Dak
mentat
I think English is an excellent example of an extremely illogical yet extremely useful and modular language.
The Books/Reading Thread
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Einherjar86
Active Member
Draehl
Lurker
Nothing so intellectual as most of this thread, but the final of the four books of the series. Good stuff. Just over half way done.
Dak
mentat
Master_Yoda77
Juggalo
monoxide_child
New Metal Member
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Einherjar86
Active Member
Coincidentally enough, I'm going through Philosophical Investigations yet again (Jimmy, I share your problem. This is one of like, 6 books I'm juggling around right now). It helps to have the Tractatus in mind, as PI is in many ways a direct response to the hyper-formal picture theory of language that he once espoused. The heart of the first part, to me, is the insistence that natural language is a living, breathing organism that actively resists formalization (recall how he harps on "language game" being indefinable, the idea that you can always conceive of a new use of a word) due to its social element. There's the motif of something resembling a mathematical limit where the more familiar we are with the totality of involvements that a word has in a language, the closer we are to fully understanding the word and its innumerable linguistic relations within the said totality; but this is only a theoretical consideration and practical impossibility.
Nevertheless, it's such a ridiculously influential text that you could spend your whole life reading it and the people responding to it and always stay busy.
Nevertheless, it's such a ridiculously influential text that you could spend your whole life reading it and the people responding to it and always stay busy.
Master_Yoda77
Juggalo
Einherjar86
Active Member
Wittgenstein seems to oscillate between wanting to study "actual" languages, or language-games (an infinite endeavor), and wanting to crystallize some form of perfect, a priori logic. I've fixated on this passage, which is early in the Investigations:
"Perhaps someone will say, 'two' can be ostensively defined only in this way: 'The number is called "two".' For the word 'number' here shows what place in language, in grammar, we assign the word. But this means that the word 'number' must be explained before that ostensive definition can be understood. - The word 'number' in the definition does indeed indicate this place - the post at which we station the word. And we can prevent misunderstandings by saying 'This color is called so-and-so', 'This length is called so-and-so', and so on. That is to say, misunderstandings are sometimes averted in this way. But does one have to take the words 'color' and 'length' in just this way? - Well, we'll just have to explain them. Explain, then, by means of other words! And what about the last explanation in the chain? (Don't say: 'There isn't a last explanation.' That is just as if you were to say: 'There isn't a last house in this road; one can always build an additional one.')"
This passage is fucking crazy, and not merely for its obvious aspect of suggesting the infinite regress of linguistic description/explanation. Rather, what's truly amazing is that Wittgenstein seems (and I stress "seems" since it's sometimes difficult to get at what he means; if he even means anything!
) to suggest that there is a "last" explanation in the chain. He wants to believe in a kind of total meta-language, something like mathematical logic; but as he says later, logic is still a "normative science." Language, at every turn, defies normality.
"Perhaps someone will say, 'two' can be ostensively defined only in this way: 'The number is called "two".' For the word 'number' here shows what place in language, in grammar, we assign the word. But this means that the word 'number' must be explained before that ostensive definition can be understood. - The word 'number' in the definition does indeed indicate this place - the post at which we station the word. And we can prevent misunderstandings by saying 'This color is called so-and-so', 'This length is called so-and-so', and so on. That is to say, misunderstandings are sometimes averted in this way. But does one have to take the words 'color' and 'length' in just this way? - Well, we'll just have to explain them. Explain, then, by means of other words! And what about the last explanation in the chain? (Don't say: 'There isn't a last explanation.' That is just as if you were to say: 'There isn't a last house in this road; one can always build an additional one.')"
This passage is fucking crazy, and not merely for its obvious aspect of suggesting the infinite regress of linguistic description/explanation. Rather, what's truly amazing is that Wittgenstein seems (and I stress "seems" since it's sometimes difficult to get at what he means; if he even means anything!
