I said "postmodern" in relation to Pynchon and Wallace which you were thinking about reading eventually. Good point about Don Quixote. Maybe challenging book might be a better term.

I can't say you'll enjoy it, it might turn out to be very boring for you, but given that you were talking about GR and IJ, difficult books or unique books in general. Now you know about it. — Manuel

:up:

Yep, and I enjoyed looking into it for a few minutes. Who knows if I'll go further with it. Maybe in two decades.

Ducks Newburyport — Manuel

I read the first few pages on Amazon's "look inside" and thought it was a fun read. The form looks interesting, less so the themes and subject matter. It might be a matter of taste.

And there's the blurb:

"A scorching indictment of America's barbarity, past and present, and a lament for the way we are sleepwalking into environmental disaster"

Yawn! But I guess I shouldn't judge the book by the blurb.

And then there's ... "the fact that". Would I be a middlebrow philistine fool to point out how ugly this phrase is? Maybe it takes on a pleasing hypnotic quality as you get into the book, I don't know. Think how much paper and readers' time could have been saved if every instance of "the fact that" had been removed. Now, I expect the sentence wraps up at the end brilliantly or movingly or shockingly or whatever, when "the fact that" finally pays off, but still, I wonder if it justifies making the reader put up with it for almosty the whole reading experience.

Of course, these are just initial reactions combined with my tastes and prejudices.

It might not be "postmodern" — Manuel

I suppose it's kinda modernist in that it has a superficial resemblance to parts of Ulysses, though maybe without the poetry. Whether it's postmodern, I don't know. I don't even know what "postmodern(ist)" means when it comes to fiction. It can't be about the cool stuff like self-reference, metafiction, nested stories and so on, because that was going on at the beginning of the novel in Don Quixote, and hasn't stopped since then.

This discussion was merged into Anti-vaccination: Is it right?

I do have some sympathy for digging into the language of a poem looking for deeper meanings. I remember an interpretation of Frost's "Wild Grapes" that identified and explained some of Frost's allusions to Greek myths. It added depth and perspective without changing my basic understanding of the poem. — T Clark

Yeah I'm all for digging into the language for deeper meanings in the way you describe. But the habit of identifying allegory and symbolic schemes in works of art that I see so much of seems much more primitive and lazy than that.

I'm not familiar with Robert Frost. Basically I know some Ted Hughes poems and this one by Ezra Pound:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

----------------

I always seem to go for the nature imagery.

I find it hard to get along with anything that rhymes. It's hard for me to grasp. I can't do the rhythms and absorb the meaning at the same time. It never feels right.

No one has anything but a preliminary understanding of how memory and consciousness work. Trying to do the philosophy without adequate understanding of the mechanics won't work. — T Clark

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time

I'd say Proust is more than preliminary, but some may disagree.

As I wrote before, this has been a really helpful, interesting, and eye-opening discussion for me. — T Clark

:up:

The Critique of Pure Reason reading group starts tomorrow. See you there!

I don't think I'm anti-intellectual at all. I live in my intellect. Everything good I've ever written on the forum comes from my intellect, reason, resting on a foundation of experience and awareness. — T Clark

Fair enough. Maybe I'm still reacting to the tone of the OP.

I think there's a good case to be made that western philosophy is founded on distrust of experience and awareness. — T Clark

There's some truth in that. Particularly a distrust of earthly, bodily experience. But here we are engaging with the tradition, and some philosophers within the tradition have addressed it.

My former professor in art failed to perceive the beauty of the Mona Lisa painting when she saw it in person. She wasn't impressed. — Caldwell

Yes, there is clearly something wrong with her. — Bartricks

@T Clark

Here's another angle. I think you've said a couple of times that you're seeking the insights of people here who you respect. So why not seek the insights of the people who have dedicated their lives to thinking things through?

I think Cornel West makes a good distinction between "philosophy as a profession" and "philosophy as a way of life". We can add to that philosophy as a hobby or amateur philosophy, which needn't mean bad. — Manuel

Talking of Cornel West, he wrote a piece in April that's even more pertinent, and an interesting angle on this topic:

Howard University’s removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe

Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero.

Long after Douglass’s encounters with these ancient thinkers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be similarly galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian — he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” — Cornel West

Of course I am influenced by the culture I live in. How much does that make my search for an unprejudiced vision of reality quixotic? I can't be sure, I can only do the best I can. Purity of vision is probably not necessary. If my current understanding is irreparably intermixed with western philosophy, it hardly seems likely that further study will make things better. — T Clark

The sentence that I've bolded here: maybe you can see that it's mistaken, if you think about the difference between, on one hand, being unknowingly influenced, and on the other hand, reading the influential thinkers to understand how you and others are being influenced (and what those thinkers were reacting against, and so on). I suggest you read the short opinion piece by West that I quoted above, to get an idea of the value of the philosophical canon.

Here are some more quotes from it:

Students must be challenged: Can they face texts from the greatest thinkers that force them to radically call into question their presuppositions? — Cornel West

As German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer emphasized in the past century, traditions are inescapable and unavoidable. It is a question not of whether you are going to work in a tradition, but which one. Even the choice of no tradition leaves people ignorantly beholden within a language they didn’t create and frameworks they don’t understand.

