"Good Readers and Good Writers" by Vladamir Nabakov (1948?)

 "Good Readers and Good Writers" by Vladamir Nabakov (1948?)

Bonus: 

Summary: You gotta be an art-scientist to be a good reader.

Commentary: 

I like that Nabakov translates his French. 

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.

I'm reminded of Adler's levels of reading (Analytical->Synoptical)

Also, of a discussion we had in one of my writing groups recently about "alternate Earth" vs "second world" (a term I've always hated) in fantasy. I lean towards alternate Earth, since we're sure to (consciously or subconsciously) wind up using Earth. Might as well lean into it, takes care of a lot of the worldbuilding for you. Nabakov disagrees:

Can we rely on Jane Austen’s picture of landowning England with baronets and landscaped grounds when all she knew was a clergyman’s parlor? And Bleak House, that fantastic romance within a fantastic London, can we call it a study of London a hundred years ago? Certainly not. And the same holds for other such novels in this series. The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales—and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales.

[...]

To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction.  

POP QUIZ! Which makes a good reader?

1. The reader should belong to a book club.

2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.

3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle.

4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none.

5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie.

6. The reader should be a budding author.

7. The reader should have imagination.

8. The reader should have memory.

9. The reader should have a dictionary.

10. The reader should have some artistic sense 

(It's the last four. Which is questionable test design, but whatever.)

When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development.

I definitely like to look at little sections of a painting one at a time.

 Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature.

 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 10 Part 1 (1-17)

  Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 10 Part 1 (1-17)

Bonus: 

I wonder how long it would take me to blog Homestuck

Summary: I literally don't know if I've read some of these before.

Commentary: 

1. Wilt thou ever, O my soul, be good and single, and one, and naked, more open to view than the body which surrounds thee? Wilt thou ever taste of the loving and satisfied temper? Wilt thou ever be full and without wants, setting thy heart on nothing, animate or inanimate, for the enjoyment of pleasure; not desiring time for longer enjoyment; nor place, nor country, nor fine climate, nor congenial company? Wilt thou be satisfied with thy present state, and well pleased with every present circumstance? Wilt thou persuade thyself that all things are thine; that all is well with thee; that all comes to thee from the Gods; and that what is best for thee is what they are pleased to give, now and henceforth, for the preservation of that perfected being, which is good, just, and beautiful; which generates, combines, embraces, and includes all fleeting things that dissolve to bring forth others like themselves? Wilt thou never be able to live a fellow citizen with Gods and men, approving them and by them approved?

Something I don't think is talked about enough in discussions of stoicism is how important the dichotomy between body and soul is. All of the, "NOTHING MATTERS! YOU'RE GONNA DIE!" comes from the fact that that stuff only affects the body. But I don't know that there's a lot about how to live up to what your soul wants. It's all just, "be good and honest and listen to your soul." A bit more about what that looks like might be nice.

9. Mimes, war, panic, sloth, servility, will wipe out the sacred maxims which you have gathered by observing Nature and stored in your mind.

Damn mimes! (Footnote in other editions translate this to theatres for shitty plays.) Very Homestuck.

16. Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.

Shut up and do it! 

 

 

"The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov (1958)

"The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov (1958)

Bonus: 

Very dramatic

Summary: IN THE FUTURE, WE DISCOVER... MAAAATH

Commentary: 

Last one in this series of classic AI related stories that I previewed for my students:

1. I'm curious about what exact math has and hasn't been lost. They don't appear confused/impressed by the addition part of multiplication.

2. I'm surprised there's not some sort of elite math cabal.

3. The would definitely still be some kind of spectrumy math savants.

"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury (1950)

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

Bonus: 

Yes, Soviet Animation!

Summary: Robot house burns down.

Commentary:

I think it's reasonably well established that I'm not a huge fan of overly flowery language, but:

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed. Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

Is pretty much perfect. 

"The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury (1950)

"The Veldt"

Bonus:

Everyone is so pink!

Summary: Children program the holodeck to eat their parents for taking it away.

Commentary: The devil is in the details, and the little details are both the strongest and weakest part of this story.

“Matter of fact, we’re thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence.”

“That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do it?

And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?”

“It would be fun for a change, don’t you think?”

“No, it would be horrid. I didn’t like it when you took out the picture painter last month.”

“That’s because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son.”

“I don’t want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?”

While the "nursery" (a psychically programmed holodeck) is the focus of the story, I think all the other gadgets that are mentioned in passing are really what's interesting/depressing here. The kids don't even want to paint or anything anymore, let along brush their own teeth.

I'd insert anti-AI rant here, but I don't think you even need to go that far. There are plenty of things that we used to know how to do 50 years ago that we mostly lost 5 or 10 or 20 years before AI. Cooking/baking from scratch, basic crafts like sewing, writing a letter, doing math on paper. I'm not trading in my calculator or my search engine, but I do think there's some value in being able to sit down and actually, physically do things.

On the other hand:

“Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that’s all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit—Africa in your parlor—but it’s all dimensional, superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens. It’s all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here’s my handkerchief.”

So the whole thing is what sounds like a hologram (though without using the term), sounds, and a smell-o-vision. But then at the end, it's strongly implied the lions eat them. I'd have accepted "don't worry, they're not really lions, just disguised 50s technobabble about them being tiny bumpercars with projectors or something and they somehow manage to eat them anyway, but the fact that the nursery supposedly has no real parts at all (although you'd think it'd at least have the ability to raise the floor to make steps or chairs or something) makes the ending kind of iffy. Maybe the parents are just so dependent on their smart house they're ignorant of how it works.

3/5 good prose, interesting details, spotty world building.

 

I never realized how little of Pride and Prejudice is actually about Darcy and Elizabeth's relationship.

 Also, listening to audio books isn't reading. That doesn't make it bad, it's just its own thing.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 9 Part 2 (22-42)

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book  Part 2 (22-42)

Bonus: 

Listen you your ruling part

Summary: They're getting shorter!

Commentary: 

23. You yourself are a part of a social system necessary to complete the whole. Accordingly, let your every action be a similar part of the social life. And if any action has not its reference, either immediate or distant, to the common good as its end, this action disorders your life and frustrates its unity. It is sedition like that of the man who, in a commonwealth, does all in his power to sever himself from the general harmony and concord.

Does yawning count as an action for the common good?

26. You have endured innumerable sufferings by not being satisfied with your own ruling part when it does the things which it was formed to do. Enough then of that.

You know the right thing to do, and denying it will just make you miserable.

Begin to pray about them and you will see. One man prays: “May I possess that woman!” Do you pray: “May I have no wish to possess her!” Another prays: “May I be delivered from so and so!” Pray you: “May I not need to be delivered from him!” A third cries: “May I not lose my child!” Let your prayer be: “May I not fear to lose him!” In fine, turn your prayers this way, and observe what comes of it.

I feel like that second one is very different. Need not be delivered could just mean he moves away for a job or something.