Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to BenWilson,
It sounds like something that would have been in my least favourite Plato - The Republic, written when Plato was himself an old fart. As with everything he wrote, it's quite possible Socrates said nothing of the sort.
Is it this one?
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
That's indeed the Republic and by this stage the consensus is that Socrates had become just a character in Plato's own theatre.
However Hesiod said this some three centuries earlier:
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint"
-
Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to BenWilson,
My folks used to have a quote from Plato on the wall for years in which Socrates carries on about how the youth of today loves luxury and indolence, don't swot enough, and are disrespectful to their elders
Surely Socrates meant that ironically? I can't recall the passage but I would be shocked if he actually meant that. However it's certainly true that it was an old argument by then already.
-
Man, those are some nice forks.
What was I saying? Drat, now you've distracted me with the Internet.
True... but I think the spell that a really good novel casts is built up via a slow accumulation of attention over a long period, culminating (in my case at least) in a need to barricade myself behind a pile of pillows and/or a closed door as soon as I reach a point approximately 50 pp from the end.
Yes. And duration is an aesthetic dimension, I think that's beyond question. But I think so long as the larger issue is that you've found your latest NZ fiction reads a little boring, and I can't quite accept that it's your fault somehow. And it's just as easy to be uninteresting in the short as in the long form I would contend. Indeed, once can be quite exquisitely boring in tweet form. It just happens to be over more quickly.
(For some reason I am reminded of a headline in The Onion of February 2, 1922:
MARCEL PROUST FINALLY DIES
"We thought it would go on forever", say loved ones.)(I read it like two years ago and I was able to find it in the book in a flash. Reading skillz: I still haz them.)
-
Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Of course, many stories deserve or require a novel-length telling, but that doesn't make them necessarily deeper stories. Just longer ones.
I was going to airdrop Borges into the conversation, thank you for sparing me the trouble.
Useful -- if not compulsory -- reading at this point in the thread: Adam Gopnik's assessment of the various schools of thought on whether the internet is ruining, ah, I mean, changing, or simply enhancing our brains.
Yes, that's lovely. Although, why didn't anybody send me the link to this before? Isn't that why I pay you people?
I'm off to the emblazoner to get this bit on some sort of pennant:
"When the electric toaster was invented, there were, no doubt, books that said that the toaster would open up horizons for breakfast undreamed of in the days of burning bread over an open flame"
-
(Besides, the contention that reading a novel requires "deeper" as opposed to "more protracted" reading than a short story or fable strikes me as highly dubious.)
-
Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Fergus Barrowman,
and that we're losing the ability to read deeply
Am patiently waiting to get my hands on The Shallows. In the meantime, as it has been framed thus far (in Is Google Making Us Stupid and Proust and the Squid) it's an argument that annoys the beejesus out of me for a whole bunch of reasons. Foremost among which that it's a series of cliches dressed as an argument in search of its evidence. But maybe Tatar has finally cracked it.
-
Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to GeoffRobinson,
Maybe I'm ignorant of party processes but couldn't Labour have reviewed their list post-election so that it reflected their actual preference for next-in-line candidates?
I sincerely hope it's not possible to do this. Some of us actually read those lists ahead of the elections, you know. I'd hate for a party to change theirs post hoc and replace all the non elected with the Addams or, worse, the Douglas family.
-
I was given to understand that nobody reads blogs anymore?
-
Hard News: Time to get a grip, in reply to Russell Brown,
To be fair, viral hepatitis is a pretty good excuse for low energy, as excuses go.
Sure. Having been in a place with no cellphone coverage somewhat less so. Was she the only person on the planet who hadn't anticipated that Darren Hughes would retire?
-
I'm pretty sure your horizon wasn't 20 years either. And it didn't include short stories, did it? Expressing less than unbridled enthusiasm for the homegrown novels published over the last 2-3 years doesn't seem a devastating proposition to me.