Engaging with the classics and with our civilizational heritage is the means to finding our true voice. It is how we become our full selves, spiritually free and morally great. — Cornel West

It's interesting how West's focus on the black experience brings these things into focus. He implies that what might appear as the "decolonizing" of education has more to do with a utilitarian anti-intellectualism in the wider society. I think it's fair to say that there is more than a hint of this in your OP.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/19/cornel-west-howard-classics/

Just pay attention. To the world and to yourself. — T Clark

I think it's fair to accuse some academic philosophy of concentrating on texts at the expense of paying attention to yourself and what's around you.

But, and this is a big but, I think the best philosophers do both. More than that, you can learn how to better pay attention by studying great philosophers. My own experience is that I learned how to pay attention more deeply and more productively from reading Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Plato, and others. And Proust, very philosophical as novelists go, though maybe he's more in the realm of psychology.

This is just a quick response. I'm not sure I'm up for describing exactly how those writers worked their magic on my perceptual skills, even though that might be interesting.

Thank you for being you — ArguingWAristotleTiff

It seems I can't help it, no matter how hard I try. :wink:

Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

------------

It shows how undeveloped my appreciation of poetry is that the poem I've chosen is one that I posted about back on the old forum. It's still the only one I know well.

As I said back then, I find it frustrating that the internet is full of allegorical interpretations of this poem, the hawk representing the Nazis or violent destructive humanity, for example. But it's not an allegory. I find myself wondering if the people who interpet it that way have ever seen a hawk before. Probably what's happening is that with the wider exposure to literary and film and art criticism that's been enabled by the internet, bad interpretations abound, with some folks apparently thinking that a non-allegorical interpretation of any work of art is simple-minded.

But it's the other way around. Hughes is describing what he appears to be describing, and that's hard. It's about a hawk, and as he said himself later, about nature in general.

I'm pretty much with Tolkien, although I'm not sure about "in all its manifestations":

I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. — Tolkien

But there's a deep difficulty about the poem, the thing that makes it interesting. The poem doesn't take the form of the poet's observations. It's the hawk talking, with some level of human-style self-awareness. To show the purity of an animal in contrast to the artifice of human lives (at least as the hawk sees it), but using a human point of view, is quite something. It's anthropomorphism but doesn't feel like it.

One thing about it I don't understand. Maybe poetry heads here can help. I think I get the full stops, but some of the other punctuation seems arbitrary to me. But it must be very deliberate.

:cool:

When Hebrew is written among speakers, they don't use the vowels because it's not necessary to be understood. For example, here is a Hebrew version of a newspaper and it does not contain any of those vowel marks: https://www.haaretz.co.il/ — Hanover

This is the main thing I wasn't sure of, to what extent the vowel marks are used today. I'd guess it's similar with Arabic.

But TheMadFool seems to be looking for something more mysterious.

@thewonder: I think Wheatley meant for this thread to be for informative links, videos etc. You're making it your own twitter feed, and later you edit most of the comments to remove what you wrote, leaving lots of empty posts that I have to delete. I just deleted more than 45. Please stop posting this way in this thread (in fact, it's not appropriate anywhere).

I know it's the Lounge, but there are limits even here.

BTW there are other ways of indicating vowel sounds in writing, without using separate letters. I think modern Hebrew does this, though I'm not sure.

There are always battles to be fought, and sometimes we fight for ideas.

You weirdly rejected Tim's answer so I won't attempt one myself. In any case, it's an empirical question for historical linguistics and I'm not sure where the question is coming from.

my question is about books/documents (written word) — TheMadFool

But vowels and consonants are by definition speech sounds, and written letters represent them. If there's no need to represent speech, neither consonants nor vowels are required in the alphabet or whatever.

It also depends on what you are trying to do with your philosophy. Messiness can get in the way of clear communication, which is bad. But some ideas are crude and need time to develop, I guess you can call developing your ideas as a "messy process". — Wheatley

Yes.

Some of the clear, well-argued posts here can seem too self-satisfied, as if they're done thinking and now it's just a matter of convincing people. No doubt we all do that. A minority of members, who are less prideful or more willing to take risks, take a messier approach. They change their mind mid-discussion and fire out half-formed ideas. That can be good, but not always.

I'm probably in the first camp. To me, messy often means wishy-washy. Maybe it's a matter of taste.

When I read some of the things on this forum, I'm like "yuck too clean, too thoughtless". I guess that's just me. — Wheatley

I know what you mean, but I think it's unavoidable in philosophy. The ideas are what's important, not the style, although that in itself is probably debated within philosophy.

Maybe you're describing something that's more often used in creative writing. Can you write philosophy in the style of Ulysses?

Did you go "yuck" when you read this?

"Dense" by Univers Zero. The whole thing is great, but there's a section from 3:46 that culminates in an oboe (or cor anglais) solo that's particularly beautiful.

Absolutely not. Just bothered by things. — thewonder

Fair enough. May your botheration dwindle.

