Michael’s Comments (group member since Mar 07, 2009)

Michael’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Brian wrote: "may need two shrines patrick. i've added it to my 'purchase' category and i'm looking forward to reading it. i just need to know what michael witnesses and doesn't quite comprehend."

Maybe we should move this over to the 'Reading Our Own" group of threads. I'm intrigued now too and will be adding this to my must purchase/read pile shortly.

Patrick wrote: "Also, it looks to me as if the circle, which is closed, is more inevitable than the infinite possibilities of different lines or different acts."

> I'm still ringing from this great quote Patrick. But I might add that the circle might be the more successful form, but I think the dimension of possibilities to which you refer - and which Borges once masterfully referred to as the Museum of Platonic Archetypes - is a) overpopulated with potential geometries and histories, and b) less conscious of the degree of actuality which this thing or that thing have over each other, and is more about "fair play", chap, and equality of potential than even the success of the circle would allow at first blush. Don't get me wrong, I like circles. Don't want to get on the wrong sign of any circle lovers out there.

Jcamilo wrote: "Time is a manifestation of religiosity, every time you check what hours is, you pray"

> Man, I heard the sound of one hand clapping with this one. Need to think about it. But I think Mr. David Hume would agree with you here Señor Jcamilo.

Great comments continue to come to this thread people! I've been out leading a real life and been away pretty much the past few days. Good to come back and see it lively here at ffredux. It’s why I keep coming back.

Bueno,
Oro

Looks like you and me about kilt off this here discussion Oro. You want to meet me at the saloon for a whiskey and wait an see if anyone comes around back agin?

mm

Hugh wrote: "Oh! Look, Pa! That Evison boy is going after old man Faulkner agin...

Don't know that sending The Bear after him will help, Swanny. I understand that some folks just find Faulkner insufferable. I ..."

Great to have you back, Hugh. Must have been having to great a time in, er, Fort Lauderdale. Don't think we've heard from you in weeks, and to re-enter with ""Oh! Look, Pa! That Evison boy is going after old man Faulkner agin..." had me searching for the right acronym. Oh, here it is: ROFL.

Oro

Maureen wrote: "our culture is obsessed with wanting it all, in acquiring the latest and the greatest, or the youngest, if you will. most people don't really appreciate what they have, even if it compared to somebody who has nothing, they will find a way to say "it's all relative"...

It could also be biological. The animal needs to keep it's stress levels exercised "just in case" at all times. You know that bit about necessity being the mother and all.

But, in a vain attempt to steer this puppy back to the book, Charlaralotalot's point was, I think, that these poor characters weren't in it for the romance or the rubbing of naughtly bits. They were in it to excercise their need for a little stress, just to liven up the evening. Like going out to a restaurant.

mm
er, I mean Oro.

Just see what we are missing. Love the song to the webpage.

http://www.myspace.com/nylonmagazine

Shel wrote: "You know, I've been waiting for someone (I mean anyone, not this discussion) to adequately define what this blanket statement means... people say things to me all the time like "oh, she just needs ..."

One species we have in our neighborhood is the housewife who has been continually redecorating for the past 12 years, but who is not quite ready to have people in yet.

Charlaralotte wrote: "Dogs help. Jobs help. Marriages help. Chidren help. Restaurants help. Affairs help.
"

Great depressing post. My pet peeve: crisis helps, small wars help. I am just constantly surprised at people's need for problems.

But might I add, "Fiction Files helps" and maybe leave this post on a lighter note. re!
mm

Jcamilo wrote: "It is not one of my favorite tales of Borges, in my opinion, not one of his best, but the title is good enough to became some short of trademark.

Hence also my prejudice. I do not think this is his best story, but I understand why the title stuck. Borges says an author's work is gradually reduced over time to a single sentence (I paraphrase), and then a single word; hence, sadly "Borgesean".

I think this story would be better understood in context of other stories. Maybe we could take Ben's advice and do a companion reading of "Pierre Menard"? Maybe comparing the two would elicit more discussion?

I also like his "Handwriting of God", "Funes the Memorious", "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins", "New Refutation of Time", "Pascal's Sphere", ...any takers?

mm

That isn't synasthesia. That's just the power of association.

