"'. . . The time of the sidhe is long past, and the time of geese is
passing. And in time men, too, will pass, as every man who lives long
learns in his own body. But Jesus Christ saves all.' So saying, he
dipped his hand into a bowl that stood upon the table by him and
touched her head with water, making her think, for a moment, of the
calm sweetness of Lough Conn, and then of the wild sea. Then he
said, 'I thee baptize, in the name of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Ghost,' and when he had said these words there stood
before him Deirdre and her two brothers; but time had had his way
with them, and they were bent now and old, and though their cheeks
were red as apples, their hair was white as frost, for they had far
outlived their time."
With Josie!
Married to Josie
(more from Pasadena: the picture is much
better at full size)
(and from Arizona)
(wedding pics)
Me, inside the model-checking machine, about to launch missiles to destroy the universe. *
Attacking Tip with an ant on the balcony in Pasadena. Photo credits: Josie
Vital statistics are, perhaps, in order--they don't solve the riddle, but they're useful clues:
Full name: Alex David Groce (not Alexander)
Height: 5'6" (economy size-human)
Weight: 130ish
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Brown (driver's license disagrees)
Born: One cold November day in 1975
(a Monday--I've been told it was raining)
Died: Not yet
Mother: Carole Groce (high-school math teacher)
Father: Leonard Groce (high-school drafting teacher)
Religion: Christian
Attends Shady Grove Baptist Church at home
Sometimes goes to West Raleigh Presbyterian
at school (Dr. Banks, a very good chemistry
professor, sings in the choir, by the way)
Pretty Orthodox--believes in Original Sin,
Free Will, Divinity of Christ, Miracles,
Hell, Heaven, Death & Resurrection
Sins far too much
(Mother is Methodist
Father is Southern Baptist
Favorite writers tend to be Roman Catholic)
UPDATE: 4/20/99: In February I began the long process
of converting to Roman Catholicism. In the fall
I will begin RCIA (the formal process) in
Pittsburgh.
UPDATE: Started and well under-way towards the Easter goal...
UPDATE: At the Easter Vigil, in the Jubilee Year 2000, I
was baptized and entered into full communion with the
Church at St. Paul's Cathedral in Pittsburgh.
Permanent residence: Jonesville, North Carolina
Current residence: On Forbes Avenue, in Pittsburgh (Squirrel Hill,
just below Murray Avenue)
For those who care, Pittsburgh is actually a nice
place to live.
UPDATE: Now I'm in sunny Pasadena, CA.
Occupation: Ph.D. Student, Carnegie-Mellon University
Computer Science Department
Would-be writer (on hold? sort of, waiting for more
rejection slips, I guess, and new story ideas)
UPDATE: Finished my doctorate, now working at NASA/JPL's
Laboratory for Reliable Software; still thinking
about ideas and tools to find/eliminate/verify the
absence of/ bugs in software. Also still writing.
Education: B.S. in Computer Science,
North Carolina State University (May 1999)
B.S. in Multidisciplinary Studies (with a
Concentration in Technology in Fiction)
North Carolina State University (May 1999)
Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Golden Key,
Upsilon Pi Epsilon, Pi Mu Epsilon, blah blah blah
Ph.D. in Computer Science,
Carnegie Mellon University (March 2005)
Favorite composer: J. S. Bach
Favorite band: R.E.M. (or maybe Dire Straits)
UPDATE: 4/20/99: U2 or Dire Straits
Favorite color: Blue, I think
Favorite ice cream: After Eights, as served at George's
Ice Cream in Oxford, England
Favorite season: Winter
Email address: agroce@gmail.com
Wants to be when he Computer scientist, doing research
grows up: Writer (science-fiction & fantasy, but also
non-fiction and mainstream fiction)
Ate for lunch today: (April 3rd, 1997) A hot dog and a Coke
Is that healthy? No
UPDATE: (April 20th, 1999) A chicken parm sub at Jersey
Mike's with Tracey, Chris, Rob, and LJ. Also
not particularly healthy.
UPDATE: (9/2/99) Sandwich, Coke, pretzels & macaroni salad
at a "lab lunch" thing during CMU Immigration
Course. Not TOO bad, not great. How good
for you is Chinese? Guess it depends.
Books reading at this THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
time (4/3/97 again): R. Kirk FROM BURKE TO ELIOT (and back?)
THE DARK DESCENT, ed. David G. Hartwell
(last story read in this was Joyce Carol
Oates' wonderfully terrifying "Night-Side")
UPDATE: 4/20/99: THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN ORDER, Russell Kirk
VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET, Gore Vidal
THE PRISONER, Marcel Proust
Recently finished:
THE UNMAKING OF A MAYOR, WFB
AT-SWIM-TWO-BIRDS, Flann O'Brien
MARY ROSE, J. M. Barrie
UPDATE: 9/2/99: LIFE WITH JEEVES Penguin omnibus, Wodehouse
--lots and lots of papers by various people--
9/10/99: Finishing the Wodehouse
THE KING OF ELFLAND'S DAUGHTER, Lord Dunsany
UPDATE: 9/26/99: Wolfe's ON BLUE'S WATERS tantalizingly
hints that THE BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN may well be
Wolfe's finest work yet.
UPDATE: 2/4/00: Chesterton's WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD,
Eddison's THE WORM OUROBOROS, and ROBERT AICKMAN: THE
COLLECTED STRANGE STORIES (the stories I haven't
read previously--"The Insufficient Answer," and
"Choice of Weapons" so far)
Recently finished: THE SPIRIT OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
by Etienne Gilson, and Neal Stephenson's marvelous
CRYPTONOMICON
UPDATE: 3/1/00: Walker Percy's THE MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE,
and Dickens' OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
Recently finished: Bill Amend's WILDLY FOXTROT
UPDATE: 5/25/00: Muriel Spark's LOITERING WITH INTENT,
Maritain's MAN AND THE STATE, considering a
long overdue reread of LITTLE, BIG. Recently
finished Lafferty's wonderful SINDBAD: THE
THIRTEENTH VOYAGE, Brust's entertaining ATHYRA,
and Le Guin's promising but somewhat lacking THE
BEGINNING PLACE (Wolfe overrates this one).
UPDATE: 6/6/00: Just finished Johnson's LIFE OF SAVAGE,
and a reread of LITTLE, BIG. Enjoying Lafferty's
THROUGH ELEGANT EYES, a quirky collection even
for Laff.
UPDATE: 6/9/00: (Too quick an update? who's to say?)
Finished the Lafferty, which was one of his best
(the stories in it I'd read before much improved
by conjunction--on its own, "Brain Fever Season"
isn't half as much fun). Now reading more Spark,
A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON, and Newman's THE IDEA
OF A UNIVERSITY.
UPDATE: 7/5/00: Almost done with Newman, halfway through
Nabokov's selected letters, and just starting
Trollope's DOCTOR THORNE.
UPDATE: 7/26/00: Just finished Johnson's RASSELAS (wiser
than CANDIDE, if not funnier), now starting Mark
Helprin's WINTER'S TALE.
UPDATE: 9/17/00: Midway through PETER PAN, reliving my
childhood as fall settles in. Also, Newman's
ESSAY IN AID OF A GRAMMAR OF ASSENT, Lafferty's
collection IRON TEARS, and various J. F. Powers
short stories.
UPDATE: 1/8/01: Just finished Thorne Smith's THE NIGHT
LIFE OF THE GODS, which is much better than the
more celebrated TOPPER. Not sure what I'll read
next--probably start a reread of SHORT SUN in
preparation for release of RETURN TO THE WHORL.
I've also got V and INFINITE JEST on loan (thanks
Jennifer) as part of an effort to convince me
that postmodernism does exist.
UPDATE: 1/28/01: Just completed Wolfe's RETURN TO THE
WHORL. Wow. Insanely good, maybe the best
thing Wolfe's ever written.
