Casually Completing Classics:1984 Part 6 (TWO)

 Oh boy, it's one of those books that's divided into parts and the chapter numbers reset. Couldn't at least do 2.1? 2.I? B1?

Winston sees the girl at work. She hurt her arm on a "kaleidoscope" that they use to make/transport their trashy prole novels. I looked it up, and kaleidoscope does not mean something else in British. Earlier in the book:

 Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section—Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak—engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.

It's like a robot Madlibs? Mechanical LLM. Mechanical LLM would sell as a short story idea. 

She slips him a folded up paper. He hides in the bathroom until he calms down (without reading it) then goes back to his desk, mixes it in with the other papers, and works for a while.

Eventually he unfolds it. It says "I love you" because of course it does. This woman he's met like 3 times and just incel glared at is in love with him, because reasons.

He thinks about her naked, with less murder this time (but still some murder). He's convinced it's not a trap, at least. 

We learn that no one sends letters anymore. They use preprinted post cards, kinda like the ones you use for correspondence chess.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

She disappears for a while and he's worried about her, but she comes back. They manage to meet at lunch and plan to go to the Victory Square, where they briefly hold hands and see some prisoners.

This whole scene brings the logistics of actual dating/fucking to mind. We know that you're not supposed to love your spouse or enjoy sex, but how do they keep population numbers in the party from collapsing? Do they promote proles? Are there enough people surreptitiously, awkwardly fucking to keep the numbers up? 80 years after the novel was written, with much of the developed world struggling with demographic issues, this part seems less predictive/likely than the rest.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 5 (Chapter 8)

 This is a long, kind of weird, chapter.

Winston goes to the prole part of town, where he asks an old man at a pub about the before times. He doesn't do a great job of asking questions, and the old man does a worse job of answering. He gets upset, leaves, and goes to the antique store he got the diary in. The guy there is happy to tell him about the before times, but Winston seems less excited then you'd expect. He's interested, to be sure, but he just freaked out on someone for not doing the same thing this guy is doing and he's not that into it.

Blah blah women hating.

He sees the "young and lusty" woman and fantasizes about killing her again (no rape this time).

WIP, FIS, IIS count: 3

I feel like you could cut most of the old man (and a good chunk of the antique shop) and this chapter would work just as well.

A Varicose Ulcer

 

Gross

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 4 (Chapter 7)

 This chapter starts off with a pseudo-epigraph from Winston's journal, "If there is hope [wrote Winston] it lies in the proles."

And then it's mostly him saying they just need to RISE UP. The party doesn't even bother trying to indoctrinate them, or even surveil them fully. (This is a different from the modern age, where the lower class is the easiest to surveil, since they're attached to smart phones 24/7.)

I like that jus primae noctis has become a right of the capitalists in the urban legends of the oppressive future. 

It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.

People talk about how prescient 1984 is, but I don't see this quote passed around a lot, and I think it's relevant. How many people today feel like nothing even matters? How much of the stuff people do obsess over obviously doesn't? He then goes on to describe how they're in a boring dystopia.

It's "the lonely hour fifteen". I'm starting to wonder if they're just in 24 hour time.

It's starting to sound like Oceania is just "The West". They talk about working with New York and Canada.

This is also the, "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." chapter.

I think people think too much about the thought police parts of 1984 and not enough about the denying reality parts.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 3 (Chapter 6)

 It's a sex chapter!

I will definitely be making fun of Wilson's attitude towards women and sex when I teach this book. He's got a incel-vice going on, and he seems like the kind of guy who says, "these females" or something. He definitely mad that the woman he paid to fuck is "post wall" as they say. And, of course, his ex-wife is the dumbest person he's ever met.

Villifying sex seems to be something that authoritarians across the political spectrum can agree on. Can't have sexy music, eh Tipper? 

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 2 (Chapter 5)

 Winston goes to lunch. He hates everyone in the canteen. Production is up (even though it was down yesterday, doublethink)! The girl he wanted to rape/murder yesterday sits behind him and looks at him.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 1 (Ch1-4)

 The first thing that jumps out about me in 1984 is how disillusioned Winston already is with the Party, and how much he understands the system.

I feel like most dystopian stuff you read, the main character is initially mostly unaware. But Winston already has his rebel notebook, has long thoughts about how the Party's manipulation works, fakes being a good cog, etc.

I would like to know why the UK is in Oceania. I looked it up, the term had been in use for Australia since the 1800s. Maybe it'll make sense later.

I'm keeping a count for every time there's a:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

So far, 3 (pgs 4, 16, 26 in my Signet Classics 75th anniversary edition).

Liquor is often described as oily. I feel like that's a kind of stock description of cheap liquor. I've had some cheap liquor in my life, and I don't remember it ever being oily. I was going to say I don't really know how alcohol could be oily (doesn't it cut grease in real life?) but apparently (for gin) it could be caused by improperly mixing the botanicals. Which would make sense for the shitty propaganda gin he's drinking.

A huge part of 1984 deals with how uncertain Winston is about the past. He's not even really sure what year it is. Most written records have been destroyed, and the ones that haven't have been censored and altered so many times. I wonder how the people who rewrite classic books (I feel like Roald Dahl's are the ones I've heard about most recently) to censor them would feel about those scenes, and if they realize they're doing the same.