I think it was Danielle - who I am happy to say rejoined our group today, welcome back Ms. D - who pointed out that Nabakov was inflicted with synasthesia. I should go back to the archives and find the thread on this subject.

Meanwhile here is a link to that book by Nabakov:
Vladimir Nabokov, Alphabet in Color

Interesting blurb: "Vladimir Nabokov saw rich colors in letters and sounds and noted the deficiency of color in literature, praising Gogol as the first Russian writer to truly appreciate yellow and violet. He saw q as browner than k, and s as not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl. For anyone who has ever wondered how the colors Nabokov heard might manifest themselves visually, Alphabet in Color is a remarkable journey of discovery. Jean Holabird's interpretation of the colored alphabets of one of the twentieth century's literary greats is a revelation. The book masterfully brings to life the charming and vibrant synesthetic colored letters that until now existed only in Nabokov's mind. In Alphabet in Color Jean Holabird's grasp of form and space blends perfectly with Nabokov's idea that a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape. In his playful foreword, Brian Boyd, "the prince of Nabokovians", points out that an important part of "Nabokov's passion for precision was his passion for color."

Brian wrote: "Jonathan wrote: " . . . lovely passage, but how exactly does one smell the curves of a river? . . . does a river smell different at a bend? and if so, can one smell multiple curves at a great dista..."

Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi that the Choctaw had 14 different words for the smells of the river.

Kidding.

Esther wrote: "I have to agree that MySpace is dying...of that I feel pretty sure. Facebook seems to be thriving but has attracted the older crowd, hence my republican aunts and uncles sending me friend requests..."

Sounds like a promising recipient for the annual Fiction File Scholarship prize.

Michael wrote: "Shel wrote: "So, Michael, where did that little excerpt above come from?"

I would recommend The Modern World site I reference at the top of the thread for study of many of the authors we discuss..."

BTW, I just found the results of a contest The Modern World sponsored for "the best review of an imaginary book". These are great!

http://www.themodernword.com/contests...

Oro

Shel wrote: "So, Michael, where did that little excerpt above come from?"

I would recommend The Modern World site I reference at the top of the thread for study of many of the authors we discuss in this group, and the Borges section is no exception. Within that section I found a listing of fictional books whihc Borges did not write, including The Garden of Forking Paths, by Ts'ui Pen.

Here is an index of the authors on The Modern World:
http://www.themodernword.com/authors....

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this short story.

Oro

Now that we have rescued the Kafka thread from a discussion of Borges, I thought I'd post a quote from the Argentine master on imminence. Note Borges' use of lists as here,

"Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon."
- Borges, Essay: The Wall and the Books

Shel wrote: "I guess we should all just keep turning left.

I wish I were more of a Borges afficionado, but I'm not, so I'll be stumbling through this one, even with that extremely helpful other thread. What's ..."

Oh no, I'm enjoying too much listening to you circumnavigate any meaning that might be here to interrupt. Please go on. I am afraid my mind is already made up, and I find the fresh eyes on the text delightful. Anyway; I am sure Oro - if that who he really is - and I, Michael, will jump in and prejudice the conversation soon enough.

mm

Shel wrote: "Hm.

Well, the way I would do it were I on the inside of MySpace is to do what our team of developers at About very technically used to call (are you ready?) sucking it down and chewing it up. (Whi..."

I take your point about getting a static copy (e.g., er, "sucking" it down). From there it would be gravy. And yes, text index the entire puppy. My question: what would Rupert think of us doing that? Doesn't he own the entire content of Fiction Files?
mm

The following is an overview by Allen B. Ruch, 21 January 2004 http://www.themodernword.com/borges/b...

