site banner
bolido_sentimental  1yr ago (text post)   3350 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 25, 2022

Merry Christmas, everyone!

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Merry Christmas, everyone. So, what are you reading?

I'm starting Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State. From skimming it, it looks like it touches on lots of contemporary things.

I'm attempting The Wandering Inn, currently a few chapters into the first arc.

So far, comparing it to other web fiction such as Wildbow I've read... not terribly impressed. It feels like a generic isekai-with-an-RPG-interface, 1D protagonist and forced le funnies included. If the writing gets noticeably better, let me know.

On the whole, I'd say the first book is very good, but every book afterwards is better. Also, the scope of the first book is mostly Liscor and some nearby places, but much more of the broader world is introduced in the second book.

One of the things pirateaba does well might be called "character development from the audience's perspective." You're often introduced to a character and develop the usual first impressions, but your opinion of him may change quite a bit over time for various reasons--you get a second perspective on the character from a different person; you get a part of a chapter from his viewpoint, showing how he thinks; or he makes an unexpected decision that clarifies his priorities. Everyone is complicated on their own terms; it's just that you aren't introduced to all the layers at once.

Erin is no exception to this pattern--the first view you get of her is heavily impacted by the fact that she's trying to cope with being isekai'd, and it's hard. Once she finds her feet a bit, different aspects of her character come to the fore. Much much later, another character from the first book describes Erin as "a puddle that you stepped into and began drowning in." She's got some excellent qualities, and other things she's bad at, but she makes some mistakes even where she's strongest, and her limitations really do constrain her options. Erin does use humor as a coping mechanism sometimes, but both she and especially the series as a whole have a surprisingly large emotional range.

It's hard to give much detail without hitting significant spoilers; there are a subreddit and a wiki that are very good, but you'll run into spoilers pretty much immediately, so I would stay away for now. If you've got any particular questions, I'd be happy to respond.

1D protagonist and generic isn't what I remember about it at all, so I'm sure you won't regret sticking with it for a little longer. However it was incredibly long and the author evidently didn't care about any pace other than her own, so I never actually finished it. It switches from intensely emotional stretches to lulls as if there's no difference between the two in the author's mind.

I'm re-working my way through the Harry Potter series for the first time in about a decade.

Currently about halfway through Goblet of Fire and overcome with nostalgic love.

Her prose is pretty basic but the humor, imagination, and world-building are top-tier. As an adult looking back, you can really see the depth of the British influence on these books. Boarding school, dry humor, Dickensian names, some undertones of Arthur Conan Doyle mystery, etc.

I really hope that the controversy around her political views doesn't start to overshadow how incredible these books are. I already see it happening on Reddit whenever Harry Potter is brought up. People are starting to memory hole Harry Potter as if it wasn't one of the biggest cultural phenomenons of the past century.

I “read” the Jim Dale audiobooks last year, and I was impressed by the YA dystopia in books 5-7. The banality of bureaucratic evil punctuated by horrors for people who cross the powers that be, a governmental shift into pre-genocide policies, and a keen awareness that one’s mortal enemies have the levers of the ultimate power of the state.

As 2020 (the year of perfect hindsight) turned into “twenty-twenty won” and “twenty-twenty too” (yes, I’m referencing Meme Magic), I’ve become keenly aware of how realistic her scenario was.

world-building are top-tier.

Her world-building is in an interesting place to me. It's evocative, creative, interesting... but then falls apart the deeper you delve into it. I think she makes an understandable mistake of trying to go into more detail later (its what everyone wants to know!), and it just doesnt seem to work.

Kind of like Narnia, I suppose, except that C.S. Lewis doesn't feel the need to try to explain where Mr. Tumnus was doing his shopping, for the better.

It's clear from the start that the world building is non committal, she starts off with a lot of stuff she hadn't thought about following through on. Starting from the sorting hat and the houses, which are naturally one of the coolest parts of the world, but Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are basically pointless from the beginning.

Hermione obviously should have been a Ravenclaw and Ron and Neville obviously should have been Hufflepuff. Making Gryffindor basically the "you have the guts to matter" house is silly. Making the smartest and most loyal characters avoid the houses for smart and loyal people makes those houses obvious downgrades.

I wouldn't worry about that. My nieces are nephews are all becoming obsessed with Harry Potter and the parents are very happy about it.

Roald Dahl was antisemitic and kids still read his books. They're still being adapted into plays and films too.

I agree that the books are superb. Rowling has a real ability to add 'colour' to her world. Like the weird currency or the every flavour beans. Small things like that make it a much richer experience.

You Suck At Cooking by the YouTuber who runs the eponymous channel. Since I met my reading goals this year, I decided to reward myself with something light and silly.

Finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Enthralling despite the brutal subject matter, it had this kind of meditative cinematic quality. Probably half the allusions and references were over my head, but the stark account of events cut with poetic landscape paintings hit the spot. Days later I'm still turning over some of the chapters in my head.

