Author Archives: Abalieno

The Republic of Wine

Actually, I bought both. “The Republic of Wine” arrived first.

It reads a bit like an alcoholic version of Alice in Wonderland. The sense of humor is hit and miss but the prose is lively and playful enough to make it quite fun to read. These are just a few quotes I enjoyed from a story “embedded” in the book.

“Dear friends, dear students, when I learned that I had been engaged as a visiting professor at the Brewer’s College, this supreme honor was like a warm spring breeze in midwinter sweeping past my loyal, red-blooded heart, my green lungs and intestines, as well as my purple liver, the seat of acquiescence and accommodation. I can stand behind this sacred podium, made of pine and cypress and decorated with colorful plastic flowers, to lecture to you primarily because of its special qualities. You all know that when alcohol enters the body, most of it is broken down in the liver…”

Diamond Jin stood at the podium in the General Education Lecture Hall of Liquorland’s Brewer’s College solemnly discharging his duties. He had chosen a broad and far-reaching topic for this, his first lecture – Liquor and Society. In the tradition of brilliant, high-ranking leaders, who steer clear of specifics when they speak in public – like God looking down from on high, invoking times ancient and modern, calling forth heaven and earth, a sweeping passage through time and space – he proved his worth as visiting professor by not allowing the details of the topic to monopolize his oration. He permitted himself to soar through the sky like a heavenly steed, yet from time to time knew he must come down to earth. The rhetoric flowed from his mouth, changing course at will, yet every sentence was anchored in his topic, directly or indirectly.
Nine hundred Liquorland college students, male and female, heads swelling, hearts and minds ready to take flight, along with their professors, instructors, teaching assistants, and college administrators, sat as one body, a galaxy of celestial small-fry gazing up at a luminous star.

[…]the lights singing, the wine surging through my veins, in the flow of time my thoughts travel upstream[…]

“Dear comrades and dear students, do not have blind faith in talent, for talent is really nothing but hard work. Of course, materialists do not categorically deny that some people are more lavishly endowed than others. But this is not an absolute determinant. I acknowledge that I possess a superior natural ability to break down alcohol, but were it not for arduous practice, attention to technique, and artistry, the splendid ability to drink as much as I want without getting drunk would have been unattainable.”

By the way, Howard Goldblatt, the translator that on the cover is called as “the foremost translator of Chinese literature in the West”, has probably butchered these books:

Goldblatt added that Mo Yan writing style is often unfamiliar with Western readers, and that publishers often demanded that he trim parts of Mo’s novels.

Simple guide at US political elections

Following, from Italy, the Obama/Romney debate the other day I was dismayed about how simplistic was it all.

Some of the most relevant claims used from a side or the other are a constant in all political debates, in most countries I guess. On top of this, there seem to be a much greater attention in the US, about the “form” over substance. Who smiled the most, who sounded more secure of himself, who kept more control of his facial expressions. So it is a rather obvious claim I’d make: it wasn’t a “political” debate. The politic I heard from both parties was fake. It was instead just a show, theater.

A simplistic analysis could cover all the meaningful points. For example it is very obvious to see Romney’s weakness by just looking at his speech patterns:
“I know what it takes to…”
“I understand what it takes.”
“We must…”

He affirms the obvious, without ever saying HOW. Or WHAT. It evokes politics without ever saying something concrete. Every phrase he says is missing one half: how he intends to carry out the things he promises.

The “intention” is manifest. Romney intends to tell American people whatever it takes to win. It is that simple.

The entire deal stops there. Romney is not interested in explaining what he’ll do if he’s elected. He’s interested on winning the elections. Generalizing: the “now” is more important that what will happen afterwards.

This idea crosses over to the political idea. You need energy and more jobs? Then Romney gives them now. Drill more for more oil. Exploit all the natural source America has left. Squeeze it all out, right now. Because he isn’t in the least concerned to what happens long-term. Obama shows more concern for long-term impact of his choices, but long-term doesn’t pay off in a political election. Most people are selfish and think short-term by constitution.

The rest of the political debate is about the game of the three boxes:

TAXES – DEFICIT – SERVICES

The relationship between these three “boxes” is not political. It is not a subjective thing. It’s simply factual and depends on the real world. If you want to lower TAXES overall and still want to keep the same level of SERVICES, then the DEFICIT goes up. If you want to lower TAXES without affecting the DEFICIT, then you’ll have to cut SERVICES.

Romney promises that he’ll lower taxes across the board for EVERYONE. That the deficit will go down, and that he’ll provide excellent services. This is not a political plan, it’s simply an objective FRAUD. So let’s call things with the proper name empty of rhetoric.

