Man of Leisure

Comic Genius

John Hodgman is a riot. His appearance last evening at Powell's was better than an hour of serious therapy - funny, engaging, and multi-sensual (if that's even the right word to describe visually and aurally pleasing entertainments).

I sat in the front row of a packed Pearl Room, and before the reading began, interacted a bit with Mr. Hodgman by suggesting that he read the list of 700 hobo names as part of his presentation. Later on, he gave me a shout-out by name, saying, "And, by request of Ken, I will now read the 700 hobo names in order. Number 1: Stewbuilder Dennis."

He took questions from the crowd, including one about his work in the Apple adverts. I have posted a clip of his answer, where he describes one of his favorite ads that began airing this week. He talked about the iMovie ad, and how the guy who played the home movie composed on a PC reminded him of Jon Lovitz. The clip is over on the GoogleTube (I guess that's what we call it now?):

Tonight: Complete World Knowledge!

I am so excited! Tonight I will be found at Powell's City of Books, the famed independent Portland bookstore, for a reading and signing by John Hodgman, the author of The Areas of My Expertise, and Jonathan Coulton, musicial collaborator of the aforementioned Hodg-man.

Even if you don't read chapter books, you know John Hodgman. He's the "PC" in the current crop of Apple adverts -- you know, the dumpy-looking businessman who has no clue what's happening and why he's so uncool. He can also be seen occasionally on The Daily Show as the "Resident Expert". Here are some Hodg-man resources for your edification:

Apple adverts
The Daily Show excerpts
The Areas of My Expertise website (with free audiobook clips!)

The Glories of Reading Good Books

I started to read Angels & Demons two nighs ago as my bedtime book. Now you must understand, I read The DaVinci Code back when it came out, and considered it hack writing and little more than a day's light entertainment. But Angels really bothered me, because it's the exact same book as DaVinci! (Yes, I recognize that Angels actually predates DaVinci, but that doesn't change the fact that they're the same book.) Both begin with the same disclaimer: "The facts in this book are true" [sic]. Both have the same main character, a Harvard "symbologist" [sic] named Robert Langdon. And the dialogue is similarly banal in each.

While attempting to read Dan Brown's tripe, I became embarassed for myself, mainly because I've been working so hard to better myself through the Great Books master's program, and yet here I was, reading the worst sort of pulp fiction. Ten feet away I would find Dickens, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. So, my heart convicted, I shunted Señor Brown aside, and grabbed a book of essays called Reading In Bed, a collection of some great pieces on why we should read, and why we should read well.

No more Dan Brown, I promise.

A Response: Up the Great Books!

This is an email I sent to the author of an essay attacking the Great Books of the Western World:

I was reading your essay regarding the Great Books Search 1997, and I was inspired to write you with some thoughts. I am finishing my MA in Philosophy at the College of the Humanities and Sciences, which is a school based on the Great Books of the Western World as edited by Mortimer Adler. I was intrigued by your criticism of the 102 Great Ideas and the consequent selection of which books make the "Great Books canon" based on their addressing of these ideas. I didn't see a counter-proposal for what makes a book great in your essay, so I am left wondering what the point was of the Great Books Search 1997, if it's not simply a repeat of the 1845 high-school extracurricular reading survey that you ridiculed.

The criteria for being published by Britannica as a Great Book, that it address several of the 102 Great Ideas, seems to me to be a standard that at least guarantees that the work in question participates in meaningful dialogue with the deepest philosophical ideas in the western intellectual tradition. To dismiss the Great Ideas as simply an arbitrary list is to ignore the importance of the ideas themselves. A read of the book "How to Think About the Great Ideas" by Adler will disabuse you of that notion, by helping you to understand why these are ideas and questions that continually arise in our public and private discourse. None of the ideas is settled intellectually; take, for example, "Virtue and Vice", my own special area of study. To define virtue is to take an ethical stand about which reasonable people can disagree. Yet once I've identified my own ethical ground for action, my choices and actions are able to be judged in light of that as virtuous or vicious. Other people may choose different ethical stances; eventually one may be right and the other wrong, but the conversation that we conduct through reflection upon our choices is what is important.

