READIN

Friday, May 6th, 2005

Here is an essay William Gass wrote for the New York Review of books on the occasion of a new and complete translation of The Man Without Qualities -- nice piece but poorly formatted. (Note that I am reading the older, abridged translation -- only even learned today that that's what it is.)

posted evening of May 6th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings

Note on the below: "treating someone as a means rather than an end" is the same as "objectifying" the person, and the thought I am trying to develop about Ulrich can be rendered as that he "objectifies himself".

posted evening of May 6th, 2005: Respond

🦋 Bland Ambition

For the inhabitant of a country has at least nine characters: a professional one, a national one, a civic one, a class one, a geographical one, a sex one, a conscious, an unconscious, and perhaps even too a private one; he combines them all in himself, but they dissolve him, and he is really nothing but a little channel washed out by all these trickling streams, which flow into it and drain out of it again in order to join other little streams filling another channel. Hence every dweller on earth also has a tenth character, which is nothing more or less than the passive illusion of spaces unfilled; it permits a man everything, with one exception; he may not take seriously what his at least nine other characters do and what happens to them, in other words, the very thing that ought to be the filling of him.

-- The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil: Chapter 8, "Kakania"

I have been getting my first inklings of sympathy for Musil's characters, I started to notice it around Chapter 14 -- specifically for Ulrich but also Walter and Clarisse. With Ulrich my thinking has run sort of like this -- that Ulrich, there's something weird about him... I have heard calculating people described as "treating others as means reather than ends" -- could that be applied to Ulrich? Maybe, but (a) I am not concretely sure what the phrase means (NPI), (b) Ulrich hasn't even interacted with that many other people yet (at the time I was thinking this, about Chapter 12, only 2 other characters had been introduced, both very briefly). Aha! But Ulrich has been relating to himself quite a bit in this story. Could it be that he is "treating himself as a means rather than an end"? That sounds promising, though with the caveat that I am still not so sure what I mean by it. But let's pursue...

I am feeling a good deal of sympathy for Ulrich -- could the point of identification be reducible to the (still not-well-defined) attribute of "treating oneself as a means rather than an end"? When I started sympathizing with him it was in connection with his desire to become "an important person" and cluelessness about how to achieve that -- such a vague, shapeless ambition has been characteristic of my Bildung. It is something I am really thinking I need to grapple with in approaching my Master's Degree.

posted evening of May 6th, 2005: Respond

Tuesday, May third, 2005

Okay the current Ulysses attempt is officially over -- it's just not moving me enough to be worth the effort. (Except for that "Calypso" episode, that one's really nice.)

Moving on... I'm flirting with the idea of reading The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. I read the first 20 or so pages yesterday and found them funny and engaging. For some reason I am reluctant to commit to that book though.

posted evening of May third, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Ulysses

🦋 Oy Vey

Honorifics will be the death o' me. Just sent an e-mail to a professor, realized after I clicked Send that I had addressed her as "Ms" steada "Dr" -- something I hardly ever do when addressing male professors. The hidden sexist strikes again!

posted morning of May third, 2005: Respond

Saturday, April 30th, 2005

🦋 A First

I have many projects in my woodworking portfolio that took longer than they should have taken -- furniture pieces generally take me two months minimum and it's always been a source of frustration for me. But tonight I built my first piece of furniture (well, more "finish carpentry" I guess) that I finished in a single session -- 3 hours from a board to installation. It is a built-in shelf in our new bathroom. The main time-consuming part of it was carving out a recess in the surface of the shelf -- basically I wanted the shelf to have a lip around its edge, so I chiseled out the area inside the lip with my new set of gouges^*. I was able to get it quite flat except for one corner where the grain is funny -- there is a rise and a depression there. But everything is quite smooth.

The shelf is mounted between the moldings of two doorways. I had been thinking for a few days, that a shelf would be nice there, but could not figure out how to do it. This evening it hit me -- pocket screws! I have never used pocket screws before; but I cut pockets for them out of the board with a chisel, and it worked just great. After we finish the painting in Sylvia's room I am going to post some photos of various home improvements we have been doing; I will be sure to put a shot of this up.

