The Brain is not a Digital Computer (The Muse In The Machine, Gelernter 1994)

David Gelernter. The Muse in the Machine. (1994) A strange book, which makes a number of major points or claims.

First, Gelernter posits a spectrum of attention, from the barely conscious, half-recalled dream state to the rational, hyper-focussed attention and linear thinking that we’ve learned to accept as the best kind. However, says Gelernter, creativity is highest when attention is low and the mind “wanders.” Hyper-focussed attention is on the contrary not very creative. Its main (and perhaps only) value is to bring order to the usually chaotic structures of the insights created when our attention is low.

There’s some truth to this. In fact, it’s become a pop-psych cliche. Every now and then some analogy tripped over when the mind wanders triggers an insight.  But in my experience those events are not guaranteed. In fact, they are rare enough to make them memorable. I think that pretty well everybody has worried a problem until a solution “presented itself” unexpectedly. But we know that it’s a process that we can’t control. About all we can infer is there is a lot of thinking well below the level of conscious attention, some of it surfaces, and occasionally the product is useful. We can allow this process to work by letting go of a problem and chilling. But there’s no guarantees.

A Wandering Mind?

Second, the mind is not software. I agree, in part for the reason Gelernter puts forward, which is that the analogy of  “mind” with “virtual machine” breaks down. A virtual machine is one that’s implemented in software running on another machine. Abstract the concept of “machine” to an entity that performs some task in response to some input, then any program is a virtual machine. E.g., the wordprocessor I’m using takes data from the keyboard, and transforms that into a block of data in memory. It sends copies of the data to the graphics processor, which translates them into a display on the monitor. When I hit Print, it sends data to the printer, which in turn lays microscopic dots of ink onto a sheet of paper. To my eye, it’s the text I composed.

This is not how the brain works.

The analogy is that “mind” is a massive data-processing program running on the brain. Or a mess of such programs running in parallel. Hence a virtual machine. Write the program(s) in a suitable language, and the “mind” can run on any capable “substrate.” Such is the fantasy supporting the desire to “upload” the self and live forever. Gelernter is no biologist, but he argues that his concept of an attention spectrum requires a body. IOW, a mind cannot exist apart from a body. I agree, but my reason is I think somewhat simpler. The brain’s primary function is to operate the body. Most of its energy is expended in doing just that.

(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/)

 “Thinking”, such as it is, takes up a very small part of the brain’s energy budget. Being “me” is what thinking is mostly about, and it’s really just an afterthought.

The last part of the book is a nicely done symbolic reading of  The Song of Solomon. Gelernter is a believing Orthodox Jew. He posits that the hyper-focussed attention that we nowadays equate with thinking is a recent development. (Schooling is intended to train us to think this way.) An unfortunate effect of high-attention rational thought is a misreading of ancient texts, which are, he says, the products or records of low-attention thinking, hence their nonlinear narratives, symbolism and metaphor, and reliance on analogy to make both narrative and thematic sense. I think this is the most valuable part of the book. But it doesn’t prove that the concept of an attention spectrum explains creativity.

A curious book, with many interesting and useful insights. Worth a read. **½

165 years ago (Essays From The Times, 1860)

(The Times), Essays From the Times. (1860) I received this collection many decades ago while researching Swift’s literary reputation as part of my work on his satiric poems. Like most critics of his verse, the anonymous essayist reprinted in this collection fails to notice that Swift used impersonation in his verse as well as in his prose. Very few readers have believed that the supposed author of A Modest Proposal is Swift himself. The suggestion that the poor should raise their children to be tasty dishes for the rich is ascribed to the supposed author, a practical man of business suggesting a solution to poverty. But the uncritically accepted Romantic notion that a poet expresses his most authentic self in his verse prevented Victorian and later critics from realising that Swift used the same method in many of his satiric verses. The speakers of Swift's satires are not Swift, but various personages. Some are people of sense, others quite the opposite.

The Romantic poets were disingenuous in their claims. The speaker of a Wordsworth poem is an idealised version of himself. The Romantics would have you believe that this idealised version is the real thing. I don’t think so. In fact, I think all writing is a kind of impersonation.

