Essentials
theDiagonal is a personal blog by Mike Gerra, skeptic, technologist, psychologist, artist, humanist, collector of grand, eclectic ideas.theDiagonal blog connects the dots across multiple disciplines for inquisitive, objective and critical thinkers, exploring the vertices of big science, disruptive innovation, global sustainability, illuminating literature and leftfield art. It is on this diagonal that creativity thrives, big ideas take flight and reason triumphs.
Category Archives: Literature
Saturday, April 6, 2013
The Filter Bubble Eats the Book World
Last week Amazon purchased Goodreads the online book review site. Since 2007 Goodreads has grown to become home to over 16 million members who share a passion for discovering and sharing great literature. Now, with Amazon’s acquisition many are concerned that this represents another step towards a monolithic and monopolistic enterprise that controls vast swathes of the market. While Amazon’s innovation has upended the bricks-and-mortar worlds of publishing and retailing, its increasingly dominant market power raises serious concerns over access, distribution and choice. This is another worrying example of the so-called filter bubble — where increasingly edited selections and personalized recommendations act to limit and dumb-down content.
From the Guardian:
...read more
Posted in Literature
Tagged Amazon, books, censorship, filter bubble, Goodreads, recommedations, retail
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Friday, April 5, 2013
Iain (M.) Banks
Where is the technology of the Culture when it’s most needed? Nothing more to add.
From the Guardian:
In Iain M Banks’s finest creation, the universe of the Culture, death is largely optional. It’s an option most people take in the end: they take it after three or four centuries, after living on a suitably wide variety of planets and in a suitably wide variety of bodies, and after a life of hedonism appropriate to the anarcho-communist Age of Plenty galactic civilisation in which they live; they take it in partial, reversible forms. But they take it. It’s an option.
Sadly, and obviously, that’s not true for us. Banks himself has released a statement on his website, saying that he has terminal cancer. He tells us as much with his usual eye for technical detail and stark impact:
...read more
Posted in Literature
Tagged author, Culture novels, Iain Banks, Iain M. Banks, science fiction
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Saturday, March 9, 2013
Two Nations Divided by Book Covers
“England and America are two countries separated by the same language”. This oft used quote is usually attributed to Oscar Wilde or GBS (George Bernard Shaw). Regardless of who originated the phrase both authors would not be surprised to see that book covers are divided by the Atlantic Ocean as well. The Millions continues its fascinating annual comparative analysis.
American book covers on the left, British book covers on the right.
From The Millions:
Posted in Literature
Tagged books, comparative, culture, language, United Kingdom, United States
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Monday, February 18, 2013
MondayPoem: Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Emily Dickinson has been much written about, but still remains enigmatic. Many of her peers thought her to be eccentric and withdrawn. Only after her death did the full extent of her prolific writing become apparent. To this day, her unique poetry is regarded as having ushered in a new era of personal observation and expression.
By Emily Dickinson
- Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile – the winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden -
Ah – the Sea!
Might I but moor – tonight -
In thee!
Image: Daguerreotype of the poet Emily Dickinson, taken circa 1848. Courtesy of the Todd-Bingham Picture Collection and Family Papers, Yale University.
Send to KindleFriday, January 25, 2013
Orwell Lives On
George Orwell passed away on January 21, 1950 — an untimely death. He was only 46 years old. The anniversary of his death leads some to wonder what the great author would be doing if he were still alive. Some believe that he would be a food / restaurant critic. Or perhaps he would still, at the age of 109, be writing about injustice, falsehood and hypocrisy. One suspects that he might still be speaking truth to power as he did back in the 1940s, the difference being that this time power is in private hands versus the public sector. Corporate Big Brother is now watching you.
From the Guardian:
Monday, January 21, 2013
Atwood on Orwell
One great writer reflects on the influences of another.
From the Guardian:
I grew up with George Orwell. I was born in 1939, and Animal Farm was published in 1945. I read it at age nine. It was lying around the house, and I mistook it for a book about talking animals. I knew nothing about the kind of politics in the book – the child’s version of politics then, just after the war, consisted of the simple notion that Hitler was bad but dead. To say that I was horrified by this book would be an understatement. The fate of the farm animals was so grim, the pigs were so mean and mendacious and treacherous, the sheep were so stupid. Children have a keen sense of injustice, and this was the thing that upset me the most: the pigs were so unjust.
...read moreMonday, October 29, 2012
MondayPoem: End of Summer
A month in to fall and it really does now seem like Autumn — leaves are turning and falling, jackets have reappeared, brisk morning walks are now shrouded in darkness.
So, we turn to the first Poet Laureate of the United States of the new millenium — Stanley Kunitz, to remind us of Summer’s end. Kunitz was anointed Laureate at the age of ninety-five, and died six years later. His published works span almost eight decades of thoughtful creativity.