UPDATE: 11/5/01: Tonight finished WORLD OF WONDERS, and
thus Robertson Davies' Deptford trilogy--wise,
rich, fun books. I'll have to read more Davies.
Over the summer and this fall I've also finally
read a good deal of Iain Banks--good stuff, though
USE OF WEAPONS as a starter makes the other Culture
books a little less impressive. USE OF WEAPONS and
Bradley Denton's BLACKBURN were, I think, the most
impressive reads of the summer*. By the way,
INFINITE JEST was great--but V I still haven't
tackled. Enjoyed THE CRYING OF LOT 49 this summer,
in territories not too far from where it is set,
but not overly impressed with it. Pynchon still
hasn't won me over.
* well, the summer in California. I finished
Waugh's SWORD OF HONOUR trilogy before heading
West and it was the best thing I read after
the end of the school year.
UPDATE: 1/15/02: Just finished Christopher Priest's
interesting THE GLAMOUR, after reading Russell
Hoban's THE MEDUSA FREQUENCY.
UPDATE: 1/20/02: Busy week, but read Lafferty's
AURELIA. One of his best, in my opinion.
Rather a savage book, in the sense that
Lafferty is like a goofy prophet in clown
clothes, calling to repentance with a grin
since the other approaches have failed and
aren't as fun anyway.
UPDATE: 2/13/02: Finished Chesterton's A SHORT HISTORY
OF ENGLAND recently, now reading THE GULAG
ARCHIPELAGO.
UPDATE: 8/13/02: Near the end of Michael Bishop's BRITTLE
INNINGS, a fine novel. In the middle of various
other nonfictional works and short story collections.
UPDATE: 9/12/02: Reading Muriel Spark's THE MANDELBAUM GATE
and Hugh Kenner's essay collection, MAZES. Finally
within sight of the end of Augustine's THE CITY OF
GOD, but still some distance to travel.
UPDATE: 1/9/03: Just finished Waugh's EDMUND CAMPION,
almost done with Patrick O'Brian's THE NUTMEG OF
CONSOLATION.
UPDATE: 2/6/03: Just finished Jonathan Carroll's BONES OF THE
MOON. Good, but perhaps a weaker finish than the
rest of the book would have had me expect.
UPDATE: 2/12/03: Michael Bishop's COUNT GEIGER'S BLUES is
the good stuff; not quite as good as BRITTLE INNINGS,
but well worth a read. Bishop writes _Southern_
science fiction about as well as I know of anyone
doing it.
UPDATE: 3/21/03: I suggest you go read Jeff VanderMeer's CITY OF
SAINTS AND MADMEN if you haven't. I picked up
a copy of the paperback Cosmos version in Boston
after a friend (thanks, Eli) endorsed it, and was
impressed into getting the Prime hardback. You
should skip the paperback. A tricky, squidsy,
mushroom-haunted book; a bit like Nabokov, a bit
like Aickman, a bit like Wolfe. These are all
good things. VanderMeer isn't Nabokov, or Wolfe,
or Aickman, but he's pretty good.
UPDATE: 4/21/03: AMSTERDAM, by Ian McEwan. A better book than
ATONEMENT, for my money. A short, sharp, shock
of a book*. A little bit, perhaps, like Muriel
Spark in her darkest mode (think THE DRIVER'S
SEAT), if neither as funny nor, really, as
bleak. A good read with some stunning prose.
* not really a shock; you see what's coming a
long way off, but the skill is in the fact that
it still packs a punch despite the telegraphing.
UPDATE: 7/13/03: Just finished Lafferty's HALF A SKY, and before
it his THE FLAME IS GREEN.
Now this is the real stuff, the good strong stuff!
There are two more volumes to these Coscuin
Chronicles--never published. And none to say who
knows if I'll ever read them. But this part
is the top-notch, over-the-top, stuff, and yes--
even coherent. 1845-1854, Paris and Krakow and
Quito and Montevideo and Basse-Terre, and is this
the real history? If not, it's probably about as
true: 1848 and the two revolutions (one Red, one
Green) and the Devil's Disciples (Schopenhauer,
Feuerbach, Comte, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich David
Strauss, Marx, Kierkegaard, Haeckel, Fechner,
Fichte, Renan, Sainte-Beuve).
Why don't we have a parade every year to celebrate
our luck in having Lafferty? Ah, well, it's the
good stuff, and God rest Raphael Aloysius' soul.
UPDATE: 7/17/03: John Derbyshire's SEEING CALVIN COOLIDGE IN A DREAM
is charming and poignant, the light but wise story
of a former Red Guard and Silent Cal. One of the
more enjoyable contemporary novels I've read in a
while; you should read it.
UPDATE: 8/12/03: Hugh Kenner, THE POUND ERA. Kenner at the top of
his form. Anyone interested in Pound, Eliot,
Joyce, Lewis, and the other major modernists
should read this. Fascinating and beautifully
written.
UPDATE: 10/20/03: Various and sundry things; just finished
Chesterton's 1919 IRISH IMPRESSIONS. Enjoyed
Stephenson's QUICKSILVER (best ending he's done).
ARCHIPELAGO is a Lafferty masterpiece--if you
ever see a copy, grab it. Taking my time with
the Hollander and Hollander PURGATORIO and
Paul Johnson's THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN.
UPDATE: 12/14/03: I've just finished A MIXTURE OF FRAILTIES, and
with it, all of Robertson Davies' novels. I
think FIFTH BUSINESS and WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE
are the finest of them, but they're all wonderful.
On a memorial reading of Kenner's THE
COUNTERFEITERS.
UPDATE: 12/22/03: Gene Wolfe, THE KNIGHT. I have to wait a year for
the next part? Wolfe at his best, I'd say--the
story is rousing fun, fast-moving and entertaining,
a Wolfe-take on Eddison or Lindsay, "high fantasy"
with most of the stops out--only it's good, and has
the Wolfe touch. "Simple" narrator with the usual
Wolfe hints at deep waters beneath. Some guessing
games I'm sure I haven't figured out. Read it.
UPDATE: 1/29/04: About the same time, finishing Joyce Cary's THE
HORSE'S MOUTH and Annie Dillard's THE WRITING LIFE.
Fine books "about" art. The Cary novel's about a
painter, the Dillard's just Dillard, writing.
Sometimes, someone will say "Geez, why would I read
a book about writing?" On the one hand, they're
right. Nothing is more boring than writing. Reading
is a lot of fun, but writing? Yeeeeeech. Folks who
want to write can chalk it up to professional
development, the same way you read a book about
routers or grout or business plans or whatever. But
normal sensible people, why would they care? Well,
the thing is, a good bit of the actual work in, say,
sailing a boat or climbing a mountain is dull, except
for the possibility of drowning or falling to your
death. And I don't climb mountains or sail Cape Horn
very often. But I like nonfiction from people who
do such things well, and know how to write about
them. Dillard isn't going to drown, probably, but
she makes it clear that writing is a thing worth
doing well, and interesting to read about in its own
right. I think.
The Cary, on the other hand, is a good novel, never
mind the "art" hooey. Best read after HERSELF
SURPRISED and TO BE A PILGRIM. Jimson the seedy
William Blake is a lot of fun as a 1st-person
narrator, and again there's the perfect mask for
a vision of a dying England--though Jimson's more
timeless than Sara or Wilcher.
UPDATE: 3/4/04: Shusako Endo's THE SAMURAI. Reminds me of Graham
Greene, of course, but this novel does not quite
work in the same manner as THE POWER AND THE GLORY.
Powerful Christian novels, gazing at the heart of
Christ the lord of the outcast, the defeated, both,
but fictionally THE SAMURAI relies on the doubling:
Velasco and the samurai, with the third figure on
the road behind them, the King who died for us.
UPDATE: 3/18/04: Kingsley Amis' LUCKY JIM. Fun, clever, even
touching--not quite up to THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE,
in my opinion, but a fine comic novel. Probably
better when academic novels were less done. I
can't say if it inclines me for or against Amis
as misogynist (he's not really "sexist"; but it's
not clear he doesn't simply _dislike_ women in a
way, more clearly so in the later books). Anyway,
what I'd like to read now is a new Tim Powers, so
why hasn't he written one?
