Category Archives: personality

A bon mot of Peter Carey about reviews of one’s work (2012)

Peter Carey:

Do you read reviews of your work still?

I try not to. It’s stupid. It’s only driven by ambition and vanity, insecurity.

Nothing good comes from reading reviews. … I’ve had … lots of really lovely reviews full of praise, I can still remember that [bad] review from 1974.

What did it say?

It said, “Broken-toothed, rhythmless prose.”

Why don’t you quit reading them?

It’s hard. Never underestimate the self-absorption of a writer.

Alexandra Alter, “A Mechanical Duck as a Trojan Horse”, Wall Street Journal, on line at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577392430992501296.html, accessed 20120509.

A bon mot of Peter Carey about New York (2012)

Peter Carey:

I feel of two worlds, and New York’s a good place to have your heart in two places. I love New York. I go out and get bad tempered at the crowds on Broadway and start snarling at the taxis.

Alexandra Alter, “A Mechanical Duck as a Trojan Horse”, Wall Street Journal, on line at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304451104577392430992501296.html, accessed 20120509.

Recordings for Classical Chinese

I have posted my recordings of what my current Classical Chinese students have been reading, at https://brannerchinese.com/w3302_2012spring/recordings/.

There is not enough of this in the teaching of Classical Chinese — well, there is not enough Classical Chinese in Chinese programs generally, because many people fail to understand the centrality of “Classical” and literary Chinese in the structure and aesthetics of modern Mandarin. I won’t preach about that here. What I want to assert now is how important the reading aloud of texts is to learning the language they contain. Hearing another person reading them aloud is also good, and so to aid my students (who I require to read aloud everything we study together, from a clean copy of the text projected on a screen) I made my own recordings.

I prefaced the fifty-odd recordings in this set with these comments:

I recognize that these recordings are quite helpful to you, and that is why I have prepared them.

But I have misgivings about them. For one thing, they force me to commit myself to particular character-readings and syntactic expression in stress, whereas I prefer to keep my relationship to the text more fluid. For another, they rob you of the chance to decide for yourself how to interpret the text, in just those ways.

In the end, though, I think it is better for you to have these to review from, in case they are of use to you for that purpose. I hope to find time to prepare more in the next days and weeks. They are not as good as an educative native speaker might produce, but I suspect they will still be useful. They may also be rather soft unless you listen to them with headphones or a properly amplified system.

Bear in mind that these readings reflect (a) the specific versions of the texts that I have used in the course, ignoring what may be in your textbooks or other versions, and (b) my best choice of readings based on the various considerations that I consider relevant. Both undoubtedly differ considerably from what you may encounter elsewhere, and I urge you to listen widely and read aloud adventurously. I lean to the 1932 standard of Mandarin rather than the mid-1950s standard, though not in every case, and for certain words I prefer a more conservative reading (jū rather than jù for 俱, dài for dà 大 but only in the two compounds 大王 and 大夫, etc. etc. etc.). Generally I have avoided the old rùshēng 入聲 readings (zé for zhái 宅, bò for běi 北, etc. etc.), dear though they are to my heart.

To choose one’s own readings is an expression of temperament as well as understanding. My own tendencies are mainly philological and will probably not inspire you much. But if you have the time and interest, I recommend listening to the work of Mr. Hung Tzeh-nan 洪澤南老師, the most gifted performer of oral Classical Chinese literature I have yet encountered. Unfortunately, most of his work is not easy to get hold of, but his book Ták-ê lâi gîm-si 大家來吟詩 is on-line at Yuan Ze University 元智大學’s site. It is true that these materials are in Taiwanese rather than Mandarin, but they illustrate the basic nature of the oral performance of Classical Chinese literature: that it is to the reading of a text what shūfǎ 書法 (brush-pen calligraphy) is to the physical characters — an individual expression of understanding and mood, ranging from the exquisite heights of fine art down to (one hopes, at least) workmanlike presentation. Unfortunately, my reading has no artistic content, but I urge you to explore Mr. Hung’s work when you have time.

Elia Kazan on getting along in society (1974)

“Anyone who adjusts to this society is a bastard. Anyone who says you should live and be happy within the society is no good.”

“The Anatolian Greeks are completely terrorised people. My father’s family comes from the interior of Asia Minor, from a city called Kayseri, and they never forgot they were part of a minority. They were surrounded with periodic slaughters — or riots: the Turks would suddenly have a crisis and massacre a lot of Armenians, or they’d run wild and kill a lot of Greeks. The Greeks stayed in their houses. The fronts of the houses were almost barricaded, the windows shut with wooden shutters. One of the first memories I have is of sleeping in my grandmother’s bed and my grandmother telling me stories about the massacre of the Armenians, and how she and my grandfather hid Armenians in the cellar of their home … The Armenians were lustier, their history a much bolder, more rebellious one. The Greeks were crafty, they did not rebel and they did not get killed as much. … [In America, m]y father traded in rugs. He was brought to this country by my uncle, who had a great deal of energy and cunning. They say the Jews have cunning, that they’re sly people: the Anatolian Greeks are the same kind of people. If you want to know why: they couldn’t protect themselves by force, by the sword or by arms, they were constantly being demeaned, so the only way they could get along was by being sly, by never saying the wrong thing. The first thing I learned was to shut up. My father used to tell us: ‘Say nothing, don’t mix in, don’t mix in other people’s business, stay out of trouble,’ and that of course was the very opposite of the Yankee tradition. My first wife was a Yankee; her tradition was never to say anything except exactly what you felt and say it immediately without any omission or qualification. That’s one of the reasons I admired and loved her so much: she was the opposite of the way I was brought up. But I was cautious and careful and crafty.”