By Stanley Kunitz
- End of Summer
An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
LBPD – Love of Books Personality Disorder
Author Joe Queenan explains why reading over 6,000 books may be because, as he puts it, he “find[s] ‘reality’ a bit of a disappointment”.
From the Wall Street Journal:
I started borrowing books from a roving Quaker City bookmobile when I was 7 years old. Things quickly got out of hand. Before I knew it I was borrowing every book about the Romans, every book about the Apaches, every book about the spindly third-string quarterback who comes off the bench in the fourth quarter to bail out his team. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but what started out as a harmless juvenile pastime soon turned into a lifelong personality disorder.
Fifty-five years later, with at least 6,128 books under my belt, I still organize my daily life—such as it is—around reading. As a result, decades go by without my windows getting washed.
...read moreThursday, October 11, 2012
QTWTAIN: Are there Nazis living on the moon?
QTWTAIN is a Twitterspeak acronym for a Question To Which The Answer Is No.
QTWTAINs are a relatively recent journalistic phenomenon. They are often used as headlines to great effect by media organizations to grab a reader’s attention. But importantly, QTWTAINs imply that something ridiculous is true — by posing a headline as a question no evidence seems to be required. Here’s an example of a recent headline:
“Europe: Are there Nazis living on the moon?”
Author and journalist John Rentoul has done all connoisseurs of QTWTAINs a great service by collecting an outstanding selection from hundreds of his favorites into a new book, Questions to Which the Answer is No. Rentoul tells us his story, excerpted, below.
From the Independent:
Posted in Idea Soup, Literature
Tagged deception, journalism, QTWTAIN, truth, truthiness
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Monday, September 10, 2012
Saturday, September 8, 2012
The Pleasure from Writing Long Sentences
Author Pico Iver distances himself from the short bursts of broken language of the Twitterscape and the exclamatory sound-bites of our modern day lives, and revels in the lush beauty of the long and winding sentence.
From the LA Times:
“Your sentences are so long,” said a friend who teaches English at a local college, and I could tell she didn’t quite mean it as a compliment. The copy editor who painstakingly went through my most recent book often put yellow dashes on-screen around my multiplying clauses, to ask if I didn’t want to break up my sentences or put less material in every one. Both responses couldn’t have been kinder or more considered, but what my friend and my colleague may not have sensed was this: I’m using longer and longer sentences as a small protest against — and attempt to rescue any readers I might have from — the bombardment of the moment.
...read moreTuesday, August 21, 2012
Shirking Life-As-Performance of a Social Network
Ex-Facebook employee number 51, gives us a glimpse from within the social network giant. It’s a tale of social isolation, shallow relationships, voyeurism, and narcissistic performance art. It’s also a tale of the re-discovery of life prior to “likes”, “status updates”, “tweets” and “followers”.
From the Washington Post:
Not long after Katherine Losse left her Silicon Valley career and moved to this West Texas town for its artsy vibe and crisp desert air, she decided to make friends the old-fashioned way, in person. So she went to her Facebook page and, with a series of keystrokes, shut it off.
The move carried extra import because Losse had been the social network’s 51st employee and rose to become founder Mark Zuckerberg’s personal ghostwriter. But Losse gradually soured on the revolution in human relations she witnessed from within.
...read moreTuesday, July 10, 2012
Fifty Shades of Grey Matter: Now For Some Really Influential Books
While pop culture columnists, behavioral psychologists and literary gadflies debate the pros and cons of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, we look at some more notable, though perhaps no-less controversial works, in their time. Notable in the sense that ideas from any of these books — whether you are in agreement with them or not — have had a profound influence of our cultural, political, economic and scientific evolution.
...read moreMonday, June 25, 2012
Happy Birthday, George Orwell
Eric Blair was born on this day, June 25, in 1903. Thirty years later Blair changed his name with the publication of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). His preferred pen name, George Orwell, chosen for being “a good round English name” (in his words).
Your friendly editor at theDiagonal classes George Orwell as one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century. His numerous political writings, literary reviews, poems, newspaper columns and 7 novels should be compulsory reading for minds young and old. His furious intellectual honesty, keen eye for exposing hypocrisy and skepticism of power add further considerable weight to his literary legacy.
In 1946, two years before publication of one of the most important works of the 20th century, 1984, Orwell wrote a passage that summarizes his world view and rings ever true today:
...read moreSaturday, June 16, 2012
Thirty Books for the Under 30
The official start of summer in the northern hemisphere is just over a week away. So, it’s time to gather together some juicy reads for lazy days by the beach or under a sturdy shade tree. Flavorwire offers a classic list of 30 reads with a couple of surprises thrown in. And, we’ll qualify Flavorwire’s selection by adding that anyone over 30 should read these works as well.