When he brings up the example of some desperate woman without a job asking him if he can help with her situation, he says “Yes, that’s what I can do.” This isn’t just a lie, but it is speculation on other people’s suffering for personal interest. It’s a sign of how ruthless he is. It is unacceptable, disrespectful and criminal. Because the grater the NEED, the most careful and honest you HAVE to be when you promise a solution. Because not only he won’t be able to help that woman, but he’s also doing it for a personal advantage.

But Romney isn’t interested on being earnest. He’s interested on *appearing* as earnest. He’s not himself. He plays a role. He doesn’t say what he thinks, he says what you want to hear. Whatever you want to hear. He’ll say something to someone, and then the exact opposite to someone else. Romney will say that he’ll help exactly the % of people in front of him right at that moment, because it’s convenient. He can say one moment that he’ll work for 100% of people and another moment that 47% of people are govern-dependent victims. It’s absolutely logical. Why? Because when he was speaking in the second circumstance he was in front of people that wanted to hear just that. Romney says what you want to hear, so you vote for him. And that’s why a lot of the debate with Obama ends with a sort of “me too”. With the difference that Obama at least tries to restraint his political idea within the boundaries of reality, whereas Romney will say exactly what he think people want to hear. No matter how completely absurd it is. To win the elections you need to make people dream.

Romney will create more jobs, lower taxes for everyone, cut the deficit, make America autonomous with energy, take care of the environment, strengthen the use of green power, reduce criminality, crack down on China and cure cancer. Because he believes he can say whatever the fuck pleases him. He’s burden free, responsibility free. He only wants one thing: your trust and your vote.

The model he uses for himself is a winner. Real politics is about people getting involved. And not observing things from far away and nodding their approval. But the great majority of people don’t care about politics and won’t get involved. They want to delegate the choice-making and responsibilities to someone who takes charge of EVERYTHING. They want the holy savior. They want to have faith on a President that will take care of everything. And then, one day, they’ll want someone to blame for everything so that this wheel will make another turn. They do not care HOW things will be done. They only want them being done, right now. Romney knows this. He knows that people voting for him aren’t interested in HOW he’ll lower taxes, create more jobs and everything else.

On the bottom of all this there’s some real politics. One handhold Romney has is that a way to rig the game of the three boxes above is economical growth. Economical growth brings more jobs, lowers the deficit and can lower the taxes for each, because it increases directly the volume of money that those three boxes deal with. But usually economic growth requires money being spent to jumpstart it, the deficit increasing, and America can’t afford that kind of program. So if he can hope of achieving something similar then it is about removing all rules. Deregulate everything and let businessmen go wild. Let everything loose so that there can be a net earning. Go after profit AT ALL COSTS. The lack of rules can offer a short term advantage and, again, long term is not a problem because he won’t be President by then. Some people will be crushed underfoot by this process, but that’s the price to pay. They’ll be guilty of not being rich and not having taken advantage of all the opportunities America offered. The American dream is paved with bones.

The other handhold Romney has over Obama is what Obama himself exploited to become President. When Obama was elected the first time, he was something new staked against a system. He could promise change, and he won because of those promises. But today Obama IS the system. He’s stuck in a role and he can’t promise changes. This pattern is the same no matter in what country you live. The current political party is always at a disadvantage against the competitor. And that’s why Romney gains points whenever he focuses his arguments on what Obama has or hasn’t done.

On top of all this, Obama has his hands tied, whereas Romney is free to take advantage of every opportunity. For Obama this is like playing a game of chess where your opponent plays with a different set of rules. And that’s why I think Obama’s strategy should be to overturn the whole table. This is not a game where the two players are in their own fields. Obama has NO HOPE of describing a political plan that can look better than Romney’s plan, because Romney isn’t playing by the same rules. It doesn’t need to “add up”. You can’t win that kind of match if not by accepting to do the same. And if that happens then there’s zero difference between Romney and Obama. So what Obama should do is not focus on his own plan, but focus on the rules and the game that Romney’s playing. He should treat Romney as a parody to show exactly how Romney’s agenda is working. More simply: he should expose how simplistic, self-focused and dishonest is that plan.

And to do that he can’t simply state “Romney’s plan is”, and Romney then saying, “Nope, that’s not my plan, my plan is.” Because that kind of back and forth establishes the kind of balance where Romney PROSPERS. Obama can’t play the politically-correct game, because that’s where Romney built his own strategy.

Romney will keep a relevant advantage as long America continues to focus on the participants, and not on the rules.