This time round, I read all the essays. What struck me most was the writers’ blithe confidence in the correctness of their judgements and censures, especially of their subject’s morality. People of every age tend to believe that their judgements on their forebears are correct. But it seems that the Victorians were the first in many centuries to believe that their judgments were final. As such, they are a cautionary example: The current wave of belief that we have reached a pinnacle of moral and ethical righteousness is as misplaced as those of every earlier age. If anything, we repeat the errors of our ancestors, technologically enhanced. Human progress is a circle dance.

These essays are essential reading for any student of the 19th century. The essay on Swift’s life and works found its place in the bibliography of my thesis. ***

Alligators in the Sewer (and other Folk Tales)

Thomas J. Craughwell. Alligators in the Sewer (1999) Folk tales, or real stories that happened to a friend of a friend, or FOAF. The compiler serves up relevant research into older versions of the tales. The plot generally remains the same, only details of technology and lifestyle change with the times. A first class potato-chip book, which I will dip into repeatedly as time and occasion offer. 

Recommended, if you can find a copy.

BTW, there are no alligators in the sewers of New York or any other city.

****

Fin de siècle fiction: Daughters of Decadence (Showalter 1993)

Elaine Showalter. Daughters of Decadence (1993) Showalter has selected a representative sample of short fiction written by women around 1890. These stories were published in women’s magazines and literary journals. The writers were at least semi-professional. Like their male counterparts, they wrote to satisfy the market, which at the time wanted moody pieces that suggested sensuality and luxurious indulgence in emotions, or melodramatic examinations of moral failure and just punishment.

The pieces that Showalter chose have an edge of defiance and rebellion. These writers knew their skills were equal to those of their male competitors, and naturally they did not like the lower pay and lack of recognition. They were  part of the second wave of feminism, which among other things gained the vote.

Given the heavy political freight these stories carry, are they worth reading? Yes, but like all fin-de-siècle art, they are as interesting for what they tell us of our ancestors’ taste and sentiments as for their artistic merit. As stories, they are well constructed. They cover a wide range of genres, from naturalistic fiction to romance to fantasy. I like the satire and social critique that most bring with them. They’re generally set in the upper middle and upper classes. The dialogue is artificial, but oddly enough it gives an impression of truth. I suspect that’s because men and women of those classes were always on their guard. They could not assume the language of intimacy among equals without also suggesting a sexual intimacy that could damage their reputations.

The stories are about personal and social relationships. Most tell of the emotional costs of presenting oneself as available, or withholding oneself because of some unsuitability. Women must play their roles, and so must men. It’s all very civilised in tone and style, but often viciously mean in substance. Many of the male characters display their prejudices and misogyny unwittingly. It’s no wonder that the critics objected, especially to the stories that suggested or showed that personal happiness requires the freedom to make moral choices for oneself.

The anthology apparently was assembled for use in a course on feminist literature, but the stories don’t need academic justification for reading them. If you like short stories, I think you will like these. If you also want to know something about the taste of your ancestors, I think they are good data. If you see popular literature as the mirror of the moral and ethical concerns of its times, these stories are essential reading.

Recommended. ***

Maliick's Pillow Book: Random musings and barbs.

     Heather Mallick. The Pillow Book of Heather Mallick (2004) Mallick was still writing for The Globe and Mail when she published this book. The Globe eventually dismissed her because of her caustic remarks about rich twits who think they’re the Universe’s gift to the rest of us. She titled this collection of notes “Pillow Book” in homage to Sei Shonagon. Like a commonplace book, a pillow book is a collection of quotes. Like a journal, the quotes are written by the collector.
     Mallick is about as open a writer as I’ve ever read. She seems to hold nothing back. I’m sure she’s left out some of her rawest bits, after all, one’s readers’ sensitivities must be respected. What she’s included adds up to a portrait of a person on whom nothing is lost, one who finds nothing human alien to her. But Mallick does show her distaste for the detestable. Fundamentally, she’s a satirist in the Juvenalian tradition, which means she’s a moralist. Her morality is simple: Don’t hurt people. But otherwise, you can do (and say) what you want.
     As you might guess, I enjoyed this book. Even the bits that annoyed me. Mallick’s sharp eye is matched by a clear style. Recommended. ****