If you want to specifically have some of the possible meanings of the allusions pointed out, I can recommend "Notes on Blood Meridian", see https://www.amazon.de/-/en/John-Sepich/dp/0292718217 .

I read it about four years ago. It is fantastic. I liked it much better than The Road. It is also the hardest book I've ever read, but I'm not a native English speaker, so that might be why.

Ben Nichols made an album inspired by it, but I feel like it completely misses the mark. I listened to the soundtrack for The Revenant a lot while reading it. It just captures the feeling of dread and despair so well.

If you have any thoughts on the ending, I would love to hear them. I've read a few interpretations online, but they are not really in line with my own understanding and I didn't find them very convincing either.

I like the Nichols album. Not for listening to it while reading, dear god, no, but I like it just as its own thing. A tribute to the book; not a soundtrack.

As for the ending, I have my thoughts on it, yes. And I'd like to type them out, but I fear I don't have the time right now. Here's the very short version, please excuse me if I fail to make sense:

  • The book is nominally and thematically about things reaching their meridian, i.e., the highest point, from which they must necessarily go down towards their ending. Many individuals and groups in the book have their high point or aristeia, then decline and end, usually painfully so. Even more others have already ended, and all we hear of is their bones or leftovers or not even that but only the narrator's speculation.

  • The kid is born for violence, and seemingly goes towards his own violent meridian together with the Glanton Gang, but then rejects this trajectory and selects a different one. For decades the man just wanders, an illiterate with his bible, a refugee from violence who yet attains some triumph, a different meridian, by managing to live in peace against his own nature and former trajectory for so long a time. Then he witnesses the slaughter of the pilgrims, hopes in vain to save the old woman, kills again even if in self-defence, and suddenly finds himself back on his old trajectory, but not on the ascent he was on as the Kid, and nowhere near the Meridian, but already at the very end, at which the Judge simply collects him as a matter of fact.

  • The post-digger striking sparks is the very earliest beginning of a different such arc. McCarthy often writes of carrying the fire, and the Glanton gang were in their ascendancy associated with fires, but here the fire is in its infancy - a spark, the smallest form of fire. The book followed one arc to its meridian and decline, and in doing so passed over the remains of many older arcs, and here we are given the image that even as all the arcs we followed joined the corpses and ruins, new ones yet begin.

Don't get me wrong, I like the album as well. I've been fond of Ben Nichols vocals ever since I heard the credits song to Take Shelter.

I pretty much agree with your take, except I don't think the man is at the end of his violent trajectory when he meets the judge in the bar.

I read the last chapter again, and what I was thinking of specifically was what went down in the outhouse after they meet and the dancing bear is killed. It is very vague, and some interpretations I've seen believes the Judge literally eats the Man and others that he just kills him. I don't really like either. I perceive the Judge as someone who the members of the gang places their guilt of their terrible deeds upon. The judge is the personification of the cruelty that every man is capable of. When the Man sees the Judge at the bar, it says

"He wore a round hat with a narrow brim and he was among every kind of man, herder and bullwhacker and drover and freighter and miner and hunter and soldier and pedlar and gambler and driver and drunkard and thief and he was among the dregs of the earth in beggary a thousand years and he was among the scapegrace scions of eastern dynasties and in all that motley assemblage he sat by them and yet alone as if he were some other sort of man entire and he seemed little changed or none in all these years."

You are right, that the Kid is born for violence and has been running from his violent tendencies personified as the judge.

After the bear is killed it says that some of the patrons are looking for the little girl who was crying over the dead bear as she is nowhere to be found. I take that as when the man enters the outhouse where the naked judge is waiting for him, he is consumed by the judge metaphorically speaking and kills the little girl in there.

The Kid is not a reliable narrator. There are multiple accounts of children ending up dead and it is strongly implied that the judge abuses and kills them, but my interpretation is that it is the kid who does it, but he absolves himself by letting the judge be responsible.

I don't know if it makes much sense and it might change when I read it again some day as most of the book is not very clear in my memory.

I think this requires a fair bit of reinterpretation of the story's events. I wondered about it while reading, but ultimately rejected it.

Evidence for: The Judge is more often seen counselling the gang, encouraging them, teaching them, but not seen committing the deeds himself. We see the aftermath and assume he is responsible. He is almost inhuman, impossibly skilled, knowledgeable, strong. His being the personification of evil/violence/war/his philosophy, he certainly doesn't seem real.

Evidence against: But on the other hand, he does act a fair bit himself and can't easily be removed. I'm not sure how to reassess scenes like the stand-off with Toadvine, Brown, Tobin, and the Kid toward the end without the Judge there as a real character. Holden negotiates on behalf of the gang with some of the more cultured/learned characters in the story. He teaches the gang how to make gunpowder, etc. Sure, these events could be waved away, but.. who did it then? Is that another aspect of Glanton's personality? If so, why is it the Judge the more intellectual, rational part rather than the violent, impulsive part that is still attributed to Glanton.

I thought it worked better if he was a real, though possibly supernatural character. The confrontation at the end is the two of them committing to their respective philosophies. The Judge again lectures the man on war and the way of the world. The man again rejects it. "You aint nothin".