Mo Yan, wins the Nobel

As probably most people I never heard the name of this writer, so started looking on Amazon and Wikipedia. I ended up buying a book.

Two titles I tracked that are most interesting:
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
The Republic of Wine

And extrapolated comments that piqued my interest:

“there are three major features in his works: extraordinary characters; language with absurd local flavor (or somewhat black humor of the absurd); and plots with symbolic meaning.”

“Whatever the subject matter is, a torrential flow of rich, unpredictable and often lacerating words remains his trademark.”

“Today’s most revered, feared, and controversial Chinese novelist offers a tour de force in which the real, the absurd, the comical, and the tragic are blended into a fascinating read.”

“He flouts literary conformity, spiking his earthy realism with fantasy, hallucination and metafiction.”

“This “lumbering animal of a story,” as he calls it, combines the appeal of a family saga set against tumultuous events with the technical bravura of innovative fiction. Catch a ride on this wheel of transmigration.”

“use of multiple narrators”

“Much of the book is very funny, especially when the narrator is one of the animal reincarnations Of Ximen Nao (he returns as a donkey, an ox, a pig, and a dog) commenting on the foibles of humans and the many reforms of the Mao era.”

“This book is written masterfully and encompasses a half century with sorrow and wit.”

“Set in the fictional province of Liquorland, this tall tale begins with a rumor of cannibal feasts featuring children as the delectable main course. In response, Chinese officials send special investigator Ding Gou’er to look into the allegations. He arrives by coal truck at the Mount Lao Coal Mine, where he meets the legendary Diamond Jin, Vice-Minister of the Liquorland Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Bureau, a man known for an epic ability to hold his booze. Almost at once, Ding’s worst fears seem to be realized when he is invited to a special dinner, given enough alcohol to stun an ox, and then served what appears to be “a golden, incredibly fragrant little boy.” Despite his hosts’ explanation that the boy’s arms are made of lotus root, his legs of ham sausage, and his head from a silver melon, Ding remains suspicious–until he is rendered so addled by wine that he ends up eating half an arm all on his own.”

“A lesser novelist might be satisfied with just this one narrative thread; Mo Yan, however, has bigger ambitions. The correspondence between fictional character and author allows Mo Yan to wax satirical on the subject of art, politics, and the troubling point where the two intersect in a Socialist society: “One of the tenets of the communism envisioned by Marx,” the hopeful Yidou writes, “was the integration of art with the working people and of the working people with art. So when communism has been realized, everyone will be a novelist.””

“only a first-rate artist like Mo Yan could pull off such a subversive and darkly comic metafiction.”

“he waxes metafictional in this savage, hallucinatory farce.”

“The novel grows progressively more febrile in tone, with pervasive, striking imagery and wildly imaginative digressions that cumulatively reveal the tremendous scope of his vision.”

Framing devices: MS Paint Adventures

Some more speculative garbage ;)

One of the Internet phenomenons I never understood, though I tried at least a few times already, is MS Paint Adventures. Especially its last, epic and mythical, incarnation, Homestuck (somewhere around 5200 “pages” right now), that can reach a rather impressive depth in its mythology. It is easier to grasp how it started since Jail Break was modeled after a classic point&click adventure game. You can call it a typical post-modernist “deconstruction” of the medium. The guy posted an illustration on a forum, and then prompted people to suggest an action. So it was something like interactive writing, where the original author still had control over it, as he still picked one suggestion among many and showed its outcome.

Today I was going through the first “pages” of Homestuck and noticed something else instead. The story is again presented as if a “game”, complete with a parody of a rudimentary interface. The protagonist of the story is a not-so-good programmer who happens to be working on a game, called SBURB. You can play the beta. And you can see that it’s exactly the beginning of Homestuck, with very minimal differences. A game within a game. A world within a world. The protagonist of the story, putting himself into the story. All of this being the exquisite post-modernist quality: playing with frames.

“Sometimes you feel like you are trapped in this room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular.”

So this time my interest was tickled by this different perspective. Think of a programmer, putting himself in the game he’s making. Is it possible, from within the boundaries of the game, to reconstruct the world outside? How do you think out of the frame? How do you punch holes through it?

It becomes a parody on reality, metaphorically strong. See my analogy with dreams and reality. The creator and his creation. The dreamer and the dreamee, trapped into the dream, unconscious about the dream. And here in this case, the protagonist of a game, unconscious of himself in a game, but playing within the rules. This blinkered look at reality that makes you take everything for granted, because the brain is hardwired to make sense of what is fed to it. WYSIATI, What You See Is All There Is. Sufficiency. The brain projects a world using a severely limited set of features. An abstract.

