I’ve been fascinated with this concept at a distance for some time now,
though I can’t help but to regard it as faintly ominous. Having recently
read Jane McGonigal’sModern Dramaarticle
“SuperGaming: Ubiquitous Play and Performance for Massively Scaled
Community,” I’m wondering again about the technoutopianist slant of the
concept, mirroring, as it does, the demotic gnostic nightmare of Dick.
I’ve taught “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” and The Magus (and
eXistenZ, come to think of it) over the last few years, and I’ve
always asked the students to compare them with the ARG/LARP phenomenon.
(Another, more topical, comparison might be The Little Drummer Girl.)
Surprisingly few of the students seemed to be enthusiasts. I had assumed
that an interest in these or even an autochthonous culture of them would
have grown around Georgia Tech.
I’ve turned some of my recreational reading attention to Starwater
Strains, and the aforementioned story is worth teaching as an
introduction to reader-response theory. A lot of Wolfe might be,
actually, but this exemplifies precisely.
Another of the many interesting things that happened in 1926 was the
switch to the Einheitskurzschrift system of shorthand in Austria from
the Gabelsberger method (“Godel’s Gabelsberger Shorthand,” Cheryl A.
Dawson, Collected Works III: 7).
I miss the times where the Victorian alchemist William Alexander Ayton
could write an unadmiring biography of John Dee in Latin. I studied Old
Norse a bit in graduate school, and it occurred to me at the time there
should be a journal devoted to contemporary literature and media studies
written entirely in that language. I think it would necessitate a
considerable refinement of the working concepts.
Michael Berube
posts
about Yeats, mentioning in passing that he’s the greatest
English-language poet of the 20th C.
I replied there that I prefer Stevens, Eliot, and possibly also Auden;
but “prefer” is not quite the same thing as “consider the greatest.”
Outside of some appreciative pockets, this kind of question is something
I haven’t heard anyone take seriously since I was an undergrad, if then
(though the problem trended more apathetic than contemptuous
thereabouts).
I mentioned earlier that I found the anthropology in this story to be
dubious. What difference does that make, though? I’ve been wondering for
some time now about the phenomenology of error in fiction. Are there
ever legitimate grounds for determining when a writer’s incomplete
understanding of some concept or fact can be separated from that of the
narrators’? (Enormous portions of the critical corpus rely very heavily
on drawing this distinction to be sure, but I think it’s a poorly
understood topic.) Did I find myself reminded somehow of Robert Stone,
Joan Didion, and even The Stars at Noon here? Yes, however improbable.
What kind of aid work is it that Baden does?
Is this such a bad thing to aspire to? “The fat man in the cloak and the
brigand’s hat forever stopping for a pork pie and a beer while he
scribbled yet another poem or article on his cuff or on the back of a
sugar packet” (D. J. Conlon G. K. Chesterton: a Half-Century of Views
[1987]: xxiii, qtd. in ODNB entry).
Book of Days In the near future
(and also the long-promised Endangered Species edition).
I’ve only read the first three stories in Innocents Abroad at the
moment, and I wanted to note how impressed I was with the A Rebours
reference. It doesn’t take much, I know. “The Tree is My Hat” also
seemed to contain some dubious anthropology, but I’ll withhold judgment
there.
Whatever happens, it will be set to Tom Petty, the ideal musical sponsor
of the National Basketball Association. We may also get to view the
charming VW commercial about egocasting cars. (Should I remind you of
the list of exceptions to my categorical opposition to torture? Maybe
later. But no death is too slow for the ad team responsible here.)
I doubt I will watch a game of the East Conference Finals, as it
promises to be excruciating. (Also, do you need detailed
statistical/econometric analyses to tell you that Allen Iverson and
Antoine Walker don’t help their teams
win?
[The tease graf there is “why some basketball players aren’t as good as
you think.” Well, maybe not as good as you think.])
