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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   4842 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Laslett's The World We Have Lost, one of those books from the past that Curtis Yarvin mentions occasionally. Has definitely stimulated some thoughts, but it feels like one of those books which will show its value over time. Also eyeing Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, due to a recent sci-fi related thread here. This is an anachronism, but I'm hoping for something that reminds of Frank Frazetta.

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. The setting is depressing, but the writing has been top-tier so far.

"Interactive Theorem Proving and Program Development: Coq'art: The Calculus of Inductive Constructions", and it's kicking my ass to a humbling degree. I'm spending, conservatively, 15 minutes per page, in chapter /one/. I don't know if I'm dumber since I was in undergrad, or if this is my true info onboarding rate and I did undergrad wrong, or what, but this isn't boosting my ego at frigging all.

Do you want to study the underlying theory, or are you primarily interested in learning how to actually use Coq to prove stuff? If it's the latter, maybe have a look at https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/.

Still Moby Dick.

Moby Dick usually shows up in literary genealogy between Homer's Iliad and McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Sometimes Williams' Butcher's Crossing makes a blip between MD and BM, but I feel it's a lesser beast, a modest Duodecim porpoise between these grandiose Folio whales.

Homer sings, muse, of glory and tragedy in war, in which great heroes kill each other almost without pause throughout the entire story. Homer is sad about them having to die and about what a gruesome affair war is, but he doesn't shy away from describing it in loving detail and it's clear that these men are having the time of their life. It's the only lyrical item out of the four, and obviously also the one that isn't originally in any language I speak.

Moby Dick tells us a story about killing whales for fun and profit and how if you let madness get in the way of that because you can't get over a workplace accident, everybody dies. It's full of awesome prose about the majesty of the world and of labor and of manful courage, and even more full of Melville just shooting the shit and joking about whatever the hell he thinks amusing. The man just cannot shut up, but it works because he's really good at writing. He has some moral qualms about violence, but ultimately that's secondary to what fun one can have with it.

Butcher's Crossing fits in in terms of plot and themes, and it's not a bad book, but it just does much less, less impressively and less beautifully. Hunters accompanied by city kid kill tons of buffalo and go insane in the process, also the buffalo trade dies. The book depicts the killing trade as almost entirely deplorable and debasing, and in my view this one-sided engagement with its subject matter is one thing that makes it a lesser work than the others.

Blood Meridian is another story about violent men going to their doom, but more so than the others it continually highlights the violence that is the entire substance and order of the universe. I'll cut myself short before I write another essay on it.

So, back to Moby Dick. Moby Dick is a bit odd compared to the others here because of the light-hearted chatter Melville keeps up. It feels a little like he can't help himself but insert every joke he feels he can get away with Ishmael making. And yet it floats. It's still a serious book full of serious stuff. It's also the one that most clearly illustrates, or is best known for illustrating, one theme that shows up in all these works: Excessive violence dooms. The Pequod is stove and sunk because Ahab changes its mission from commerce to vengeance. The Glanton Gang rises in war and falls and dies in banditry. Achilles is elevated to great honor when he fights and gets Patroklos killed when he stays in his tent in order to take vengeance on Agamemnon. Butcher's Crossing never has much good to say about hunting, but one might imagine that its issue is specifically with hunting Buffalo en masse and that its the scale of the killing that drives the hunters insane.

I've also been reading Latro, by Gene Wolfe. Fun.

Just finished the Golden Oecumene after a rec from here, was pretty solid.

Picked up Interview with a Vampire from Rice and finished it in one day, much better than expected. The next book from her isn't as gripping so far though.

Working through Leviathan Wakes on Audible. Had a notion to listen to several of the novels before I watch season six.

On a Daphne Du Maurier kick right now, reading her short story collection The Breaking Point after deeply enjoying The Scapegoat.

I recently finished The Three-Body Problem and was left with a feeling of general annoyance. I'm fine with trilogies, but don't end a book just hanging in the middle of the story. You have to have some kind of mini arc! I read the plots of the second and third books on Wikipedia, and I think I'm done there.

Then I picked up Pnin by Nabokov. His writing tickles my brain in just the right way and makes me so happy.

Re 3 body problem, the good parts are the ideas. The literary execution, imho, sucks. I mean, it's not awful, but it's kinda just ok maybe, not something great. The ideas, however, are very good. Of course, I am judging via translation from an unfamiliar culture, so I can't really decide where the problem lies, but if you read the main plot details, and thought about the problems raised there - you haven't lost too much by not reading all of it, IMHO.

I recently finished The Three-Body Problem as well, and I felt much more satisfied by the conclusion than you did. To me, the story arc of the first book is about solving the mystery of what is going on. Why are scientists commiting suicide, why does Wang see crazy ass numbers, what is the deal behind the three body game, etc. All those questions were answered by the end, which is really what I wanted. Yes, the book sets up future plot, but that's fine.

Honestly I can't say enough good things about that book. It's just... really, really good. It gives me hope that science fiction isn't dead just yet, if we can still get tour de force books like that one. I realize it's not that recent of a book, but it's recent enough to still give me hope.

I read it after seeing tons of rave reviews, so you're clearly not alone! It just didn't resonate with me somehow. However, I did really enjoy the parts inside the game, and learning about a period of Chinese history that I am pretty ignorant about.

I picked up You Suck At Cooking by the YouTuber of the same handle at a used bookstore over the weekend. The semi-absurdist humor reminds me of mid-90s, early 2000s Dave Barry.