UPDATE: 3/26/04: Give you joy, and what a fine sea it's been.
Just finished the last of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey
and Maturin books (or Maturin and Aubrey, as I
would have it, based on natural sympathies). What
marvelous books! Another world, like and unlike
our own. Gene Wolfe once wrote that great writers
make a world "that is different from the actual
world, and in some respects better" (Wolfe was
writing about Nancy Kress, who I like but not that
much). Now, of course, these worlds are parasitic
on ours, God being a better writer than even Gene
Wolfe or Dickens or O'Brian. But O'Brian is part
of that better work the Creator breathes forth,
and not an insignificant part of it. How can
things be so terribly awful if somewhere Jack has
his flag, and the ugly good man Maturin has his
anomalous nuthatches and perhaps the worthy
Christine, and Killick is toasting the cheese?
I read one of the Hornblower books, and while it
was not a bad book, it was such a shadow to the
world of O'Brian: humor, order, freedom, delight
in seas and skies and things that creep and crawl,
murder and death and fear, deep sadness, but again
like the seas, changing humor and, above all, love.
That's what makes the best books, the best worlds,
love -- not just romance, though not contra romance,
but the love that's at work in friendship, and
loyalty and, behind it all, driving the seas and
the sun that Jack takes his sighting from at noon.
UPDATE: 4/23/04: Finished Baron von Hügel's LETTERS TO A NIECE,
on recommendation from Flannery O'Connor, via her
letters some years ago, I suppose. Wise and very
charming. I was pleased to see that in giving up
buying books for Lent I was following in the Baron's
footsteps. Not a hardship, but more sincere and
mindful than, say, giving up chocolates (for me, that
is; clearly there would be others for whom the very
reverse would hold), which costs neither thought nor
much pleasure.
I'm also continuing to enjoy Stephenson's THE
CONFUSION: quicker to get moving than QUICKSILVER,
which I liked in spite (or even because) of its
defects. No CRYPTONOMICON, but it is unreasonable
to expect Stephenson to write books that
good all the time.
UPDATE: 6/26/04: Graves, GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT. If I were an English
professor, and called upon to conjure up a seminar
to teach, I think something interesting could be
made out of autobiographies of English writers
born around the first quarter of the 20th century:
Graves (1895), Muggeridge (1903), Aickman (1914),
Spark (1918), and, say, John Mortimer (1923).
If you can't form some notion of what's wrong with
life and what's all right with life from that set,
the problem may be your own.
UPDATE: 7/5/04: Just read "The The Horse of Iron and How We Can Know
It," by M. John Harrison. Which, of course, I'd
read already, as part of LIGHT. Is it a strong
story? Hard to say, in a way. On the one hand,
Harrison's prose is superb, and I've enjoyed THINGS
THAT NEVER HAPPEN a great deal. On the other hand,
somehow, much of Harrison's short fiction feels like
failed Aickman. I don't think Harrison is trying to
do what Aickman did, or that underneath lies the same
vision of the world. Still, it feels like failed
Aickman. Both pick out detail, and render it such
devastating attention that the things of which the
world is made become sinister, imbued with unsettling
significance. But Harrison seems to rush it, or at
least his approach is too rapid to achieve the same
effect. The illuminations come too fast--while the
psychology and the words are often as high quality as
you will find in short fiction anywhere, the effect
that (I think) he's after somehow doesn't always come
off right. Aickman measures out the nightmares, and
so every little thing that shouldn't be, and is
harmless in-and-of-itself ends up weighing too much.
Which works. Also, while Harrison isn't always
soured on reality, his occult discoveries, his
revelations, don't ever seem to carry any hope.
While Aickman can write something like "Into the
Wood" which shines while it terrifies. On the other
hand, Aickman could never have written a beautiful
and bizarre space opera like LIGHT.
UPDATE: 7/7/04: This is just to say, Muriel Spark is a marvel and
a treasure. ROBINSON, as usual, short, to the
point, funny, and superb.
UPDATE: 7/18/04: John Clute's APPLESEED and Brother Guy Consolmagno's
BROTHER ASTRONOMER. The Clute is cleverly written,
and (at first) very funny. Unfortunately, the
verbal pyrotechnics turn out to be a great deal of
sound and fury signifying rather little--no real
characters, and the underlying conceit is a cheap
mix up of Vinge with Ellison and Morrow. Very, very
mildly recommended, for the language.
BROTHER ASTRONOMER isn't as well written, but it's
actually got something to say. Nice little slices of
life from an astronomer at the Vatican. Nothing
surprising here, really--Consolmagno has what I'd
consider a good common sense view of the matter, but
still interesting reading for anyone else both
a Christian and a scientist (I'll have to admit it's
easier to consider examining the wonders of the
firmament as worship than it is verifying programs,
but the underlying ideas aren't that alien).
UPDATE: 7/27/04: Haruki Murakami, THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE. What
if Aickman were Japanese and wrote a picaresque
haunted house story? It wouldn't be this, but it
would be interesting. I'll have to read some other
Murakami--experts say this wasn't the ideal start,
and I thought this was a fine book. Between this
and Carey, the summer has placed many books on my
"I bet this will be good" list. I also recently
finished Kenner's A COLDER EYE: THE MODERN IRISH
WRITERS. Also highly recommended, especially the
index.
At some point I really should finish McPhee's
A ROOMFUL OF HOVINGS--I read the Hoving and Euell
Gibbons profiles at the airport when I was in
Boston visiting friends (hi, James and Christy!)
a few weeks ago, and ought to finish it. For some
reason, though, I find McPhee most enjoyable when
traveling. By the way, a shame about Avenue
Victor Hugo. Finding the sign saying it had closed
was the low point of my Boston trip (I should have
checked their website before we went, I know).
UPDATE: 8/1/04: I'm enjoying (so far) Babbage's PASSAGES FROM THE
LIFE OF A PHILOSOPHER. Babbage seems to have been
a truly odd man, with an engaging Victorian voice:
it is almost, but not quite, impossible, to figure
out when he is joking. His version of the Difference
Engine controversy ought to be read by every computer
scientist, in order that we may know we stand on
foundations of rancor, dispute, cleverness, and
either government waste or penny-pinching. But
Babbage is possibly more interesting when he's
stalking around in a volcano or plumbing the depths
in diving bell. These parts have left me hungry for
some first rate travel writing. I think I'll go to
Waugh's first, LABELS.
A curious thing: until two years ago, I had never,
as far as I can recall, read a single work of travel
writing, except for the occasional magazine article
(Stephenson's fiber-optic-laying extravaganza for
WIRED, for instance). Then I was stuck in Rome for
an extra day, thanks to the vagaries of Italian
train schedules (yes, yes, pace Mussolini). Not
that I'm complaining--another week in Rome, if not
for the need to get back to work at NASA, would have
been fine (though I raged unreasonably at the
Northwestern counter, to my discredit). I had a
place to stay (though my friend was a bit surprised
to see me back). Since I had an extra day to kill,
I had time to take care of a problem: I'd finished
the book I had brought with me, and had nothing left
for the flight back to San Jose.
Being trapped on a long flight with nothing to read
isn't the worst thing I can imagine, but I try to
avoid it. If you could be sure of interesting folks
in nearby seats, it would be different, but, no,
you can't.
I went to an English bookstore somewhere near the
Spanish steps, and browsed for a few moments. Hmm,
books by Evelyn Waugh I had never heard of? WAUGH
IN ABYSSYNIA, and REMOTE PEOPLE? That ought to do
the trick.
I actually had an interesting neighbor on the flight
back (still managed to read the first section of
REMOTE PEOPLE), and ended up working with her on a
crossword puzzle in the in-flight magazine that
turned out to be by someone I knew. But that is
another story (actually, that is most of the story--
it's not much of a story).