Winston really hates women:

He disliked nearly all women and especially the young and pretty ones who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party the swallowers of slogans the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

On the one hand, I will be making fun of him for being an incel for the rest of the book. On the other hand,  this is definitely a type of woman that very much exists in real life. Fortunately not the majority of women. (Also, not usually the young and pretty ones.) 

The Big Brother chant at the end of the Hate is written the opposite of how it's apparently pronounced:

"B-B!... B-B!... B-B!" over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first "B" and the second

That'd be a closely connected 1, 2 and then a long gap between 2 and 3. 

Continuing with the above, "Winston is an incel" he also hates any physical activity. He's definitely a cliche basement loser. He dreams about his mom, because of course he does.

Something I thought about during the exercise scene is Winston's concerns that he's being watched via the telescreen. While the telescreen can monitor him, I wonder if they actually have the resources to monitor all of them all the time. Later, he mentions that probably no one knows how many boots are being made when he's making up fake numbers, and I suspect this applies to a lot of things within the Party.

Enjoying it so far, more (probably) tomorrow.

15 Minute Classical Music

 We went to the symphony today. I'm not really sure what I planned for the blog with this...

Ummm, have some videos.

Casually Completing Classics Round 2: 1984 by George Orwell (1949)

 Shhhh, Canadians only.

I'm gonna tell my kids this was 1984

I'm going to start teaching 1984 in my class next week, so I figured I should give it a reread. I figured that was a good enough reason to brush of Casually Completing Classics.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

Something I notice right away is the contrast between Orwell's prose and the world he's describing. Winston doesn't just "tuck" his chin, he nuzzles. The wind is "vile." I think a lot of dystopian literature goes for a narrator voice that's relatively constrained to match the society (or goes way in the opposite direction to make them special). He strikes a good balance here. 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 10 Part 2 (18-38)

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 10 Part 2 (18-38)

Bonus: 

10.33

Summary: They get shorter now! (Also, everyone dies)

Commentary: 

30. When you are offended at any one’s fault, turn at once to yourself and consider of what similar fault you yourself are guilty; such as esteeming for good things, money, pleasure, a little glory, or the like. By fixing your attention on this you will speedily forget your anger, especially if it occur to you that he acts under compulsion and cannot do otherwise; else, if it be in your power, relieve him from the compulsion.

This is pretty good advice. Glass houses without sin and all that.

 

"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. 

 

 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 9 Part 1 (1-21)

  Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book  Part 1 (1-21)

Bonus: 

Basically Aristotle.

Summary: Everything bad is bad, especially feeling good.

Commentary:

I think I'm getting sick, so very sleepy during the reading today. This one felt especially repetitive and MA is really into his, "pain isn't bad, pleasure is bad," "dying isn't bad!", schtick. The lengths here are all over the place. Some one liners, and some that run most of a page.

The one that stood out was the first one:

1. He who does injustice commits impiety. For since universal Nature has formed the rational animals for one another; each to be useful to the other according to his merit, and never hurtful; he who transgresses this her will is clearly guilty of impiety against the most ancient and venerable of the Gods.

He who lies sins against the same divinity. For the nature of the whole is the nature of all things which exist; and things which exist are akin to all that has come to be. Nature, indeed, is called truth, and is the first cause of all truths. He, then, that lies willingly is guilty of impiety, in so far as by deceiving he works injury: and he also who lies unwillingly, in so far as he is out of tune with universal Nature, and in so far as he works disorder in the Universe by fighting against its design. He is at war with Nature who sets himself against the truth. He has neglected the means with which Nature furnished him, and cannot now distinguish false from true.

He, too, who pursues pleasure as good, and shuns pain as evil, is guilty of impiety. Such a one must needs frequently blame the common nature for unseemly awards of fortune to bad and to good men. For the bad often enjoy pleasures and possess the means to attain them, and the good often meet with pain and with what causes pain. Again, he who dreads pain must sometimes dread a thing which will make part of the world order, and this is impious. And he who pursues pleasure will not abstain from injustice, and this is clear impiety. In those things to which the common nature is indifferent (for she had not made both, were she not indifferent to either), he who would follow Nature ought, in this also, to be of like mind with her, and shew the like indifference. And whoever is not indifferent to pain and pleasure, life and death, glory and ignominy, all of which universal Nature uses indifferently, is clearly impious. By Nature using them indifferently, I mean that they befall indifferently all beings which exist, and ensue upon others in the great chain of consequence which began in the primal impulse of Providence. Providence, in pursuance of this impulse, and starting from a definite beginning, set about this fair structure of the universe when she had conceived the plan of all that was to be, and appointed the distinct powers which were to produce the several substances, changes, and successions.

Anytime you do anything bad=work against the gods=pleasure=working against the gods=not wanting pain=working against the gods.

Seems like a pretty miserable worldview. Also assuming that anything we do for pleasure is negative. If enjoying writing a cool story or dancing or whatever gives you pleasure and adds something good to the world, I don't see how it's a bad thing.