Sanjay Varma > Recent Status Updates

I love etymology so much, and this passage gets at why. We are passing through time enveloped in a cloud of meanings.

Kant used the word ‘experience’, but, you remember, the word ‘experience’ in most languages—most Latin-derived languages, at least—has the same origin as the word ‘experiment.’ So, when Kant was talking about wxperience he was, in some sense, talking about scientific experiments.”

I love the way the author draws me n, using a conversational, almost gossipy tone, as he starts from the inconsequential rumors about Copernicus’s nationality, and then pivots to an examination of why the church did not initially respond to the placement of the Sun at the center if the Universe, instead of the Earth.

Charlotte Bronte can’t write children, at all. But the child characters sure are bizarre and hold my attention.

Nagel says that the objective point of view undermines the subjective standpoint by interpreting the subjective as being in the world. And then skepticism undermines the objective point of view using the same techniques. Wow.

Very enjoyable prose but doesn’t try to be realistic in any way, and that’s pretty much my bag at this point.

The characters and the narrative voice make me recall James Wood’s critique of Donna Tart. These are familiar types that we encounter only in stories. They do and say things which real people would not.

“We are in the odd and self-defeating position in which taking responsibility for bettering ourselves feels like a surrender to white power.”

“We recorded a self, titled EP, had a school photographer take our photo for the brooding album cover, and performed a few U2 covers for some old-timers at the local community center. Fame!”

“A higher standard of living, over-eating, and idleness develop the most insolent self conceit in Russian. Nikolai Ivanic, who when he was a petty official was afraid to have opinions of his own even if he kept them to himself, now uttered nothing but incontrovertible truths, and did so in the tone of a minister of state.”

“In a good story, the writer makes energy in a beat, then transfers this energy cleanly to the next one (the energy is conserved). She does this, by being aware of the nature of the energy she’s made. In a bad story, or an early draft, the writer doesn’t fully understand the nature of the energy she’s made, and ignores or misuses it, and it dissipates.”

The earlier chapters emphasized the human (vs. divine) interpretation of Jesus, that much of his mythology is common to other “messiahs” of the era. The second half of the book is finding what is unique in his story. I like this chapter’s discussion of the phrase “son of man” and what Jesus could have meant.

This book is so shocking because it is told from the man’s point of view! So different from a modern romance novel.

The first chapter of this book includes robbery, murder, and rape.

This remindd me of a film review I read years ago about “A Quest for Fire,“ which complained that the first five minutes of the film depicted rape, homicide, and cannibalism. I don’t think “the stranger“ can compete with that, but it sure comes close.

when we talk about fiction we tend to use terms like theme, plot, character development, and structure. i’ve never as a writer found these useful…. These terms are placeholders and if they intimidate us and block us as they tend to do we might want to put them aside and try to find a more useful way to think about whatever it is they’re place-holding for.

At this page in the book, I realized that this is an incredible book of poetry, and one of my favorite books of the year.

“i have a divine or spiritual sign which Meletus has ridiculed in his deposition. This began when I was a child. It is a voice, and whenever it speaks it turns me away from something I am about to do, but it never encourages me to do anything. This is what has prevented me from taking part in public affairs, and I think it was quite right to prevent me.”

“Acorn is the fruit of the unenclosed land by the way”

in this

case, just above the solidus,
the temperature below which
a given substance—lake water, or my will—
is solid. As a mark
of punctuation — / —
“solidus” descends toward

us from the
imperial Roman coin of
(nearly) solid gold, also called a solidus,
on the same downward-spiraling staircase
that brings “sold” to “soldier”—one who serves
for pay.

This book is starting to remind me of The Lord of the Rings. In that the characters just keep crossing a landscape and i’ve begun to tune out the landscape descriptions.

“He said that in any case a bad map was worse than no map at all for it engendered in the traveler a false confidence and might easily cause him to set aside those instincts which would otherwise guide him if he would but place himself in their care.”

I really like Cormac McCarthy but…

Let’s call a spade a spade. His “prophetic” writing style is simply mediocre gibberish.

Absolutely dead on:

“We discovered during our research stage that websites for cities and towns present a very different use case from most private-sector websites. Rather than a collection of media or a sales funnel, municipal websites need to point users to 200 to 300 task flows that, for any given user, are rarely engaged.”

Billy?
What.
I had this dream.
What dream.
I had it twice.
Well what was it.
There was this big fire out on the dry lake.
There ain’t nothin to burn on a dry lake.
I know it.
What happened.
These people were burnin. The lake was on fire and they was burnin up.
It’s probably somethin you ate.
I had the same dream twice.
Maybe you ate the same thing twice.
I don’t think so.

Socrates: What do you say that piety and the pious are? Are they a knowledge of how to sacrifice and pray?

Euthyphro: They are.

Socrates: To sacrifice is to make a gift to the gods, whereas to pray is to beg from the gods?

Euthyphro: Definitely.

Socrates: It would follow that piety would be a knowledge if how to give to, and beg from, the gods.

“In single-celled life, action exists; there is swimming, seizing, and engulfing.“

He’s laying the basis to describe Cnidarians (e.g. corals) and the way that they move. Corals exist as polyps, but cnidarians can have two forms: polyps or medusas. One is stationary and the other propels itself. This reminds me of the different forms of a human being; and the different ways that men and women experience sex.

had to stop. This would have been a perfect little book if it dealt only with his childhood until age ten in Vienna. Reading the same old tension with his mother is so boring. It is worse than melodrama. This is melodrama written in the first person! A tragic error in narrative technique.

the narrative thread is getting thinner after they reach Zurich. Very little interaction with Swiss people, and no family nearby. Attention between boy and mother has grown repetitive.

As I read, I began to daydream that Robin Williams from “good Will hunting” was giving Pinkie a speech, as he gave Matt Damon a speech while they sat together on a bench by the lake.

The novel was so focused for 190 pages but the last few scenes have felt sort of random and distracting. Pinkie having a sexual failure with Soicer’s girl, and now meeting Rose’s parents.

Ida does a little investigative work after “fred” is killed. Then her next step is to consult a ouija board! LOL.

I have always loved reading books in cafés and while riding on the bus. I aspired someday to have a room in my house with a comfortable chair where I enjoyed reading so much that I could sit and lose track of time. That vision must set aside for awhile because I have discovered the joy of reading in bed before I go to sleep and sometimes in the morning when I wake up.