The Waugh books were the beginning, and Eric Newby
and Wilfred Thesiger and John McPhee (parts of COMING
INTO THE COUNTRY and LOOKING FOR A SHIP are travel
writing of some sort, aren't they?) followed. Thanks
be to late-running trains.
UPDATE: 8/8/04: Just started Mieville's THE SCAR. Rumor has it that
the invention is as first-rate as PERDIDO STREET
STATION, but that he's learned to do plot. Didn't
end up reading any travel books, after all--a passing
mood, I guess. Enjoyed Wilfred Sheed's OFFICE
POLITICS. After the first 40 pages, I was ready to
put it aside and slowly force myself through the rest
while reading something more interesting. Read one
more chapter, and the rest flowed very nicely, though
it's not a spectacular novel or anything. I'm not
sure what rubbed me wrong about the beginning. I
had thought Sheed was supposed to be funny--compared
to Waugh, some reference to TRANSATLANTIC BLUES as
mordant, but OFFICE POLITICS, for the most part,
lacked such effects. For the most part, it presents
a low key but interesting examination of a set of
intertwined, somewhat stylized, characters. That's
all, but it does it very competently.
UPDATE: 8/22/04: Sean Stewart's PERFECT CIRCLE was wonderful: in
a (vague) sense reminiscent of THE TOOTH FAIRY, or
at least sharing some of that book's excellences.
THE SCAR was indeed much better than PERDIDO STREET
STATION. As usual, every page of Hugh Kenner's
Modernism "trilogy", A {COLDER, SINKING, HOMEMADE}
{EYE, ISLAND, WORLD} provided more tantalizing
insights, claims, anecdotes, and thought experiments
than many books of literary criticism. In other
news, Willmoore Kendall (CONTRA MUNDUM) is convincing
me that Russell Kirk's theoretical analysis
has some holes, however on target in an
emotional and "literary" way it may be, and I see
what Flannery O'Connor meant in thinking Simone Weil
would be a fine figure for a comic novel.
UPDATE: 10/20/04: Kenner, BUCKY: if you're going to read a book on
Buckminster Fuller, here you go! Reynolds' CHASM
CITY sure was a lot better than REVELATION SPACE,
by the way: definitely worth a look.
UPDATE: 10/25/04: Dear Neal Stephenson,
I have delivered myself into your hands for many,
many hours and nigh on 3,000 pages now. I just
finished the Baroque Cycle last night.
You tied it all together in a most satisfactory
manner, and after the initial slow start of
QUICKSILVER, I enjoyed just about every moment of
the journey. I'll reread CRYPTONOMICON again before
I reread this, but now that you've proven you can
manage large scale novel structures, and write
endings, I foresee even greater things from you,
Sir, and I salute your vision.
UPDATE: 11/17/04: St. Therese of Lisieux's THE STORY OF A SOUL:
delightful, wise, and good. Thanks to Josie for
the recommendation. During my post-Seattle cold,
I've started on Wolfe's THE WIZARD. So, so, good.
While in Seattle, finally obtained a copy of
MOONWISE (thanks Eli) and a few other interesting
things. Tempted to reread MOONWISE, but it'll take
a month I don't "have."
UPDATE: 11/21/04: THE WIZARD was very good. You should read it. Yes,
I mean you, reader. First read THE KNIGHT, though.
Muriel Spark's THE FINISHING SCHOOL is lightweight
Spark, but a delightful afternoon's reading, anyway.
UPDATE: 12/1/04: Thomas Merton, NO MAN IS AN ISLAND: astonishing.
I'll be reading more Merton (thanks, Josie).
UPDATE: 1/21/05: Guardini's THE END OF THE MODERN WORLD: provoking,
though perhaps less so than it could be,
as the central notion is present in Walker Percy
and R. A. Lafferty's work, and is just 'in the air'
in some fundamental way. I'm enjoying Peter Carey's
OSCAR AND LUCINDA.
UPDATE: 1/30/05: Finished Theodore Dalrymple's LIFE AT THE BOTTOM:
a British prison doctor looks at why, given that in
many cases the poor of the West have wealth undreamt
of by those of other times (and places), life at the
bottom is so cruel, harsh, and damaging. His answers
won't please everyone--certainly those who despise
the notion that ideas bear (often terrible) fruit,
or prefer to think of men as economic objects or
victims or things than as souls with free will will
reject his diagnoses. This book reminds me of
Chesterton, though the style is completely different;
Dalrymple refuses to see souls as atoms, and respects
his patients enough to think that they are capable of
better lives than the ones they live.
Also, Carey spins a wonderful tale, but again I'm
not sure that there isn't a whiff of something I
don't like in his endings. But I'm not sure there
is--it's hard to say. His skill with narrative,
and the beautiful writing and impressive play of
themes (glass, water, and God here) is, for me,
balanced by a feeling of a bit of coldness in his
heart: that is, that he crushed his characters to
make some point, or because he "needs" a tragedy.
There is a vague feeling of the arbitrary, the
capricious, in the destruction. Perhaps I am not
being fair, perhaps I am missing the drive that
creates the necessity here, but I feel the doom is
for the author's ("as flies to wanton boys") sake
rather than for the story's sake. The best writers
may destroy with complete calm, but the blow comes
as inevitable, not capricious. Reality may crush
us in a fit of whimsy: but we are souls, with a
life to come. The characters of fiction have no
such grace (or judgment), and should be dealt with in
a different manner.
On the other hand, I'm a sentimental guy. On
still another hand, it's not as if I don't often
apply needed dooms to characters in my fiction, or
enjoy seeing Banks or Wolfe or Waugh or Greene
play the tragedian. And David Lodge constantly
annoys me by letting _his_ characters off too
easily sometimes--even in comedy, there should be a
little real blood and sweat.
UPDATE: 2/13/05: A correction: when I mentioned Guardini's THE END
OF THE MODERN WORLD, I'd only read the first half;
after completing POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY, I find
the whole much more impressive. It's not just a
diagnosis, it's a prescription. Is the solution
startlingly novel? No, but the challenge is
compellingly presented, and the general analysis is
striking, particularly the theology of power.
UPDATE: 2/21/05: Among other things, I'm reading MARY COLTER: BUILDER
UPON THE RED EARTH, by Virginia Grattan (a very
welcome Valentine's gift from Josie). An interesting
point from Chapter 4: "Colter's philosophy was that
a building should grow out of its setting, embodying
the history and flavor of the location.... She
could not visualize the design of a building or plan
its decoration until she thought out its 'history.'"
This reminds me of an approach to fiction that's
particularly common in Gene Wolfe's work, but also
appears with Nabokov and others: the fictional work
as an _artifact_. How did this document get here?
To determine what words belong in it, a false
"history" for the document must be invented, just as
Colter's hotel La Posada is formed from its fictional
history as a wealthy Spanish don's rancho. This is
taking point-of-view one step past the usual point,
into the realm of the object and its "provenance"
rather than just the knowledge available to the
narrator. Wolfe does the fictional equivalent of
sandblasting beds to age them -- and it gives his
work an architectural or "decorative" quality that is
missing from less obsessive work.
UPDATE: 2/23/05: Oh, just finished the last story in Harrison's
THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPEN. Hrm. I was unfair to
him earlier--the later work is not failed Aickman,
and there are a large number of first-rate stark,
beautifully written glimpses here--and there's a bit
of hope as well as despair, making Harrison something
other than an artist of the desolations. Also, skip
the China Mieville introduction: pretentious, and
in the midst of babbling about "pleroma" in a way
that devalues the fine fictions, he repeats the old
silly mistake about the real hero of PARADISE LOST.
Has Stanley Fish taught us nothing? (Don't answer
that one.)
