Chris Via > Recent Status Updates

My February novel. I can’t put it down!

This is a very engaging mix of history, ecology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy (in the true sense of the practice), biology, and, as I'm sure will prove true, more. Harari has already developed a fascinating twist on the usual academic stances for a history of humankind: the importance of fiction-making and its pervasive manifestations (beyond what most readers would expect).

What a ride this has been!

I feel that Penrose is pawing at my mind like a cat's plaything.

We now enter the 100-Page Stretch.

Quite a mixed bag.

Grazie attente, signore Eco!

"I slide these sheets between the sheets of G & I and wonder when I'll run out of history to hide in, or if I'll be forced to double the center of the sandwich with another layer of ham" (495).

A variation on Heraclitus' panta rei: "We can't turn back for a second look because no one gets a look at the same thing twice..." (358).

"Data trumps everything." - Google Translate engineer

"...the study of history is the study of language..." (271).

I am reminded that a fundamental reason why some people struggle with math is because of the lack of possession of the basic properties and rules of mathematics. Those who are used to these governing rules (i.e. math teachers, mathematics, physicists, et al.) often bewilder the former types because so many of these rules are used to make giant leaps in calculation and discovery.

Despite his best efforts to encourage and lead me, Penrose left me in the dust there for a little while. But he roused my interest and my persistence with his explication of Euclid's fifth postulate, using one of Escher's woodcuts and hyperbolic geometry.

These scenes of domestic quarreling are rendering so sharply that I find myself squirming uncomfortably in my chair (life in a chair)!

"The willingness to keep trying new things--different methods, uncomfortable tasks--when you are already an expert at something is what separates good from great" (15).

"Perhaps my long German book was an exterior, a façade, for which I am now constructing an interior" (95).

The first chapter is devoted to making it supremely clear that, without a solid understanding of certain mathematical principles there will be no real appreciation of the laws underpinning the physical universe. And it seems the next 15 chapters are dedicated to explicating these very principles. Bring it!

Gass has the power to work language into fits and explosions!
“It is that speak of life you sometimes see from a plane, starleak in the darkness (13). “...a dinky Dixie cup, each cup rewashed at the outdoor tap until it was flimpy and buckled in the hand the way the day did” (28). “Plan lacquered his eeee’s. You could set a drink down and not ring them” (44).

The little drawing after the title page looks like a distortion of the eagle on the German coat of arms. (Presumably this sketch is a topography of the tunnel.)

“What it is is to make sure the person who gets into the book is ready and deserves to be there. I mean, it’s a kind of test of competency.” - William Gass concerning the difficulty of the first 90 pages of The Tunnel (from a Bookworm podcast of 12/14/2017). Well, I say, challenge accepted!