'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."

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.

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.