Literature – Page 79 – the coffee philosopher

It’s finally over. I’m kinda sad. Part of the sadness comes from the knowledge that I’ve never read these books again. Basically, I will probably never have the time. Fourteen books, averaging over 800 pages each… not gonna happen. I have yet to read the complete works of Dostoyevsky and that has to be a priority over re-reading the Wheel of Time series. Still. A bit sad.

This one is also only a bit over nine hundred pages, which, I guess is an improvement.

I want to go back to something that’s actual from the previous book, involving how the Children of Light (a kind of radical/reactionary military society that’s very unyielding) somehow agreed to work with a person totally antithetical to their beliefs. I know that the person (Perrin, if you must know) is ta’veren, which means that things just kind of happen around him (the Pattern bends around him, to use Wheel of Time speak) and there was good faith authorial effort to show some development in the Children of Light, but it was just too damn fast. I don’t buy. I didn’t buy it then. And this book is reminding me how I didn’t buy it.

But, the book does one thing very, very right. It picks up speed very, very fast. Very. Fast.

Less than halfway through, it turns into an enormous set piece, with three major, multi-day battles – not including the more individualistic, ultimate showdown between the mythic hero and ultimate evil. Sanderson shows a good touch for this sort of thing (his battle scenes in the Mistborn Trilogy were pretty good, so it’s not unexpected, but it is appreciated). The action is non-stop, exciting, and propulsive. The battle scenes, at least.

Rand al’Thor, the great hero of the book, has his final confrontation with the nebulous evil that is the ‘Dark One.’ And it’s a little disappointing. Parts of it seem, I kid you not, ripped off from The Last Temptation of Christ. While one can figure out what happened (Rand won, but how is the question) and what was done and the reasoning, it was not clear. Not in a ‘making the reader think’ way but in a ‘sloppily rushed to a not very well described conclusion’ way. There is some irritating deus ex machina regarding some of the main characters and the way in which they survived. And the very end, with Rand sneaking off while (most) everyone thinks he has died and is being burned on a pyre… well, what is the body being burned? And what is he doing to do about his two unborn children? It’s… I don’t know. Some big enemies were brought into the fight without a real explanation of why they were there and what they were and what exactly was motivating them.

But, hey. I finished. Fourteen freaking books. I took the last of them to the used bookstore the other day (not the final book, which I bought in hardback; not used bookstore wants hardback genre fiction, so I will likely donate it to the library). A part of my life that began in 2009 is over and that’s good and bad, but certainly not something I regret.

Posted on February 10, 2014January 31, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

Monday Morning Staff Meeting – Yes, But Was He Any Good?

This article goes into the big question when it comes to J.R.R. Tolkien: was he any good as a writer? The article says… maybe. It’s all a bit wishy washy. And I object strenuously to the negative criticism of his poetry, which I loved when my mother sang to me while reading The Hobbit out loud to a seven year old me. I think that there is also an argument to be made for a little pomo gamesmanship in his writing, if you look at it as having been written in an imaginary language (based on Anglo-Saxon and pre-English languages from the British Isles) and then translated into English. Rather as if someone wrote an epic novel in Klingon and then translated it into English. And, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet – I’m a fan of Tolkien.

Neo-liberalism and negative solidarity.

UC Davis has sold out to Amazon.

Emile Zola: novelist, polemicist, pamphleteer… influential art critic?

There are Crystals in Stone and Pressure in Snow So Are Snow and Stone the Same

Allen Ginsberg was many different from the others.

I’m glad that some newspapers are still covering poetry. Even if it is on the other side of the country (Dear WaPo, would it kill you to write more about literature and poetry ’round here? ‘Cause there’s a lot of it, most of it having nothing to do with poorly researched, pseudo-timely musings on the politics of six months ago).

Posted on February 9, 2014February 6, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

From Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘The Defence of Poesy’ (Published 1595)

If reading be foolish without remembering, memory being the only treasure of knowledge, those words which are fittest for memory, are likewise most convenient for knowledge. Now, that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of the memory, the reason is manifest: the words, besides their delight, which hath a great affinity to memory, being so set as one cannot be lost, but the whole work fails: which accusing itself, calleth the remembrance back to itself, and so most strongly confirmeth it.

Posted on February 7, 2014February 2, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

Weekend Reading – If You Don’t Find This Cool There Is Something Irrevocably Wrong With You

William Butler Yeats on modern poetry!

And new poetry by Sappho. Yeah. You heard. Sappho. Not some contemporary poet who nicknamed him/herself ‘Sappho,’ but Sappho herself.

Posted on February 6, 2014February 3, 2014 by the coffee philosopher · 1 Comment

Dungeons & Dragons: Part II

I’m just going to keep on recording the events of my Dungeons & Dragons campaign. You will probably keep on not reading it, but… I don’t know. Maybe someone will. Or no one will. Or just me.

The party took a boat, along with a helpful gnome named Peleg and an obnoxious, arrogant elf named Aelat, to the capital city of Hazakis. Inside the city, Teague, the cowardly, but also passionate, venal, cruel, and impulsive bard, managed to insult the emperor by suggesting that the Sunward army was doomed. Fortunately, after the party was summarily thrown into prison, some wiser heads prevailed and smuggled the party out and sent them to mainland to determine what was behind the invasion. The invaders had already been determined to be the Hoshen, a warlike nation of humans not normally known to be seafaring; as well, a strange symbol had been found on an amulet worn by some leaders: three parallel, vertical, wavy lines.

Teague, Regdar, and Finian set off for the prosperous and tricky city of Amran, the Sunward Empire’s main trading partner, hoping to meet up with an agent of the Sunward Empire who had been stationed in Amran for many years…

Posted on February 5, 2014January 31, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

Midweek Staff Meeting – Don’t Go Mistaking Me

We are not a southern city.

Build a better subway station and they will come.

‘Selfies’ and knowledge of the self. Not the same thing, apparently.

Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy

Books that changed people’s lives. We’ve all got them. But if you’re going to check this one out, I suggest you go down to Eileen Myles’ list. She’s a great poet and her opinions are worth listening to.

DC is good place to buy vinyl.

The (not so) strange friendship between Frank O’Hara and Amiri Baraka.

Posted on February 2, 2014January 28, 2014 by the coffee philosopher

Posted on January 30, 2014January 27, 2014 by the coffee philosopher · 7 Comments

Ezra Pound: Canto LXXV

Okay. It’s mostly sheets of music. I can’t read music. Can’t even play an instrument. Not even the triangle. I’m really bad.

If you’re musically inclined, make what you will of what’s below. It’s probably something famous.

So… apparently, ‘Gerhart’ was pianist friend of Pound and he transcribed the music below, which was originally composed by Clement Jannequin for four voices. Phlegethon is one of the rivers of the ancient Greek underworld.