The Garden of Forking Paths - Ts'ui Pen

Written by the governor of Yunnan, this work is largely considered to be next to Finnegans Wake in inscrutability. Ts'ui Pen retired from rulership to write a book and construct a labyrinth; and for thirteen years he labored on that task. Upon his death, all his relatives found were the myriad pages to an almost incomprehensible manuscript -- no real book, and certainly no physical labyrinth. Saved from the fire by a Buddhist monk, the pages were organized into some sort of form and published, much to the shame of Ts'ui Pen's family. Virtually ignored in China, the work was finally revised, corrected, and restored to its intended form by the English Sinologist Stephen Albert, who began a translation. To him goes the credit for the discovery of the book's strange form: the book is the labyrinth. It is a non-linear work in which anything that can happen, does -- each possible plot outcome is pursued, multiplying into a seemingly infinite chaos. In this way, the book represents Ts'ui Pen's view of time: and endless series of possibilities that spread their web through all of eternity.

The restored and translated version had to wait several decades after Albert's death to finally find a publisher: the book was finally published in 1955 by a small company in New York. Financed by a Dublin philanthropist, the editions were quite beautiful: three volumes, each of 500 rose-colored pages, bound in black leather with golden Chinese calligraphy on the front; illustrated throughout with color plates, they bore a dedication to Stephen Albert and a forward by Joseph Campbell. Unfortunately The Garden of Forking Paths has never been published again, making the surviving volumes quite rare and expensive. (I would like to make this observation: In 1985 the American composer Stephen Albert, a direct descendent of the Sinologist of the same name, wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning symphony based on Finnegans Wake. It seems that it runs in the family!)

This from the Kafka thread on Sr. Borges:

Jcamilo wrote: Hey I can still provide several evidences that I am a fictional identidy with something not related to either identidy.

As Borges, do not forget he is an atheist that mistrusted his atheism, so he claimed to be in doubt. But he certainly didnt believed in god or a creation power, just the chances of something happening all the time. In the end, like everything, it is a game of interpretation, so God is also one of his precursors. (hence, Shakespeare and Homer are gods. Better way to define creation than that, I have no idea. God as the verb was one of his favorite parts of the gospels)....
And that works with Kafka. Faith is full of certainess. Kafka is not. Kafka is not talking about religion, we are.”

Maureen wrote: hey oro: i think i am you, oro :)

Jcamilo wrote: see, Michael. Another prof. The Universe fixes the mind of men.

Michael wrote: Interesting either/or proposition here “Oro”. What exactly would be the difference between:

1. Creative power
2. The chance of something happening all the time.

The Borgesian sense that the divine is an imminent ground of possibility, that it is near, rejuvenative and surprising; how does that stray a lick from Catholic theology? Borges has his doubts, but I don’t think his fruit fell that far from the Catholic tree which bore him. That said, he claims Judeo-Hispanic roots, and often talks of the Cabalah. He has also on multiple occasion referred to God as a lesser God, a temperamental brat of a lesser God. I need to consult my notes, but Borges wrote often of the Heresiarchs and their intricately steeped heavens, containing level within level of divinities; the God of the Christians being way down on this hierarchy, a pawn to the higher powers.

But, we digress.
mm


Jcamilo wrote: Some say his hebraish roots are a form of reverence. Also, his studies of Cabalah are focused on text, he neved admited the hand behind the text. God is author, but not author of nature, universe, author of the aesthetic products because his faith was only on aesthetic experience.
Rememer, Borges was not really catholic, his father was agnostic and his father is his first hand influence. They are closer to protestant. He declared he felt himself close to budhism, where a Order was reverenced, not the creator of the order.
But the difference here is the absence of creator - adding a creator is great logic, an explanation - Borges used God as a symbol, like he used Asterion, a concept, not a character. Remember Michael, Religions are not about doubts, are about a given explanation. They are logical. Not the world of borges.

Chris wrote: I need to introduce you to some of my Episcopalian brethren. We live in doubt and question everything, albeit cheerfully.

Margaret wrote: "I am really interestedin working on a solidcopy ofbackspace. Iwas hopeing Matija would look into it withme. But also some kind of hard copy of both ff versions. Also I was pondering something along..."

I am thinking both FF groups and Backspace. What I think we would need to do is create a program to go through each page (each topic, each post) and download the content to a consolidated database. We should be able to capture the content, author, date, etc. from the HTML. I don't know if MySpace would appreciate it. Shel; your thoughts?