Fiction of my imagination

I'd written some notes on reading non-fiction vs. fiction, but after reading through them I realized that a) I'd covered that ground before and b) I didn't really agree with what I'd just written. Because of that I decided to just include a memory of high school English class, and some comments on reading books on science. I don't really have time for more right now.

I recall my high school English teacher, Father Naumann, explaining to us that one of the criticisms of Dickens is that he 'sacrifices art for pamphleteering', but regardless of how faithfully I copied it down in my notes, and preserved it in my brain, at the time, it's not something I fully agree with now (at least, I wouldn't apply it universally to all writers). Novels are a subjective expression of the human experience, whether some well-known historical event or an aspect of life that is universally known but individually experienced, such as love, death, growth, that sort of thing. Poverty is part of the human experience, and part of the power of the novelist is to take that and personalize it by, instead of describing the horrors of poverty, simply showing them. Maybe Father Naumann's criticism was that Dickens was doing quite enough by showing us the poverty of Victorian London, and didn't need to harangue his readers with essays about injustice at the same time. Which, to be honest, I don't recall his doing. It's been a long time since I've read a Dickens novel. And Father Naumann did once also say that my high was home to 'boys and other idiots' so maybe everything he said should be taken with a grain of salt. Regardless, my point is that a novel can have a political perspective without necessarily weakening itself, and a good political rant can be an effective literary device if put into the mouths of a character and not the narrator. Unless the narrator is a character and not outside of the story, in which case it's much more involved. But this is neither the time nor the place for a discussion of the profoundly influential field of narratology.

I should probably clarify that what I said above about non-fiction doesn't apply to books on science, or scientific study in general. Reading about politics and history is essentially looking at words written by humans about what other humans have done. Reading about science is looking at words written by humans about the natural world that we have to deal with every day, regardless of our intellectual inclinations, so I differentiate it as people writing about things instead of people writing about people. I think fiction writers with a knowledge of science have the option to add an extra dimension to their work (and not just in science fiction), which I don't think I'd ever fully considered before. This is something I've been reflecting on since discovering Simon Mawer's essay on Science and Literature, providing me with a delightful and convenient bridge between my recent science kick and my love for the experience of reading good fiction. It included this line:

As an undergraduate I heard the Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen start a lecture course on animal behaviour with the words, “Some people try to extrapolate from our studies to human behaviour but if you wish to learn about the behaviour of man don’t ask the ethologist; turn rather to the great writers. Read Dostoevsky, read Tolstoy.”

Books and life

After a couple of weeks off, and more than a month of nothing more substantive than just posting amusing quotes, I'm starting to get back into the blog game. (Is there a blog game? Doesn't like like it'd be much fun). I've had a lot of literarish thoughts on my mind lately, and had an interesting conversation with J. over some Guinness & Kilkenny last night, so as long work does not demand too much of me today, I'll try to get down some thoughts on what I've been reading and watching lately, including Roberto Bolaño's 2666, Bill Bryson's A short history of nearly everything, Simon Mawer's The glass room, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, as well as articles and interviews on and with the likes of Hemingway and Roth and Bolano. Some superb books, and various life changes taking place around me as well, are providing me with plenty of fodder for the amateurish philosophical reflection which I enjoy so much, and it's a shame to let it all waste away in my brain instead of sharing it with my readership (note that by adding '-ship' to the word 'reader' it makes it sound like more than one person reads this blog).

You might also like to note the new additions to my links section. I just discovered the love german books blog today, and it looks like it might become a part of my daily blog rounds. Maybe I should create my own called love Czech books - tough this site seems to be doing a good enough job.

Douglas Adams, talking about the internet in 1999:

I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Source: http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

When JFK visited Berlin he was mocked a bit by Germans for saying "Ich bin ein Berliner," which is apparently some kind of a jelly doughnut. Of course to an English speaker this sounds fine. It just occurred to me how funny it would have been had he given the same speech in Vienna, where he'd have said, "Ich bin ein Wiener."

Quote of today

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

More on libraries

...and why some places are better at providing public services than others. As usual, no comment because it's late and I'm tired.

http://www.thestar.com/article/698252

Quote of the day

All things are subject to interpretation - whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

To be followed by a quote from Monty Python:

It's all very well to laugh at the military, but when one considers the meaning of life, it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself. And without the ability to defend one's own viewpoint against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies, then reasonableness and moderation could, quite simply, disappear! That is why we'll always need an army, and may God strike me down were it to be otherwise.
- from The Meaning of Life (of course, lightning strikes him down as he finishes the last sentence)

Phoenix envy

In the 'cities are broke' category, I learned about (via cryptogon) serious budget problems in Phoenix, which is forced to cut 10's of millions of dollars from its budget. This article doesn't give any details specific to library cuts, but based on what other city agencies are losing, I'm sure it won't be pleasant.

This is also the first article for which I'm finally adding tags. I don't know why I never bothered to before. Probably because 2 people read this blog. Anyway, maybe I'll go back and add them to some older articles as well.

Information-rich and attention-poor

I don't feel like commenting on this article right now because it's Sunday morning and I want to get outside, but it's a really well-written summary of how information-gathering is changing us and the idea of 'knowledge'. This is one of the most interesting parts of being a librarian - thinking about issues like this. Unfortunately, all I tend to see are calls for understanding or adapting, rather than actual suggestions on how to do so, but still, I thought it was worth sharing. I'm starting to think it might be worth having a whole blog just dedicated to posting articles, with the occasional commentary, on such issues.

