Kevin Lopez > Recent Status Updates

“[…]no such things as selves exist in the world: Nobody ever was or had a self. All that ever existed were conscious self-models that could not be recognized as models. The phenomenal self is not a thing, but a process—and the subjective experience of being someone emerges if a conscious information-processing system operates under a transparent self-model.”

“When he died, aged just fifty-three, Von Neumann was as famous as it is possible for a mathematician to be. The writer William S. Burroughs claimed that Von Neumann’s game theory inspired some of his bizarre literary experiments, and he is name-checked in the novels of Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut.”

“Right-wing hostility to universities was in part a question of deference and social status, but in part, also, a reflection of the old Jacksonian dislike of specialists and experts … The universities, particularly the better-known universities, were constantly marked out as targets by right-wing critics.”

“Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them. Kilimanjaro belongs to Ernest Hemingway. Oxford, Mississippi belongs to William Faulkner. A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.”

“We must identity and disown the means of extremism, even when they manifest themselves in pursuit of ends we may agree with. That is the most basic prerequisite for democracy.”

In light of recent events this injunction seems more urgent than ever.

“One dismal truth that spans the political chasm has become all too obvious: a remarkable and increasing number of Americans believe themselves not only justified but entitled to resolve political disagreements—by force, if they sense themselves at an impasse.”

“Madame Bovary told us more about bourgeois life than several generations of Marxists have.”

“‘Prophecy is the gift of God and everyone has a smidge of it. My own grandmother used to call it the shining lamp of God, sometimes just the shine.’”

“Both fear and hope are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse. Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We, however, are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.”

“It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”

Ancient self-help writing at its best.

“He laughed and then he got up from his chair and went to the window. ‘The more intelligent you become the more problems you’ll have, Charlie.’”

“In many advanced democracies, there is now no common debate, let alone a common narrative.
People have always had different opinions, now they have different facts.”

Patty “Never-ever-gonna-finish-my most beloved fantasy series called the Kingkiller Chronicle seemingly for nothing other a truly sadistic gambit

Very good so far, if slightly silly at times. The principle villain (and every other character from Granbretan, for that matter—an stylized UK with a vast imperium that even its citizens casually call “the Dark Empire”) is either a weird yet one-dimensional cutout who’s not much fun—or a weird yet one-dimensional cutout who’s so over the top as to be loads of fun.

I’m beginning to suspect that this novel does not, in fact, contain any kind of recognizable plot structure. I keep expecting an inciting incident to occur to kick things off, or for something resembling a story arc to materialize—but so far, nothing. Despite its lack of a conventionally plotted storyline, however, and though it dithered for awhile in the second act, I’m very much enjoying it now.

Cal Hooper (the annoyingly bland American expat and former Chicago cop who somehow managed to police one of the most crime-ridden and dangerous cities in the entire US for a quarter century while remaining every bit as vacuous, vanilla, & oddly unblemished as… well… as the sort of rural Irish Gardas who he so sanctimoniously looks down upon), is without a doubt the worst protagonist Tana French has ever created.

“We all have a tendency to massage our memories so they reflect our better selves.”

So true.

“There are even some who claim he is Maerlyn—he who was court mage to Arthur Eld himself—for Maerlyn was said to be eternal; a creature who lives backward in time...”

“As throughout life, whatever may happen to be his situation he keeps a way of retreat open—leaves himself an opportunity for a change. To the Church he will give himself only temporarily, and not wholly, just as later to the Revolution, the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire, or the Monarchy. Not even to God, let alone to men, will Joseph Fouché give a pledge of lifelong fidelity.”

“It slumped in the hot light, a ramshackle slate-roofed revenant growing out of a hummocky trash-littered yard. Its steep roof overhung the front porch like a beetling brow. The boards of the porch were splintery and warped. Shutters which might once have been green leaned askew beside the glassless windows; ancient curtains still hung in some of these, dangling like strips of dead skin.”

That Jake interlude seemed very long—especially when long-craved answers to some of the books’ most central mysteries were beginning to be answered, or at least addressed, in Roland’s world!

“The westward push of the Americans followed a radically different course [than the earlier, government and military-led expansions in the East and Midwest]. A ‘folk imperialism,’ its vanguard was not federal troops in federal forts but simple farmers imbued with a fierce Calvinist work ethic, steely optimism, and a cold-eyed aggressiveness that made them refuse to yield, even in the face of extreme danger.”

“’Equality’ here is a direct extension of ‘freedom’—and indeed is its expression. It also has almost nothing in common with the more familiar Eurasian notion of ‘equality before the law,’ which is ultimately ‘equality before the sovereign’—that is, once again, equality in common subjugation.”