(Here is a post I wrote at Woodcentral about the technique I used to hang the shelf.)

^* I really want to recommend these gouges by the way. If you enjoy carving wood they are going to add dramatically to your enjoyment. They are 18 fishtail gouges in various widths and sweeps, plus two parting tools, available at the low low price of $200 from Woodcarver's Supply. I say they are "new" but I actually bought them about a year ago and have used them lightly a couple of times since; this is the first heavy work I have done with them. When I saw them I found them too good a deal to pass up; plus I love fishtail gouges, and I only ever see straight gouges for sale elsewhere.

posted afternoon of April 30th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Bathroom Renovation

Friday, April 29th, 2005

So the garden is going like gangbusters. The bulbs I wrote of previously are still out (the tulips in majestic force), and I can't mow the lawn because it is full of daffodils and hyacinths. Plus: the shad bush which Ellen planted in back last year is in lovely white bloom. Some purple flowers on the side of the house that I don't know the name of. The two azalea bushes (one in front, one in back) have thousands of crimson buds out. Of the three bushes we planted next to Sylvia's sandbox, one of them has large white flowers on it; I think it might be rhododendron but that guess is random. The other two I thought were azaleas but I don't see anything happening on them. The lilac bushes, two years old, have a couple of flowers. Many buds are visible on the dogwood and it should be coming in soon.

For Mother's Day, Sylvia and I are going to buy Ellen a myrtle tree to plant in front. It will be a couple of weeks though until the actual purchase transpires, as Ellen's preferred nursery is Foliage Farm in Kutztown, PA.

Update: Checked my memory impressions when I got home. I did not get everything right: for one thing I forgot the phlox, which is very much a part of the first impression you get from the garden. And: the bush is a rhododendron; and the others are azalea, and they have some small buds on them too. And: now that I get a good look at the back yard I see there are a lot of light-colored violets toward the back of the yard, on the lawn and in the garden, and some small pink flowers closer to the house.

Update: Ellen writes:

hi jer,
just read your recent posts, which i enjoyed very much. just to add about the garden: there are bleeding hearts now - remember when they are finished, they are really done for - they disappear magically into the ground til next spring, so worth taking note of. it was fun explaining to sylvia why they are called that- not many plants have such literal names. i divided one of them a few weeks ago into five separate plants and placed them around the garden, where they are all in full bloom, if smaller. also - i think it's worth noting that we have at last count, about 15 different varieties of daffodils, some of which are incredibly untraditional looking - like a pale yellow almost peony-like one on the side of the house, and another that has multiple orchard-like blooms on one stem. for anyone in the market for bulbs - it's worth getting a daffodil variety pack and not just the samo-one shape of yellow kind. it's really been a trip seeing what comes up - and they stagger in bloom- so we've had them for almost a month and they're still appearing. sylvia and i picked out a bouquet of them, each different, to bring to school, so the kids could see so many types of one flower.
love,ek

posted morning of April 29th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about The garden

Thursday, April 28th, 2005

🦋 Game skills

Sylvia has played enough Monopoly at this point to be able to make change (sometimes) and add currency (more frequently; she is particularly good at making $90 out of $50 and two $20's, and $70 out of $50 and $20, and has the hundreds down pat). This is fun to watch and help out with. Also: this evening we played backgammon for the first time in a few months, and she knew how to do it -- when we played before, I would need to tell her which pieces to move and to where; tonight I was still helping her quite a bit with which pieces to move, but she understood straightaway how to do the move. Does not sound real impressive written down but again: a lot of fun to experience, and I got an inkling of what it will be like to play with her when she understands the game. She is also very interested in using the doubling cube, I wonder if she will be attracted by gambling. I ended up trying to play a back game and got gammoned.

posted evening of April 28th, 2005: Respond

Wednesday, April 27th, 2005

Talking with Nathaniel on the phone tonight I mentioned that I am in the middle of Ulysses and he replied that he is too, for a few decades now.

posted evening of April 27th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about James Joyce

"Hades" -- I read half of this episode on the train last night and was having a pretty hard time following it. But this morning restarted the chapter and lo and behold, the story flowed quite smoothly.

posted morning of April 27th, 2005: Respond

Previous posts
Archives