Some highlights (the italics are mine):

Knowledge is evolving from a “stock” to a “flow.”...A stock of knowledge may be thought of as a quasi-permanent repository – such as a book or an entire library – whereas the flow is the process of developing the knowledge...Obviously, a stock of knowledge is rarely permanent; it depreciates like any other form of capital. But electronic information technology is profoundly changing the rate of depreciation....Knowledge is becoming more like a river than a lake, more and more dominated by the flow than by the stock.
.....
Consequently, there is little time to think and reflect as the flow moves on. This has a subtle and pernicious implication for the production of knowledge. When the effective shelf-life of a document (or any information product) shrinks, fewer resources will be invested in its creation. This is because the period during which the product is likely to be read or referred to is too short to repay a large allocation of scarce time and skill in its production. As a result, the “market” for depth is narrowing.
.....
There is also under way a shift of intellectual authority from producers of depth – the traditional “expert” – to the broader public.
.....
What makes the mobilization of “crowd wisdom” intellectually powerful is that the technology of the Web makes it so easy for even amateurs to access a growing fraction of the corpus of human knowledge...the traditional experts – professors, journalists, authors and filmmakers – need to be compensated for their effort, since expertise is what they have to sell. Unfortunately for them, this has become a much harder sell because the ethic of “free” rules the economics of so much Web content. Moreover, the value of traditional expert authority is itself being diluted by the new incentive structure created by information technology that militates against what is deep and nuanced in favour of what is fast and stripped-down.
.....
The result is the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers of virtually all kinds. The irony is that experts have been the source of most of the nuggets of knowledge that the crowd now draws upon in rather parasitic fashion – for example, news and political bloggers depend heavily on a relatively small number of sources of professional journalism, just as many Wikipedia articles assimilate prior scholarship. The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital. This suggests that today's “cult of the amateur” will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge.
.....
Far better, one might argue, to access efficiently what you need, when you need it. This depends, of course, on building up a sufficient internalized structure of concepts to be able to link with the online store of knowledge. How to teach this is perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity facing educators in the 21st century.
.....
For now, the just-in-time approach seems to be narrowing peripheral intellectual vision and thus reducing the serendipity that has been the source of most radical innovation. What is apparently being eroded is the deep, integrative mode of knowledge generation that can come only from the “10,000 hours” of individual intellectual focus – a process that mysteriously gives rise to the insights that occur, often quite suddenly, to the well-prepared mind.

There's not always money in Philadelphia

I learned of the inevitability of the closing of Philadelphia's libraries on October 2 via a library listerv I subscribe to, and after looking into it very briefly I realized the problem goes well beyond just libraries. Serious cuts to fire and police services, not to mention garbage pickup and daycare (after living through this for 6 weeks here, I can only imagine if it became permanent - even though these are just cuts and not a total cancellation).

I was drawn to the story because it relates to libraries, which I think are an essential and fundamental part of any city - they serve as active cultural centres and also repositories of a community or society's cultural memories. They also often act as a key gateway to information for many people, from books & CDs to internet service. However, it's clear that the city of Philadelphia has problems beyond just access to information, and when you're cutting police and fire, I can understand that it's hard to justify keeping libraries open. I don't know enough yet about the details of the situation, so I don't have any real commentary or insight to offer, but it is a shame that any city would reach the point of cuts to so many essential services. It is frightening to think how much the loss of these services will hurt the quality of life for the people of the city. I wonder how widespread this sort of situation is across the United States.

For the record, here is a more or less complete list of what's being cut.

SA pigeon 'faster than broadband'

After reading this article, I have just decided on a new and improved way to transfer my information. I can't afford to wait for my broadband connection to download data and information, especially not when there are so many unemployed pigeons in the world. I wonder if Winston has any relatives?

Quote of the day

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

- Albert Camus

Open Book Alliance

I’ve recently signed up to receive updates from the Open Book Alliance, which is basically a consortium of libraries, companies and authors’ organizations opposed to Google’s possible dominance of book digitization. On their site they had a pdf of a presentation given that illustrates some of the more glaring scanning and metadata errors that have appeared so far in Google’s massive scanning project. Some of them are absolutely incredible, and in my opinion strong evidence of why we can’t rely on a private company and unskilled scanners – instead of librarians – to digitize and classify millions of books. And while I am a fan of the many of the products Google produces or has bought, and the convient integration of multiple platforms, I'm starting to become wary of doing so, especially as my information sharing is increasingly being stored on and filtered through Google servers.

Anyway, here's the presentation. It's worth checking out:
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/GBook/GoogBookMetadataSh.pdf

On writing - quote

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.
- Franz Kafka

'Tis no man, 'tis a remoreseless reading machine

I’m reading Moby Dick right now, and I'm about 190 pages in. It was clearly a mistake to start such a heavy book so soon before my wedding, as all the planning and discussions have left my little time for reading. Also, it’s a hard book to get into with periodic short fits of reading 5-10 pages at a time - the language is too rich and the ideas too integral to the narrative to be able to dip in and out frequently without missing a lot.

I do have complaints about the book – like how Melville periodically diverts from the story to give essays of moderate interest and (to this point, at least) minimal relevance to the action – but overall I’m enjoying it, and it offers plenty to think about, from its almost poetic language and descriptions to the religious references and themes. In short, there are plenty of interesting aspects worth writing about but, as usual, time limits me to just a short comment, which is what this post will be.

So for now, I'll just point out this quote I liked, from the end of chapter 44 (they’re short chapters), obviously. It’s about Captain Ahab’s madness while lying in his cabin, and his internal torment in pursuit of Moby Dick. The Prometheus reference makes it clear what Melville's going for here, but since this passage describes Ahab’s torments as internal and self-created, to me it felt similar to an obsessive author creating a character that drives him insane.

Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.

Aleksandar Hemon

I was just reading this interview with Aleksandar Hemon, a Bosnian immigrant to the US and one of my favourite current writers. I'm biased towards the Eastern European experience, but there's something about his style I really find appealing. I've requested his latest book of short stories from the library, which should be available soon. I can't wait. Anyway, I just thought it was worth sharing this excerpt from the interview, as a taste of why I like his writing.

