Occupation of Independence

My "mighty" success at reading a novel started when I was rereading Boswell's "Life of Johnson" for the umpteenth time. Why do I keep rereading this book? Is it because it is a rare example of a book that brings philosophy down from the clouds? It also makes philosophy brief enough for human conversation. At any rate Boswell mentioned that Samuel Johnson loved Henry Fielding's "Amelia." This is surprising since Johnson stubbornly held to a low opinion of Fielding's work. Nothing quite disposes us to accept advice from somebody else like seeing them make an exception to a general position of theirs. And so I read and enjoyed "Amelia."  It resembled "Tom Jones" actually: the surprises were a bit outlandish, and it had too much lovey-dovey. So then, why did I enjoy it? The book is quite a sermon about not blaming "Fortune" for the consequences of our rash behaviour, especially when we are young. It seems odd to use t

There is no point in trying to hide it: I am quite pleased with myself. I read a novel, and even enjoyed the ordeal, overall. Still, there were times when I was bored and frustrated. The only thing that helped me through those episodes was visualizing my suffering as "noble and heroic." The half-facetiousness of this lightened my mood. Fortunately the novel would then become more interesting in a couple pages, and I could take a break from my play-acting.  This gimmick worked all through the novel. Many times, I kept hearing a voice say, "It's a far, far better thing I do than..." But say, where did that come? Wasn't it from some novel I was forced to read in high school, and therefore, probably disliked? Rather ironic, if true. And yet there are many people who enjoy novels, effortlessly I suppose. What is their secret? Why don't they spill it to people like me? Maybe it will help to consider one category of successful novel-readers at a time. 1

It seems like many of the experiences, that I want to post about, occur during the food-stop in the middle of a bicycle ride. Why is that? Is it the mood that cycling puts me in? It certainly seems to be true that one's appreciation of a Thing depends more on the Context of the thing, than on the thing itself. At any rate, it happened again today. A couple of deaf people were having an animated conversation at a table in front of the window of a food stop. I could pretend to watch my unlocked bicycle just outside that window, without it being obvious that I was "eavesdropping" on their conversation in sign language. (I do not "sign.") Through my sunglasses I could watch them out of the corner of my eye. They had each other's undivided attention. No distractions. Compare the quality of the conversation of these two "handicapped" people to the usual 'barely listening' conversation of non-handicapped people! We struggle with the crappy bac

Now that I'm rereading a series of novels, adding up to many thousands of pages, it would certainly be nice if I actually accomplished something. The good news is that I am starting to realize that fiction has something to offer: but strangely enough, it really isn't the "story." I admit to being a die-hard non-fiction reader. Mostly history. Many years ago, it was philosophy, until I decided that it was mere wordplay. Fiction always seemed like a waste of time. What did the plots of novels really consist of but rags-to-riches, revenge, whodunnit, mistaken identity, improbable reversals of fortune, and -- above all else -- adulterous love triangles? Yawn, especially the latter. It was a good choice to reread Patrick O'Brian's "Aubrey/Maturin" ("Master and Commander") novels because they are written more to please men than "lady novel readers," who have an insatiable appetite for romantic drivel. (It was they who bought most

For all the times that she has done it, you'd think that I would have a photograph of my dog wriggling in the desert sand, belly-side-up, and acting happy to the point of silliness. It always pleases the human spectators. Her behavior reminds me of how I feel from time to time when reading Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander." Ships-of-war, when not fighting their own kind, were virtually pirates with a license: they would attack rich merchant ships, and hopefully get them to surrender before doing too much damage to all those valuable goodies. Then they would bring her in to port to be sold off, with the "pirates" getting a bonus proportional to the wealth of the captured ship. A cyclist experiences the same thing when he espies another cyclist up ahead who looks vulnerable. Of course, sometimes, the cyclist is on the receiving end of that kind of treatment. What a chase it can become, regardless of which side you are on! It is fascinating