That'll have to do. I'm going to leave. — thewonder

You keep on promising, but never deliver :wink:

Are you drunk?

There are whole guidebooks for GR — Manuel

I looked at one today, but I approach literature as I do film, knowing as little about it beforehand as possible and certainly avoiding plot spoilers, which this guidebook apparently has.

This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. — Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

This is always quoted, but the thing is: the whole book is like that.

I've been trying to get up the nerve to read "Gormenghast." — T Clark

Titus Groan is ponderous, if you can imagine that as a positive, but Gormenghast I found somewhat lighter and more comedic, in a Dickensian kind of way.

Really odd, but wonderful. — T Clark

:up: :100: :cool:

Thank you for sharing your experience. I appreciate it.

There was a time when I went for big difficult books in the way that young men do: to prove to myself and to others that I was a serious intellectual.

These days, it's more like curiosity and exploration. These books stand in the cultural landscape like mountains to be climbed.

The endnotes thing puts me off, I have to say. Friends of mine have raved about Infinite Jest, but I feel more drawn to Gravity's Rainbow. I can handle books I can't understand so long as it seems like the writer knows what he's writing about, and if it looks like it could be interesting. That's when I know I have to go and do some research of my own.

I first read Moorcock back in the late '70s – The Eternal Champion-Silver Warriors duology and Elric stories mostly, later Behold the Man, von Bek stories and "sampled" quite a few other of his novels. I really fell for Moorcock's pulpish weird fantasy (i.e. sword & sorcery), especially Elric and the Multiverse back in the day (which, along with Conan stories and Lord of the Rings-The Silmarillion, lead me to running & designing tabletop roleplaying games through the mid-80s). Foundational stuff for me. — 180 Proof

:cool:

I was into the Corum and Von Bek stories back in the day. Later on Colonel Pyat.

Ursula LeGuin — 180 Proof

:up: :up: :up:

I've never ventured past Titus Groan, so maybe I'll give Peake's trilogy another chance. — 180 Proof

I definitely recommend the second one, Gormenghast, but the third is non-essential and really not of a piece with the first two. But it's fascinatingly odd.

What do you think of Moorcock's Gloriana with its deliberately Gormenghast-like 'mood'? — 180 Proof

I abandoned it when I tried reading it in my adolescence but I'd be interested to try again. But although Moorcock loved Peake, I don't think he's the same kind of writer at all, so I don't know how he'd succeed with that kind of thing. I could be wrong about that, because there's a lot of Moorcock I haven't read (I've probably only read his Eternal Champion/Multiverse stories, and less than half of those). What did you think of it?

Btw, reading Gene Wolfe rewards patience. — 180 Proof

Glad to get some support for my suspicion that he's not just crap after all!

EDIT: btw, I saw Dune in a beautiful "premium" cinema with big chairs and tables and all that, and only four other people there. It was a very good experience, but I'll say no more.

I also like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and 1Q84 — javi2541997

[SPOILERS]

I just read 1Q84 and after the first book of the three, which was compelling and fascinating, it seemed to just fall flat, dominated by (a) mundane activities--which can be described interestingly in fiction but not here--and (b) the dull, bloodless thoughts of the main characters, especially Tengo. I can happily live with a main/point-of-view character who is evil or contradictory (or breast-fixated), but not with a boring one. He's the most boring fictional main character I can remember. In the third book, no sooner does the increasingly likeable and interesting Ushikawa begin to liven things up than he gets caught by Fuka-Eri's gaze and becomes as boring as the others, just before getting killed off.

It was my first Murukami and I've seen people say it shouldn't be the first one you read. And it has indeed put me off reading more.

Currently reading and reading soon:

• The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. I've read it every ten years or so since I was a teenager and it seems to get better each time.
• Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock, another re-read.
• Dune by Frank Herbert. Abandoned it after a few pages a few times for whatever reason, but I've just seen the movie and fancy reading it now.
• The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. I read this supposed classic (UKLG called Wolfe "our Melville" because of it) a long time ago and took its uneven narrative and confusing world-building to be clumsy incompetent writing, but I'm going to give it another go.
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Now that I'm the same age as the character, it's time for a re-read.
• Black Spartacus by Sudhir Hazareesingh. So far the only book on Toussaint Louverture I've read is the brilliant classic The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James.
• The Volga: A History by Janet Hartley. I've just been on a cruise down the Volga, all the way to the Caspian, and I always for some reason do my research after I get back from my travels.

I also want to try those big difficult American classics, Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow. Until now, just as the thought of being stuck in an upper class manners-infested house for a whole book has put me off Jane Austen, so getting bogged down in anything to do with tennis has put me off Infinite Jest. Maybe it's because I myself was a promising tennis athlete for a short time in my adolescence, before throwing it all away.

Jesus said it best: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

@Waarzin was one of Prishon's many reincarnations, by the way.

Note that @Hanover did send him a message to ask him to change his ways, but the response was a bad one.

Something philosophical for the first time in ages:

Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

Welcome to TPF, Hel :smile:

:roll:

My advice is to find better sources of information and advice than this forum.