The Judge will have him anyway, but not willingly.

IMO it's worth taking another look at the opening quotes of the book.

Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.

PAUL VALÉRY

It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness.

JACOB BOEHME

Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a reexamination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier showed evidence of having been scalped.

THE YUMA DAILY SUN

The theme these suggest to me is the following: Violence and death, for lack of a better term, are an essential component of life. Rejecting them will not free you from them. They're coming for you no matter what. Let's take a look at No Country For Old Men:

He did close his eyes. He closed his eyes and he turned his head and he raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in the face.

Of course Chigurh is not an otherworldly entity on the same level as the Judge, but both characters seem to stand with one foot in the mundane and with the other in the supernatural. Both bring death, in various ways. Both expound on philosophy. Neither can be stopped. For all the fight he puts up, the only reason why Llewelyn Moss manages to not get killed by Chigurh is because others get to him first. For all the geographic and philosophical distance the Kid tries to put between himself and the Judge, the Judge still gets him in the end.

Here's another from BM:

Have you got a gun? he said. A gun? A gun. Have you got a gun. Not on me I aint. Brown pulled a small fiveshot Colt from his belt and pitched it to him. He caught it and stood holding it uncertainly. You got one now. Now shoot the nigger. Wait a goddamn minute, said Owens. Shoot him, said Brown. Jackson had risen and he pulled one of the big pistols from his belt. Owens pointed the pistol at him. You put that down, he said. You better forget about givin orders and shoot the son of a bitch. Put it down. Goddamn, man. Tell him to put it down. Shoot him. He cocked the pistol. Jackson fired.

You can't get away from it. You just plain can't. Whether you're born for violence like the Kid or thrust into it like Owens, it's there. Death is there. It's the fundamental stuff of the universe. Run or fight or close your eyes in denial, the end is the same.

I strongly feel that this is one of McCarthy's central points. It makes no sense for the Judge to be an abstract position that can be adopted or rejected by regular humans, who then have all the agency. Whatever principle the Judge and Chigurh represent has agency of its own. It moves, it acts, one way or another you must engage it - and you can't just refuse to be overcome by it.

The Judge must be a physical actor to represent the agency of this primordial force.

I didn't mean to imply that the judge isn't real. I do think he is an actual person in the gang and possibly the worst of them all. I'm just not sure everything can be ascribed to him. It is not easy to reconcile and maybe even impossible on a second reading.

soundtrack for The Revenant

Yeah, that fits. I thought of Earth, and was surprised to learn they'd also done an inspired-by album. The subtitle, "Printing in the Infernal Method", is from William Blake, which recalls the film Dead Man.

thoughts on the ending

Assume you're referring to the epilogue? I also found it perplexing and looked online for interpretations.

One: "Perhaps the digger is a figure for the novelist himself, striking fire out of the dead holes of history, bearing witness, though it is not at all clear that those following understand."

but that sort of meta-commentary feels unnecessary, self-centered, and incongruous with the preceding novel. I dunno. Maybe?

Others: That the post digger represents the coming of civilization and the end of the bloody, evening redness, (Epilogue: "In the dawn"), or that it represents the opposite - the continuation of that philosophy after the night.

I honestly don't know. I think the fact that so many interpretations disagree so wildly means it was intentionally left ambiguous. Like you, none of the ones I read seemed right.

I've never heard of Earth, but I'm gonna give them a listen.

I was actually thinking more of what happens after the judge and the man meets in the end. You can see my reply to Southkraut.

I am also kind of lost on the epilogue, but I think you are right that it is intentionally ambiguous.

Have almost finished that myself. Some really beautiful writing and occasional interesting philosophy, maybe a tad repetitive at times.

Finished that a few months back. Fantastic, fantastic book.

One thing that I didn't realize before actually picking it up was how much time he spends on the landscape descriptions.

It's probably 40-50% of the book, and while I didn't know most of the plants and geological formations he described it was still totally gripping and reminiscent of the best kind of Romantic-era writing.

After a few months away from books I've started reading again. My wife bought me and her two copies of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karasamov so we could read it together this winter. Barely started it but already enjoying having conversations with her about the characters and the Author's life.

I also recieved Asimov's Foundation trilogy in hardcover for christmas. Big sci-fi fan, so finally giving Asimov a try is going to be fun. The beginning is already thrilling, even though Asimov's style is pretty dull.

The robot stories actually get tied back in, the further you get into the Foundation series. Reading them in publication order should be possible through your public library and a Wikipedia bibliography.

Don't worry, Foundation soon becomes bombastic. But it also loses focus long before the end. Uneven but great.

I'm reading Fulfillment by Alec MacGillis, an analysis of "Amazon’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States." I love this kind of book about regional economics and the changing nature of work. Well-written and particularly significant to me as a Midwesterner

I listened to his podcast with Lex Friedman, was interesting.

I’m thinking of jumping into Neal Asher’s Polity series. I’ve heard good thing here and elsewhere.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats