What are you reading?

[Patroklus]

Perhaps to merchandise this book wisely I ought to give away not only the previously mentioned fried egg, but as an added attraction (at no extra charge) I should give away with each and every book, a hundred pounds of seed corn. Not ninety pounds, mark you, not eighty pounds, but one hundred pounds. Where am I going to get the corn? I have already anticipated your question. I'm going to get it from the farmer. For years the American public has been getting it in the neck from the farmer and, in return, all we have received is a large bill for farm relief and rigid price supports.

The reason the farmer gets away with so much is that when a city dweller thinks of the farmer he visualizes a tall, stringy yokel, with hayseed in his few teeth, subsisting on turnip greens, skimmed milk and hog jowels and living in a ramshackle dump with his mule fifty miles from nowhere. But what's the good of my trying to describe it? Erskine Caldwell wrapped it up neatly in God's Little Acre.

This kind of farmer may have existed years ago, but today the farmer is the best protected citizen in the entire economy. As a city-dweller, I can assure that there is no love lost between the urbanite and the farmer (unless the farmer has a daughter).

Each year the government is faced with the same problem - how to dispose of the corn surplus. They've tried everything: storing in on battleships, dumping it in silos (with the hope that the rats and the squirrels will make away with some of it); they've even tried giving it away for free to moonshiners. But the White Mule business ain't what it used to be. The moonshiners now want potatoes because the American public has switched to vodka. Well, the government's problem can be solved very easily. Just give me the corn my book so sorely needs.

The government's eternal solicitude for the rustic has got the rest of the country gagging. Why don't they do something for the book publisher and the author? Why don't they do away with literary critics who, in three fine sentences, can cripple the sales of any book? Did you ever hear of a farm critic coming out and saying, " Farm Snodgrass' corn crop is not up to his last year's crop." Or, "Another year's crop like this one, and he'll be back digging sewers for the county asylum,"

The book publishers of America, you'll notice, have no lobby in Washington looking after their interests. They have a surplus of books they would like to plow under, but they haven't got enough money to buy the hole to bury them in.

-Groucho And Me, by Groucho Marx

[alex.a]

Just finished reading this:
Not bad, not the best existentialist book I read, but there was a couple of parts I enjoyed





Also read this super short essay by JunIchiro Tanizaki (In praise of shadows) about how classic japanese culture would praise the shadows and discover beauty in the contrast of light and how we screw that up with our western modernity

I found it really interesting, I read it in french;I really don't know how well it is translated in english

[PoubelleMaBelle]

What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

Lewis Carroll

Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on its back.

"So you've got to the end of our race-course?" said the Tortoise. "Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some wiseacre or other had proved that the thing couldn't be done?"

"It can be done," said Achilles. "It has been done! Solvitur ambulando. You see the distances were constantly diminishing; and so --"

"But if they had been constantly increasing?" the Tortoise interrupted "How then?"

"Then I shouldn't be here," Achilles modestly replied; "and you would have got several times round the world, by this time!"

"You flatter me -- flatten, I mean" said the Tortoise; "for you are a heavy weight, and no mistake! Well now, would you like to hear of a race-course, that most people fancy they can get to the end of in two or three steps, while it really consists of an infinite number of distances, each one longer than the previous one?"

"Very much indeed!" said the Grecian warrior, as he drew from his helmet (few Grecian warriors possessed pockets in those days) an enormous note-book and a pencil. "Proceed! And speak slowly, please! Shorthand isn't invented yet!"

"That beautiful First Proposition of Euclid!" the Tortoise murmured dreamily. "You admire Euclid?"

"Passionately! So far, at least, as one can admire a treatise that won't he published for some centuries to come!"

"Well, now, let's take a little bit of the argument in that First Proposition -- just two steps, and the conclusion drawn from them. Kindly enter them in your notebook. And in order to refer to them conveniently, let's call them A, B, and Z: --

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.
(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.
(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.

Readers of Euclid will grant, I suppose, that Z follows logically from A and B, so that any one who accepts A and B as true, must accept Z as true?"

"Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School -- as soon as High Schools are invented, which will not be till some two thousand years later -- will grant that."

"And if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true, he might still accept the sequence as a valid one, I suppose?"

"No doubt such a reader might exist. He might say 'I accept as true the Hypothetical Proposition that, if A and B be true, Z must be true; but, I don't accept A and B as true.' Such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid, and taking to football."

"And might there not also he some reader who would say 'I accept A and B as true, but I don't accept the Hypothetical '?"

"Certainly there might. He, also, had better take to football."

"And neither of these readers," the Tortoise continued, "is as yet under any logical necessity to accept Z as true?"

"Quite so," Achilles assented.