The lack of inclusion of non-Western authors does not denigrate the societies that are not represented, nor deny that they have written great books. It merely reflects a judgement that other societies have to identify their own intellectual tradition and great works, in order to see where their "great conversation" is taking them. To date, there is no "Great Books of the Asian World" set which is comparable to that published by Encyclopedia Britannica for the West. That doesn't mean that Great Books do not exist elsewhere - it merely means that work remains to be done; this work must be undertaken by those who are versed in the tradition of the society in question. And unfortunately, a simple "bestseller list" doesn't indicate that a book is necessarily being read, digested, and influencing society; it merely means it's being bought; elsewise, the currently most important books in America are: "Godless: The church of liberalism" by Ann Coulter, and "Ultrametabolism: The simple plan for automatic weight loss". Are these the "Amazon.com Great Books"? Hardly.

To address your assertion that only the 517 works in the published set are "Great Books", it's important to note that the Syntopicon also includes suggested additional readings which number in the thousands. What is published in the 60-volume works are those which best address the Great Ideas and are obtainable. The inclusion of "Portrait of The Artist as A Young Man" actually may work better in the set than "Ulysses", because people will read the shorter "Portrait" before they will attempt "Ulysses" and be better prepared to read the longer work about the same character. And if a book is unobtainable, it hardly can have an influence on a great number of minds.

You ask, "What makes a great book?" I offer a simple answer: One that is read. As a fellow reader, I salute your search for the best that the pen has to offer.

My First LibriVox Recording

I heard about a great project to create free audiobooks called "LibriVox", and I thought that this is the kind of thing I'd like to participate in. So here's my first submission, The Circuit Judge from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. This poem and my recording are in the public domain. First, the original poem, courtesy of Bartleby.com:

http://www.bartleby.com/84/73.html

Note, I believe there's a typo in the 9th line, "O wing and rain..." should be "O wind and rain..." And now, for my recording:

spoon_river_073_masters.mp3 (986k, 1:03)

Dave and Oprah: A Remarkable Rehabilitation!

I've just finished watching The Late Show, where David Letterman welcomed Oprah Winfrey as his guest for the first time in 16 years. Now while I'm a huge Letterman fan, I always had the sneaking suspicion that the "feud" that kept Oprah from guesting on the Late Show had more to do with Dave and his caustic humour than anything on Oprah's side of the equation. It is pleasing to see the hatchet buried, and Dave couldn't have been more gentlemanly in the process.

Oprah Winfrey is doing great things with her popularity and her riches - one might say she is "magnanimous" - literally "great souled". I am especially appreciative of her Book Club, which has not only inspired millions to take up everyday reading of serious literature, but she has also brought some classics into American homes, especially Anna Karenina (link to discussion guide by the Great Books Foundation) by Leo Tolstoy, as well as works by John Steinbeck and Gabriel Maria Márquez. (Side note: Is it mere coincidence that the Oprah Empire shares the same home base as the Great Books Foundation, Chicago?)

Dave, as I mentioned, was quite a gentleman last night, asking Oprah to explain her childhood inspiration to charity, as well as her latest venture in South Africa to start a school for girls who would otherwise not have an opportunity for education. He got in a few good comedy bits before Oprah came on stage, including a great bit in the monologue: "Oprah thinks she's here to see Spamalot. And we had to give her a Pontiac." But most telling was Dave's pointing out that she had nothing to gain by appearing on his show - "It's not like things are going to really go her way after this!"

Oprah told Dave that she herself began to see him change and "soften" when his son Harry was born two years ago. I must say, I have seen the same, and it's charming to see him become less caustic and more reflective on occasion.

I predict that this warming relationship between Dave and Oprah will have a great impact on Dave's popularity. In my opinion, David Letterman is the funniest man on television, as well as a great comic inspiration to me, so I'm darn happy that he's beginning to make a comeback against that no-talent ass clown Jay Leno. Cheers to Oprah for rehabilitating my boy!

technorati tags: comedy, letterman, media, radio/tv/film, tv, oprah, great books program, culture

Disappointing Dan Brown

I mentioned a few days ago that I was reading "Digital Fortress" by Dan Brown. I finished it last night before I went to bed, and I must say I was sorely disappointed. It most certainly was a page-turner - that is, a book that just carries you along, without requiring you to think too much. But that leads to my problem: if you do think too much, you end up predicting the plot twists and seeing through the technobabble that he uses to make it look impressive to the non-initiate.