Hemon unwraps a piece of candy, sucking pensively as he begins a story. As a young Bosnian journalist, he interviewed Benazir Bhutto when she was prime minister of Pakistan. He tells how she went to visit her father, once prime minister himself and now in solitary confinement. She asked her father how he could endure long days in prison, waiting for his eventual execution. "And he said that he would pick a day from his life, and try to remember it in its entirety. One day. It's an incredible project, really."

Now Hemon the philosopher, no longer the slightly bored interview subject, is caught in this thought, staring at the candy wrapper. "Because, do you know what you did on 6 October last year? You can pinpoint existence, you can possibly look at your credit card and may notice you were somewhere. But how about a memory of walking down the street and seeing the sunlight hit at a certain angle?

"Memory is re-creation. Do you know what I mean?... The trick is to tell the truth about human life while lying."

Multitasking Muddles Brains, Even When the Computer Is Off

I think this article could have been personally addressed to me. I notice exactly this problem, even when I'm not at work or on the computer. I really struggle to block out everything but the one task I'm working on. This makes it difficult to concentrate on anything, from doing the dishes to reading a book. I've always had a fairly short attention span but I have noticed it getting worse as I spend my working day doing several things at once. And the fact that I caught myself looking at the 'Most Recent Entries' on the page while reading this article not only drove the point home, but made me realize that it's largely not my fault. Any kind of article or news page will be surrounded by links and graphics that distract you from the article you're trying to focus on, so even if you are trying to do/read one thing at a time, the way web pages are designed makes it damn near impossible.

Anyway, it's good to know I'm not the only one losing my attention span. And now I'm inspired to- has anyone noticed that building there before?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/multitasking

Whachya readin' for?

Time for your Friday-morning digital book fix. I really think this struggle for control is one of the fundamental issues surrounding e-books, since this is probably where a lot of people will start getting their books from, once e-readers get their iPod equivalent. Issues of privacy & content control are huge, and because of the role books play in distributing ideas and information, they affect book publishing in ways other industries - including music - don't have to deal with as much. These issues are too important to be left to the control of private companies, much less one private company (Google).

Maybe an alternative model would be just the digital equivalent of the way libraries work now - Google, Amazon, etc, 'publish' e-books and do what it is they want to do, but then individual libraries or library systems can purchase access to, or subscribe to, whichever books or whichever database they want. There are endless possibilities as to how it could be done. This way, as a 'reader' I can download my books from Toronto Public Library, in the same way I physically pick them up now, but it's TPL who will have the record of what books I, the individual, the consumer, the patron (however you choose to classify the person) have been reading. They have this information now, but are pretty responsible with destroying it, so it's nothing new that a library would be able to keep track of what its patrons are reading. Judging by the ALA's passionate response to the US PATRIOT Act, librarians take privacy issues pretty seriously, and I'd certainly trust a public library with my reading records more than a private company.

Regardless, it's interesting to see what the Open Content Alliance has to say about the issue.

Anyway, here's the article that got this all started:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8200624.stm

More on books

I've just started reading Umberto Eco's On literature. I managed to get through about 5 pages last night before it was time to make dinner, but so far it's pretty compelling stuff. He's talking about the importance of literature and language, not just as hobbies but as serious cultural elements, and Eco has been pretty interested in technology and its role in literature for a while, so I'm curious to see what he'll have to say about that later on. I guess I'll have to wait until I've read a little more until I can comment further

Oh, and in case anyone's thinking it I'm aware of the irony of using a google-owned blog to criticize it for its monopolistic control on the spread of information, so please don't bother pointing it out.

A waste of language

My boss is starting up a new monthly or (I hope) quarterly newsletter, to inform the office of the goings on in the library. She's not quite sure what the contents of this newsletter will be, but she does want me to contribute a 300-500 word article on something interesting about the library, some reference tips, or maybe a 'Did you know?' column. I've spent the past hour looking through old reference questions and answers, thinking about what I've done here that's worth sharing, and I've come to the unsurprising conclusion that what I do isn't interesting enough to write about. Of course, I can come up with something to write about, but there is nothing I care about enough to share it in written form - at least, unlike this particular post, nothing positive.

I do write fairly regularly on this blog so I obviously am not opposed to writing and I do have things on my mind that I think are worth putting into words. But to receive an assignment to write something, and to have to come up with a topic yourself, within the confines of a job that you don't particularly care for, is a frustrating exercise to say the least. Whichever words I do end up throwing together to take up space on the page aren't going to be interesting to read because they won't be interesting to write. I do my job and that's fine, but I can't force myself to care enough to articulate, much less encourage amongst others, an interest in what it is I do here. I take words and language seriously, because they can be used in unique and interesting ways to express thoughts or create images with a precision that can be surprising. There's a beauty to language, whether it's using your native tongue to express a thought in a new way, or just learning how to say something simple in a foreign language. It can also be simply practical, and improve our lives by allowing us to communicate important information to another person. The way I see it, like the title says, writing for such a newsletter, which I'll ultimately have to do and is neither practical nor beautiful, is just a waste of language.

But at least I got a blog post out of it.

Lobster?

This was an ad I jjust saw in my gmail. I know google scans the contents of your emails to send you targeted ads that you might be more interested in, so I'm really wondering - what triggered this one?

#1 Live Lobster in GTA - http://www.maritimelobster.ca/ - Free Delivery, Wholesale, Retail $7.95 lb, pickup at store, Fresh

Neither practising nor believing, but Catholic even so

An interesting article on secular Catholicism in Quebec. The idea of being a secular Catholic is one I think about but, despite what you read here, I'm not sure it's really possible in the way it is to be, say, secular Jewish. I've found that as my personal belief as wained over the years, I've found it harder to participate (honestly, at least) in religious ceremonies, even just out of tradition - or habit.