) to suggest that there is a "last" explanation in the chain. He wants to believe in a kind of total meta-language, something like mathematical logic; but as he says later, logic is still a "normative science." Language, at every turn, defies normality.
unknown
fuck ftagn
currently on my table: The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor, Fritz Lieber's Selected Stories and New Media, New Methods: The Turn from Literacy to Electracy. The Fritz Lieber collection is really good stuff. Very accessible
I'm also giving serious thought to subscribing to the following literary magazines: Three Penny Review, Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, Lapham's Quarterly, and McSweeney's. Grad school (and undergrad I suppose) absolutely killed my pleasure reading ability. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I don't have the attention span yet to get back into full length novels (though I did re-read The Hobbit), so I'm sticking with short stories for now
I'm also giving serious thought to subscribing to the following literary magazines: Three Penny Review, Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, Lapham's Quarterly, and McSweeney's. Grad school (and undergrad I suppose) absolutely killed my pleasure reading ability. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I don't have the attention span yet to get back into full length novels (though I did re-read The Hobbit), so I'm sticking with short stories for now
Einherjar86
Active Member
Flannery O'Connor is great! I have two of her collections, Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man is Hard to Find.
Cronopio
Glorious Imperator
Cool that people still read short stories. I would very much welcome recommendation in that area.
unknown
fuck ftagn
I pretty much only exclusively read short stories now: Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever, Charles Bukowski, Donald Barthelme, Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, and the ones I mentioned above (Flannery O'Connor and Fritz Lieber)
Cronopio
Glorious Imperator
I've been thinking about getting my hands on some Barthelme. He's supposed to be a very "intelligent" writer, right?
Love Bukowski's short, also the fact that he sometimes mixes really weird stuff in there.
Love Bukowski's short, also the fact that he sometimes mixes really weird stuff in there.
monoxide_child
New Metal Member
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all of the short stories written by Stephen King
they're just as good as (if not better than) King's long-as-hell novels
Cronopio
Glorious Imperator
I've read them all, except for Full Dark, No Stars (if you count those as short stories).
Jimmy... Dead.
contemplative curmudgeon
Jeffrey Brenzel: The Essential Value of a Classic Education
FYI this is strictly Western Thought, but it is a fantastic lecture. Dr. Brenzel's basic premise is that you must read the classics in their entirety to truly have a cultivated understanding of what influential greatness is.
What Marks a Classic:
1.) Address permanent & universal human concerns
2.) Game-changer
3.) Influences other great works
4.) Respected by Experts
5.) Challenging yet rewarding
The Books ~ Author - Title - Time:
1.) Artistotle - The Nicomachean Ethics (350 BC)
1.) Plato - The Republic (380 BC)
2.) St. Augustine of Hippo - City of God (500s AD)
3.) St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica (1300s)
4.) Dante Alighieri - Divine Comedy (1350)
5.) Martin Luther - The Ninety-Five Theses (1517)
6.) John Milton - Paradise Lost (1667)
7.) Thomas Malthus - An Essay of the Principle of Population (1798)
Modern Philosophical Influences:
* Socrates >- Soren Kierkegaard (1800s) - Godfather of Existentialism > Hiedagger & Sartre
* Socrates >- Nietzsche
The Five Values of Reading Great Classics:
1.) Value of Forgotten Ideas
2.) Value of Connecting Ideas
3.) Value of Strangeness
4.) Value of Building intellectual Muscle
5.) Value of Better Judgment
Great Writers:
1.) William Shakespeare (Breath and Range of the human condition)
1.) Jane Austen (narrative of English gentry culture of late 1700s)
2.) Emily Dickinson (uniquely poetic mind and emotions)
FYI this is strictly Western Thought, but it is a fantastic lecture. Dr. Brenzel's basic premise is that you must read the classics in their entirety to truly have a cultivated understanding of what influential greatness is.