This is exactly like in a game, where you program and defines just a few features of the world. Is it a limited top-down 2D view? So what would the characters see if they were to look up, out of the “frame”? You don’t know. You can’t know. And, more precisely, you don’t ask questions. Because the question itself is out of the frame. Not only it can’t be answered from within, but it also cannot exist. Because it’s outside the bounding rules. Out of the physics that regulate and frame your world.

Take the idea of “time” into this frame. The character of a game experiences time. The game story has a natural flow. It starts and then goes on. The character may have a sense of previous history even at that starting point, so “misperceiving” it. But is the game a “beta”, or a final version? How many iterations that world has gone through? What was written “before”, and what “after”? The timeline experienced in the game is not the timeline that exists in the world that built that game. You could perceive an embryonic state where instead there’s a final one. So it gets to the point where time collapses, like in the other example I was making.

Once again, this is all the result of reflexive properties. Things that self-describe through recursive processes. And, in these endless loops, the impossibility to escape.

P.S.
I’ve seen a similar concept mentioned here. Though I’d stay more with the world itself, “closure”, describing precisely the “binding” of these worlds. As I think the property of doing without the details, erasing them, is more meaningful than the property of “filling in”.

GNU’s Not Unix, as a model of reality

Some speculative garbage ;)

I was watching this video, and its two children. Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design, The Meaning of Life.

Quite a bombastic title. The documentaries are nice to watch, with flashy editing. Content may appear a bit superficial, though, but they are meant for the large public and not the specialized one. I wrote some comments over at Bakker’s blog.

The summary is that I think it could be possible to see progress and science as the opposite they usually represent. The more science develop, the more we think we have a better grasp on reality. We have more knowledge and disproved ideas such as the sun orbiting around earth. We know physics, we can use electricity, make fancy things and so on. All of this possible because we know better how reality works.

Though you could say that, with this kind of progress, we are emancipating from reality. We concretely live in meaning-full worlds. The internet becomes a good chunk of life. We watch movies, play games. We live into fancy cities with skyscrapers. The environment we actually live in looks nothing like a “natural” world. We still die, suffer of illness and all those things that remind us where the real world is, but there’s still a drift toward a virtual world that is made, opposed to a real world that we are subject to.

The more we achieve progress, the more we purchase virtual land. We take from reality and build anew.

Where does it lead? To a point where reality is completely reclaimed and stops existing. Reality becomes subjective. That threshold may well mean that the notion of “reality” stops to matter. Philosophically you can decide what is true and what is not.

An idea suggested in one of Bakker’s books is that all this could have already happened, in the future. So stretch that same fancy hypothesis. Take the biggest idea like the one about the many worlds, of which the one we know, from the Big Bang to the final collapse is just a grain of sand. What if this impossibly large construct is also man made?

If reality stops existing, then time stops existing. The future collapses into the now. So we have now, a reality that will be built in the future. God, making reality, in this case would be an advanced human being far in the future, who built reality as we see it.

Now think that if reality is completely virtual and man-made, then it means that the actual “real” reality we started from is lost. Men end up living within their imaginary worlds, leaving “real” reality behind. Reality vanishes.

Take the acronym: “GNU’s Not Unix!”. It’s recursive, built by itself. It’s as if the “G” is an original state that is lost and then absorbed into the rest of the body. The same way, virtual reality spawns from “real” reality, but when virtual reality becomes complete, reality disappears. It’s like a “ladder” that you use to reach an high place.

You climb the ladder, then look down. There’s no ladder. It’s like the time paradox where you go back in time to give someone an object so that in the future he’ll give it to you so you can go back in time and give it to him. Strange loops.

Hounded – Kevin Hearne

“The point is, Mrs MacDonagh, that the universe is exactly the size that your soul can encompass. Some people live in extremely small worlds, and some live in a world of infinite possibility.”

As mentioned in the previous post I appreciated that roundtable between Pat Rothfuss and the three other “urban fantasy” writers. The genre doesn’t appeal to me all that much but in the end they convinced me to read one that belongs to none of those participants to the roundtable, but that all seemed to agree was a fresh and worthwhile entry. Actually Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files is quite often mentioned and recommended by Malazan readers as some material to chill off and relax between those big and demanding books. A kind of “sit back and enjoy” without any heavy lifting. While these days this Iron Druid series, that’s already at volume number 5 and has one coming out every six months, on average, is often recommended in the Dresden Files forum threads. So after looking online at some of the recommended series this one was the one that sparked my interest, with its focus more on the mythical aspects than the defused horror story in urban setting.