Questions

In response to an idea for a writing exercise on the Rose-coloured blog, I've written a little scene made up entirely of questions. I've never seen Rosencrantz & Guilderstern are Dead, so I'm not sure if I took the instructions too literally, but it was still a fun exercise. Even though I wrote this at work and could probably go through and fix it up a bit if I had the time or the inclination. Of course, I'm too self-conscious to actually share it with people who aren't my friends, so it'll just have to sit here for the enjoyment of the (as far as I know) 2 people who read this blog.

[Two people waiting in a long line. Neither the beginning nor the end of the line is visible. In some sort of public building. They could be men or women, but they appear to be in their 40s. Every few seconds they take a small step forward as they move up the line.]

A So how did you die?
B Why do you think I’m dead?
A We’re in heaven, aren’t we?
B You think this is heaven?
A You don’t?
B Isn’t it more like purgatory?
A Why do you say that?
B It’s not perfect here, is it? And aren’t we just waiting in line?
A Look – can you just answer my first question?
B About being dead?
A How did it happen?
B Why do you want to know?
A You’re not curious why we’re here?
B Does the manner of my death affect where I go in the afterlife?
A You don’t believe in that sort of thing?
B Is it some metaphysical worldview you just invented?
A Would it be less true if it is?
B Don’t you think how I lived my life would affect the eternal destination about my soul?
A Who said anything about a soul?
B Didn’t you?
A Is your soul separate from who you are?
B ‘Who I am’?
A Isn’t your soul just a symbol of your whole being?
B If it’s just a symbol and not real, then how does it explain our being here?
A Have we determined where we actually are yet?
B If we’re both dead, can we assume it’s some kind of afterlife?
A So you are dead then?
B But wouldn’t my death be the end of consciousness?
A Maybe you’ll learn that in the afterlife?
B Shouldn’t the afterlife be more about answers than questions?
A Isn’t that what I just said?
B Did you?
A Anyway, why do you assume that the afterlife would give you any answers?
B How else would you learn about the mysteries of existence?
A Who says we have to learn about them at all?
B Aren’t you curious about the universe?
A Does my curiosity make the unknowable any less unknowable?
B If death doesn’t provide us with answers doesn’t it make life feel kind of pointless?
A If you were waiting to die to find answers, then what did you do with your life?
B Hey – what’s with all the questions anyway?

England, philosophy, comedy...

I've started reading Christopher Hibbert's The Story of England. Despite the fact that I lived in the country for a while, and that I was an English major and have read a great deal of European history, it occurred to me how little I know about England, so I thought this would be a nice way to fill in some gaps. It's a short book, about 180 pages, and well-illustrated. I've just gotten past the Norman invasion and the end of their rule, and I've just started with the Plantagenets (whose name I was familiar with from Richard III and Henry IV pts 1 & 2 - Fetch me a cup of sack!).

[Thesis] Reading through the bits about the Middle Ages, I was finding a lot of the brief descriptions about daily life, castles, etc, familiar, and the funny thing is that most of this knowledge, and the ability to visualize things like descriptions of castles or trials by ordeal, comes from Monty Python. And this realization came a few days after I mentioned to my roommate J. that most of my knowledge of philosophers comes from Monty Python. Which is probably why I always thought Kant would be funnier than he is. What a let down that was. It truly was the antithesis of funny.

[Synthesis] But back to the book. I've used the above picture, which is a replica of a Norman helmet found at Sutton Hoo, a huge archaeological find of a Norman ship, not only because it's impressive in its detail and ornamentation, but also because I love the fact that whoever designed it took the time to put a false moustache onto the actual mask. Unless this serves some defensive purpose I'm not aware of, I really think it's one of the more comically unnecessary military decorative elements of the past 1000 years.

Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it wouldn't last

I was just reading through some old posts and it struck me how often I write things at work, in a short amount of time, and always want to get back to a topic to be able to discuss it further. Of course, I never do.

But in an attempt to do so at least once, I will say that, in regards to the previous post about the Holocaust, I was surprised at the author's assumption that most people's view of the Holocaust is that its victims were largely West European Jews. I never thought that myself, and have always thought of Poland and Ukraine as bearing the brunt of WWII, to say nothing of the Jews of the region. It's not really that important, I guess - who thought what and when - but while I enjoyed the article and found it incredibly informative, I can't say it really shook my previous perception of the war. Is this how people really see it? I suppose I'm biased because of my connections to, and interest in, oh, let's just call it East Central Europe. But still, I was surprised by the assumption.

So at least I got back to that topic. There's always more to say about things I guess, which is why there will always be blogs, and may strike me down were it to be otherw-

“Instead of one big shot controlling the media, now there’s a thousand freaks Xeroxing their worthless opinions.”
- Homer Simpson

Go back to Germania, German boy!

Being at work, I don't have time to get into this, but I find the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II a fascinating and world-changing event that's really worth thinking about but which not many people realize actually happened. Before the war, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe had had diverse, multi-ethnic and multilingual populations, with their cities largely populated by Germans and Jews in addition to Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians or whatever else you can imagine living between Russia and Germany. It looked very different from the region's relatively homogenous nation-states of today, and it's hard to fathom how much the murder of millions of Jews and the expulsion of millions of Germans changed those countries in a very short time. I'm not going to get into the human tragedy, which is obvious enough though truly terrible, but in case anyone's interested in the story of the involuntary post-war German exodus, I thought I'd post this article for your reading pleasure. Also, in case you're interested, and have the time, it's included with a longer article about the Holocaust and the experience of the peoples of Eastern Europe during World War II.

The Expulsion of Germans from the East
Of the 12 million or so Germans who fled or were expelled from Eastern Europe at the end of the war, the vast majority came from Czechoslovakia (3.5 million) or Poland (7.8 million). Most of the second group came from lands taken from the defeated Reich and assigned to Poland by the Allies. About half of the 12 million fled, and about half were deported—though a neat division is impossible, since some of those who fled later returned and were then deported.

