Literature – Page 26 – the coffee philosopher

Posted on September 19, 2017September 18, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

‘More Than Human’

To dispel some, perhaps, common misconceptions: the novel More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon is not very much like the White Zombie classic, More Human Than Human. One is grand guignol rock classic and the other a meditation on identity.

The novel dragged a bit to begin with and it wasn’t until about a third of the way through that the disparate pieces started to come together. There was a bit of second rate Faulkner-ism in the third person limited narrative sections featuring children and brain damaged adults and I honestly couldn’t see what Sturgeon was doing. I now see, but I’m not convinced it was worth it.

Posted on September 18, 2017September 18, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

‘The Long Tomorrow’ By Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett wrote heady, thinking person’s sci fi, pulpy space operas and planetary romances, and also worked on the script for The Empire Strikes Back. I’ve read a little of her pulp (one of her Eric John Stark novels/novellas – an homage to Burroughs’ Barsoom novels), but it’s more books like The Long Tomorrow that have made her important to the history of sci fi.

The Long Tomorrow is post apocalyptic, but more in a Canticle for Leibowtiz way than a Road Warrior way. The world is still around. She’s thought out some interesting implications (the new America is politically dominated by groups descended from Mennonites, because they were already reasonably self sufficient in the absence of much technology; and America still exists, but it’s a lot more low-tech).

The evolution of the main character, Len, is interesting. It’s not that he’s super smart, but he is a thinker. More, he can’t help thinking and can’t help taking his time when thinking, but then, in the end, acting on the implications of what he has figured out.

The ‘twist,’ if that’s what it is (and it just might be my interpretation) is that the secret colony of scientists may just be spinning their wheels and the answers may not exist. Which also might be the point of Len’s thinking.

Posted on September 16, 2017September 15, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

‘Empty Chairs’ By Liu Xia

http://amzn.to/2x8Ie5H It seemed unfair (and possibly sexist) to read Liu Xiaobo and not read his wife and fellow poet, Liu Xia.

I do not know how typical the poems are (the dates range from 1983 to 2013), but based on the sample size of one collection each, Liu Xia was the finer poet. Maybe that really means she had a finer translator, but the artistic and political demands are better balanced and… they’re just better to read.

And knowing that her husband, who is addressed or referenced in the many love poems in here, died recently (while serving a eleven year sentence; ostensible ‘crime’ doesn’t matter; he was a political prisoner) and that she is under an extra-legal form of house arrest (so also a political prisoner), makes many of the poems, which touch on love and on freedom curtailed, devastating (and never didactic).

Posted on September 14, 2017September 13, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

My iPhone Is Slowly Dying

It doesn’t charge very well. Most cords won’t work. I can sometimes charge in car and with the off brand cord next to my bed, but only if I brace it and the angle is correct.

One day soon, I suppose, it won’t charge at all. Read more

Posted on September 13, 2017September 11, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

The Space Merchants

First, let me say that The Space Merchants is excellent. For a novel published in the mid-fifties, it is a masterpiece of prescience (or else a sign of how little things have changed). Its portrayal of media domination, inequality, and environmental ravages is eerily relevant; simply replace the novel’s world spanning, world dominating advertising firms with social media companies and search engines and you won’t miss a beat. Read more

Posted on September 11, 2017September 11, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

‘The Wilderness’ By Sandra Lim

T he Wilderness was the most affecting collection I’d read since Che’s Split. Cold (physically), estranged, and searching. Many of the poems are arranged in paragraph-like stanzas (albeit, short paragraphs of three lines or so) that almost act as individual prose poems. Longing and desire are strong, if rarely explicit, elements. But the dialogue, as it were, is between the poet and herself. The object of desire may be referenced, but it does not feel present. In sense, the object is not the point.

Posted on September 2, 2017August 30, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

‘The Narrow Road To The Deep North And Other Travel Sketches’ By Bashō

His travelogues are sprinkled with many poems, though I wouldn’t call this a poetry collection, but I wish some more were actually by Bashō and fewer by his students (especially one named Sora, who often accompanied him) and others.

He doesn’t engage in the kind of detailed, rapt description that I’ve found in nineteenth century European works, but it’s still moving to read his spare remarks about mountains, rivers, and beaches; meeting fellow poets; and making pilgrimages to isolated temples.

Posted on August 26, 2017August 31, 2017 by the coffee philosopher

Mentally Stuck In The Library

civic-center-library-01 The Scottsdale, Arizona library has a justly famous sculpture outside. My mother’s most vivid memories of me in Arizona are of me climbing on the pieces that make it up (it was allowed, I gather; and by the way, I am not talking about the ‘LOVE’ sculpture because that wasn’t there during my early childhood days in the southwest).

My most prominent memory of that library is actually of what felt like a terrible failure.

Posted on August 23, 2017May 28, 2020 by the coffee philosopher

Thomas Jefferson: Author Of America

Having finished Hitchens’ brief biography of Jefferson, the final question must be: is this anything more than an adequate biography of our third president?

And I am not sure that it is.