I'm continuing to read one chapter of deathworlders every evening. I feel like it is worthy of more discussion, but when I try to find depth I come up empty. I'm starting to think it's just a fun power fantasy.

I've been jumping back into Tolkein with all of the ROP talk going around lately. I figured instead of ruining the majesty of Arda through bland, modern, American retellings of what amounts to an appendix of a book I should return to Tolkein's Silmarills and enjoy his beautiful prose. Tolkein's use of language is unmatched, and is something I never fully appreciated when I was younger:

An honest hand and a true heart may hew amiss; and the harm may be harder to bear than the work of a foe

I find his tragedies of Húrin and Túrin, or the themes of eventual fall, to be incredibly powerful. It breaks my heart that so many people are being turned towards his earlier works from the perspective of modern politics, and can't help but feel like all the controversy of the ROP are beneath the majesty of Tolkein's legendarium.

Or perhaps I'm simply pretentious and a nerd. Either way, The Children of Húrin remains one of my favorites, and it feels like a comfortable hug to return back to the tragedy of Túrin Turambar and the fallout from The Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

The Children of Húrin broke my heart, to the extent that I haven't been brave enough to try the newly released version. The part where Húrin finally meets Morwen, after all the years and the tragedies, still kills me.

Anyone who thinks (like a recent video review I saw about the 'golden age' of TV and how we're not getting great characters like Walter White and Tony Soprano with their moral ambiguity and shades of grey anymore) that Tolkien is just simple "good versus evil, good guys wear white and bad guys wear black" should be forced to read this (maybe not with me screaming, as I smush their nose into the text, "is this grey enough for ya now? huh? where's your Walt and Tony now, eh???")

From HoME Volume 11, The War of the Jewels, 'The Wanderings of Húrin':

But Húrin passed on, and at evening of the sixth day he came at last to the place of the burning of Glaurung, and saw the tall stone standing near the brink of Cabed Naeramarth. But Húrin did not look at the stone, for he knew what was written there, and his eyes had seen that he was not alone. Sitting in the shadow of the stone there was a figure bent over its knees. Some homeless wanderer broken with age it seemed, too wayworn to heed his coming; but its rags were the remnants of a woman's garb. At length as Húrin stood there silent she cast back her tattered hood and lifted up her face slowly, haggard and hungry as a long-hunted wolf. Grey she was, sharp-nosed with broken teeth, and with a lean hand she clawed at the cloak upon her breast. But suddenly her eyes looked into his, and then Húrin knew her; for though they were wild now and full of fear, a light still gleamed in them hard to endure: the elven-light that long ago had earned her her name, Edelwen, proudest of mortal women in the days of old.

...He arose and lifted Morwen up; and suddenly he knew that it was beyond his strength to bear her. He was hungry and old, and weary as winter. Slowly he laid her down again beside the standing stone. “Lie there a little longer, Edelwen,” he said, “until I return. Not even a wolf would do you more hurt. But the folk of this hard land shall rue the day that you died here!”

…“Ashamed ye may be. But this is not my charge. I do not ask that any in this land should match the son of Húrin in valour. But if I forgive those griefs, shall I forgive this? Hear me, Men of Brethil! There lies by the Standing Stone that you raised an old beggar-woman. Long she sat in your land, without fire, without food, without pity. Now she is dead. Dead. She was Morwen my wife. Morwen Edelwen, the lady elven-fair who bore Túrin the slayer of Glaurung. She is dead.

“If ye, who have some ruth, cry to me that you are guiltless, then I ask who bears the guilt? By whose command was she thrust out to starve at your doors like an outcast dog?”

Kills me every time. One of the greatest heroes of mortal Men, who fought until overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers by the Orcs, and now he can't even carry the dead body of his wife. And then I think of the muppets scriptwriting "Rings of Power" and dey took er jerbs, and I want to go all Ancalagon the Black on their asses.

I've experienced the same feeling.

I read The Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion when I was a teenager. It was addictive, like being kidnapped into a whole new living world. When I reread LotR about a year ago, the same feelings came back--but this time enriched with an awe of Tolkien's language. I didn't even try watching ROP because I don't think it's possible to capture that magic in the medium of a TV series.

From his newer things, I've read Children of Hurin and loved it. Would you recommend the other "new" works as well?

I would absolutely recommend his other works. My next favorite myth is that of Beren and Lúthien, which is equally as tragic and probably more important to Tolkien's theme of uplifting grace funneled into the inevitable fall. He has a few complete narratives, but those two (Beren and Lúthien and The Children of Húrin) are my favorites outside his story of the rings. I really enjoy his legendarium, but pulling the stories out into dedicated works makes them much more impactful. I think Christopher had a very discerning mind when it came to his father's works, I'd feel comfortable recommending anything he transcribed or put together. I am not really sure about anyone else in the Tolkien estate, but if it has J. R. R. or Christopher on the spine it's probably good.

I've stalled on reading Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography by Harlow Robinson which is, well, as named. What's fascinating is the time period that Prokofiev 's life occupied (along with many of the other famous Russian composers like Stravinsky) which tertiarily documented the end of the Royal line and the rise of the Bolsheviks into Lenin's rise. and how it impacted the arts and the decisions composers made in regard to their musical and personal choices- to either reintegrate with the new Russian society or expatriate to new countries. It's helped me realize something about historical communist revolutions which I would like to write about here, but my schedule has made it too difficult to devote any significant time to research.

The book itself is interesting and well-written, but I find time to be my current short end and right now I prefer to spend what limited free time I have gaming over reading. Sad, but true.

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