In late 1944 and early 1945 some six million Germans fled before the Red Army; it was then that most of the 600,000 or so fatalities among German refugees took place. Many of these were simply people who were caught between armies; some were purposefully massacred by Soviet soldiers or died in Soviet camps. Murders were also committed by Czechs and Poles. Hitler shares responsibility for these deaths, since German authorities failed to organize timely evacuations.

The postwar deportations of Germans, a direct result of Hitler's war, were a Czechoslovak-Polish-Soviet-British-American project. During the war, the exiled leaders of occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia expressed their wish to keep their postwar German populations small, and the Allies agreed that German populations would be removed after victory. Winston Churchill recommended a "clean sweep," and the Allied Control Council issued the official plan for the transfer of six million Germans.

The (non-Communist) Czechoslovak government had Stalin's approval to expel its Germans, but also Churchill's and Roosevelt's. Poland was under Soviet control, though any Polish government would have expelled Germans. Polish Communists accepted Stalin's proposal that Poland should be moved very far to the west, which implied expelling more Germans than democratic Polish politicians would have wished. (It also entailed the deportation of Poles from the eastern half of pre-war Poland, which the Soviets annexed. About a million of these Polish expellees settled the lands from which Germans were expelled.)

From May to December 1945 Polish and Czechoslovak authorities dumped about two million Germans over their borders. From January 1946, Polish and Czechoslovak authorities continued to force Germans to leave, while British, Soviet, and American forces arranged their reception in their occupation zones in Germany. In 1946 and 1947, the Soviets received slightly more than two million Germans in their zone, the British some 1.2 million, and the Americans some 1.4 million. Deportations continued at a slower pace thereafter.

Although the expulsions were a case of collective responsibility, and involved hideous treatment, mortality rates among German civilians—some 600,000 out of 12 million—were relatively low when compared to the other events discussed here. Caught up in the end of a horrible war fought in their name, and then by an Allied consensus in favor of border changes and deportation, these Germans were not victims of a calculated Stalinist killing policy comparable to the Terror or the famine.

Correction

I just noticed that in the picture below, the naked souls entering heaven receive clothing as they arrive. So heaven is not a wild sex party after all. My apologies.

Heaven & Hell Cotillion

I’m not normally one to offer opinions on visual arts, as I really don’t know anything about it, but it's something whose pleasures I've recently discovered. I was just admiring Hans Memling’s The last judgment, which I saw on another site. Maybe I’m just looking for distractions from my work, but I looked at it closely, and it’s really terrifying – and not just the images of hell. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t picture heaven as walking naked into a Gothic cathedral. If I were naked, I have other concepts of what heaven might look like – but I’m too bashful to share them here.

What I did find interesting about the painting is how it illustrates how Medieval Europeans really saw the world as a battle ground between good and evil, or God and the Devil. Look at the centre frame, with St. Michael (I think) and his (or is it His, in the case of a saint?) angels fighting for the souls of the naked. Presumably the good and naked. I particularly like the image of the person/soul, just at St. Michael’s right hip, who’s caught in the grips of a devil, but being pulled from towards heaven by an angel – with a spear! Does this mean the forces of good use the same weapons as the forces of evil to win a soul? I’m not sure. But I do like the graphic and personal illustration of that particular struggle, as if, despite what the Church has always taught, it’s not man who freely chooses his destiny, but rather God or the Devil. Why would an angel have to fight for a soul like that if its fate had already been determined by the person's actions on earth? And does that mean there might be good souls who actually are lost to hell because an angel (I only see one in the middle frame) couldn’t get to that soul in time?

I really wonder how literally most Europeans took the ideas of heaven and hell at the time. I’d think that in a world bereft of the visual imagery that so overwhelms us, and in which most people were illiterate and so got their ideas about the world mostly through graphic arts (especially in Church), seeing such a picture must have been horrifying.

A brief post to be continued later on


I'm working on a longer and more detailed post about a couple of things I've encountered lately - namely, the artist's place amongst a larger group. This is something I've thought about before, but I recently read two things that have brought it back to my mind. Chaim Potok's My name is Asher Lev, which I just finished, looks at this from an artist's perspective, and it's also something that's always present in Philip Roth's novels. I just read a profile of him that reminded me of this, and is the reason I'm writing this. Basically, I find the 2 writers' approach to the subject complementary, and interesting for their difference - in Roth, you get characters (at least Coleman Silk is an example of this, maybe Alexander Portnoy, though his situation is a bit more complex) who are trying to escape the world they were raised in, to choose their personal "I" over the "we" of the group. But in Asher Lev, you have a Hasidic, Orthodox Jew with a great talent for painting & drawing. Pursuing this gift is contradicts the wishes of his father, the community, etc, but he does it anyway. What I found interesting, after reading several Roth novels, is that he never questions his religion, and while he doesn't necessarily try to combine religion and art - the two definitely remain separate spheres in his life - he never sees the two as mutually exclusive. For anyone this can be an ongoing struggle with different complications.

Anyway, it's interesting and there's a lot more to say, but I actually have work to do so I thought I should get this down before I forget about it. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to it soon, but for now, I'll use this Degas painting to illustrate my office, which is much less scenic than the painting.


(As you can see, the inspiration of reading a book about a painter has led to the use of more classic images for the blog. The hard part is finding something relevant - the first painting is by Marc Chagall, of his shtetl in Belarus, painted after he left, called I and the village. The second, called The office. But maybe I'll pick up a book on art history one of these days. It's embarassing how much I don't know.)

Having been away for 6 weeks I'm extremely busy at work and I really shouldn't be writing this right now, but I've been playing around with font colours to try to get something legible on the background picture I've chosen (a painting of Genesee St. in Buffalo by Charles Burchfield).

