Posted on by the coffee philosopher

The Windup Girl


I’ve been slammed at work, so not much time to say much of anything.

But I will offer a recommendation for The Windup Girl.

Not quite post-apocalyptic, but definitely a vivid and believable bit of world building (critical to any good sci fi or fantasy novel) for an earth after global climate change and made it suicidal to continue to use fossil fuels, coastal cities either used to be inland or are protected by high sea walls, and “calories” (as in both food calories, but also calorie meaning a measure of any form of energy) become the source of power.

It’s sort of like Neuromancer for the Audubon Society set.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Good News! Reading In The Bathroom Generally Safe For You And Your Loved Ones


Thankfully, someone has looked into this issue.

And I admit it – I read a lot on the toilet. I finished Norman Spinrad’s Agent of Chaos on the toilet. That is where I have almost finished Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. So I’m glad that this habit won’t cause untold destruction on my household.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Who Gets To Call One’s Self A Writer?


When do you get to say, ‘I am a writer.’ Not yet, according to this person.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Happy Birthday, Franz Liszt


Today is his 200th birthday.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Readability Versus Literary Quality


I want to thank British poet Andrew Motion for making this point, that the dichotomy between literary quality and readability is almost entirely a false one.

War and Peace is not a good book because it’s beautifully written but well-night unreadable. No, it’s a damn fine read.

Even so-called difficult books, if well written, are also readable and enjoyable. In different ways than other books, perhaps, but then again, the best selling and very readable Guns, Germs and Steel is readable and enjoyable in a different than The Hobbit.

I’m not reading The Cantos because they’re boring and unreadable. Yes, they are often difficult, but it is not painful to have one’s view expanded and one’s mind challenged. Or rather, if it is, then you are a sad, sad person.

Great literature is great literature for many reasons, none of them are ‘unreadable’ nor ‘providing no pleasure in the reading of it.’

Here’s another bit of (not misplaced) grousing about the direction of the Man Booker Prize.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher · 1 Comment

Will Literature Live Forever?


I don’t universally agree with what Curtis White writes here, but does pen some lines that chills this would-be poet to his very bones:

Even allowing for the possibility that Amazon will be a benign monopoly and will encourage or at least tolerate the continued unruly flowering of this thing we have known as literature, if you thought it was hard to find a book spine out at a superstore, try finding that book of poetry that changes your life and that you didn’t know you were looking for in the web’s ether, “in the cloud,” as the techno-hip say. You’d have better luck finding a speck of gold in a bucket of sand.

Mr. White does bemoan the death of  book culture, but seems to think that great works will live on. He doesn’t say ‘literature’ because part of his purpose is doing away with that concept.

But, I wonder whether ‘it’ (literature, great works, etc) will really live on? He quotes a bit of Keats as an example of something immortal.

But will such things remain immortal?

How many plays by Sophocles were lost time? Or the rumored lost play of Shakespeare? What about the lost books of Artistotle? The books burnt when the Library of Alexandria caught fire?

How were they immortal?

Or on a more philosophical note, in what way does a great poem exist truly exist if no one reads it?

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Did I Mention That I Also Love Sharks


If my local course had sharks in the water hazard, I would be willing to spoil a good walk long enough to take up golfing.

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

DC: Vegetarian Capital Of America


Washington, DC has the most diners who abstain from meat while eating out of any metropolitan area. We are also the most vegetarian friendly.

Take that San Francisco, you damn, dirty, anti-environment, animal haters!

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

The Next Big Place In Literature


In the years following WWI and WWII, Paris was the center of literary life (while it’s easy to point the city’s long and great artistic history, the American writers who went there didn’t so much go for that reason as for the favorable exchange rate – which meant that pocket change from their families in America could support a comfortable life in France).

When I was in college, Prague was the next big thing.

New York, of course, has always had a special place in literary geography.

And to this list we add… Nairobi?

Posted on by the coffee philosopher

Outlaw Star


I have an obsession with a nearly fifteen year old anime called Outlaw Star. It’s only claim to fame in America is having run Adult Swim for a few months nearly ten years ago.

Lacking enough thematic or artistic innovation to appeal to Cowboy Bebop fans nor enough adolescent silliness to attract Sailor Moon fans, it never really found it’s niche here.

Which is to say, you probably know nothing about it. But I love it. Don’t know why. When I’m sick, I like to watch it on DVD.

So I’m going to write about as if you did know about it and indulge in some embarrassing, overgrown fanboy behavior.

Let’s just dive in then, shall we?

I am struck by how the ghost of the memory of ‘Hot Ice’ Hilda haunts the hero, Jean Starwind. The first so-called ‘outlaw’ he meets (‘outlaw’ referring less to status, re: the legal system, than a certain independent space travelers – more ‘outlaw’ like a biker gang [which may still indulge in criminal behavior] than outlaw like ‘I have the death sentence in six systems’ [and yes, I was quoting Star Wars) becomes the model for him, even though she dies (though dies as she lived, committed to her ‘outlaw’ principles) within a couple of days of their meeting.

Jean recalls some of her words on a couple of occasions throughout the 26 episode series (Hilda died during the fourth episode), almost as if conversing with ghost.

She is a mother figure (Jean has flashbacks to incidents of his time with his father, but there is nothing about his mother; and when his father dies, he appears to be orphaned), an older sister exposing her little brother to the exciting world ahead of him (though, in this case, it’s more about pirates
and space ships than taking him to his first college keg party), and also lover (though it’s not clear whether they ever actually have sex, but she is clearly an object of sexual desire).

Though the ostensible love story is between Jean and the android Melfina, their relationship is pretty platonic. Not necessarily brother and sister, but perhaps like the girl who has a crush on her older brother’s friend. This is in contrast to Jean’s feelings towards Hilda, who represents desire in all its forms – the desire for sex, for adventure, for knowledge of the path one should take. He wants Melfina for the companionship, but it is always the memory of Hilda he turns to in order to show him the way.