What Marks a Classic:
1.) Address permanent & universal human concerns
2.) Game-changer
3.) Influences other great works
4.) Respected by Experts
5.) Challenging yet rewarding
The Books ~ Author - Title - Time:
1.) Artistotle - The Nicomachean Ethics (350 BC)
1.) Plato - The Republic (380 BC)
2.) St. Augustine of Hippo - City of God (500s AD)
3.) St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica (1300s)
4.) Dante Alighieri - Divine Comedy (1350)
5.) Martin Luther - The Ninety-Five Theses (1517)
6.) John Milton - Paradise Lost (1667)
7.) Thomas Malthus - An Essay of the Principle of Population (1798)
Modern Philosophical Influences:
* Socrates >- Soren Kierkegaard (1800s) - Godfather of Existentialism > Hiedagger & Sartre
* Socrates >- Nietzsche
The Five Values of Reading Great Classics:
1.) Value of Forgotten Ideas
2.) Value of Connecting Ideas
3.) Value of Strangeness
4.) Value of Building intellectual Muscle
5.) Value of Better Judgment
Great Writers:
1.) William Shakespeare (Breath and Range of the human condition)
1.) Jane Austen (narrative of English gentry culture of late 1700s)
2.) Emily Dickinson (uniquely poetic mind and emotions)
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Einherjar86
Active Member
(literature, on the other hand, I can give you lists
"Anti-humanist" literature for Jimmy. This is all fiction by the way; I'm assuming that's what you want:
First, most novels by Cormac McCarthy; some of his books like All the Pretty Horses get a bit romanticist, so avoid those (unless you become a fan, then by all means read everything of his; he's phenomenal). McCarthy has been a huge influence on the revisionist western, and remains a big figure in what lots of people describe as a pessimistic, anti-humanist worldview. Check out: Blood Meridian, Child of God, Outer Dark, and of course The Road.
Maurice Blanchot; I've only read Death Sentence, but it's short and strange.
Alain Robbe-Grillet; his novel La Jalousie ("the jealousy" in English, although this misses the pun on a jalousie windows, which play a prominent role in the novel) is one of the most frustrating and confounding prose works I've ever read, but if there exists an "anti-humanist style," Robbe-Grillet nailed it. There isn't even a subjective narrator, and descriptions of scenes and events passes coolly as though a detached camera lens is apathetically passing by everything. I wrote a paper on this novel and simply called the narrator "it." In that paper, I also compared La Jalousie to...
Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho; probably not the best recommendation, but I happen to love this book. You can skip most of the chapters of mindless violence, it actually gets nauseating; but make sure you read at least one of them. I remember reading the chapter where he shoved a tube into a woman so that he can get a rat to crawl inside her and thinking "Done." I skipped the rest of that one; but the book as a whole deals pretty profoundly with problems of representation and the constitution of the human, which is why I put it in this list.
Margaret Atwood; check out her novel Oryx and Crake. It's a post-apocalyptic story about gene manipulation and bioethics, and while it's pretty full of humanist pleas, the overall vibe is pretty bleak.
M. John Harrison; he's a sci-fi writer whose 'Kefahuchi Tract' series is just one big relentless mindfuck. If humans have any role to play in his vision of the universe, it isn't much more than as characters in his stories. The first two books in the series are Light and Nova Swing; the third book, Empty Space, comes out this year.
Peter Watts; I've only read his novel Blindsight, but if you want a story that relegates humans to the evolutionary dustbin of consciousness, check it out. And steel yourself, because it's a frighteningly good book.
China Mieville; Mieville frequently writes quite humanist literature if you can call literature about non-humans "humanist." I mean that much of his work is profoundly concerned with elements of emancipation and revolution, which are really very human issues. However, his novel Embassytown is a great sci-fi read and really blows the centrism of "the human" out of the water by fiddling intensely with language. It's a difficult book, but worth it.
Kathy Acker; Empire of the Senseless. Extreme feminism, such that it borders on normative human reality.
I'll leave off with good ol' Samuel Beckett; some might contest my including him here, but I personally think that the author of Waiting for Godot and Endgame deserves a mention in a list of "anti-humanist" works.
There are tons more, but it's late, and I should be working, and I can't think of any off the top of my head. I could send you some messages if you have more specific questions about anything.
Cheers.
Master_Yoda77
Juggalo
Is Cormac McCarthy something that I would enjoy? I find that I enjoy nearly all forms of literature, but you know I value Classical epic and Renaissance over pretty much all things. I love the movie "No Country for Old Men" but I know that McCarthy's writing style in that movie does not use any punctuation, which scares me. I find "gimmicks" like that in literature to be annoying and stupid.
In other news, I started Frankenstein. Read it before, but it's nice to reread those classics once in a while. I'm already reminded of my love for this story and I've only read the prologue where the dude on the ship finds Dr. Frankenstein nearly dead. The tale hasn't even started yet.
In other news, I started Frankenstein. Read it before, but it's nice to reread those classics once in a while. I'm already reminded of my love for this story and I've only read the prologue where the dude on the ship finds Dr. Frankenstein nearly dead. The tale hasn't even started yet.
