Shel’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Shel’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Oro wrote: "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 c..."

OK, I get it now! :-)

I know we were just getting back to the story but I think talking about postmodern malaise is actually relevant to the story and how we all perceive the characters. We have all seen so many private lives and indiscretions dragged out into the open like so much dirty laundry; we are led by the noses to judge those lives. We are numb from the coverage. Britney. Lindsey. Drew Peterson. That mom in Texas who killed all of her children. And on an on.

I think that in this story, instead of talking about it in contemporary terms of this drama stuff, maybe it would be helpful to view it through a self-constructive or self-destructive lens.

For Gurov and Anna, it seems to me that it will take an act of destruction of others, to be self-constructive.

That's what I was trying to say, but you said it better. As usual.

I think I put it lamely, like love surprises and confounds. Finds you late in life. Or when you least expect it.

I understand the frustration with Gurov; I think we are meant to be frustrated with him. But that doesn't make him unredeemable.

Sorry I missed the fun. I had a French class yesterday and then there was this wine waiting for me at a bar.

So anyway.

It's just after 6 am, I can feel the bags under my eyes, and I have nothing good to say just yet.

People say I do make a good point occasionally.

Clearly, you should explain to your professors the intrinsic and inestimable value of attending.

I get the intent -- ? -- maybe the real intent is to provide decent books for, say, the public school students in Chicago who have one book per 5 students and the books are missing sections. But the implementation, as usual, ends up being wrong-headed. That's what happens when the government treads into the land of legislating the hell out of our lives.

Yeah, it kinda sounds like the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) that was passed in 1999.

I worked about About.com at the time and handled the Family channel, which included the kids' homework sites. Very helpful stuff. Students helping students, the guide hosted chats each day during after school hours... the chat transcripts showed no predators or untoward behavior.

Our lawyers took the strictest interpretation possible - so we had to take them down - they were the most popular part of those sites. I don't know what they've done since then.

I also managed the adult channels. We had to put up a screen that asked for a credit card number so that the user could "prove" they were 18. Let's set aside the idea/definition that being an adult means taking on credit card debt (basically), and focus on the fact that any kid with half a brain who wanted to see the adult sites could easily copy down the credit card number and get to anything they wanted.

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 a crisis/problem/drama all the time to be happy." Or the one leveled at me - some version of: "You think too much. You make yourself unhappy and create problems."

I don't really understand what's meant by this accusation... and it is an accusation.

Do most people go around just doing things and not thinking about what they're doing/saying/feeling?

In a way, we are all living in our own drama/comedy/tragedy depending on the day. They may be small, but they are usually there, sometimes in the background, sometimes the forefront. It's not as though I understand my life in scenes or stories in a movie, but there is an aspect of life that is like that.

Is that what we mean?

Or... are we talking about people who are complainers about how rotten their lives are? Or are we talking about people who need to create problems for themselves -- like procrastinating on work, sleeping through class, and therefore flunking out of school? Or are we talking about people who need to blow up their lives over and over again?

I'm just saying, I don't really understand what the words really mean... When people start using catch phrases like "she has to live in a constant state of crisis to be happy" to talk about anyone and everyone, I grow suspicious.

True, they are not one and the same, but (a) hypertext theory is more complex than what we all understand to be hypertext... hypertext in its strictest definition goes back to ancient texts... and I think you would have to add metatext to really approach Borges with any kind of contemporary metaphor... and (b) any tool (not solution) that can be used, however clumsy, to better understand his work is one worth using.

So when you say Art is about giving an object to this possibility, oh hell, I just need more explanation, because that statement is kind of confusing to me. What possibility? The infinite book? Reality? Time? Memory?

The name Chicago means "Wild Leek/Skunk," or more loosely, River of Stinking Onions.

Nope, not kidding. Even Wikipedia agrees:

At the beginning of recorded history, the Chicago area was inhabited by a number of Algonquian peoples, including the Mascoutens and Miamis. Trade links and seasonal hunting migrations linked these peoples with their neighbours, the Potawatomis to the east, Fox to the north, and the Illinois to the southwest. The name "Chicago" is the French version of the Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa ("wild leek"/"skunk"), named for the plants common along the Chicago River, and this has nothing to do with Chief Chicagou of the Michigamea people.

Yeah, I see that - absolutely - the nature of the original novel, the oddness of finding someone with a last name to kill to convey the spy's message... I think Borges is playing with the form.

And the spy thing - that fits with the unpredictability of human motivations, as well as the effects of their unpredictable actions.

For one thing, I don't really buy the idea that this Chief understood that some news story with the name Albert in it forewarned the attack. Unless I'm incorrectly recalling how the information made it to the Chief, and Yu Tsun's name was in the news story.

Esther wrote: "*sigh* I really wish I was joining all of you. I guess it's better that I stay home and read Piers Plowman, The Canterbury Tales, and Paradise Lost about 20 times before I take that test at the e..."

Yeah, I can tell you that's *not* better. Because if you were at the Dork you could talk about all of those works, probably with one person, and come away with a better understanding of all of them, plus the secret to eternal youth! Mua haha!

I think if we just keep everyone's addresses and cell numbers on hand we will be able to find each other. I have a couple of things I've been told to check out - like the erotic bakery, which makes cakes shaped like - well, erotic things - and a few other sights other than the original Starbucks.