"Well, now, I want you to consider me as a reader of the second kind, and to force me, logically, to accept Z as true."

"A tortoise playing football would be -- " Achilles was beginning"

-- an anomaly, of course," the Tortoise hastily interrupted. "Don't wander from the point. Let's have Z first, and football afterwards!"

"I'm to force you to accept Z, am I?" Achilles said musingly. "And your present position is that you accept A and B, but you don't accept the Hypothetical --"

"Let's call it C," said the Tortoise.

"-- but you don't accept

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true. "

"That is my present position," said the Tortoise.

"Then I must ask you to accept C."

"I'll do so," said the Tortoise, "as soon as you've entered it in that note-book of yours. What else have you got in it?"

"Only a few memoranda," said Achilles, nervously fluttering the leaves: "a few memoranda of -- of the battles in which I have distinguished myself!"

"Plenty of blank leaves, I see!" the Tortoise cheerily remarked. "We shall need them all!" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I dictate: --

(A) Things that arc equal to the same are equal to each other.
(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.
(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true.
(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other."

"You should call it D, not Z," said Achilles. "It comes next to the other three. If you accept A and B and C, you must accept Z."

"And why must I?"

"Because it follows logically from them. If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. You don't dispute that, I imagine?"

"You might," the candid hero admitted; "though such obtuseness would certainly be phenomenal. Still, the event is possible. So I must ask you to grant one more Hypothetical."

"Very good. I'm quite willing to grant it, as soon as you've written it down. We will call it

(D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true.

"Have you entered that in your notebook?"

"I have!" Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as he ran the pencil into its sheath. "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."

"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?"

"Then Logic would force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see."

"Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your book, please. We will call it

(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?"

"I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.

Here narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so, Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was saying, "Have you got that last step written down? Unless I've lost count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come. And would you mind, as a personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century -- would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be re-named Taught-Us?"

"As you please!" replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he buried his face in his hands. "Provided that you, for your part, will adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A Kill-Ease!"

[Fuuma]

Just finished reading this:
Not bad, not the best existentialist book I read, but there was a couple of parts I enjoyed





Also read this super short essay by JunIchiro Tanizaki (In praise of shadows) about how classic japanese culture would praise the shadows and discover beauty in the contrast of light and how we screw that up with our western modernity

I found it really interesting, I read it in french;I really don't know how well it is translated in english

I do believe I read the english version (not 100% sure) and it was fine.

Reading this:

[BSR]

Reading this:

c'est pas mal, j'aime bien le portrait de Godard en gros con bling-bling sarkozyste

[Fuuma]

c'est pas mal, j'aime bien le portrait de Godard en gros con bling-bling sarkozyste

Ouais, je me promet de lire ce truc depuis que c'est sorti, le livre people de l'intello bien hype. C'est un peu comme lire du Beigbedder mais pour les pas cons. Au final c'est toujours mieux que se tapper le Vomi de notre ami Sartre.

[trentk]

*just kidding. by chance, I happen to be synthesizing my own proust / neuroscience book by reading Berthoz/Petit's The Physiology and Phenomenology of Action and Proust's Swann's Way concurrently.

[galia]

I do believe I read the english version (not 100% sure) and it was fine.

yes the english translation is fine. book was a disappointment

[PoubelleMaBelle]

SAVE ST. MARK'S
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i never wrote anything about it here previously, but the neglect of a walk on the wild side in the american 'canon' is baffling. if you're into henry miller, celine, etc. this should be essential as well. best book i've read this summer.

thanks for the rec. c., looking forward to it! have you ready any other algren? i'm a sucker for short stories...though, this seems to be his masterwork.

[flwlessvctry]

Currently reading Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity
By Ulrich Lehmann great book great book would absolutely recommend fellow szr's!

[belgaux]

The Great Gatsby again, in case the movie sucks and ruins the book forever.

[droussin]

just started reading. no idea why i hadn't read it before but i can see why it holds strong in literary history

[Verdandi]

Just lovely.

[een]

Dalkey Archive redux:

[trentk]

Just ordered this book, and can't wait to read it. Too bad Florensky's work - spanning a mind-boggling range of fields - is hardly available in english.

"Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius is the first biography in English of an extraordinary polymath whose genius was stifled and finally extinguished by the Soviet Union. He has been compared to Pascal, Teilhard de Chardin, even da Vinci.

Florensky was, at one and the same time, a supremely gifted philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, engineer and theologian. He was also a poet and wrote studies of history, language and art. Although he taught philosophy for most of his working life, his interests were wide-ranging and profound and included the study of time and space, theoretical and applied physics, aspects of language, and the properties of materials and geology. His book The Pillar and the Ground of Truth is widely seen as a masterpiece of Russian Orthodox theology."