Wednesday.

Finished The Name of the Rose. I stayed up until something like 1 am on Wednesday morning finishing The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. This is a book that Seth and Leonard and the like had liked and recommended to such as me.

And after I read it, I read the author's postscript, and then I went to sleep, and the next day I spent something like half an hour telling Leonard how little it had done for me, and that I loathed the book viscerally. I feel less intensely about the volume now, thank goodness.

Point-by-point breakdown follows:

• My parents didn't raise me Jewish or Christian or Muslim. And so the scriptures that my parents hold sacred, and the mythologies that they gave me to study, had nothing to do with stories of Moses and Jesus and Abraham and Cain and Sarah and Ruth and Isaac and Job and Peter and Judas and Adam. I have about as much knowledge of the Judeo-Christian backstory as might be expected from going to school in the USA all my life. And so The Name of the Rose is not a book for me. Eco assumes that his reader knows quite a bit of mythology and theology that I just don't know. Perhaps, if I happen to learn a lot more about Christianity in the next twenty years, I might get more out of Name of the Rose.

  Now that he knows this complaint of mine, Leonard recommends Foucault's Pendulum to me, since it's more self-contained, but then again, he had thought that Name of the Rose is self-contained, and it was to him, since he was raised Christian, but it's not to me.

  This complaint raises my suspicions that people I know only like The Name of the Rose because it pats them on the back for being erudite. It's like why I like watching "Jeopardy!"

• Maybe the spoiler that Seth accidentally told me influenced me a great deal, and I would have thought the book much more compelling if the ending had surprised me.
• Sometimes I like it when an author digresses into philosophy or description. But Name of the Rose made me impatient for plot (and, to a lesser extent, character development) during the long lists (and, to a lesser extent, during theological speeches). The first half or so of the book was particularly grueling, serving as exposition regarding the politics of the time (I wouldn't have minded some exposition regarding that general Christian backstory, but no). And Eco knew this: in the postscript, Eco characterizes the first two hundred pages as an initiation! Even though his editors clearly informed him that the first two hundred pages were too demanding, Eco maintained that he wanted the reader, after the first third of the book, to be ready for particular things that Eco wanted to do in the rest of the book. Well, Umberto, this is a book, not a frat, and I don't particularly like being hazed.

  A greater emphasis on plot is another reason that Leonard recommends Foucault's Pendulum to me now. Perhaps. But, having burned myself once, should I really return to the same stove?

• Eco explicitly aims at providing a "metaphysical mystery." In the postscript, he references G.K. Chesterton. I've read some Chesterton, and Father Brown Stories amused me much more than Name of the Rose. There's Christianity, there's twisted mystery, there are musings on the meaning and nature of knowledge and being. And it's far more interesting. I'm thinking that I'll read The Man Who Was Tuesday (or is it "Thursday"?) before I read any more Foucault.
• Seven hours? I spent seven hours reading this thing? I mean, at least now I've read this thing, and so I can say more informed things about it. But I'd prefer to, having read it, be able to say more informed things about lots of things, not just about Eco's work and this novel in particular.

Handball. Terrorists. Exactly. So I got this newsletter in my handball class Wednesday morning. It was a standard little association thing, desktop-published by some soul at the Northern California Handball Association onto fourteen orange sheets five times a year. In this Issue were hall of fame inductees, a treasurer's report, a silly column, tournament results, a calendar, some other items of the same type, and an article entitled "Cupertino Courts at Risk," by Jack Murphy.

The Cupertino Parks & Recreation Department is planning public forum [sic] for the purpose of hearing from users of the Sports Center about the type of programming they would like to see at the new Cupertino Sports Center. This meeting is scheduled for October 11, 2001...

...have consistently pointed out that Racquetball-Handball is a sport that does not support itself with enough members to warrant a continuation of its facilities....There is even talk of having any new courts (if any) shared with other activites, such as kids taking tennis lessons, which has devastated the quality of the courts in the past and tended to stymie our sport...

I urge you to coordinate all your efforts on behalf of Racquetball-Handball with...

All well and good. All fine. This is exactly the civil society of which de Tocqueville and Madison spoke, what? And then there was a note at the end, in italics:

Editors [sic] Note: Jack lost two relatives at the World Trade Center attack. We offer our condolences to Jack and his family. Please support Jack and handball players everywhere by helping to save these courts.

If I may, What the hell? We'll return to No-Connection Theatre right after these messages...

Telly.

• "The West Wing." I saw the second part of the season opener two-parter last night. Not bad. I'm glad that "drink the Kool-Aid" has become standard enough in the American lexicon that Sorkin had a character say it in last night's episode. Oh, and the various characters' behaviors and changes over time allow for ample application of political cognition theory, e.g., consistency bias. I love it.
• "Enterprise." This was, in my opinion, the best episode so far of this new Star Trek series. The Klingons weren't bad, the characters reacted realistically, the Texan and the Vulcan didn't annoy me out of my skin, and I actually found the discovery and the wonder touching. I still opine that the Enterprise shouldn't be running into any aliens of which TNG and DS9 fans (such as Sumana) don't recognize. Oh, and some wonder why this ship seems better-designed than the Original Series ship does. My theory: some very odd tragedy around 2200 killed all the industrial designers and the craft had to begin again from scratch.
• Note that these two hours of television each week comprise pretty much the only TV I see at all, barring glimpses when I'm at someone else's home or passing by the Recreational Sports Facility concession stand. And the ads are driving me nuts. Some cleverly arrest me. And then some make me wish I were reading a book. Even Name of the Rose again.

Mom, I'm not going to contract anthrax. I wish my mom didn't worry so much. I really doubt I'm going to come down with anthrax, or eat so little that my body doesn't get all the nutrition it needs, or get trapped on the BART when terrorists strike. Yes, I'm taking extra precautions these days because I'm brown and really stupid racists could think I'm a Muslim or from the Middle East. But I don't think she needs to worry as much as she does. I imagine I'll be just as much of a worrywart if I have kids. I'm well on my way already, especially when it comes to my personal life.

Seth's diary.

• TFA: Well, some people have been telling me unfelicitous things about Teach for America, so I'm certainly aware of some problems of the program. I'll be thinking about those for a while.
• "Free": I think that this fella was actually getting people to sign up for a credit card, not just fill out personal information questionnaires. That's even more diabolical! And that's why I called him a sophist.
• "To be": I try to avoid "to be" in my writing just because it bore and so many nuanced verbs exist. Russian has no present-tense conjugations for the verb "to be," and that (although I knew about E Prime a while back) has raised my consciousness of the different ways that English speakers use "is." We ascribe characteristics and describe locations and declare existence and all manner of bad-things-to-conflate. E Prime attracts me.
• Spoiler: I wished, for a very short time yesterday morning, that "ecpyrosis" had meant "the burning of [Umberto] Eco."

Thursday.

PHC is third-wave! Lookee here, you can submit greetings for Garrison Keillor to read on the air. Some people don't quite get the point.

John's great email. My old friend from the University of Maryland, John Stange, wrote me a terrific email complimenting my recent Segfault stories, "Top Ten Signs You're Using Windows" and "Heinlein Maneuver" (the latter inspired by a Leonard comment). I love praise.

Katie visits. More on that in tomorrow's entry.

Islamic terrorists and Kress. A while back, I wrote that I didn't like how Nancy Kress made Muslims into terrorists in her Beggars series. It seemed too stereotypical. Jennifer Sharifi wasn't what I wanted her to be. But right now I feel less prone to object.

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Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/19/63758/104