This blog doesn't just assign old-fashioned homework. In addition to the essay by William James, mentioned last time, today's assignment is to watch the Coen Brothers' movie, "Barton Fink." The role of "the life of the mind" in its memorable climax fits in well today. _____________________________________________________ Long-suffering readers know that I encourage 'living' a book rather than just reading it, in order to turn a stultifying process into a more vivifying one. You must pretend, even if only temporarily, to have some sympathy with this approach if the rest of this post is to mean anything to you. The first time I read Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" novels, several years ago, I was in Yuma, bicycling with the superb road-cycling club here. Back then I saw no connection between sailing the high seas in a British man-of-war, during the Napoleonic era, and the sport of cycling. This time around I have see

Perhaps the reader is relieved that there aren't Google ads in this blog. Actually, as a reader, I really don't mind stationary ads in parallel with the reading material. But product-placement ads infuriate me. So this blog doesn't offer those, either. Perhaps the reader thought that this was too good to be true. Well, it was. Today marks the beginning of a new policy on this blog. Not ads. But there will be homework assigned. Mandatory reading. I expect to double my hit-count because of this new policy. The only thing still to be decided is how to quiz the readers at the end of the post so I can see if they've been cheating. Very well then, today's assignment is a short essay by Jonathan Swift on conversation.

Very well then, we are all agreed that in pursuing a winter lifestyle that enlarges our overall lifestyle we must move towards complementarities rather than outright reversals. For instance, the internet is a pretty big part of most people's lifestyle these days. But surely most people suspect that much of their online time is wasted on predictable repetition of absolute trivia. It's tempting to fantasize smashing the computer with a hammer and chucking the whole thing into a dumpster, and then dropping the expensive monthly charge of the cellphone carrier. But wait. Where is the perpendicular move? It must make a youngster's eyes roll when an old timer tells them that that they used computers for several decades without being online. (Although they were hooked to a mainframe computer, usually.) In fact it even makes me wonder sometimes what I ever found to do with an offline computer at home. But remember my sighs over the great charnel houses in the cloud, or for tha

Normally it is pretty easy to insert a quote from a classic book when I write a post. But last time, I dropped the ball. It finished as: Of course Gandhi-on-Wheels gets his compensation by visualizing Mobility as a consumer good and status symbol, and then by falling in love with the insatiability of mobility.  So it really is just a re-incarnation of the very thing he thinks he is rebelling against. I forgot to pull in a quote from Edmund Burke, in his classic "Reflections on the Revolution in France":   Seldom have two ages had the same pretexts and the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive...The very same vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life from its change of appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity. By the way, somebody recently asked me, What is a classic book or movie? My answer was similar to what a Supreme Court justice said abo

Call it a blessing or a curse as you wish, but it is certainly true that pontificating on the internet (even anonymously!) makes you feel obligated to practice what you preach. (How grim!) For instance, I was extolling the general value of the Rockhound Principle recently. The perfect place to apply this principle is in the reading of books. Where else can you benefit more from infinite patience with "detritus?"  Instead of feeling disgusted, you can channel this into delight when you finally do find something precious. You can also work to ensure that the precious nuggets you find stay found, by actively assimilating them into your life. Recall that I was reading "The Name of the Rose," by Umberto Eco. All in all, I don't recommend it. Still, there were a few precious nuggets on the way through the book. The leading character was a monk trying to solve some murders in a monastery in the early 1300s. One body was found in a vat filled with the blood of re

Would it pay off to drop my Verizon Wireless internet connection? I'm talking about more than the $53 dollars per month. The main benefit would be the killing off of the bad habit that the internet has become. But there's more: without worrying about internet coverage, North America will be a much bigger and better place to camp. Does the reader know of anyone who has done this, and whether they are happy they did? There would still be wi-fi in town or at country stores. I r eally like the camping-style of coming to town once per week to do the usual errands. Internet usage w ould just be one more errand. It would be fun to look forward to it. Access once per week would be adequate for paying bills, catching up on the news (mostly just entertainment trivia), and reading websites and blogs (more trivia). Once per week would be adequate for a little bit of internet shopping. Nor would dropping Verizon Wireless internet service mean that my computer lies fallow all week.

