10 feb 2004
Someday, Angeline
My favorite character in any book is Taleswapper from the Alvin Journeyman series by Orson Scott Card. The main reason i like him is because he doesn't belong in a book, his profession and entire life exist because books weren't common in the story's setting. He seems like an amazing person to spend time with, but not someone who you'd ever be able to hold on to. He comes and goes as he tells his stories, or rather as Card needs him in the story.
I wish i could share Evan's enthusiasm for old texts, because everything he says about them is true. But at a whole other level, something about writing itself bothers me. Knowledge isn't linear, but of course books are normally read front to back. Abstraction (i.e. letters) isn't natural (easy) for us to learn; the fact that you think it is shows how far we've come. Our tracking skill lends itself too easily to literacy, yet this is not what it evolved for.
I have spent too much time with people in books--i could list them like my friends, and visit them on weekends. I've found blue with Kira, swam with Morning Girl, was confused with Anna, imagined Theo's freedom, got advice from Claudia, cried for Lydia. I don't really believe Davy was hurt; because i sympathesized too much with the narrator, i wanted the story to be my own. The problem here, of course, is that she told it truer than i would have, her lies closer to my truth. I don't want to be fooled with the Socratic method.
Was Huck Finn the first to know that literature can lie? He was the first to admit such was possible.
Imagine what it must have been like, to be one of those first people to write cuniform. Or one of the very first Greeks to learn the Phoenican alphabet, its symbolism lost in translation.
Or Diderot holding the first bookmark.
Make no mistake; Plato became Plato for a real good reason, and we are just the same.
But i'm a hypocrite, no? We don't become Taleswappers by typing all day, and yet here i am again at the old blog. But i read much less now than i did when i was young(er)--maybe i subconsciously act on my annoyance.
Someday, Angeline.
¶ 10:16
My favorite character in any book is Taleswapper from the Alvin Journeyman series by Orson Scott Card. The main reason i like him is because he doesn't belong in a book, his profession and entire life exist because books weren't common in the story's setting. He seems like an amazing person to spend time with, but not someone who you'd ever be able to hold on to. He comes and goes as he tells his stories, or rather as Card needs him in the story.
I wish i could share Evan's enthusiasm for old texts, because everything he says about them is true. But at a whole other level, something about writing itself bothers me. Knowledge isn't linear, but of course books are normally read front to back. Abstraction (i.e. letters) isn't natural (easy) for us to learn; the fact that you think it is shows how far we've come. Our tracking skill lends itself too easily to literacy, yet this is not what it evolved for.
I have spent too much time with people in books--i could list them like my friends, and visit them on weekends. I've found blue with Kira, swam with Morning Girl, was confused with Anna, imagined Theo's freedom, got advice from Claudia, cried for Lydia. I don't really believe Davy was hurt; because i sympathesized too much with the narrator, i wanted the story to be my own. The problem here, of course, is that she told it truer than i would have, her lies closer to my truth. I don't want to be fooled with the Socratic method.
Was Huck Finn the first to know that literature can lie? He was the first to admit such was possible.
Imagine what it must have been like, to be one of those first people to write cuniform. Or one of the very first Greeks to learn the Phoenican alphabet, its symbolism lost in translation.
Or Diderot holding the first bookmark.
Make no mistake; Plato became Plato for a real good reason, and we are just the same.
But i'm a hypocrite, no? We don't become Taleswappers by typing all day, and yet here i am again at the old blog. But i read much less now than i did when i was young(er)--maybe i subconsciously act on my annoyance.
Someday, Angeline.
¶ 10:16
