Summer of grammar by Michael Dirda
All great criticism begins with love. After all, we read books not from obligation but for pleasure, for mental excitement, for what A.E. Housman called the tingle at the back of the neck.
This quote, which I cannot agree more, was on the back cover of The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature, and I got curious about the person who wrote it: Michael Dirda
Dirda's objective, which I thought that he achieves:
We turn to books in the hope of better understanding our selves and better engaging with the meaning of our experiences. Let me say, right off, that I believe a work of art is primarily concerned with the creation of beauty, whether through words, colors, shapes, sounds, or movement. But it is impossible to read serious novels, poetry, essays, and biographies without also growing convinced that they gradually enlarge our minds, refine our spirits, make us more sensitive and understanding.
Full of great quotes of which possibly my favourite is:
The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.. . . Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our mind, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired, which we are forced to make use of.—Simone Weil
All great criticism begins with love. After all, we read books not from obligation but for pleasure, for mental excitement, for what A.E. Housman called the tingle at the back of the neck.
This quote, which I cannot agree more, was on the back cover of The Story About the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature, and I got curious about the person who wrote it: Michael Dirda
Dirda's objective, which I thought that he achieves:
We turn to books in the hope of better understanding our selves and better engaging with the meaning of our experiences. Let me say, right off, that I believe a work of art is primarily concerned with the creation of beauty, whether through words, colors, shapes, sounds, or movement. But it is impossible to read serious novels, poetry, essays, and biographies without also growing convinced that they gradually enlarge our minds, refine our spirits, make us more sensitive and understanding.
Full of great quotes of which possibly my favourite is:
The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.. . . Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our mind, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired, which we are forced to make use of.—Simone Weil
Amidst all the calls for more ethics and considerations for social issues on the part of tech companies, this looks like quite an interesting and innovative way of approaching the problem. This review of the book Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds gives a good overview of the contents and thinking.
The critical essays accompanying the text are eclectic, cross-disciplinary, and incisive, and they include contributions from beyond the academy, such as the essays by science fiction authors Elizabeth Bear and Cory Doctorow.
Using the novel as a canvas on which to think through contemporary issues.
These annotations often raise novel questions about technology and society, extrapolating from the technological conditions suggested by the novel into terms that might emerge today, alongside the more usual role of explanatory footnotes in a student text.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein’s Monster in another time of technological transition, the Industrial Revolution.
It is an important part of what gives “Frankenstein” its enduring hold on our contemporary imagination: Both the novel and the cultural icon derive their special pathos from what Heather E. Douglas’s critical essay shrewdly calls the “bitter aftertaste of technical sweetness”—tragedy set in the distinctly modern conditions of secular science and technology.
The piece and the book it refers also cover how Shelley’s work is regarded by many as the first work of science-fiction and how it was made possible not only by her great talent but also her education. She studied the humanities—literature, philosophy and classics, as well as the science of the day. Today these two aspects of education are often times presented as opposites, and in some kind of fight, where on the contrary they need to coexist and feed from each other. It’s something that more and more people realize and integrate in their teaching, planning, and hiring but which is still regularly disregarded in many technology circles.
From Elizabeth Bear’s essay, this sounds familier:
Victor, she says, is morally culpable for not taking responsibility for his creation and for his refusal to acknowledge his responsibility because he cannot see it for what it is. He runs away from it and refuses to engage with it. He refuses to engage with the creature and flees, and he does so because he is not able to see its essential nature, its needs and his part in their fulfilment—and that, Bear says, is on account of his monstrous “narcissism, this inability to engage with other creatures” as creatures like himself.
And brings two kinds of cautionary tales, both very much worthy of deeper reflection and of today’s challenges:
We can thus discern two kinds of cautionary tales in “Frankenstein” (there are others): one Miltonian and the other Promethean. The former is a warning to “creators”—scientists, engineers and what this new edition of “Frankenstein” calls “creators of all kinds”—of the risks of hubris: reaching to exercise knowledge and powers that are not fully understood, whose consequences cannot be predicted and which cannot be controlled. The latter, however—the Promethean—is a warning to these same creators that, when they *do* exercise that knowledge and power, they must be willing to take responsibility for the things they create, for the work of their hands, which is what Prometheus did and what Victor failed to do. [Emphasis mine.]
Via Kottke:
Well this was fun! I’m not sure to which degree readers realize how much work goes into a week of kottke.org, and I’m sure Jason has a number of habits and a flow to things but wow! It’s an occasion to discover things hour after hour and find out what readers enjoy, but it is a lot of work. Hats off to you Jason.
I hope you enjoyed what I shared here this week. I encourage you to have a look at my newsletter Sentiers. Check out the archives and subscribe to keep up with where my curiosity takes me.
In case you missed them the first time around, and perhaps to give you a better idea of what usually draws my attention for Sentiers, here are some favorites from what I posted over the last few days, written as an homage to Tim Carmody’s style in the Kottke newsletter.
There’s a kind of superpower in walking, which is also a good way of encouraging serendipity, you might even find things like these storefronts in Tokyo. Much of my life and career was made possible by reading. I’ve never been to a desert library but I do have ghosts on my shelves. With books you can create futures byinventing utopias, and you can draw lessons from them, like cautionary tales from Frankenstein’s Monster or the many teachings of the great Ursula K. Le Guin.
Where the River Runs Gold by Sita Brahmachari. “The few live in luxury, whilst the millions like them crowd together in compounds, surviving on meagre rations and governed by Freedom Fields — the organisation that looks after you, as long as you opt in. The bees have long disappeared; instead children must labour on farms, pollinating crops by hand so that the nation can eat.”
How “Bookstagramming” Is Changing How People Read
In these sprawling but welcoming communities, readers have found one another, banding together in a global, aesthetically pleasing book club that’s open for discussion 24/7. More than 33 million Instagram posts are tagged “#bookstagram,” and BookTube videos can amass millions of views — luring publishers and authors who actively court the most popular accounts. –Washington Post
Urban Nudges is a site that documents small efforts by cities and the people who live in them to slightly change the behaviors of their inhabitants in some way. A 2008 book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein defines a nudge as “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives”. That sounds a bit academic but some examples from the site clarify things. For instance, protected bike lanes encourage bike riding
Earth Heroes: Twenty Inspiring Stories of People Saving Our World by Lily Dyu. “With twenty inspirational stories celebrating the pioneering work of a selection of Earth Heroes from all around the globe, from Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough to Yin Yuzhen and Isatou Ceesay, each tale is a beacon of hope in the fight for the future of our planet, proving that one person, no matter how small, can make a difference.”