Do our habits and attitudes carry over from "old" technology to newer tech? For instance, many people (and most men) do not like to shop. They already know what they want when they go into a store. They want to find it quickly, buy it, and get the hell out of there. But what happens when the reluctant shopper has to go to a search engine on the internet? How can he not growl at the 3.6 million hits for his search? That's as growl-able as going to a flea market at Quartzsite in January, and sifting through a ton of unsorted detritus piled up on a table. Recently I've been complaining a lot about wasting time on the internet, reading repetitious trivia. And yes, I have considered the possibility that some of this problem is self-inflicted. Perhaps I would find something fresh and worthwhile to read if I stopped being so impatient with those search engines. Where are the blogs that are reminiscent of the periodical essays of the 1700s? So I used "periodical

I w a nt to follow up with some suggestions about conquering the Uni nterrupted Prose Syndrome, by making verbiage "breathe" with some kind of pictorial illustration, gotten somewhere . (Let's ignore the fact that music might be eve n better for this purpose, since it's pr obably more technically difficult to get it into the blog post.)  So off I will go, searching for shareable photographs in the great charnel houses for internet photographs, such as publicDomainPictures.net, Picasa, or Flickr. Blogs that have a Creative Commons License, such as a commenter's blog , are also worth a serious look. Oops. There is a likely problem that we must address before rolling up our sleeves. Recall the controversy that good ol' Leo Tolstoy got into in the Colorado arts scene, one summer not so long ago. (grin) By invoking his arguments on "What is Art?" (free on Google Books), I am not trying to con you with an "appeal to Authority," as it might

Now don't be sus picious or skeptical if I boast of progress in my de-internetting project by reading adulterous love triangles. Thanks to getting a library card from the Yuma library, I picked up the late-1940s movie, Anna Karenina , starring Vivian Leigh. She was good in the role and, let's face it, agreeable to look at. It served as inspiration for a rematch with Tolstoy's novel. It took about 40 pages for the main characters to start the soap opera, proper, after which I just rolled my eyes and put the book away. Ahh but wait. Maybe things are different when re-reading a book.  Let's try to learn something from rewatching a movie. Years ago I learned the trick of focusing away from the center of the screen. Without any special effort, you prob ably would be focusing dead center, where the action is an d the leading c haracters are.  Perhaps this could work for re-reading a novel? For example I am merely skimming the main chapters in Anna , all ghastly s

Isn't it strange how little training we get as schoolchildren in finding stuff that's worth reading? I can't help but think about this enigma now that the euphoria has worn off from my project of breaking the internet blog habit and going back to reading real books. In olden times idealistic school teachers might have thought it impertinent to guide students towards what they should read; after all, that should be a matter of personal choice for the reader; and they were paid to educate, not to brainwash . But if individual teachers still practice that today, when the teacher's union is an integral part of a political party and teachers are state-paid priests of political correctness, well then, they are indeed idealistic. In theory teachers and librarians should be just a s qualified to aim readers towards certain books as they are to choose academic courses for youngsters. Of course there was a time, circa 1970, when it became an educational fa d to "like,

An internet dieter does not have the advantage that food dieters do when they finally step on the scale. Perhaps there is an app out there that keeps track of the hours you are on the internet. Nevertheless, at the risk of fooling myself, I claim to be making progress with my internet diet. When wireless internet access got better around 2005, I really thought I was done with book-reading, and that the internet would be my main venue for reading in the future. But experience has shown that most blogs are too trivial and repetitive to waste much time with. Of course the internet is still good for many things other than reading blogs. Ever m indful that one can't cut b ack on a vice without replacing it with something else, I've gone back to reading books , which thankfully has become much easier the last few years. For one thing , reading is no w easier on the eyes.  Th is is crucial to older eyes on winter evenings, e s pecially when they are camping in an RV without el