From Flavorwire:
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
MondayPoem: McDonalds Is Impossible
According to Chelsea Martin’s website, “chelsea martin ‘studied’ art and writing at california college of the arts (though she holds no degree because she owes $300 in tuition)”.
From Poetry Foundation:
Chelsea Martin was 23 when she published her first collection, Everything Was Fine until Whatever (2009), a genre-blurring book of short fiction, nonfiction, prose, poetry, sketches, and memoir. She is also the author, most recently, of The Real Funny Thing about Apathy (2010).
By Chelsea Martin
- McDonalds is Impossible
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Ray Bradbury – His Books Will Not Burn
“Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.” [From Fahrenheit 451].
Ray Bradbury left our planet on June 5. He was 91 years old.
Yet, a part of him lives on Mars. A digital copy of Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles”, along with works by other science fiction authors, reached the Martian northern plains in 2008, courtesy of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft.
...read moreFriday, June 1, 2012
Comic Sans or Futura?
Infographic courtesy of Mashable.
Send to KindleThursday, May 31, 2012
Philip K. Dick – Future Gnostic
Simon Critchley, professor of philosophy, continues his serialized analysis of Philip K. Dick. Part I first appeared here. Part II examines the events around 2-3-74 that led to Dick’s 8,000 page Gnostic treatise “Exegesis”.
From the New York Times:
In the previous post, we looked at the consequences and possible philosophic import of the events of February and March of 1974 (also known as 2-3-74) in the life and work of Philip K. Dick, a period in which a dose of sodium pentathol, a light-emitting fish pendant and decades of fiction writing and quasi-philosophic activity came together in revelation that led to Dick’s 8,000-page “Exegesis.”
...read more
Posted in Idea Soup, Literature
Tagged Gnosticism, Philip K. Dick, philosophy, science fiction, spirituality
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Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Whitewashing Prejudice One Word at a Time
From Salon:
The news of recent research documenting how readers identify with the main characters in stories has mostly been taken as confirmation of the value of literary role models. Lisa Libby, an assistant professor at Ohio State University and co-author of a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, explained that subjects who read a short story in which the protagonist overcomes obstacles in order to vote were more likely to vote themselves several days later.
The suggestibility of readers isn’t news. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel of a sensitive young man destroyed by unrequited love, “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” inspired a rash of suicides by would-be Werthers in the late 1700s. Jack Kerouac has launched a thousand road trips. Still, this is part of science’s job: Running empirical tests on common knowledge — if for no other reason than because common knowledge (and common sense) is often wrong.
...read moreWednesday, May 23, 2012
Philip K. Dick – Mystic, Epileptic, Madman, Fictionalizing Philosopher
Professor of philosophy Simon Critchley has an insightful examination (serialized) of Philip K. Dick’s writings. Philip K. Dick had a tragically short, but richly creative writing career. Since his death twenty years ago, many of his novels have profoundly influenced contemporary culture.
From the New York Times:
Philip K. Dick is arguably the most influential writer of science fiction in the past half century. In his short and meteoric career, he wrote 121 short stories and 45 novels. His work was successful during his lifetime but has grown exponentially in influence since his death in 1982. Dick’s work will probably be best known through the dizzyingly successful Hollywood adaptations of his work, in movies like “Blade Runner” (based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”), “Total Recall,” “Minority Report,” “A Scanner Darkly” and, most recently, “The Adjustment Bureau.” Yet few people might consider Dick a thinker. This would be a mistake.
...read more
Posted in Idea Soup, Literature
Tagged Philip K. Dick, philosophy, science fiction, spirituality
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Thursday, May 17, 2012
British Literary Greats, Mapped
Frank Jacobs over at Strange Maps has found another really cool map. This one shows 181 British writers placed according to the part of the British Isles with which they are best associated.
From Strange Maps:
Maps usually display only one layer of information. In most cases, they’re limited to the topography, place names and traffic infrastructure of a certain region. True, this is very useful, and in all fairness quite often it’s all we ask for. But to reduce cartography to a schematic of accessibility is to exclude the poetry of place.
Or in this case, the poetry and prose of place. This literary map of Britain is composed of the names of 181 British writers, each positioned in parts of the country with which they are associated.
...read moreThursday, March 1, 2012
Most Expensive Books
OK, it’s World Book Day today, March 1. Regardless whether or not this day was contrived by Hallmark (or more likely, Barnes and Noble or Amazon), it’s fascinating to look at some beautiful record holders.
From the Daily Telegraph:
To mark World Book Day on March 1, we look at some of the world’s most valuable titles. In a list of the most expensive books sold at auction, The Economist put John James Audubon’s The Birds of America (1827-1838) at number one. It sold for $10.3m in 2010.
See the Top 10 most expensive books here.