Trickster tricks make for a good life

 

    Tomson Highway. Laughing With the Trickster (CBC Massey Lectures, 2022) I learned that what I had learned about First Nations cultures was woefully incomplete. Read this book. It will educate you, and entertain you. Highway shows what he means when he says that Indigenous people laugh a lot. Life’s a blast, even when it isn’t. The Trickster deludes us, but also makes life interesting. The Creator made us for enjoyment.
     Threaded throughout this hugely exuberant romp through life is the dark narrative of the clash of Indigenous and Settler cultures. We Settlers have a lot to learn. A brighter thread, told mostly through Highway’s life story, is that Indigenous peoples are adaptable. Their cultures thrive because they have been able and willing to adapt. They don’t try to preserve their way of life, but to live it. And if that includes telling their stories in Settler languages, well, that’s life. And if that adaptation causes Settlers to adapt, too, well, that’s even better life.
     Highway ends with a brief account of his brother’s death. Rene told him, “Don’t mourn me, be joyful”. The last sentence of the book is, “ I have no time for tears; I’m too busy being joyful.”
     Read this book. ****
Footnote: Another essential book is Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian.

Orwell's last words:The Decline of the English Murder.

George Orwell. Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays (1965) Posthumous selection of previously uncollected essays. Orwell laments the banality of mid-20th century murders compared to the ingenuity of late 19th and early 20th century ones. For example, the desperate attempt to combine respectability and middle-aged passion as seen in the Crippen case.

     Most of these pieces discuss literature and art. Orwell observes the  political and social links between novels and the author’s life and times. Thus, he notes that Dickens accurately diagnoses the harms done by the mercantilist economics of Victorian Britain, but doesn’t see them as any more than the failings of individuals to exercise the common human virtues of empathy and generosity. Orwell doesn’t use the word “systemic” but the concept is implicit in all his social and economic critiques. He knows that any system makes some behaviours easy and others difficult. Change the system and some behaviours will increase and others decrease. To put it another way: We can choose only from what’s available to us; and we will tend to choose the easier or less costly alternatives.
    Orwell’s writing, as you can see, prompts rambling and ruminative responses. He’s also a pleasure to read. Recommended. ****

How Writing Changed Us: Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong (1982)

Walter Ong. Orality and Literacy (1982) A careful survey of the state of orality studies, or better, the study of spoken language. Since the 80s, the field has proliferated, with increasing emphasis on how we generate speech in different contexts. That spoken and written language were different was obvious. What was less obvious was that the written language was not the superior mode. In fact, spoken language, exhibiting as it does the vagaries of regional and class dialects, was often deprecated as a primitive and even degraded form of the proper language as recorded in writing.
      Ong does not attack this attitude directly, but shows that an oral culture uses language differently than a literate one. He’s concerned that literate readers of the earliest writings aren’t aware enough that these are records of oral compositions, and hence of oral modes. He does a wonderful job of describing and explaining how people without writing construct(ed) their songs, stories and orations using standard tropes and repetitive patterns as scaffolds for building the performance in real time, and certainly each time adapted to whatever audience listened to them. What Homer memorised was not an unbroken stream of thousands of lines of verse, but pieces of the story, which (he) would select, adapt, and reconstruct. Ong’s evidence is both field work by anthropologists who recorded the myths and histories of non-literate peoples, and also the bits of speech embedded in the epics as recorded.
     Ong (and his fellow scholars) go a step or two further. They claim that literacy changes the way we understand the world. What’s written is read, not heard. The text takes precedence over the writer, and eventually become detached from the writer. When we read old books, we read them as independent and objective witnesses to the past, often not realising how much we reconstruct a text, any text, as we read it. Hence the mistaken belief that we can understand the “literal meaning” of a text.  In an oral culture, speech and speaker are one: the story exists only while it is being spoken, and the relation between the audience and the speaker’s utterance is personal, immediate, and fleeting. A written text preserves what was though and understood generations before us. A speech exists only while it’s spoken, and memory of what the now dead ancestors thought and understood is reinterpreted every time it’s spoken. Written law can be consulted. Spoken law depends on trust in the speaker. Grasping the difference between the oral and the written may help us understand why so many of our present day conflicts are about what words signify. We tend to believe that if we understand the text we understand reality, and if we understand reality, we know the truth.
     I found the book heavy going at times, and have already begun to re-read it. Ong’s style is clear, and he has nice dry wit. His observations cast a new light on the effects of electronic media. The Wiki article on him adds a great deal to my comments.
     Recommended. ****

