The Aspiring Polymath's Society discussion

What are your thoughts on the essays and the photographs they explore?

Note: I'm still on the waiting list for this at my library, so I will have to comment later in the month :)

I had the opposite problem: after being waitlisted for a month and a half, my copy showed up 2 weeks early, and since the library only lends for 3 weeks at a time and there's certainly a lot of people waiting, I started mid-November and just finished it today.

So I'ma keep tight-lipped for a bit, but this book was fascinating to me, and I'm going on a bit of an Errol Morris bender. Oh, and reading this slowed me down on Musicophilia, so I need to get back to that, in the other thread!

I could not get into this book at all :(
This hasn't happened to me in such a long time, and I'm really not sure why it did. It felt like my expectations about the book and the approach that Morris took were completely misaligned. I didn't even make it through the first chapter before resignedly taking it back to the library for someone else to enjoy...

That being said, I would really REALLY love to hear what you liked so much about it! Must understand how I approached it so differently.

Ha! Well, fair enough, that's basically what happened with me and McMafia.

In brief, what I love about Errol Morris, especially in this book, is that he's a very intelligent and genuinely curious person. The book, to me, wasn't so much about the nature of photography as it was about the nature of truth. Morris really firmly believe in the idea of objective truth, but also knows that there is no perfect means of FINDING the truth, especially from the past. Our tools are always imperfect. And he writes often about how they're imperfect, and centers many of his films around the same ideas.

And what I love is that he just seems to find that tension between truth and perception so fascinating. Fascinating enough to search out the site of a couple photos from the Crimean War just to find in which order they were taken. Each essay reads like a mystery (Morris used to be a detective), but mysteries that are less about the solution than about how you find solutions, and how answers always raise more questions. It definitely helps that I happen to find that tension really fascinating as well.

Anyway, that was my takeaway. I'm curious what your expectations were, if you don't mind me asking. (Somehow I can't figure out how to say that without sounding condescending, but I don't mean to.)

(Sorry, got really busy there for a spell)

I think you hit it right on the head in your blurb: "The book, to me, wasn't so much about the nature of photography as it was about the nature of truth."

I know this is going to sound strange because I am a psychology researcher by trade, but I also happen to be a photographer by hobby and I definitely came to this book from that angle, expecting photography. For some reason I couldn't shake that expectation enough to keep reading beyond the first chapter :(

When you said films, I realized that Morris is the director of a documentary I've been meaning to watch, Fast Cheap and Out of Control. I mostly want to watch it for Rodney Brooks, the robotics researcher whose approach to AI I completely admire, but I'm interested to see how Morris ties in his other subjects. I really did like the "style" he wrote/thought in (I didn't realize he used to be a detective, but I see it quite clearly now), and I'm hoping it comes across more clearly for me in a film format.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is fantastic. I hope you dig!