I just finished Chaim Potok's My name is Asher Lev, which explores the tension between tradition and the individual, the traditions of family vs. the tradition of art, the individual vs. the collective, and other aspects of art in one's life, among other themes. I wasn't loving the book for the first 100 pages or so but luckily I stuck with it because I really enjoyed it by the end, and have taken a lot of ideas away from it that I'll have to record at some point. Maybe I'll write more on it in the near future.

But now - work. I've got a presentation this afternoon after 6 weeks away. I'm trying to remember what it is I do again...

The medium really is the message?

I had a weird moment of realization today. I was watching CP24, hoping for any news update to the strike, and the story was about the mayor’s announcement today that more building permits will be processed, up to 500 by the end of the month. To ‘illustrate’ the story there was a video clip – a close-up of a hand hammering a nail into some sort of wooden structure. I was thinking how funny it is that they must have video clips for all sorts of stories, catalogued somehow so that the editors or directors or whoever decides these things can find an appropriate one for any kind of story. I find it funny because a picture of nails being hammered into wood doesn’t strike me as necessary when doing a story on building permits – I know what building permits entail, and even if I don’t know or can’t picture it, an image of actual ‘building’, no matter how on-point and illustrative, doesn’t add anything to the story. And yet, stock footage like this is used all the time.

Then it occurred to me that I do the same thing on my blog, and so do many other bloggers. I can’t decide whether this is a sign of a universal and inherent form of thought that we think is the best way to illustrate stories – whether with a picture or a video, do we feel that text isn’t enough to get our point across? Are we that limited by language that we use a picture or video to set up or establish what we’re trying to describe with our text?

Or is the creation of blogs, and this apparently universal format, just a product of all of us watching the same television news programs since childhood? Has television –in this case specifically television news – implanted itself in the way our minds work so deeply that, even when presented with a blank canvas and the opportunity for unlimited creativity, we are still limited by what newsroom editors in Washington or London or Toronto think is the best way to present news? When extrapolated beyond blogging, it’s a disturbing thought.

This is the first personal and non-strike thing I've written since it started. I don't feel like going back and editing it for typos and continuity and whatnot, so if there are any errors, that explains it. I'm just procrastinating when I should be applying for jobs. I had a job, or I guess I technically still do have a job. And one that I like, too. I'm just not allowed to do it right now so I'm forced to apply for other jobs. That's really annoying.

On history and aging writers

I'm about 80 pages into American Pastoral. A couple of thoughts. I don't know if you remember, but he finished the Counterlife with letters between Nathan and Maria about him creating her as a character, and her writing to him that 'pastoral' settings don't suit him (Zuckerman, at least) as a writer and he turned the characters in England into open anti-Semites because he needs the controversy and conflict that it produces. I find it funny that Roth finished one novel describing pastoral settings in literature as unsuitable for himself and then uses that as the title in his next one. It's pretty clear where AP is heading - I mean, the title of the first section is 'Paradise remembered' - and the way he's establishing Swede Levov and then introduces the story about Merry throwing the bomb, it'll be something along the lines of 'pastoralism lost'. But I like the thematic continuity. Says a lot about him as a writer, as if finishing with those thoughts in The Counterlife developed into the plot for American Pastoral.

Using the school reunion as a story-telling device works well too, and it's also kind of funny (for me, at least) because it makes me think of Skvorecky. His last novel (Ordinary Lives) uses 2 school reunions (25 & 50 years, I think) to frame the flashbacks and kind of tie together old stories told in his previous novels. It's interesting to see 2 aging writers, whose works I'm fairly familiar with, and who use recurring characters with loosely continuous storylines from novel to novel, use school reunions so prominently in their later novels. You start to get the feeling that nostalgia is an inevitable part of growing old, and for a writer, that means you're not just going to think about high school, but write stories about it too. I wouldn't be surprised if reading I Married a Communist and The Human Stain changes my perspective on this, but that's at least my impression for now.

The conversations Zuckerman has with his former schoolmates - it's really similar to what Skvorecky did, though I have to say Roth pulls it off a little more successfully. Maybe that's just because of the story he's telling, about America in the 60's, has more continuity and relevance for America today than when Skvorecky talks about Communist coups and exile. The Czech Republic today doesn't seem to lean on that past as much as its exiles do, or as much as the United States does, and conversations about Communist theories and political oppression really sound dated, like they're coming out of an isolated past. Of course, the reasons for the differences are obvious - the US didn't have the same clean break that came from the radical political changes as the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe, so there's a more direct line from the 60's to today. And as for the exiles, even if they've gone back to the Czech Republic since 1989, having lived in North America for 30-40 years, they still remember the country they left more strongly than the one they visit. It's just a shame that Skvorecky (like his fellow Czechs here) hasn't moved beyond that more in his writing.

Anyway, my original intention was to point out the similar outlook of two aging writers and comment on how aging affects the way we look at life, and I didn't necessarily set out intending to compare Roth and Skvorecky, but I suppose it's not entirely a waste of time. For both of them, 20th century history plays such a huge role in their characters' lives, even with some cross-over in setting (Prague Orgy), so it can definitely be an interesting and worthwhile exercise.

I don't think that's selfish. We've of course discussed this before, but maybe part of getting older is accepting the inevitability that we're not as unique as we thought when we were younger, and because of this we find that we have less and less to learn from the outside world.

I think about the idea of raising a child, and one thing that's on my mind about it is that there is nothing new you can teach that child - sure, it'll all be new for her or him, but all you can do is spend the first 20 years or so catching them up with what the rest of the world already knows. So from the child's perspective - which in this case is us - as we get older we realize this, and so tend to turn inwards as we age as the world is no longer as fresh and new as it once seemed.