UPDATE: 3/9/05: Well, I've been a bit busy, what with defending my
thesis last week, and so forth, so not a lot of
fiction reading lately. I enjoyed Oliver Sacks'
THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT, and am in
the middle of Brookhiser's very good ALEXANDER
HAMILTON, AMERICAN. I did read the last Patrick
O'Brian fragments, "21," as a kind of rounding off
for the grad school experience (hmm, any resemblance
of CMU grad life to the British navy is purely
coincidental I imagine--the lash is as little used
here as on Aubrey's ship, I suppose). de Caussade's
ABANDONMENT TO DIVINE PROVIDENCE is excellent Lenten
reading (another fine suggestion by Josie).
UPDATE: 3/17/05: St. Patrick's day! But nothing Irish here, I'm
afraid. I'm in the middle of several things, but
wanted to note that SETHRA LAVODE was a fine (and
touching) series finish and that I'm very much
liking Rebecca Goldstein's INCOMPLETENESS. I had
not realized how profoundly Platonic Gödel's
convictions were, or just how harmful the
Incompleteness results are (if understood as Gödel
thought they should be) to formalism. I suppose most
philosophical realists are "Platonists," in this
sense, so it should come as no surprise that I'm in
complete (hah!) sympathy with Gödel here. Of
course math is about! To suppose that things
aren't about seems almost blasphemous to me--
a suggestion that God's creation is essentially empty
as opposed to the truth that it is nothing in
comparison to His Being.
And on the other hand, I'm reading ANNE OF GREEN
GABLES, which has very little metamathematics, but
I like it anyway.
UPDATE: 4/19/05: Well, I'm moving to Pasadena, so it hasn't been
the MOST productive reading time recently (not to
mention a wonderful trip to Arizona, and some other
still fun but lesser vacations without much time to
read). I'm about halfway through NICHOLAS NICKLEBY;
I did finish von Balthasar's A THEOLOGY OF HISTORY;
and a good while back I tried to decide if the end of
Murakami's SPUTNIK SWEETHEART is grim or hopeful.
Both? It didn't depress me, anyway, if that was
intended.
UPDATE: 6/5/05: ...and now I'm there. Been here a month and then
some actually. But I've given up reading, now that
I have a real job. Ok, perhaps that's untrue. No,
read a good bit. Finished NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, finally
read a Lemony Snicket book (Josie gave me one -- fun
though not as well done as Harry Potter, and while
I like those I'm still unsure what ALL the fuss is
about, since it's not as if Lloyd Alexander and T.
H. White and Helen Cresswell and Ellen Raskin and
John Bellairs and a host of others didn't write
children's books that a "grownup" can love...), read
Steyn's post-9/11 column collection (grumble), another
Peter Kreeft book, and I'm sure some other things --
ah right, enjoyed THE LIST OF 7, which Bruce has been
pressing on me for years. And a fistful of papers
to review for conferences, as usual. What now?
Wojtyla's LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY, which is as wise
and true as you would expect if you knew the author
would become Pope John Paul II (the Great), and
I've just started Haruki Murakami's latest novel,
which I'm experimenting with by reading it to a
Cibbo Mato/My Bloody Valentine soundtrack.
UPDATE: 6/29/05: I finished LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY, which says as
clearly as can be just what it is we must be for,
rather than against: that chastity and continence
are not a "via negativa" but the proper service of
love -- this is something to be for, rather than
simply a reaction to the rhetoric of "love" that
fools itself but masks, in the end, nothing either
free or loving, but the use of human beings as tools
for pleasure, devices of desires.
I've borrowed another good Kreeft from Josie,
prompting a rereading of Ecclesiastes. Now on to
Job...
And just a few minutes ago I finished Mordecai
Richler's ST. URBAIN'S HORSEMAN, which is a heck of
a novel. Comparisons are always unfair, suggesting
that something good isn't sufficient in itself, but
for those who haven't read Richler (you should; this
one's a good place to start, maybe), think of a
Jewish Canadian Kingsley Amis -- only imagine Amis
didn't despise the human race. Funny, of course, but
just an all-round winner of a novel, and even a heck
of a love story. Crude, rude, and offensive, of
course -- not for the squeamish, I suppose, but if
you like this sort of thing, you'll probably like
Richler doing it very much indeed.
UPDATE: 7/12/05: Still reading in ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL,
borrowed from Josie (who, by the way, I have asked to
marry; and she has, most happily, accepted): I
thought for sure I'd read it before, but now I'm
thinking it must have been one of the other Herriot
volumes I read, not this one.
Also: Benedict XVI's THE SPIRIT OF THE LITURGY and
the new Kelly Link collection. "The Hortlak" may
be the only Aickman story about pajamas and dogs and
convenience stores we'll ever see, though the great
man did write a few dog stories.
I guess the only real point of this entry was that
bit about Josie above, in case you were wondering.
UPDATE: 7/25/05: Read Crowley's latest, LORD BYRON'S NOVEL: THE
EVENING LAND. This is not LITTLE, BIG or ENGINE
SUMMER; on the other hand, it's not THE TRANSLATOR.
LBN is an affecting, cleverly written, touching tale
of possible and lost worlds, with more tenderness
than the usual beautiful Crowley trap (I'm not sure
THE TRANSLATOR was a trap at all, which may be why
it was a much lesser work): but this is certainly
a novel about choices made and worlds closed off.
Interestingly, the invocation of "America" here
is not clearly ironic; in ENGINE SUMMER and LITTLE,
BIG the "matter of America" -- the Huck Finn/Gatsby
(literary) sense of wide-open America, and lighting
out for the territories -- is negated; that is not a
true story, in those books. It's not even, I think,
an ambiguously or possibly true story, as it is in
GHOST WORLD (comic or movie). Here, it's a myth that
is possible; it only takes place in fiction, but it
isn't empty, and it's a real possible story of the
world. Anyway, those who like John Crowley's work
will like this book, perhaps even enough to not mind
if it somehow delayed the last Aegypt book.
I started reading the latest Harry Potter, but I'm
not that far, so don't ask me about anything. Other
than that, reading some Guardini and Merton, and am
really intending to get to Orwell's HOMAGE TO
CATALONIA Real Soon Now. Honest. For several years.
UPDATE: 8/24/05: Annie Dillard's AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD is fascinating,
beautiful and haunting. You should all read it.
UPDATE: 9/5/05: Well, I finally read HOMAGE TO CATALONIA. Why did I
wait so long? Orwell's honesty and decency make sense
of a small but symbolic part of that "low, dishonest
decade" that haunts us to this day (or does it? do
people other than politics-junkies know anything at
all about these things?). A shame that Orwell's
only religious impulse seems to have been a strong
"natural piety" -- in its English middle class form,
rather than the less humane old Roman version. We
must hope that what was best in him somehow found its
home (or lives nobly in Dante's Limbo with a host of
virtuous pagans...)
Murakami's UNDERGROUND is fascinating and worth a
read even by folks who'd be driven up the wall by
his novels. And I'm reading von Balthasar's book
on prayer, and finishing Merton's CONJECTURES OF A
GUILTY BYSTANDER, a Valentine's Day gift from Josie
(see why I want to marry her?)
UPDATE: 10/15/05: Just read Guardini's THE ROSARY OF OUR LADY, on
loan from Josie. Also finished KAI LUNG'S GOLDEN
HOURS -- maybe I should read some Jack Vance, to
satisfy the same appetite, but having just read that,
maybe not.
UPDATE: 10/17/05: Oh, almost forgot -- Squyres' ROVING MARS was an
interesting science read, and would almost certainly
be liked by non-JPL-employee readers.
UPDATE: 11/14/05: Poking my way merrily through Andreas Zeller's
WHY PROGRAMS FAIL, Guardini's THE LORD, and the
letters of Walker Percy and Shelby Foote. A random
mish-mash, I suppose in one sense, though also
obvious books for me to be reading -- what else is
a Southern Catholic student of software to read,
except his Bible, and his Wm. Faulkner and his
source code? Probably payoffs in all directions;
a healthy sense of the Fall of Man is a useful thing
to have about the house when you're debugging code;
and, like the detective story, debugging may have
an inherent moral and even (though in a limited and
not final sense) theological significance, as it
implies a true order, existing beyond the present
perceptions: a possibility that what is all wrong at
the moment has a rightness to which it can be put.
