Using a modified (and depleted) version of this script written by digital historian blogger William J. Turkel, I tried to see how useful of an automated source generator Amazon’s Statistically Improbable Phrases and Capitalized Phrases data would be for Gene Wolfe’s Solider of Sidon: SIP red land ———– Atlantis: Insights from a Lost Civilization Soldier [...]
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I’ve updated my research page. Would be of course delighted to hear any comments you may have. I will write a response to Conrad H. Roth’s piece when time permits. The erudite Roth is one of very few to share my interest in this oddity, a worthy testimony to the fundamental soundness of his discrimination.
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First day of school tomorrow. Mood: Actually, not at all like that. I seem to recall Rushdie begrudgingly crediting Le Carré with skillful plotting in Tinker, Tailor. It would be interesting to chart the geography of the novel, particularly that of Tarr’s (an allusion?) movements. The board above is also too monochromatic (the amber spectacles [...]
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I’ve only caught a few episodes of this in hotel rooms, but it seemed sublime. (But the affectless intrusion of the marvelous also seemed to be something I think of as a wounded trend in contemporary American fiction.) I’m not at all surprised that it was cancelled, given that its obvious lack of popular appeal. [...]
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It’s far more likely that Mrs. Shade would have known the definition of “sempiternal” than “grimpen” (PF 46).
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I’m contemplating the following as a syllabus: Metamorphosis Ficciones The Street of Crocodiles Pale Fire Imaginary Magnitude and/or A Perfect Vacuum But I think something is missing. I don’t think that something is The Waves, though there are reasons to think so. Nor Calvino. (But were there an affordable edition of the Codex Seraphinianus!) It’s [...]
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Fiction in which Jacques Monod appears: Kosinski, Jersy. Blind Date. I would like to hear from anyone who’s read both this book and Lem’s Chain of Chance (Catarrh).
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I plan to teach a seminar on the interwar apocalypse, broadly considered, in the spring, and, while there’s much to choose from, I’m leaning toward showing at least a clip from one of the Bergfilme. Riefenstahl’s maenadic turn seems to be the most representative. I’m also interested in relating the mountain-cult to the scholarship associating [...]
Because of backorders, and frustrating customer service, I had to relinquish the potential Dell Ubuntu notebook in favor of a Gateway with the dreaded Vista pre-installed. (Note to Mac Users: I have .5 GHZ less processor speed [bus issues are not relevant, I don't think], twice as much memory, and 40GB more hard drive space [...]