For myself, at least concerning my reading habits, I've found that over the past year or so I take a lot more pleasure in fiction than I used to. I think it's a combination of two things - one, I think I find comfort in seeing a subjective experience of the world that I can relate to - even if it's fictional it's still been conceived and written by a real person. Secondly, I find that I can't concentrate on non-fiction, history, politics like I used to. While they're all interesting and important, at the age of 31 I'm already seeing the world around me repeat itself, and that gets frustrating. As part of getting older, maybe I'm also finding stories more engaging than events, and that the individual is more interesting than the collective. More important? I'll have to think about that one.

On the question of what is art. Beautifully put.


Knowledge can never transform the world,' I blurted out, skirting along the very edge of confession. 'What transforms the world is action. There's nothing else.'

[...]

'There you go!' he said. 'Action, you say. But don't you see that the beauty of this world, which means so much to you, craves sleep and that in order to sleep it must be protected by knowledge? You remember that story of 'Nansen Kills a Kitten' which I told you about once. The cat in that story was incomparably beautiful. The reason that the priests from the two halls of the temple quarreled about the cat was that they both wanted to protect the kitten, to look after it, to let it sleep snugly, within their own particular cloaks of knowledge. Now Father Nansen was a man of action, so he went and killed the kitten with his sickle and had done with it. But when Choshu came along later, he removed his shoes and put them on his head.

What Choshu wanted to say was this. He was fully aware that beauty is a thing which must sleep and which, in sleeping, must be protected by knowledge. But there is no individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence. I think that is what he wanted to say.

Now you want to play the role of Choshu, don't you? Well, beauty -- beauty that you love so much -- is an illusion of the 'other way to bear life' which you mentioned. One could say in fact there is no such thing as beauty. What makes the illusion so strong, what imparts it with such a power of reality, is precisely knowledge. From the point of view of knowledge, beauty is never a consolation. It may be a woman, it may be one's wife, but it is never a consolation. Yet from the marriage between this beautiful thing which is never a consolation, on the one hand, and knowledge, on the other, something is born. It is as evanescent as a bubble and utterly hopeless. Yet something is born. That something is what people call art.'

-- From Yukio Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

[and seen by me here]

Some thoughts on reading

I just read the letters from a librarian post about aesthetics, art and philosophy. Well, the most recent one, at least. Pretty fascinating stuff. I wish I had the time to just sit around and think about this sort of thing. I guess it's good that other people do, as long as they share their thoughts and conversations with people like me. Hey, maybe that's the whole value of art, philosophy, even academic studying of humanities - not to live in isolation, but to produce something of value that regular people (at least, non-academics who care about this stuff) can use to improve their own lives, their understanding of the world they live in, and thereby contribute to the overall improvement of human civilization. Not through technological advancement, but through furthering knowledge of civilization itself.

Maybe because I read a lot, I occasionally feel the need to justify it in a more meaningful way than just that ‘I enjoy it’ or ‘I like learning’, so I think about this sort of thing all the time. When I read, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, I can't get away from the mindset that reading should be about more than entertainment or even personal fulfillment. To give meaning to reading, it’s important to discuss what we read, whether facts, ideas, or just beautiful usage of language (poetry, etc), and by doing so to add, in however small a way, to society's understanding of itself. This can happen even if you only share your thoughts with one or two people. If a person fills their brain with knowledge or ideas and doesn't share them, it's a waste, and turns reading into a self-indulgent exercise no different from sitting on the couch watching reality tv shows because any knowledge, insight or understanding gained remains internal and unused. To share ideas it’s not necessary to publish novels or give academic lectures - not at all. Ideas can be shared through simple things like conversations or pointless, rambling blog posts we write while at work (ahem). To quote Jacques Cousteau via Rushmore: "When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life he has no right to keep it to himself."

I have more thoughts on this, like the idea that there are too many voices out there already, so it might be nice if someone just sat and listened and tried to keep track of it instead of just adding to the cacophony (I am a librarian, after all), but I’ll have to think about it some more first.

Albania dusts off ancient treasures

I don't normally associate Albania with ancient Greek and Roman architecture, but really, why shouldn't I? It should be so obvious - Albania's right across the Adriatic from Italy, and right next to Greece. And yet, I'm still amazed at how the political map of today's world can almost completely erase the our consciousness of the historical continuity of civilization. Anyway, pretty cool stuff.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7978443.stm

Reading Proust – Swann’s Way, 2: Struggling with Proust
Page 264, end of Part I.

Well what can I say at this point? In case it’s not obvious already, I’m not an academic, I’m not a writer, I’m a person with a job who reads when I have the time. I read because it offers a subjective view of history, or a close-up view of life that you miss in non-fiction or even, to bring Proust himself into this, because it can be more truthful than reality. So that’s where I’m coming from. And now, onto the book.

Mr. Proust is capable of some beautiful linguistic photography and he has some fascinating reflections on the mind, human interactions, social class, nature, reading, memory, and whatnot. And that’s just in the first 264 pages of a 3000 page novel. It’s a work of genius.

However, I have to say, I’m really struggling to continue. I might just be too distracted by other things going on in my life, or maybe I’m not getting enough sleep, or maybe I shouldn’t have committed to Proust so soon after emotionally exhausting myself on Hrabal, but I just find myself, ok, recognizing his genius as a novelist while struggling to give a damn about what the narrator thinks of hawthorn trees, or his gossipy dying aunt’s routine being thrown off by eating lunch an hour early on Saturdays. If I were in a class where I’m forced to read this, I could come up with some interesting observations and even write a paper about it if I were motivated by a grade. But as a guy with limited free time and a shelf-full of other books I’m thinking about reading, I’m finding it increasingly hard to focus on Swann’s Way. One expectation I had when I started this is that, like War & Peace, reading such an enormous novel I’d over time become increasingly attached to the characters and their stories. But because of the perspective of In search of lost time, you only get to know one character, whose own thoughts on the novel’s events (which aren’t really events per se, but rather his memories of, well, the past). After 264 pages I’m starting to feel like I’ve been stuck in a room with the same person for too long, and I need air, I need other characters with their own lives who aren’t just shadows of this one person’s memory – as vivid as those shadows are evoked. I find myself desiring conversation.