UPDATE: 12/20/05: 2005 draws to a close; Christmas is upon us. I'm
still reading Guardini, but finished off Walker Percy
and Andreas Zeller (well, not "finished off" -- as
far as I know, Andreas is still alive and kicking,
and I wouldn't dream of hurting the later Walker).
Excellent books. Mark Helprin's A SOLDIER OF THE
GREAT WAR is fantastic, and should make the many odd
hours of flying coming up to see the folks and Josie
bearable. I've got Josie reading Muriel Spark, after
years of trying to press the catty and wise
Spark and her catty and dubious narrators on others.
UPDATE: 1/9/06: Tonight I finished Mark Helprin's A SOLDIER OF THE
GREAT WAR. It is a beautiful book, a book about God,
about love, about men and women, and a book that is
profoundly on fire with the Resurrection of the Dead.
You might want to read it. It has left me happy and
defeated and crying, and it will always be part of
me -- isn't that what a great novel is supposed to
do? I'll talk more about what else I'm reading, such
as the book James tried to get me to read years ago
that I'm finally reading after borrowing from Josie,
but Helprin did something fantastic and I think he
ought to get a whole entry to himself.
UPDATE: 1/11/06: So, I'm reading CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, on loan from
the lovely, intelligent and ever amusing Josie, and
THE PRACTICE OF PROGRAMMING. That's all I have to
say about that.
UPDATE: 1/22/06: I am enjoying Garth Nix's LIRAEL very much, and have
John Mortimer's second volume of memoirs at hand,
though I haven't started it. I'm sort of pondering
rereading some Muriel Spark, since Josie has begun
devouring the lot of them... Or I might finally read
LITTLE WOMEN. Or I may abandon literacy and take up
swordfighting. Though, er, probably not.
UPDATE: 2/6/06: Finished part one of LITTLE WOMEN, and am wondering
why the heck I didn't read this long ago. I blame
Josie for not having met me years ago, but I forgive
her.
UPDATE: 3/15/06: Cormac McCarthy, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES. Well. I
suppose I'll just have to read all the rest of Mr.
McCarthy's books, too, won't I? What took me so
long? Can't blame this one on Josie.
UPDATE: 3/29/06: I'm in Vienna for TACAS/ETAPS, so I'm reading a lot
of tourist maps and paper abstracts, but also for
Lent and the edification of my soul Kierkegaard's
TRAINING IN CHRISTIANITY (heaven knows I need
training). Josie's sheer joy in their wonders and
many delights has sent me back to Muriel Spark for a
second or more trip through her -- A FAR CRY FROM
KENSINGTON at the moment (Vienna is lovely butfor
rain, but I wish I weren't such a far cry from Josie
right now.)
UPDATE: 6/7/06: Busy getting ready to get married, testing file
systems, writing papers, etc., but have enjoyed
(even read out loud a decent chunk of to Josie)
Joseph Mitchell's UP IN THE OLD HOTEL. Mules and
rats and gypsies and black clams, oh my: good
stuff. von Balthasar, Nero Wolfe, and software
engineering notes also (who knew von Neumann came
up with assert statements, a while before there were
any programs running anywhere?)
UPDATE: 6/18/06: I just started A SCHOLAR OF MAGICS (need some light
elegant fantasy right now!) and am enjoying very
much Jaroslav Pelikan's fine commentary on Acts
(Acts is also good, of course, as you might imagine.)
Josie said I could say what she's reading, too, so
I will because I like talkin' about her. She reads
a bunch of books at once, more than I do -- if you
don't count ones I'm plodding through over a period
of years with long long long stalls. Right now,
that I can think of, she's liking St. Catherine
of Siena, and John McPhee's ANNALS OF THE FORMER
WORLD has convinced her to be a geologist, and also
there is the lively and great late Muriel Spark and
then Sigrid Undset, who I'd never have heard of if
not for Josie (not that I've _read_ any yet).
There's more. I cannot give micro-reviews, unless
Josie chips in. How about it, my lady, when you're
done, and I bother to update again?
UPDATE: 7/10/06: My wife and I are enjoying reading each other
TREASURE ISLAND. Did I mention Josie was gracious
enough to marry me the other day? She was.
I'm most of the way through Pelikan's ACTS, and
just started while in Utah on Edward Abbey's DESERT
SOLITAIRE, at the suggestion of my father-in-law
(well, and Wendell Berry before that, and others).
UPDATE: 8/14/06: Finished Mitchell's CLOUD ATLAS. About to start the
new Tim Powers novel, since m' dear wife Josie's
off to Arizona for a bit (and I'm off to Seattle for
a week for a conference) and I need something to
occupy my time. Ok, and I have been wanting to read
a Tim Powers novel for ages. I have thus far
resisted buying the new Ambergris book, but that
won't last long.
UPDATE: 8/27/06: So. The Powers? Good. Not nearly as good as it
looked to be to begin with -- left me cold in a way,
at the end. Objectively, a nice Powers novel, though
nothing on LAST CALL, THE ANUBIS GATES, THE STRESS OF
HER REGARD, or DECLARE. Ah, well. Can't complain.
Now. I just finished Lafferty's "Episodes of the
Argo." And it is impossible to say anything about
Lafferty that's of any use -- it's balderdash, and
beauty, and waking dream, and Irish Texas bull, or
maybe high mysticism, the fiction God gives us to
remind us that all is at stake, and to be of good
cheer (for He has conquered the world). Bah. Any
ways -- if you get a chance (it isn't easy, is it?)
read it. Read it. And miss Lafferty.
UPDATE: 10/31/06: Hey. Jeff VanderMeer isn't just a squidsy trickster
of a high order. He can write a lovely novel of
character that also moves through the mystery, the
baroque slimy elaboration of Ambergris with joy and
love for his characters. SHRIEK: AN AFTERWORD is
a fine, fine novel. I just reread Wolfe's SOLDIER
books as well, to prepare for SIDON. Lovely, sad,
cruel, and beautiful. Books about people and their
god(s)(God), as always with Wolfe. Interesting in
the case of SHRIEK and SOLDIER OF ARETE how well an
opening epigraph serves to frame the story, as about
_mortality_ above all -- about death, one of the few
things really worth writing about and thinking about.
"The dead have pictures of you" / "I knew that I begat
him mortal" -- good reading before All Saints' Day,
and All Saints' Eve. (All Souls, too, though let
us pray if not believe that these days shall be one.)
Josie and I also reading some books my mom suggested
to us, by Jane Duncan. I've only read the one, but
Josie's started a second. Quite good, very Scottish.
UPDATE: 12/1/06: What have I read lately? My first Walter Mosley
mystery (good, not great). On the plane back from
NC, some of THE ELEPHANT VANISHES, though Josie,
that charming Indian giver of a wife (twas a birth-
day present from her) read further than I did. Um,
read some reviews for a rejected journal paper.
Oh -- and of course I read SOLDIER OF SIDON. What
did I think? Well, on Amazon I said it was great,
KING SOLOMON'S MINES by Nabokov and Herodotus. I
stand by that, and by the claim that Wolfe's writing
has become better and less arbitrarily tricksy in
the years since ARETE. But. I think ARETE and MIST
are better novels. SIDON is wonderful, and perhaps
when Wolfe writes the rest (there's more, I'm pretty
sure, to come) it will be as fine. But SIDON is a
good book that lacks the animating and soul-searing
punch of the thematics of the first two Latro books.
In particular, SOLDIER OF ARETE is a tricky book,
and an irritating book -- but it's also a profound
meditation on mortality and the gods (and God) in a
way that SOLDIER OF SIDON is not, though it comes
close at points. There is no "I knew that I begat
him mortal" behind SIDON, to make it grab the heart
and squeeze, though certain scenes come close. It is
not that SOLDIER OF SIDON is shallow -- it's a deep,
wise book (and fun, and you should read it), but that
SOLDIER OF ARETE is a deeper, wiser, harder book.