Thee More by Lapham: Migration, Home, and Discovery

  Lapham’s Quarterly 14-3: Migration (April-May 2022). A very timely collection, now that migrations will become the new normal. Not that they’re really new: One could label our species homo peregrinus, since wandering has been hominid behaviour as far back as archeology and paleontology can tell. For us modern hominids it’s species-specific behaviour. But so is territoriality, hence the conflicts caused when we wander into land already claimed by other humans. That’s why writing about it is very ancient.
     Migration may be freely chosen or forced. Either way, it causes home-sickness. We mourn the place we came from. But we can’t go home again, because the time we’ve spent elsewhere ensures that we and home have changed. Return is usually impossible for the exile. The excerpts from migrants’ and exiles’ writings range from melancholic nostalgia to optimistic hope for a better or at least tolerable future. The urge to explore prompts much individual and some group migration. People who do this write high-spirited and often self-aggrandising accounts.
     The accounts of flight from war, natural disaster, and political oppression are harrowing. The German word for those who flee their homelands is Flüchtling, “flightling”, which could be a good Anglo-Saxon word. Instead we use the French “refugee”. So German speakers are reminded that such migrants flee from peril, while English speakers think of them as seeking safety. Language has subtle effects.
     Recommended. Subscriptions to Lapham’s Quarterly are available on their website. ****

Lapham’s Quarterly 10-1: Home (2017) The human homing instinct is as strong as the urge to wander. In the end, we wander until we come home. Home may be what we left or what we find. It signifies safety and comfort. “Home is where they have to take you in,” Robert Frost wrote. Home is where we have family and the extended family we call our tribe. “A house is not a home,” says anonymous, that composer of random wisdom.  “Home is where the heart is,” anonymous says again.
     Yes, home is defined by our feelings. It’s not a place, but a deep attachment to a place. Happy are they who can carry their homes with them, for they will never be strangers in a strange land. But most of us leave home one way or another, and thus home is inextricably tied to wandering. Life is a journey, we say. Away from home and back again.
     Another fine anthology. ****

 Lapham’s Quarterly 10-2: Discovery (2017) Not as focussed as the other collections, because “discovery” is a rather nebulous concept. Or rather, a very wide-ranging one. It covers everything from what explorers discover to what each of us finds out about oneself. Besides, what’s a discovery for some is ancient knowledge for others. For the child, every day brings new discoveries. For the elder, every day confirms what’s been discovered long ago.
     Nevertheless, some interesting bits about what drives the search, and of the difficulties and delights of finding things out, especially the unexpected. I think that as long as we can experience the curiosity of the child, life will be a pleasure, despite the annoying pains and creaky joints of old age. ****

Ursula Bloom on Stratford (re-read)

 

Ursula Bloom. A Rosemary for Stratford-on-Avon (1966) My copy was given to me by my mother, who received it from my uncle Paul Morgan. They grew up in Stratford–on-Avon, which enabled them both to add marginal notes.
     Ursula Bloom lived near Stratford as a child, and takes a proprietary interest. Much of her book is about Marie Corelli, who moved to Stratford towards the end of her career, apparently believing that she would be welcomed, respected, and lionised in such a literary shrine. She was, at first, but her quarrelsome nature soon antagonised the town.
     Bloom, who had a fair success as a novelist, writes her remembrance like a novel, with much invented dialogue between the worthies of the Town. That makes for amusing reading, but tends to create a rather confusing mix of attitudes and emphases. Bloom also romanticises the country town; this is nothing like the Stratford I remember, which was a determined market town with a hard-nosed attitude towards the tourism business that Shakespeare's Birthplace attracted. (Its other major industry was Flowers Brewery, which made real ale until it was acquired by one of the multi-nationals that now dominate that craft.) There’s no question that Corelli was a difficult person who overestimated both her talent and her eminence. But Bloom’s manner and tone, and the almost complete absence of quotations from contemporary sources, make me suspicious. A note by U.P. states that the book infuriated Uncle Peter (my great-uncle), and I’m not surprised. (Uncle Peter was a for a while assistant librarian at the Memorial Theatre.)
     An oddity, but a keeper because of the family connections. **