Last June, when I lambasted Brown's bestselling "The DaVinci Code", it was for the same reasons: I've read all this stuff before, and Brown simply is in over his head. To compensate, Brown spins his yarn in simple language, and drops nosegays in the form of buzzwords to tittilate uninformed readers. "Digital Fortress" has a similar feel, only this time his chosen setting is the codebreakers at the National Security Agency. My favorite buzzword-dependent passage goes like this:

"We've got a five-tier level of defense," Jabba explained. "A primary Bastion Host, two sets of packet filters for FTP and X-eleven, a tunnel block, and finally a PEM-based authorization window right off the Truffle project..."

Now to the person not immersed in using Internet, that sounds pretty impressive. Let me tell you: as one who's used FTP to transfer files (like I do when I upload these blog entries each time), it is painfully obvious that this guy just doesn't know squat about data security. And I find the X-eleven reference particularly entertaining, because X-11 is simply a protocol that allows me to run a program on another computer and see the results on my screen. It's also the name of a separate technology that allows you to control the lights and electrical outlets in your house remotely (Radio Shack is huge on X-11). Either way, whoop-dee-doo, Dan Brown.

[note from Ken: a Faithful Reader pointed out in the comments that Radio Shack's technology is called "X-10". Curses! Well, I'm still more versed in it than Dan Brown, as if that's any consolation.]

By the way, Mac OS X users should implement the same filters that Dan Brown has protecting the NSA's Top Secret Ultra databanks: go to your System Preferences and click on the Sharing preference pane. Check the box marked "Turn Firewall On". You're protected from prying eyes.

And now I'm done with Dan Brown.

Countdown

As Kristin noted in her comment on my last post, the countdown to the 2nd Annual 29th Birthday Soiree is in full swing. I sent out invitations today to several folks, but I no doubt missed a few worthy fans - so if you didn't get yours, don't fret! Just email me to get details!

I'm actively updating the Media List on the right side of the blog with my ongoing reading both for class and leisure. Right now, I'm trying to get into Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. Now you may remember Dan Brown as the author of The DaVinci Code, which I roundly criticized in this blogpost from last June. Why, you may ask, am I reading this author again? Well, Mr. Brown has a breezy style that makes for quick reading, the kind that you can do without really having to think too hard. Consider it Harlequin for Men. Kind of like Tom Clancy, though I grew tired of him after The Sum of All Fears.

That's it for now. Off to finish some Plato and a spot of the Aristotle before I hit the hay.

Weekend In Review

I just got back from seeing (finally!) the feel-good-hit-of-the-Christmas-season Love Actually. I found parts of the film to be particularly cheesy, but overall it was entertaining. A few pointed criticisms:

I long ago grew tired of group singing scenes that are meant to somehow cause the audience to connect with a character, and this film featured a big one. Watch any Julia Roberts film and you'll see what I mean and why they're so repulsive. At least Love Actually manages to avoid it becoming overly smarmy.

It's real poor taste to show a kid jumping through airport security to tell a girl that he loves her. Sure, the film was shot in London, but hasn't British Airways had to cancel six or more flights to the USA because of security concerns? The kid would've been mown down in a hailfire of bullets if there were any realistic screenwriters employed on this film. And where's the love in that?

Enough rant. It was fun to see the cameo appearances. Billy Bob Thornton as the POTUS portrayed a perfect combination of the Texas bravado of George W. Bush and the "I'll mount anything that breathes" of William J. Clinton. Rowan Atkinson was charming, as usual. And I think I saw Terry Jones of Monty Python deliver one line, but he's uncredited, so I'll have to check the DVD.

My friend Joshua Mackie was married to his lovely bride Catherine yesterday afternoon. It was a charming homespun wedding, with many people pitching in to help make it all happen. I myself was pressed into service at the Mass to ensure that there were bread and wine to be carried to the altar. My good friend and radio co-host Fr. Bill Dailey CSC travelled from New York to preach at the wedding, and he did a bang-up job. All in all, it was a charming afternoon, and I wish Josh and Catherine many years of marital bliss.

I just bought Pompeii, a novel about the destruction of the Italian city by Mt. Vesuvius. I'll be listening to it on my iPod from Audible.com. I hear good things about the book, so I'm looking forward to a bit of diversion during these hectic final weeks leading up to Spring Break.

Umberto Eco on the eternity of books

Arts & Letters Daily (ALDaily.com) linked to a talk by Umberto Eco in which he discusses books, hypertext, and the future of writing. It's a must-read for people who enjoy speculation on the future of learning.
--composed on-the-go using my Sidekick