I do have plenty of positive things to say about the novel, however, which is the reason I’m not ready to give up on it just yet. As I said, Proust’s a genius. His physical descriptions, while they can drag on and become tedious, are beautifully written (or, beautifully translated, at least). In general, though, what interests me most are his descriptions of what he calls “the life of the mind” which, “of all the various lives we lead concurrently, is the most episodic, the most full of vicissitudes” (258).

One thing that’s really struck me is the way he presents the relationship between reality and imagination. I’m getting the impression that the narrator is a person who prefers desire for its own purpose over the eventual fulfillment of that desire. Much of the narrative is tied up in reflection and fantasy, that leads to ultimate disappointment when that reality is fulfilled. There are two illustrations of this: when he sees the Duchess of Guermantes in her ancestral church, about whom he’d been dreaming and fantasizing for a while, and is “immensely disappointed” when he sees her in person. He says this disappointment comes from the expectation that she would be an image on a tapestry or stained-glass window, which is how he’d been looking at images of her ancestors in the church. The second illustration is just a line on the nature that surrounds him on his walks: “because reality takes place in the memory alone, the flowers that people show me nowadays for the first time never seem to me to be true flowers (260). I'm not doing a great job of evoking it but it really is amazing stuff.

I was reminiscing recently with a friend I’ve known for 30 years about growing up together, so had our own search for lost time to compare with the novel. Perhaps that could be its own post, or perhaps you’ll just have to fantasize what I could come up with on such a topic, a post which could only disappoint whatever it is you can imagine. I do hope to continue to write about the novel, though, much as Proust’s narrator does, “to appease my conscience and to satisfy my enthusiasm” (255).

There’s obviously plenty more to say about Proust, but I think this is more than enough for now. I’m taking a break from the book today after finishing Part I, but I’ll probably be picking it up again soon enough. I should also confess that I’ve picked up Hrabal again during my break, this time reading him in Czech. I’m not sure if I’ll be posting on that or not yet, but if nothing else it’ll serve as a distraction while I let the memory of reading Proust surpass the act of actually doing so. He’d be so proud of me.

Monty Python - All-England Summarize Proust Competition

As you can see, you just have to go and read the book for yourself. And for the record, I'd have given her the prize, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8rhIw_9ucA

Reading Proust - Swann's Way: 1
About 64 pages in...

Have you ever heard about the scene in Proust with the madeleine? It's about 60 pages in. I just read it, and wow, I'm starting to get what this is all about, especially why you get books like 'Proust and the squid' or 'Proust was a neurosurgeon.' He really has a great way of explaining how memories can be lost and then evoked by certain senses.

I was actually thinking about this quite a bit earlier because it comes after a 50-page memory of how the narrator used to cry for his mother as a child. I didn't find that part very inspiring, but without it this essay or whatnot on memory would not have had the same impact. I was thinking about how I would summarize or explain this to someone who hasn't read the novel, and then it hit me that if we were capable of summing up in a few words what it took a novelist 60 pages to say, the world would have no need for literature. The novel is an art form that expresses a view of human experience in a very specific way, and the only way to get that is to actually read the novel (same goes for any other work of art, I guess). I think that's why I prefer it to straight philosophy - it kind of teaches by example or illustration instead of by theory. Being told "A man died" would not have the same impact on you as if you actually read the story of that man's life, suffering and death, even though the end result is ultimately the same. Kind of like the difference between watching a game and seeing the score in the paper the next day. Maybe that's what makes a book good, or even great - expressing that experience extremely well?

As I anticipate that reading In search of lost time will be quite an adventure, I hope to post more of these quick entries on thoughts I have on the book as I go along, partially to share my thoughts but also just to leave bread crumbs of where I've been over the course of the 2500 pages. We'll see where this leads. I also just read Hrabal's I served the King of England. I'll have to come up with something on that as well.

I've been meaning to start posting thoughts about books I've read, am reading or would like to read, but I'm far too lazy to get to that any time soon, especially considering I'm at work right now, so for now I'll have to content myself with just mentioning the books and getting around to actually writing about them at some point in the near future.

I'm currently reading War with the newts by Karel Čapek. (I'm actually reading it in Czech, so maybe I should put the title as Válka s mloky.)

I just finished Ordinary lives by Josef Škvorecký and The Lazarus project by Aleksandar Hemon.

Indifference - our mother, our salvation, our destruction

From an interview with Josef Škvorecký:

“Today I’d exclude destruction, and I’m not even sure anymore that indifference is our mother. But it is certainly our saviour.” Why, I asked him, does indifference retain its saving power? “If you were not indifferent, in a certain sense, in the days of Nazism or Communism, you would go mad,” he answered. “Because there were so many victims, you accepted it as a hard fact of life. Nobody weeps reading about six million dead, but if you read the story of one concrete, individual person, you can have a rapport with that person’s suffering. The greatness of literature is that it can move you that way.”

I just had a look at my friend J.'s blog (that his form of anonymous friend-mention, which is also suitable for my purposes) for the first time in a while. He has some entertaining, but some interesting and admirable new year's resolutions, one of which is to write more. I really want to make more of an effort to write as well, especially on my blog. I find myself with thoughts that I understand about how I see the world, but when it comes to verbalizing them in conversation they tends to come out as mumbled garbage, something along the lines of "I like boobies" (a profound and important thought but which could be certainly expanded upon and clarified). Writing forces you to organize thoughts into words that are going to sit on the screen in front of you instead of just floating as vague clouds of words that can't be expressed to another person but make sense inside the limited confines of my brain. When it comes to actually putting words onto, er, paper, I always get the feeling that my grasp of the language isn't as good as I pretend or think it is, so I should really work on that. I just wish my computer was in a more comfortable place in the house...