People worth knowing: Eleanor Wachtel's Original Minds

Eleanor Wachtel. Original Minds (2003) Sixteen edited interviews originally broadcast on CBC’s Writers and Company. I’ve read writings by most of them, and met Desmond Tutu when he visited the Anglican Diocese of Algoma during his tour of Canada. He was, despite the horrors of apartheid, a cheerful and happy man. All are worth listening to, but I especially enjoyed the interviews with George Steiner, Jonathan Miller, and Oliver Sacks, perhaps because they are among my favourite people.

     Wachtel is a wonderful interviewer. She may begin with a set of questions, and clearly shifts to some questions she wants answers to, but her interviews sound and read like conversations. She prompts her guests with comments and questions directly related to what they’ve just said. She’s also done her homework: one always gets the impression that she’s read at least the two or three most important works by her guests.

     A book worth re-reading. Find the program here: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany. ****

Friends and foes (Lapham's Quarterly VIII-1 and XIV-2)

 

Lapham’s Quarterly VIII-1: Foreigners. (2015) Humans are possibly the most social animals in existence. We nurture each other from cradle to grave. Very few other animals behave similarly, chimpanzees and elephants being both the most well known and almost the only ones. We have strong instincts for bonding with each other. The complement is an equally strong instinct to distrust whoever is not of our group. Hence “foreigners”. Just as all human groups have customs and rules shaping behaviour towards fellow group members, all human groups have customs and rules about how to behave towards outsiders. The fact that these differ in detail doesn’t disguise the fact that the distinction between Us and Them is common to all social animals.
     Unlike other animals, we talk about what matters to us. Lapham and his team have assembled what looks like a representative collection of past and present writings and pictures about the Foreigner. One thing stands out to me: to enable any kind of non-violent interaction with foreigners, they are, at least temporarily, made members of the group. The distinction between Us and Them is not forgotten, but is firmly pushed into second place. A guest is one of us while they are with us. If a foreigner becomes a permanent guest, the some more or less formal ceremony acknowledges that they are now one of us.
     A tangential thought: we humans mark changes in social status. For example, a child becomes an adult. The initiation rites that mark this change are like the rites that mark the change from foreigner to insider.
     Personal note: I have felt like an outsider wherever I have lived.
     A good collection, as always. **** 

 

               
Lapham’s Quarterly XIV-2: Friendship. (2021) C. S. Lewis calls Friendship one of the Four Loves. He sees a common feature: Care and concern for some other person’s welfare. In Friendship, that begins with the awareness that the friend shares come source of joy or delight. The concern is then that the friend may enjoy that common delight as much as one does oneself. Hence a concern that they have the same resources, and hence a willingness to share. That willingness can widen to sharing anything and everything one has, which implies that Charity is next to Friendship. Lewis goes on to discuss Eros and Agape. His book is worth reading more than once.

    This collection doesn’t distinguish between friendship and charity, except perhaps in the sense that friendship may be charity focused on the few people we call our friends. Nevertheless, we read many testimonies to the power of friendship, and how for many people it was more important than family, or social or political alliance. We also read how, when mixed with social or political allowances, it can become corrupted, and an occasion for betrayal. The unkindness of a treacherous friend stings as sharp as the serpent’s tooth.

