tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36486960.post1922272345408697150..comments2023-12-20T17:48:18.108-05:00Comments on To Delight and to Instruct: On CalvinoHoracehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15662740021328265642noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36486960.post-7633026623653723762023-05-23T21:14:00.352-04:002023-05-23T21:14:00.352-04:00Great readiingGreat readiingDrink Recipeshttps://www.recipecocktails.com/drinks/moscow_mule_vodka_cocktail_5294925339.shtmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36486960.post-48059655917382044882010-01-31T21:23:50.814-05:002010-01-31T21:23:50.814-05:00Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo has another reading...Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo has another reading/sex paralleling that I really like ... and, unfortunately, some of the same "evil feminists" biases. (at least his other books do.)Sisyphushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09880634753539329199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36486960.post-87478969500858383932010-01-31T19:31:02.447-05:002010-01-31T19:31:02.447-05:00Wow. I'm totally going to steal some of this ...Wow. I'm totally going to steal some of this stuff--especially the facebook status aggregator stuff. I approached that idea with the idea of wordclouds, which seemed to invoke both Lotaria and Irnerio at the same time. Not enough of them recognized wordclouds(!!!) to find that connection useful though.Horacehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15662740021328265642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36486960.post-83975277901030081352010-01-30T12:41:16.512-05:002010-01-30T12:41:16.512-05:00Lotaria's also an interesting test case for a ...Lotaria's also an interesting test case for a particular kind of teaching problem. After we read the bit about Lotaria reading books according to word frequencies, I give my students an article on how Facebook is being used to measure the mood of the nation based on frequencies of word usages on particular days. They're pretty taken with it; it's science, after all. I ask them whether they think it's possible to actually read people this way, and the extent to which what people write on Facebook correlates with their actual state of mind. I love this moment because they usually unload on all the literary sneakiness they feel they've been subjected to. "People have no reason to lie!" they say. They imply that SOME sick minds (Borges, Calvino, *cough*) might think that it's worth leaving the most important thing unsaid or whatever, but that by and large human beings are nice truth-telling creatures. <br /><br />The study's methodology is sound, they say. They're less comfortable transferring that conclusion over to Lotaria's model of reading, but because they've agreed to the validity of statistical averages as a means of extracting information, they usually admit that she might have a point. <br /><br />Their homework is to run a Facebook Statistics analysis program on their own (or a friend's) status updates. This tells them the 6 words they most frequently use. They have to analyze it the way Lotaria would, and then say whether she's right. <br /><br />Thanks for this post---it was a pleasure of the unpoliticized kind.<br /><br />MAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36486960.post-91922868978596889602010-01-30T12:40:17.780-05:002010-01-30T12:40:17.780-05:00I like your point that the novel "can only be...I like your point that the novel "can only be loved by those it mocks while shuts out those readers it adulates." That seems exactly right. He's also excluding himself, of course. Anyone involved in writing or book production is automatically suspect. <br /><br />This post delighted me because I teach a similar set of texts, and for similar reasons. I start with a translated version of the Thousand and One Nights, Poe's "Thousand and Second Night" and Barth's "Dunyazadiad" preparatory to a chunk of Borges. (The latter makes the sex/reading connection interestingly but incredibly explicit, which prepares them for Calvino's lighter handling of that dynamic.) <br /><br />My students react to Calvino with the same range of love and frustration as yours; they think they've figured the novel out by Chapter 6 or thereabouts, so they stop investing in the last few novel fragments and declare that their interest has shifted to the frame story. My strategy is to ask them to revisit the formal schematic we developed at the beginning; it becomes obvious that the stabilizing borders between "frame" and "fiction" have blended, and that the temptation to compartmentalize that way becomes impossible exactly when they think they've got it all taped out. I also ask them to predict how it'll end. Sometimes that nudges them out of frustration.<br /><br />Lotaria's a problem, isn't she? Calvino's bizarrely ungenerous treatment of her perplexes me too. For what it's worth, I don't think it's an across-the-board condemnation of academic reading, especially since a lot of literary criticism creeps into the first few novel fragments (criticism which seems to be of the "right kind"). Ludmilla's expressed desires for a particular sort of novel are always dutifully met by the fragment that follows (or precedes), then exceeded, first by the novel (in which characters perversely start analyzing themselves) and then by the proliferation of "plots" which threaten to overturn the outer universe of the novel. Too, the Reader longs to have a conversation with Ludmilla about the literature (a conversation that could never help but be analytical), and that never happens. Even at the end they're reading separately. The fantasy is at least in part about togetherness in reading---a togetherness that gets achieved, at least metaphorically, when the Reader and Lotaria end up having sex wrapped up in the pages of a book. <br /><br />You're right that Calvino puts us in a double-bind: he encourages us to be Ludmillas but structures the novel so that we CAN'T be anything but Lotarias since---fight as we might for a complete experience---we're never (for example) *allowed* more than a fragment of a particular "novel." (And that's all that Lotaria and her academic group claim to need---they happily butcher books into chunks and distribute them for analysis without caring about the integrity of the whole.) <br /><br />On the other hand, Ludmilla disappears because she's too boring, and Lotaria becomes the authoress of all kinds of conspiracies/plots. Ludmilla might be the muse, but Lotaria is the engine that makes story happen. (Oops---ran out of room—will continue on another comment.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com