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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I’m reading Greenwood’s The Shakespeare Problem Restated, an old book positing that the man from Stratford didn’t write the plays, without suggesting a candidate of its own. It is remarkable how little the conversation has changed. Skeptics are still being called crazy reactionary snobs, and orthodox scholars are still being told that they’re appealing to authority, inertia and speculation.
Also going through Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief and James’ The Will to Believe, both short works. So far Clifford’s essay, which posits that one has a moral duty to base his beliefs on verified evidence (or something like that), is beautiful in its initial purity but gets a little confused when it has to make a framework for ethically believing in what others (like experts) say. Well worth reading in light of squabbles over conspiracy theorists.
Been reading short stories by Kafka. I reread The Metamorphosis for the first time since high school and was struck by how sad it was. I like Kafka; his stories are so bizarre and his characters thought processes so strange, it is like stepping inside the brain of an alien life form.
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