— Elia Kazan, in Kazan on Kazan (1974), cited at http://www.adherents.com/people/pk/Elia_Kazan.html

Identifying robots among human beings

Some of us are definitely robots and it’s hypothesized that some of us aren’t.

It’s hard to tell the difference, though, because the robots are known to be hard-coded to believe they aren’t robots.

My rule of thumb is to try to evaluate how strenuously a candidate denies being a robot. If s/he doesn’t seem to care too much, s/he may in fact be human.

But I admit haven’t found a decisive test yet, so there’s no way to study the hypothesis rigorously.

Non-paean to Steve Jobs

What with all the starry-eyed tributes to Steve Jobs, I found this harsher piece by Maureen Dowd refreshing: The Limits of Magical Thinking (NYT, 20111025). In 850 words, she remembers his mood swings, obsession with control, and unpleasant behavior in relationships with women.

Two reflections:

  • It’s not clear to me that knowing more details about someone’s life — especially those based on hearsay — necessarily increases my understanding of how his mind is organized, and that is one of the central things to think about in this life. But at a minimum, hearing unpleasant details in a brief, literate column is an antidote to the overreporting about celebrities that gushes through much of the media.
  • During the years when I was a a strictly non-technical consumer of technology, I was enthusiastic about the Macintosh brand and Apple, and their underdog status didn’t lessen their charm. More recently I have felt turned off by Apple’s restrictive design decisions, to say nothing of its marketing gleam. Jobs’ business successes have ripened my preference for drab graphics and command-line interfaces.

Reconsider P. T. Barnum’s reputation

Rather than suggest that Barnum was out to make his fortune by duping a gullible public, Mr. [Arthur] Saxon is now convinced that Barnum was the exact opposite: a sensitive and tolerant individual with a sense of mission who believed in giving the public a good laugh for only pennies, and fought hard for unpopular, progressive causes such as women’s rights, freedom for slaves and against the machine-dominated politics of his day.

…

There is not a whit of evidence, suggested Mr. Saxon, that Barnum ever said anything as callous as, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

“There’s no contemporary account of it,” said Mr. Saxon, “or even any suggestion that the word ‘sucker’ was used in the derogatory sense in his day. Barnum was just not the type to disparage his patrons.

…

“I’ll admit, he loved a good show; a hoax. But the whole idea was that the audience would get a laugh out of being taken in and consider it part of the entertainment, rather than feel cheated. Barnum was not even above being duped himself and turning it to his advantage.”

As an example, Mr. Saxon tells of the cherry-colored cat. “In probably the most reliable version,” said Mr. Saxon, “a woman writes to Barnum asking him to give her $25 for her cherrycolored cat. Crackpots were always writing to Barnum with curiosities like a three-legged chicken or a genuine mermaid.

“So he said, ‘Sure, bring it over.’ So the woman arrives with a cat in a bag and dumps it on the table. But it’s a black cat. ‘I’ve been duped,’ cries Barnum. ‘No sir,’ says the lady, ‘some cherries are black.’

“Barnum liked the idea so much he put the cat on display,” Mr. Saxon said. “And sure enough, the public loved it, too, so much so that they would not even give away the secret to their friends.”

Arthur Saxon quoted in Andree Brooks, “Debunking the Myth of P. T. Barnum,” New York Times October 3, 1982, accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/03/nyregion/debunking-the-myth-of-pt-barnum.html on 20111020.

Saxon is the author of two books on P. T. Barnum.

[Edit:] The Oxford English Dictionary, consulted 20111020, identifies uses of sucker in the sense ‘greenhorn, simpleton’ dating to 1838 and 1857, both North American.

Two funerary practices and the end of a good story

I was not able to attend my Uncle Barney’s funeral over the summer and just saw one of the obituaries (reposted at legacy.com from an original in The Day of New London), which mentions a “final toast and raspberry cheer”.

I had not heard of this custom before, but apparently his friends and loving children sent him off with what is also known as a Bronx cheer. (He was born in the Bronx.) That would not have been out of character for him as a last request.