UPDATE: 1/23/07: Various and very sundry things -- Avram Davidson's
ADVENTURES IN UNHISTORY (finally!), and thus in an
indirect fashion ol' Pliny the Elder and Herodotus
and Pindar and suchlike, not to mention obscurer
souls (who, unlike Somerset Maugham, didn't sell
their souls to the Devil to be famous). CEREBUS vol
3 & 4, Murakami, Henry Petroski, a lot of randomized
testing literature, etc. etc. etc. My mother-in-law
is reading Joseph Mitchell, by the way. Josie
is devouring Tintin (and I'm going to relive my
youth when she's done). If I said that Robert
Graves poems were in here, that would also be
true, at a slow rate. Oh, I read it a while back
but I thought Cory Doctorow's SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN,
SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN was very good, indeed, almost
enough to get me to read his earlier books. Even
the pointless wireless internet subplot made me
happy, in a way.
UPDATE: 1/24/07: And, best of these, on Josie's recommendation,
IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE.
UPDATE: 1/31/07: Not to mention THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE
MCDUCK (yes, we found a good comic shop right
near where we live)...
UPDATE: 2/20/07: Finished the Rule of St. Benedict (accompaniment
to BREDE) and lots of McDuck and Tintin. On
my dad's recommendation, reading Rick Bass' THE
BOOK OF CHOPPING FIREWOOD, er, WINTER -- good,
for the most part. Nice writing, nice sense of
_winter_ -- and the wood chopping really does make
the book. A bit overblown in places. Also, Jack
Vance -- EMPHYRIO. One of the few "big" Vance books
I hadn't read. Good? Of course.
UPDATE: 3/5/07: Cormac McCarthy, BLOOD MERIDIAN -- what to say? It's
as violent, as apocalyptic, as unsettling and strange
and (yes) as fun to read as reported. As good as
it claims to be, really. BREDE remains wonderful,
and totally different. Also, some good Tim Powers
short stories, and (in a sense) short stories on
the drive to and from work each day, in that I think
most every Decemberists song is a weird little
Gothic baroque short story.
UPDATE: 3/8/07: And a bunch of ICSE 07 papers -- including Dwyer
on how heuristics aren't really as good as random
search (sigh, I think it's true) and a whole bunch
of testing papers.
UPDATE: 3/12/07: Still ensnared by BLOOD MERIDIAN -- oh, I finished
it, but it lingers. The judge is the scariest thing
in American literature -- if there's no such thing
as the Devil, I don't know how there could be such
a thing in a book as the judge, arguments to the
effect that we can describe with perfect accuracy
things that do no exist aside. (Yes, but we cannot
describe, I suspect, with perfect accuracy, things
that cannot exist, so here we have established at
least the possibility of a demon). Surely the best
novel of horror (a Western? I dunno, didn't seem
much like GUNSMOKE to me, though maybe you need to
have watched GUNSMOKE or BONANZA or read McMurtry
to win the whole shooting match here) of the last
century. Impressive in a century of horrors. In
a sense it is not a "horror novel" of course, or
at least not the debased thing that can be, for all
that this is a more violent and cruel book than most
of those. The things here are things, not pictures
put on display for a circus (well, maybe not much,
anyway). Also, the writing is about as good as it
could be, embedding the things in words and playing
every serious game with the language that's available
given the story. It's even funny, in places, for
a book of nightmares loose in the desert places of
earth and man.
What to follow that up with? The coin "game" by
the fire makes me want to read THE BOOK OF THE NEW
SUN again -- partly because it seems bad luck to
read a book about the devil without reading one as
strong but a bit more balanced (MERIDIAN gives the
devil his due, at least) -- and the coin bit in NEW
SUN's better. Though the judge beats Baldanders,
hands down (but you couldn't put the judge in a book
without his running the show, unless you were a
better writer even than Wolfe or McCarthy, I suspect
is the case).
UPDATE: 3/29/07: Rereading NEW SUN. One thing it's easy to forget is
how _funny_ Wolfe can be -- Dr. Talos' play is, you
know, screamingly funny, in a way. There are a lot
of _jokes_, of a wild and weird sort. But you can
see why Wolfe doesn't get much credit for this: he
means 'em. These days, Wolfe and Walker Percy are
my desert island novelists.
UPDATE: 4/2/07: NEW SUN sure is good. And appropriate Lenten
reading, I guess -- is this not the time of year
when, before all, we should be Seekers of Truth
and Penitence? Not that I manage very well, but
then neither does Severian, for the most part.
Man proposes; the Increate disposes, eh? As a
side venture, Josie has me reading her THE
SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE at night; maybe we'll
go live in a hut and write apocryphal Danny Dunn,
Boy Software Verification Researcher stories.
UPDATE: 4/9/07: So, why is Wendell Berry's localism, though in many
ways clearly correct, probably doomed? As many
reasons as why Chesterton's visions are unlikely
to be arriving at a world near you -- but here's an
obvious one: in the modern world, which is very
much non-localist, large-scale power belongs almost
exclusively to non-localists, because to have this
power you must abandon the place you were born and
head off to DC or LA or NYC or the UN, the EU, or
another "heart of the world" fortress of gigantism.
Real localists tend to stay home, if they're sincere
(if they're insincere, like me, they head off to
some ugly city but regret it, and drag a family
along, I guess?), and thus even movements that tend
to give some lip-service to something small, such as
serious conservatism (as opposed to pro-businessism)
or environmental conservation tend to be in practice
all about thinking globally -- which means focusing
on things so large and abstract that "thinking" is
hardly the right word. I am as guilty as anyone.
UPDATE: 5/1/07: David Niven's THE MOON'S A BALLOON. Good to read
"just" after watching through season 5 (or was it
4?) of I LOVE LUCY with Josie -- Charles Boyer (a
bunch -- not that I'd heard of him before LUCY/Niven)
Holden, Ball herself, etc. It's a good book, sad
and funny and pretty well written, not to mention as
noted before I'm a sucker for any Brit who has a life
to tell and was born just before, after, or during
the death of Western Civilization (you know, that
great war they had).
Other than that, enjoyed CHARMED LIFE (after Josie
pushed it) much more than HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE,
HEXWOOD, or other highly recommended Diana Wynne
Jones.
UPDATE: 5/2/07: Three Wed. morning questions:
1. Has anyone written a really first-rate history
of video games?
2. Is the moon, in fact, a balloon?
3. Were my undergrad courses woefully remiss?
I was a "Science, Technology & Society" minor,
and a dual humanities/engineering major, so I
took a lot of "Ethical Dimensions of Progress,"
"Science, Values, and Technology" and the like.
Good classes, well taught -- and we read Lasch
and other useful people. Reading Wendell Berry,
now, I'm not thrilled with his adoration of the
Luddites. But I am thinking -- by and large
those classes presented two views of technology
(at the highest abstract level) as possible:
the instrumental view, where technology is inert
and "merely" a tool which we may use for good
or evil -- in itself, morally neutral (unless
the actions of the technology itself are of such
nature as to be evil -- there was clearly room
here to condemn a technology for eliminating
garden snails by means of human sacrifice). On
the other hand, presented as the more Luddite
notion, was the idea that technology was active,
and might be inherently inimical to man. As
good engineers we knew there was no magic in
our _tools_, and so inclined to the first, as we
should have (and as the classes intended). But,
while there's this whiff of animism in some anti-
technology folks, and more than a whiff in some,
it seems to me that it's also reasonable to take
anti-technology views without any inclination to
that sort of magical thinking. All that is
required is the obvious point that man is sinful,
and certain technologies may present such a
temptation to evil use that, while inherently
"neutral" they are problematic to anyone who
does not possess a lunatic (*cough* *cough*
enlightened *cough*) optimism about man's ability
to choose good over evil. "Deliver us from
temptation" is a reasonable and non-magical-
thinking basis for technological pessimism. I'm
not going Luddite, but they are given an unfair
treatment, I think, without considering this
point.