     Another good collection. ****

Burgess Writes about Writing (mostly)

 

Anthony Burgess. But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen (1986) A collection of “other writings”, mostly book reviews, with occasional travel pieces and general interest essays. Loosely organised by topic, eg, there are several essays about James Joyce all in a row.
     Burgess has a lively, well-stocked mind, and knows his opinions well. His pieces are a pleasure to read, especially when you have some knowledge of his subject, and even when you disagree with him. I don’t think Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses are the greatest novels of the 20th century, but Burgess almost convinces me to take another read at them.
     He doesn’t like Orwell’s writing, but can’t help admiring his honesty, and his attempts to say things as truthfully as possible. I wonder what he would now make of Orwell’s insight into how surveillance generates paranoia, which kills empathy.
     He doesn’t think science fiction is really literature, because its focus on ideas prevents its being literary art. Literature as art is finally what attracts Burgess. Using language as the medium for creating – what, exactly? He’s right that what separates entertainment from art is style (for want of a better word), and that writers can use language to help or make us imagine what we could or would not imagine otherwise, which is the function of art in any medium. But I think he undervalues craft. There’s an irony in that. He’s is a superb craftsman. His essays are learned without being pedantic, entertaining without being superficial, and satisfying for both their ideas and the skilful exposition.
     The pieces are undated, and there is no index, both serious lacks. Nevertheless, recommended, if you can find a copy. I’ll probably keep this one for the occasional re-read. ***

 

Humour in the New Yorker: An historical anthology

     David Remnick & Henry Finder. Fierce Pajamas (2001) A representative selection of humourous New Yorker writing. I read my way through it over a couple of weeks, and there are precious few knee-slappers. There are however many pieces that will raise a smile, or annoy, or please, or engage, or interest, or trigger any other of the responses to what we read. The writers use all modes and genres, sometimes as targets, sometimes a means of humour or satire.
     I enjoyed it more than I expected. I also absorbed some unexpected history of humourous writing from the chronological and thematic arrangement: Spoofs, for example, and the War Between Men and Women, or The Writing Life, as well as Words of Advice, and several others, ending with a selection of verse that proves that writing “light verse” is a serious an occupation as any other.
      The tropes of humour and satire are governed by fashion: we learn of the difficulties of love and marriage through stereotypes that change over time. The overbearing wife and the meek husband (represented by Thurber’s Walter Mitty) don’t ring true anymore, but the mutual incomprehension does. There are satires on several kinds of ignorance that no longer resonate. But the self-satisfaction of the overweening ignoramus does. We even have a name for it now, it’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. The perils of celebrity, both for idol and adulator, are well explored in the section The Frenzy of Renown, the title itself making the main point.
     A good gift for anyone who likes reading miscellaneous short writing. I was going to give it away, but I will keep it for the pleasures of rereading. ***

A Mixed Threesome: Art, Model railroading, Tolkien.

Notebook Magazine (Issue Two, 2007) Issued by a “An Edmonton Art and Writing Collective”. Works are accompanied by answers to a standard interview. The art is generally pretty good, some with a regrettable tendency to shock and annoy, the rest interesting experiments in style and media. The writing is at best average, most of it should have been edited. Much of it assumes that if you have an interesting story to tell, you don’t need to make it interesting.
     I looked up all the contributors online. Most have disappeared from public view, but Timothy Atherton (photos), Heather Millar, Stephanie Jonsson, Bruce Barry are among the few that have continued to make art. Interesting mag, not a keeper. **

Art Curren. Kitbashing HO Model Railroad Structures (1988). Kitbashing??? The art of using the parts of kits as raw material, rearranging them, cutting and splicing them, and of course painting them and adding new signage, in order to create a structure that better fits the layout design. Curren was a master at doing this. Some of his creations are fairly obvious variations on the basic kit, e.g., Maple Street, five houses made from the same farmhouse kit. Others are new designs, e.g., the Perry Shibble Fruit & Produce Co-op, which began life as a small brewery. That name shows his skill at creating groaners, too, but by the mid-80s punning names were already becoming unfashionable.
     Curren writes well, tossing in the odd warning of possible mishaps, and ‘fessing up to changes he made when he realised his original concept didn’t work out. As inspiration this book is excellent. As a set of project instructions it’s pretty good, too, as most of the kits are still available, most in new packages. Cheap plastic kits will be with us for a long time, and for the modeller willing to ignore instructions, mess with a perfectly good kit, and practice painting and weathering skills, they will continue to provide raw materials for unique buildings better suited to a layout theme than the originals..
     Out of print, but recommended if you can find a copy. ****