Yesterday, his closest youngsters went out in a boat and took turns ladling his ashes — mixed with those of my aunt Julie from 17 years ago — into the Niantic River a few hundred feet from what was once the family home. My cupful of ashes contained a good proportion of bone fragments. There is still a lot of junk in his house to be disposed of, as well as the house itself, but that burden has not fallen to me. So yesterday’s little ceremony on the water was, for me, a most satisfactory farewell.

My uncle tried all his life to write “the Great American Novel”, an ambition for which his many gifts — chiefly working with his hands — did not qualify him.

Barney met Aunt Julie when he was 16 and they were both smitten. Family pressures separated them, and they married other people. But on his return from the Korean war he found her single and courted her again, divorced his wife, and at age 32 finally married her. Seeing the family home yesterday, my grandfather’s retirement home and the place where Barney and Julie lived for the first 20 years or so of their marriage, I see that my uncle’s real novel was his happy life with Julie, an honest love story of the sort you don’t often encounter. The last line of that romance was apparently written on the Niantic yesterday morning.

Twice-a-day mail delivery

I mentioned to my mother that the Post Office is now talking seriously about stopping Saturday delivery. She said, “That would be bad, but not nearly as bad as we thought it was when they stopped delivering twice a day.”

Apparently twice-a-day delivery stopped during World War II as an economy measure and was permanently discontinued shortly thereafter.

When the service existed, it was possible to send a written message to someone in the same city and get an answer the same day. We take that for granted now with email, but for years after twice-a-day delivery was ended, round-trip communication seemed to take longer than it should.

A math professor I enjoyed

I want to describe one of the professors I know at the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York.

This man, in his sixties, teaches math-heavy courses in the Computer Science department. His course descriptions still mention Fortran, though I think he teaches mainly in C and C++. But mentioning Fortran is good for producing a certain effect, and my guess is he desires that effect. He doesn’t hold with electronic bulletin boards and just hands out a multi-generationally photocopied one-page syllabus with the current year’s changes marked in pen. It is usually not straight on the page. His lectures are mostly proofs, which he delivers looking alternately at the board or at a corner of the ceiling at the back of the room — though he does engage occasionally in a sort of Socratic baiting of students. (“What is an ‘even number’?” Then shoot down all student answers on the way to the truth.) His exams are all problems from the book. He might as well be drawing in the sand with a stick in the time of Archimedes. But you can learn a lot from him if you work hard.

He seems very gruff, but I’ve spoken with him at length in private and I find him deeply concerned about whether students are learning the material or not. He is particularly unhappy about the fact that the distribution of student grades is bimodal — it is hard to “teach to the middle”, he says, when there is none.

Plutarch’s praise of the “fox” temperament

Once, Caphisias, I remember, I heard from an artist an excellent description, cast as a simile, of people who look at pictures. He said that amateur, unskilled viewers are like those who greet a large crowd en masse, whereas skilled professionals are like those who address everyone they meet individually and in personal terms, in the sense that the first group get an impression of the finished products which is not precise, but only hazy, whereas professionals have the discrimination to take each aspect of the work separately, and they don’t overlook or fail to comment on anything, whether good or bad.

Now in my opinion, we can extend the analogy to real events too: when faced with history, lazier minds are satisfied if they gather just the gist and the conclusion of a situation, whereas anyone who appreciates honour and nobility, and who views the products of the master art, as it were, of virtue, finds the details more enjoyable, on the grounds that although the result has a lot in common with chance, yet by virtue of their causes the particular contests of virtue against chance occurrences and the acts of intelligent bravery in the face of suitable conditions [become clear cases of] rationality suitably blended with opportunity and emotion.

“On Socrates’ Personal Deity” [Περί του Σωκράτους δαιμονίου, De Genio Socratis], Moralia VII:46, tr. Robin Waterfield, ed. Ian Kidd, (London: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 308.

My mother and me, at work on the Early China index, 20110526

This summer my mother and I finished indexing a book that Li Feng and I have been working on since 2005, Reading and Literacy in Early China. My mother worked on it continuously for six months; I helped her on and off but then worked on it continuously for the final six weeks.

Below is a picture of us in the heat of labor in late May.

I’ve also attached a pair of the 5000 index cards she produced for this project. These things are now rarely seen, I think, so they’re good to document here. Not so very long ago, the only way to find books in a library was though a “card catalogue” — a huge collection of these things, typed in recent decades and neatly handwritten before that, organized and cross-referenced by title, author, major topics, and other features. Cataloguing books — deciding how someone might want want to find them and creating cards accordingly — was a major subprofession among librarians, and my mother has a degree in it from Columbia’s defunct Library School.

As you can imagine, the contents of this pair of cards have been copied and recopied over and over again as the material has grown fuller and more complete. The “xx” notations at the bottom of each card are for tracking cross-references to “literacy” that appear in other entries.I used \LaTeX and other tools to produce camera-ready copy for the publisher. With heavy editing, the index shrank from an initial 100 pages to the final 44 that are appearing in the book. Alas, much useful information had to be deleted in the process.

Dr. Johnson on the “fox” temperament

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, rev. ed., (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), p. 307 (14 July, 1763).