarding the street punkery too. Got to find somehting good to read myself. At the moment, after recently pulling my hamstring and straining my neck at the gym, I'm reading Training for Climbers. Informative, but... Has anyone here read The Shock Doctrine? Anyone want to read it? I've been thinking of starting it. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Yo, Dave - no joke. It's amazing - as Kerouac said of "Naked Lunch," an endless book that will drive everyone mad. Irwin's other novels are pretty good, too - check out "Exquisite Corpse" (nothing to do with Poppy Z. Bryte). I haven't read Klein. But the synopsis seems to credit Thatcher, at least, with way too much foresight: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine - simply because neither victory nor the weird, late imperialist fervour that swayed a lot of people here was at all predictable. The Tories certainly capitalised on that mood to encourage a culture of flesh-eating zombies: but I don 't think they had the wit or the means to plan it. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
I don't know Martin. I'm not sure I understand your last post, but, if you're turned off by what you read on wikipedia, I wouldn't worry too much. I think you're reading wikipedia right, but I think the wikipedia entry is a misreading of Klein given what I've already read of her. She doesn't credit Thatcher with much of anything. China Mieville recently spoke very highly of The Shock Doctrine, so I decided that was the last straw. Time to read it. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Ah - sorry for any confusion, Dave. I was just saying Irwin is a very good writer and "Arabian Nightmare" a great and bewildering book. And that Thatcher was (at least to begin with) more at the mercy of events than controlling them. Anyway: time for some art. Bad art. Bad paintings. Bad paintings of Barack Obama: http://www.badpaintingsofbarackobama.com/ | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
No worries Martin. For what it's worth I checked the index last night and Thatcher is referenced on about 10 pages of TSD. Safe to say she's not a major facet of the book. I think she's used basically as a case study of an early implementation of shock doctrine type policies. And I'd say that Klien would agree that she was at the mercy of events too. At least jusging from the couple of speeches or hers that I've seen. The painting: that's Obama with Mark Hamil's Return of the Jedi nose! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Mieville talks to Le Guin, Radio 4, Tues. 17 March: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j3xd5/b00j 3wgt/Ursula_Le_Guin_at_80/ |