Wasn't it Mo's birthday already? Oh, well, Happy b'day again, my dear!

Charlaralotte wrote: "Happy Birthday Mo and Maureen!

Goat cheese is good. I also like Feta.

Dan: The Velvet Fog is an excellent name for a radio host. Run with it.

Completely unnecessary update:
At my last dental ap..."

I love feta, but I don't buy it often because the only good feta is made with goat's milk. The cow's milk stuff is shite. It's more expensive but the difference is noticeable.

I agree with Mo, it's time to find a new dentist. That sample thing would have been the last straw for me. My dentist gave me 4 toothbrushes, three samples of toothpaste and 2 containers of floss for free. I think that was to compensate for the 30 x-ray cards they shoved in my mouth earlier.

Damn, I'm glad all I ever had were braces (which was bad enough, I think). What's an amalgam?

Here's a totally superfluous announcement: I burned 867 calories in one hour yesterday. I'm pretty proud of myself for still being able to function afterwards.

Wait. Sinology sounds familiar. Albert talks about being one.

Isn't that the sort of... not quite accurate translation of Chinese characters into English? Isn't that what Ezra Pound used to translate Chinese poetry back in the day...? When people still used the word Oriental?

According to Wikipedia it's the more general study of Chinese culture, history, etc. But I could have sworn it was a way of translating Chinese.

Which ties right back to "Fox-in-the-Morning"'s discourse on language!

OK. I'll stop posting now. This is supposed to be a discussion, not just me listening to myself type.

Now. Time. History. Bifurcation.

I get the multi-forking paths, I get the whole dialogue at the end where Stephen Albert seems to almost know what's about to happen to him. The theory quoted above is quite handy - when you start thinking about this in terms of hypertext theory (not even theory, really, just how they work), it's actually really easy to understand. Instead of going to pages of text you go to events and decisions and people... of the novel (and, I think, of life), Albert says:

An infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging parallel times. This web of time, the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries -- embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them.

Culture. Alienation.

Literature... novel creation... not using the word time in a novel about time... damn, there is a lot of stuff in there...

Also, the nature of being a spy - the job itself. (I just watched Body of Lies recently.) You live in a country not your own, gathering information that could hurt the people around you directly (including yourself) and deliver that information to the hands of someone else to do with as they see fit - you have no control over, or even any say in, how that information is used. In this case, he isn't even spying for China, and he thinks Germany is barbaric. He even says he was forced to be a spy.

And this word, pullulation! Gadzooks!

Now. Let's look at the story from a structural/plot/character perspective first. Because that will inform any metaphysical/philosophical understanding. That's my hope, at least.

Anyway.

So here goes. There is the plot and characters:

Dr. Yu Tsun. The spy for the Germans, in England, during WWI. Of the reason he does his work, he says "I felt the Chief had some fear of my race... I wished to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies." He is a complete and utter alien spying on the country he lives in and delivering information to the Germans.

Richard Madden, the man in pursuit of the good doctor, who arguably drives the entire plot.

Stephen Albert, the man who is most understanding of who Yu Tsun is, the man Yu Tsun has come to murder in order to pass along his information to the German Army - to the Chief who fears his people.

The apparent plot - a spy who knows his days are numbered devises a way to make his voice "heard" and sets out to murder someone with the name of the city that is about to be bombed. He succeeds but is captured; the entire story is his statement of what occurred.

Nonsense. We shall forage ahead into the unknown.

I couldn't help but to think of Eliot's Four Quartets: Burnt Norton when I was reading the parts about time:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.


You really have to read that shit carefully to get anything out of it at all.

Here's an interesting little theory I find compelling, from a site on geocities, of all places:


Borges and the particular story have long been recognised by current hypertext theorists to be a print precursor of hypertext. Borges has always been a favourite with the postmodernists and it was logical that people with a background in literary criticism and an interest in new technologies would see a connection in the Borgesian motive of the labyrinth and hyperlinking.
(http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/c...)

Well. I will be spending some quality time at that bar, I think.

I'm sure I won't be the only person downtown that day but as we get closer we will work it all out.

I will certainly volunteer to take as many people as I can out to JE's, but with the trip to costco I may not be able to fit more than one extra person on the way to Flagler.

And now, in this time and in this place, the forking path takes me to the gym.

More on all this later, provided my arms don't fall off.

So, Michael, where did that little excerpt above come from?

What we have here appears to be a story about time and ... the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure story.

When I try to relate the novel and the conversation about time and the labyrinth to the plot of the story, I come up a bit short.

Is Borges trying to say that in this time, in this place, and only this time and place, Albert and the protagonist are enemies; that Albert must die because of a series of... forking paths...; that this man Albert, who may be the only person who understands this stranger in a strange land, spying for the Germans, must die because of the forking paths followed to get here?

Or am I going too heavy handed with the determinism?

Based on what I know of the man, I have to imagine that he wasn't a big fan of the fable, or of pigs and farms.

I'm guessing, based on the letter, that he probably wanted Orwell's opinions to be expressed in some way that was more aesthetically pleasing, preferably referring as much as possible to Dante.

I'm probably biased. I came to the conclusion that Eliot was not all that talented as an artist a long time ago (I think he was a better thinker). I like Orwell much, much more.