That’s exactly what I found and I can say this is a book that is easy to recommend. After I mentioned on another forum I was going to read this book (after a careful search and selection of what the genre had to offer) a few other readers that already read it commented on it positively, and then more readers picked it up and commented favorably. That was already a nice cascading effect that tells me that this book goes down easily. Maybe you won’t think all that much of it, but you’ll hardly think it overstayed its welcome. It’s relatively unpretentious, or at least it is if you don’t count its “all in” approach that pulls out all the stops. It doesn’t have to bargain at all with reader’s expectations since it knows exactly what it is, and puts it on full display like an shameless exhibitionist. This book is like porn. But it is quality porn that is deeply self-aware, bared of pretentiousness, shrugging off all baggage and just having the best of times. This porn works because it’s positive, guilt-free and filled with pride. Maybe even a lesson on positive-thinking. And even if I could see someone feeling horrified at this description I’m making, I do think this book can only do good in the world. I am certain it’s from one of the good guys.

So I guess in the end this book worked for me because of that trust relationship it built with me. The first note I’ve written down, shortly after beginning to read, is just a word: ridiculous. And that’s precisely what I thought through the whole of it: this book is utterly ridiculous. But, oh, it works. What is to admire here is the fragile balance, the clever brilliance of genius from a side, and the complete ridiculousness from the other. It tiptoes on that thin balance line and makes it appear as it’s the easiest thing in the world. Which is the other big quality here. The sure footing of the writing. This troubles me a bit because that certainty in writing is usually a Bad Thing, but here it works out because a number of preconditions are checked. The writer is constantly smarter than what he writes, but he never underestimates or under appreciates what’s he’s writing. If there’s a recipe-for-success in this book, I think it’s that one.

“It should be clear to you that Wikipedia knows nothing about what a real druid can do.”

All the premises are ridiculous. A millenarian, immortal druid chilling out, off the records, in Arizona working at a book store specialized on the occult, but getting constantly pestered by invasions of fae beings (?) and gods meddling with and around him. The type is: the reluctant (anti-)hero. Skillfully thrust in modern days, hands-down in internet memes, puns and modern geek jokes that keep every page alive with laugh out loud moments. It’s that kind of book where events move at a brisk pace. It doesn’t even specialize on a mythological subset. It’s not about werewolves, vampires, faes or witches. It’s about ALL OF THEM, all in the bigger bowl of gods meddling in both the mortal and immortal world. The quote I put at the beginning pretty much sums up the canon here. Everything works (though coming at a price) and every belief is real. Malazan-like if you want.

In 300 pages the writer makes it work by introducing a number of elements that tangle rather well and deliver a proper conclusion. It picks a selection of Celtic gods playing their game, and it works out because of the druid pragmatic and unfazed attitude. It’s even quite original because you get the exact opposite of the clueless protagonist that slowly discovers a new world. Here the Iron Druid knows it all. Has essentially seen (and participated to, even if he’s more of a neutral, “stay out of my lawn” kind of character) all history and knows extremely well how to cover his ass and stay alive, considering he’s the last of these druids and was able to stay alive for so long. And it works again because the first person narration gives the reader everything that is needed to transform what is potentially a really weird and confusing story into something that couldn’t be more straightforward and traditional, at least in the patterns it follows. The plot is indeed quite conservative and same-y, but it stays fresh because it’s written well and because there’s plenty of clever invention all around it. Keeping it fresh and alive, instead of stilted and redundant.

When you write these kind of stories filled with absurd and ridiculous elements it all depends on the grasp on reality, and there’s a good one here. I think the writer is honest to his characters, and it’s part of why I said I “trusted” the book, so making it work. There’s a coat of “make believe”, but I could feel that these characters were written with respect. So I applaud to that. Is it comfort food? Yes it is, but as I said there’s sometimes more to it, even if it isn’t smashed against your face. When the writer flexes his muscles is always effortlessly and behind the scenes, not demanding attention. I enjoyed the book, have a positive opinion of it. I actually do like things that are more pretentious and elaborate. I can’t say this was a pageturner for me, if it wasn’t for the good pacing that makes it not boring. I’m not entirely interested in what this genre specifically offers. But I can give thumbs up to this entry. While I haven’t read anything else in the genre, I am at least convinced that I couldn’t have picked a better one.

The best written character ends up being the Morrigan.

David Foster Wallace

Merely noticed this quote on another blog, and reproducing it:

“I gotta tell you, I just think to look across the room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich, and complicated, and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not as good a writer. Because that means I’m going to be performing for a faceless audience, instead of trying to have a conversation with a person.”