UPDATE: 6/5/07: GILEAD was very good, an extraordinary novel.
For whatever reason, it has me reading von
Balthasar's THE GLORY OF THE LORD (slowly), not
Karl Barth. I think I did my Barth "duty" (not
that I minded it) years ago, during undergrad
days. Anyway, that's to the side. A beautiful
novel, about a good man -- and a Christian novel.
Rhys Hughes is fun -- the first part left me cold,
but the last half of A NEW UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF
INFAMY is very funny and awful clever.
UPDATE: 6/20/07: The ideal mystery, as Chandler pointed out, is one
you would read if the end was missing. Most of
them are not ideal, of course. I've read several
mysteries in the last few months -- the second
Maisie Dobbs book (Josie suggested -- the first one
I took in while waiting for jury duty), a Spenser
or two, and Sue Grafton. None of them would have
worked without the ending, which is fine by me --
I wouldn't like the Spenser books (one of them hardly
a "mystery" -- you knew whodunnit and whattheydid
from the get-go) without the snappy dialogue, or
Dobbs without the eerie WWI haunted atmosphere, but
I think they'd also be weak without the payoff (in
the Dobbs case, you can't really get the atmosphere
to work without the payoff, I think).
I started but never finished writing an essay on Wolfe's
constant use of mystery-novel techniques, starting
from his Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe parodies
(Wolfe's clearly a mystery _reader_) and his stint
as an actual "mystery-novel" writer in PANDORA, BY
HOLLY HOLLANDER. Silk is based in part on Father
Brown, and Severian, Silk, and most other Wolfe
protagonists spend a lot of time doing what amounts
to detective work -- ratiocination to understand
a web of motive and circumstance based on clues.
It makes sense -- the detective story is in a sense
where Wolfe often is -- the intersection of science
(a detective is a scientist, right? performing
"experiments" and examining evidence to produce
theories about the world) and theology -- or at least
morality (_justice_ is the aim of the detective's
science, at its best). "Mystery" has many meanings,
and the most important are clearly theological --
Wolfe makes it clear he knows this in "The Detective
of Dreams." You could even argue, though I would
not, that the times Abel plays detective in THE
WIZARD KNIGHT are homage to Chandler's detective-as-
knight images. Anyway, I think Wolfe's novels and
stories are often, under the hood, Chandler's ideal
mysteries. In many cases, though I think Wolfe
believes he is playing fair with the reader in
classical fashion, the work functions for us as
a mystery in which the end is missing. And we still
want to read it.
On an unrelated note, it makes sense that Disney
shows up so much in science fiction -- Varley,
Cory Doctorow, Howard Waldrop, Wolfe, and others.
I wonder how many of us got our first in-person
sight of THE FUTURE from Tomorrowland?
UPDATE: 11/12/07: Lots and lots and lots and lots of data points about
error detection rates as related to test length. But
some other things, too, that I don't try to fit to any
quadratic, linear, or cubic model. DON QUIXOTE, and
Fitzgerald's ILIAD, and 1 & 2 of Pelikan on THE
DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. All good. BEL
RIA (why do dogs always die at the end of dog books?
yes, it's a life story, but it's not as if every novel
ends with the protagonist shuffling off this mortal,
is it?), HEIRS OF GENERAL PRACTICE. This and that.
UPDATE: 12/5/07: PIRATE FREEDOM was, as expected, very good. Not
Wolfe's best, but very good. Certainly the most
explicitly Catholic of his books, and probably (in
some ways) gives more of a look at Wolfe's politics
and such, but mostly just Wolfe doing a super-readable
pirate adventure, with the expected "well, of course
with Wolfe, God will be around and the people will be
real people, and so forth, and much cleverness in the
details." Josie's going to have me reading Barbara
Pym soon.
UPDATE: 1/7/08: BEFORE THE DAWN is one of the better pop-sci books I've
read in some time. It'll be interesting to see if the
promise of reading ur-history from the genes works out
half as well as it's looking like it may; there still
(to me) seems to be an unavoidable and irritating amount
of "just so stories" (now with statistics!) in this kind
of evolutionary work, it just comes with the field --
you can't do experiments, precisely, and there's just so
few clues to so much that has happened. I (vaguely)
guess astrophysics is even harder, in this sense? Hat's
off to the folks doing this work. Enjoyed DZUR, as
expected. NOVA SWING was... odd. Not as dazzlingly
good as LIGHT, but more coherent (in a way) and with
some beautiful, attention-grabbing prose -- self-mocking
that steps around the bend to not be mockery at all.
I liked TRUMPET OF THE SWAN very very much.
UPDATE: 2/8/08: Hmm, well... EARTH: AN INTIMATE HISTORY -- hey! Babbage
shows up at the beginning, traipsing around in a volcano,
and it's a nice travel-book walk through geographical
history. Also walking back through Bentley's PROGRAMMING
PEARLS, just because. And the complete DENNIS THE
MENACE, '51-'52. And the Hollander and Hollander
PARADISO, and not much else.
UPDATE: 5/7/08: INTO THE BLACK is a well done history of the last
chunk of JPL's history, from the Murray years up to
MER or thereabouts. It is a little academic (too
dry for pop science history), but very readable. One
thing it points out, and that the history of plate
tectonics I just started also shows is how much the
20th century history of science and engineering is a
history of big institutions in addition to actual
scientists and engineers. JPL has a character that
goes beyond the folks who make up JPL, and so do the
key places for geology. It's not as if money hasn't
always mattered to science, but it does seem to be a
real difference, as instruments for experiments cost
more and more and require a "cast of hundreds."
Pym's QUARTET IN AUTUMN is great.
(note that the width above reflects Xemacs default window width; make of it what you will)
Do you see? Even after we have considered the curious incident of the dog that did NOT bark, we are in the dark. Even Severian the torturer, with his perfect memory, could not explain himself. Even Latro, who forgot everything every night, could not explain himself. Dennis Alden Weer, perhaps, managed it, but he was dead.
I love my parents, though we fight too often. I have friends enough that I seldom eat lunch or supper alone, which is a great blessing. I have been to two foreign countries, although since they were England and Canada, they weren't all THAT foreign (UPDATE: wow, should have fixed this a while back--I've also been to France and Brazil, which beat Canada and England hands down on food, and are nice places. In general, as far as I can tell, the world in general has much to recommend it, including New Jersey). I played Michael Darling in "Peter Pan" when I was in the fourth grade, and wore a flying rig. "Think lovely thoughts." "Candy." "Christmas."
Sometimes I feel very alone, sometimes I feel very un-alone. I've had some very Southern experiences: I once sat on the porch of my friend Bruce's Aunt Rose's house on New Year's Eve with a bunch of guys singing "Peaceful Easy Feeling" while rain went pitter-patter on the roof above. My Dad owns guns. I have a HUGE backyard, and I think there are a few cows in my name on our farm. I don't like country music, though.
I read a lot. I sleep too little, and often lie awake for hours at night, thinking. This doesn't accomplish much. UPDATE: I sleep more now. I've learned that I actually like sleeping, I just hate going to bed early--I want to be the last person around who is awake. I'm unsure as to what this means, other than that I may be a prickly jerk who doesn't want anyone doing anything sneaky while he's asleep. Or a peculiar manifestation of laziness.
I enjoy programming computers. BASIC, Logo, LISP, C, FORTH, you name it--I like it. But I'm beginning to burn out, because I've been doing so much of it these last few years. (UPDATE: not really as true, oddly enough--I did even MORE programming, and the further in you go the more fun it gets, although I'm told thesis topics become truly repugnant after a while.)
I ramble. You still don't know me, do you? And I don't really know you.
"Is that not an odd introduction? I don't understand it at all."
As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns The ones we don't know we don't know.Epistemological mantra adapted from the works of Donald Rumsfeld, though I wouldn't ask him to run MY war anytime soon.