Send to KindleSunday, February 19, 2012
Religion for Atheists and the Agape Restaurant
Alain de Botton is a writer of book-length essays on love, travel, architecture and literature. In his latest book, Religion for Atheists, de Botton argues that while the supernatural claims of all religions are entirely false, religions still have important things to teach the secular world. An excerpt from the book below.
From the Wall Street Journal:
One of the losses that modern society feels most keenly is the loss of a sense of community. We tend to imagine that there once existed a degree of neighborliness that has been replaced by ruthless anonymity, by the pursuit of contact with one another primarily for individualistic ends: for financial gain, social advancement or romantic love.
...read more
Posted in Idea Soup, Literature
Tagged Alain de Botton, atheism, religion, secularism
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Monday, February 6, 2012
L’Entente Cordiale: Parenting the French Way
French children, it seems, unlike their cousins in the United States, don’t suffer temper tantrums, sit patiently at meal-times, defer to their parents, eat all their vegetables, respect adults, and are generally happy. Why is this and should American parents ditch the latest pop psychology handbooks for parenting lessons from La Belle France?
From the Wall Street Journal:
When my daughter was 18 months old, my husband and I decided to take her on a little summer holiday. We picked a coastal town that’s a few hours by train from Paris, where we were living (I’m American, he’s British), and booked a hotel room with a crib. Bean, as we call her, was our only child at this point, so forgive us for thinking: How hard could it be?
...read more
Posted in Idea Soup, Literature
Tagged children, culture, France, manners, parenting
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Saturday, January 7, 2012
How to (Not) Read a Tough Book
Ever picked up a copy of the Illiad or War and Peace or Foucault’s Pendulum or Finnegan’s Wake leafed through the first five pages and given up? Well, you may be in good company. So, here are some useful tips for the readers, and non-readers alike, on how to get through some notable classics that demand our fullest attention and faculties.
From the Wall Street Journal:
I’m determined to finish “The Iliad” before I start anything else, but I’ve been having trouble picking it up amid all the seasonal distractions and therefore I’m not reading anything at all: It’s blocking other books. Suggestions?
—E.S., New York
...read moreWednesday, January 4, 2012
Ronald Searle
Ronald Searle, your serious wit and your heroic pen will be missed. Searle died on December 30, aged 91.
The first “real” book purchased by theDiagonal’s editor with his own money was “How To Be Topp” by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle. The book featured Searle’s unique and unmistakable illustrations of anti-hero Nigel Molesworth, a stoic, shrewd and droll English schoolboy.
Yet while Searle will be best remembered for his drawings of Molesworth and friends at St.Custard’s high school and his invention of St.Trinian’s (school for rowdy schoolgirls), he leaves behind a critical body of work that graphically illustrates his brutal captivity at the hands of the Japanese during the Second World War.
...read moreMonday, December 26, 2011
MondayPoem: The Snow Is Deep on the Ground
We celebrate the arrival of winter to the northern hemisphere with an evocative poem by Kenneth Patchen.
From Poetry Foundation:
An inspiration for the Beat Generation and a true “people’s poet,” Kenneth Patchen was a prolific writer, visual artist and performer whose exuberant, free-form productions celebrate spontaneity and attack injustices, materialism, and war.
By Kenneth Patchen
- The Snow Is Deep on the Ground
The snow is deep on the ground.
Always the light falls
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.
This is a good world.
The war has failed.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the snow waits where love is.
Only a few go mad.
The sky moves in its whiteness
Like the withered hand of an old king.
God shall not forget us.
Who made the sky knows of our love.
The snow is beautiful on the ground.
And always the lights of heaven glow
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd.
Image: Kenneth Patchen. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Send to KindleMonday, December 12, 2011
MondayPoem: Frederick Douglass
Robert Hayden is generally accepted as one of the premier authors of African American poetry. His expertly crafted poems focusing on the black historical experience earned him numerous awards.
Hayden was elected to the American Academy of Poets in 1975. From 1976 – 1978, he was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the first African American holder of that post). He died in 1980.
By Robert Hayden
- Frederick Douglass
...read more
Ray Bradbury’s Real World Dystopia
Ray Bradbury’s death on June 5 reminds us of his uncanny gift for inventing a future that is much like our modern day reality.
Bradbury’s body of work beginning in the early 1940s introduced us to ATMs, wall mounted flat screen TVs, ear-piece radios, online social networks, self-driving cars, and electronic surveillance. Bravely and presciently he also warned us of technologically induced cultural amnesia, social isolation, indifference to violence, and dumbed-down 24/7 mass media.
An especially thoughtful opinion from author Tim Kreider on Bradbury’s life as a “misanthropic humanist”.
From the New York Times:
IF you’d wanted to know which way the world was headed in the mid-20th century, you wouldn’t have found much indication in any of the day’s literary prizewinners. You’d have been better advised to consult a book from a marginal genre with a cover illustration of a stricken figure made of newsprint catching fire.
...read more