LMM: Round 3, Part 3: Spiegelman! Gaiman! Woolf! Dickens!

Spiegelman v. Gaiman

Woolf v. Dickens

Happy Wittgenstein Day!

In honor of his one hundred and eleventieth birthday!

Suppose I say of a friend: "He isn't an automaton." - What information is
conveyed by this, and to whom would it be information? To a human
being who meets him in ordinary circumstances? What information could it give him? (At the very most that this man always behaves like
a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.)

[Said after an argument that lasted for six hours and consisted entirely of Wittgenstein accusing Russell of being a robot.]

But, after all, the game is supposed to be defined by the rules! So, if a
game prescribes that the kings are to be used for drawing lots before a game of
chess, then that is an essential part of the game. What objection might
one make to this? That one does not see the point of this
prescription. Perhaps as one wouldn't see the point either of a rule by
which each piece had to be turned round three times before one moved
it. If we found this rule in a board-game we should be surprised and
should speculate about the purpose of the rule. ("Was this prescription
meant to prevent one from moving without de consideration?")

[Me: No, see the bishop can only move this way, diagonally. He can't go side-to-side, or front-to-back.
7th Grader: Oh. (Pauses, then moves bishop straight forward three spaces.)]

How am I filled with pity for this man? How does it come out what
the object of my pity is? (Pity, one might say, is a form of conviction that
someone else is in pain.)

[Me: Why did you just kick that girl?!?
6th Grader: I dunno.]

Reading Way Too Much Into Things

So I have been watching the NBA Playoffs on tv this week - well, all of the playoffs except for the Blazers-Suns, because I'm in the stupid Central Time Zone and have to get up at 5 in the morning and can't stay up till 1 am each night - and have become very rapidly inundated by all of the sports-and-man-themed commercials. Soon, I am sure, all of their subliminal messages will be safely and securely embedded within my psyche, and I will sped the entirety of my weekly pay on Reeboks and hybrid cars and DVD after DVD of Avatar. But, until then, I may still have the free will and capacity to question a few of the messages that are coming through. For example:




In 1965, we started a revolution. Civil Rights legislation? No, Gatorade. But it's weird how Gatorade puts themselves directly into the entire story of African-Americans fight for Civil Rights. Before Gatorade, basketball, tennis, and football we're played solely by white people, balling on peach baskets in - what? - a court house? Playing tennis in front of their friend Gatsby while wearing bloomers and fancy hats, or getting ready for the big game against the Gipper, everyone with the same crew-cut haircuts, all the while drinking plain, homogenous, monochromatic water. But then, bam! 1965! Gatorade! Muhammad Ali! Michael Jordan!* Black people can even play tennis now! (Um... but not golf....) I really like this ad. (I can't recall a Gatorade commercial that I didn't like.) And I think that it's a good idea for them to have people associate their product with the "revolution" that started in 1965. I even find the phrase, "In 2010, we're changing the game again," intriguing; could they possible be referring to healthcare reform?

Then, there's this ad, which never fails to disappoint:



This commercial initially aired during the Super Bowl, but it's getting constant air time during the playoffs. In my mind, it delivers the opposite message of its intention: Essentially it's an argument for why not to wear pants, why not to buy Dockers. I, for one, would much rather be marching proudly across the savannah in my whitey-tighties singing with my bearded and bespectacled friends then alone in some of kind of brick warehouse with my head cut out of the frame. It just goes to prove what I've been saying all along:

Pants are fascist.**

*Who, by the way, is wearing the greatest jacket ever to the Charlotte-Orlando game.
** In fact, I'm taking mine off right now. Go Blazers!

LMM: Round 3, Part 2: Tolstoy! Flaubert! Nabokov! Dostoyevsky!

Tolstoy v. Flaubert

Nabokov v. Dostoyevsky

LMM: Round 3 Update

I'm going to rapid-fire this one, the Heat and the Celtics are playing...


Still looking for a reason to vote? Well, how about drug of choice? Kesey had his LSD, Faulkner his whiskey, Balzac drank too much coffee, and I'd bet francs to farthings that Miss Jane Austen was a fan of laudanum....
Under the Influence - Drugs Used During Composition

Speaking of which... Austen continues her domination as she goes up against Willa Cather in round three, while Nathaniel Hawthorne takes on Charlotte Bronte in the undercard. I want to title this quartet as something like, "What is a woman's role in society?" but that sounds kinda lame and meaningless to me, because any novel that has women and society in it could conceivably fall into that category. But this bracket is filled by marked women, whether by sin (Hester Prynne), age and class (Elinor Dashwood), or family (Jane Eyre). *

We've got some exciting results to report as we move on into the Sweet Sixteen! A couple of upsets: James Joyce is the first 1 seed to fall to #8 Art Spiegelman 7-3. (Y'know, I can't recall anyone actually proclaiming that they enjoy reading Joyce...) Spiegelman will advance to meet another Cinderella, #12 Neil Gaiman, who upset #4 Lewis Carroll 7-3. Good news: The graphic novel is now an acceptable literary form as of right... now.

The other match-up in that region will be #2 Virginia Woolf versus #3 Charles Dickens. Both of these authors won their second round matches quite handily, and the winner will probably be favored to get all the way to the Final Four.

Finally, the second region has become over-run by the Russians. To my surprise, #1 Leo Tolstoy defeated #9 Harper Lee 7-4, and will advance to meet #4 Gustave Flaubert in the next round, who defeated #5 Thomas Mann 5-3. Below them, #7 Vladimir Nabokov ended #15 Flannery O'Connor's run 6-3, and will have an excellent and intriguing match next round against #3 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who beat #6 Jorge Luis Borges by a convincing 7-2.

Keep voting!

* I'm hoping that this statement will motivate Robyn to correct me. She says that Jane Eyre is marked more by obscurity and will, or maybe poverty and will. She also says that, "But she is still marked differently than the Dashwood sisters in the way that Charlotte Bronte is different from Jane Austen. In the end, Jane Eyre is able to get angry and get a job, which may be why Jane Eyre as so popular amongst 19th-century working class women. Though that can play into the Twilight trope of having the little, plain, virtuous women taming the tall, brooding Byronic type. And then, of course, there is the whole race/colonial issues of having the Creole wife locked in the attic. Everyone should read Jane Eyre."

LMM: Round 3, Part 1: Austen! Cather! Hawthorne! Bronte!

Austen v. Cather

Hawthorne v. Bronte

LMM: Famous First Lines

They may say that you can't judge a book by its cover - which is totally BS, as everybody who has ever worked in the publishing industry knows that that's really the only way people do judge books - but what about judging a book by its first line? As we move on in to the Sweet Sixteen of our Literary March Madness - which, if I'm lucky, will be finished by May - here's a sampling of some of our competitors best opening lines to help you in your voting wisdom and judgment:

"Call me Ishmael." - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." George Orwell, 1984

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Can't have a famous and successful novel without that first line! More available for your perusing here. What other ones am I leaving out?