     J. R .R. Tolkien. Smith of Wootton Major (1967; 2nd edition 1975) Illustrated by Pauline Baynes, a distant connection through an aunt. That’s why I bought the book, a very handsome object, beautifully printed on heavy paper. The story itself feels like an experiment in folktale, with its chronicle-like stringing together of events, minimally sketched characters, and matter-of-fact assumption of magic and Faery as realities.
     At a feast of the Great Cake a boy swallows a Faerie star, which not only gives him a talent for singing, but grants him access to Faery, which he visits regularly. The cook’s Prentice is implicated in all the major events, guiding the human actors into making the choices that are best for them, and for Faerie too.
     I enjoyed reading the book. The black and white drawings are well done, but lower the production values of the book-as-object. Apparently, the publishers didn’t think it worth the cost of commissioning colour. No doubt a collector’s item for the Tolkien fan. It merits its own entry in Wikipedia. ***

Difficult Essays by George Steiner.

George Steiner. On Difficulty and Other Essays (1972-78) Steiner is one of my heroes: his insights into how we use language have I think not been surpassed. They have certainly helped stimulate modern linguistics, which has widened its focus from the comparison of available texts to include the study of actual speech. Herewith some stray thoughts responding to and prompted by these essays.
     The study of spoken pre-literate languages has produced some unexpected results, such as that not only the lexicon but the grammar of a dialect can change radically within a speaker’s lifetime. (McWhorter, The Power of Babel). Writing slows down the rate of language change. It also, eventually, spawns two forms of the language, written and spoken, each with its own conventions and usages missing from the other.
     Steiner’s critiques of Whorf’s and Chomsky’s stances on the nature of language (Whorf, Chomsky, and the Student of Literature) feed into experiments by Pinker and others that have shown that grammatical gender, for example, affects how people feel about the world around them. That supports Whorf’s hypothesis that language shapes our experience. But Bickerton’s researches into pidgins and creoles suggest that pidgins reveal the essential features of all human languages, and the creoles show how languages acquire first the regularities that we label “grammar”, and then the idiosyncrasies that differentiate them, and eventually make them new languages. Those findings support Chomsky’s hypothesis that language is innate.

     Steiner’s stance is that neither Whorfian nor Chomskyian hypotheses can account for actual language. This reminds me of the surprising success of computerised translation, which depends not only on dictionaries, but also on statistical features such as the most likely adjective-noun combinations. “Style” also can be statistically defined, and so can some genres. Combine these ideas with AI pattern-matching systems, and an AI algorithm can write a credible sports news report when given a handful of facts about the game.
     Steiner wrote these essays before ubiquitous personal computers, which limited his speculations and predictions about the future of reading and books (After the Book?). He correctly predicted that audio-books (cassettes) would gain market share, and that hard-cover books would lose out to other formats. What would he make of e-books and texts preserved in the electronic web? I think his judgement would stand. What he calls “deep reading” would continue to decline. The kind of awareness of other texts, past and present, which characterises serious literature, would become the preserve of a literate elite. The rest of us would be semi-literate: able to decode text, but unable (and increasingly unwilling) to take the time to relate texts to each other and to the present moment. Which is exactly what has happened. Since serious literature is historical in its very essence, the awareness of history, especially of its messiness, its ethical ambiguities and contradictions, has also declined. I haven’t read more recent essays by him, so I don’t know whether my speculations about his opinions are accurate.
     I think semi-literacy tends to simplistic literalness, a resistance to and intolerance of ambiguity, an inability to recognise irony or handle metaphor, and a suspicion of any text that assumes familiarity with allusions to the past. The digital world is an eternal present, with yesterday already receding into the mist-obscured ancient past.
     I read several of these essays twice. A book that’s difficult in Steiner’s sense, but well worth the effort. His language is ornate, laced with Latinisms, but so appositely that even unfamiliar words yield their meaning(s) transparently, and enrich the reader's understanding. ****

George Steiner 1929-2020

[British Council]

Provocative entertainment: Hitchens arguing

Christopher Hitchens. Arguably: Essays (2011) Published the year before his death, the book is a compendium of pieces Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair, Slate, Newsweek, and other periodicals. Hitchens doesn’t like humbug, stupidity, fraud, cruelty, and other evils. He likes compassion, art, sense, democracy, peace, food, friends, literature, and other good things. He rails against the evils done in the name of religion, distrusts and hates all ideology, despises weakness that arms itself with a gun, and the British royal family. The latter was surely the deciding reason to migrate ot the USA and become a citizen. His love for America gave him reason to point at and criticise its failures to live up to its ideals. He was a journalist, and saw many of the horrors of the 20th century firsthand. His education at Oxford (he read philosophy, politics, and economics) gave him the habit and skills of thorough reading. He was a lifelong socialist, and hated both left and right ideologies.    
Despite his rage at the cruelty and folly of humankind, most of his writing is witty and engaging. If you find this book, read it. ****

Hitchens essays: And Yet (2015)

     And Yet... (2015) Posthumous collection of essays, mostly from periodicals such as Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, etc. His book reviews are thorough and sometimes occasions for polemics. His polemics are always interesting. He was a libertarian who detested totalitarianism, including religion. He became an American citizen late in life, and immediately began digging into the history that is glossed over by the myths. He tried to be honest and rational; one of his heroes was Orwell, because Orwell tried to be as truthful as humanly possible.
     Picking any one essay as an example won’t do Hitchens justice, but here goes: Bah, Humbug attacks Christmas, not because it’s religious but because the relentless urging to buy gifts promotes hypocrisy. The holiday instills guilt: if you don’t lavish gifts upon your nearest and dearest, you obviously don’t love them. Along the way Hitchens reminds us that, as soon as Cromwell’s victories gave them the power, the Puritans banned Christmas in England. It was a pagan feast, not a Christian one. Thus those who wish to “keep the Christ in Christmas” betray both their historical and theological ignorance. In any case, what we now think of as time-honoured Christmas traditions were invented wholesale by the Victorians. Prince Albert and Dickens have a lot to answer for.
     Beware: if you start reading, you will want to read the next essay and the next and the next, and before you know it, you’ve spent a hour or so immersed in this book. ***

Shakespeare: a Life

      John Mortimer. Will Shakespeare (1977) Supposedly written by Jack Rice, a boy actor in Shakespeare’s troupe. Well done. It covers the “lost years” of Shakespeare’s life, and provides a plausible version of Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway. I would have welcomed a longer and more detailed book, but then Mortimer would have had to invent additional narrators.
      The better you know Shakespeare’s plays, the more pleasure in the reading. There’s a convincing (at least while you read it) explanation of the “two loves” of the Sonnets. Mortimer knows theatre, his descriptions of Elizabethan theatre have the ring of truth. As do his accounts of the many ways which people scrabbled for a living in a time without social safety nets, when patronage was the best, if also riskiest, path to professional advancement, and sickness was likely to kill you without warning.
     I enjoyed the book. The cover announces that it was made into a TV series, of which I know nothing. The book is worth looking for. ***
     The TV series is available (low resolution) on Youtube.

Love and Hate

I found this when culling some old notes:

From the Toronto Star, 5th April 2014:

“Intriguingly, this pattern [of brain activity when subjects felt hate] touched on brain regions “almost identical to the one activated by passionate, romantic love.” (1)

This finding confirms an insight long known to poets: that love and hate are close cousins. Both are an obsession with the well-being of another person. The lover wants the best, the hater wants the worst, for the object of their obsession. What’s intriguing is that the researchers found this discovery intriguing. For a literary scholar the discovery isn’t much of a surprise. We see here another example of C P Snow’s Two Cultures.

(1) Jennifer Young quoting Semir Zeki, British neuro-scientist at University College, London.