Ntuple Indemnity

This week’s selection: Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (1997) by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

In brief: What begins as a comprehensive study of poetic translation evolves into a treatment of human empathy and intercultural understanding, a refutation of John Searle’s Chinese Room argument against artificial intelligence, and a solemn remembrance of the author’s deceased wife. With its exclusive focus on language, Le Ton beau is a substantially less technical and more streamlined tome beau than Gödel, Escher, Bach; the mathematically averse may find it a more accessible point of entry to Hofstadter’s thought, as there is no talk of recursion or formal incompleteness in sight. Those who prefer their poetry devoid of metre and rhyme will take issue with Hofstadter’s conservative aesthetics; those who prize pattern, structure, and wordplay will rejoice.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on Le Ton beau de Marot, keep reading below.)

Continued »

This week’s selection: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz.

In brief: Astounding. How often do you see a serious (but ironic) novel about serious (but ironic) things like immigration, masculinity, and postcolonial despotism get away with comparing the Dominican Republic to Tolkien’s Mordor, casting a mongoose as a guardian spirit, and measuring acts of brutality in hit points of damage—and make it all look so genuine?

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, keep reading below.)

Continued »

Huh?

Eoin Colfer is a witty, tech-savvy guy, and based on author’s credentials alone, when his continuation of the Hitchhiker’s Guide “trilogy” arrives on shelves I’ll be sure to take a look. I’m guilty of being party to this kind of brand-driven exploitation, and I know it. Setting aside for a minute my serious qualms about the brand-name licensing trend in fiction publishing, two reservations spring to mind:

• Didn’t we already see, with Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony (I have yet to read The Time Paradox), that Eoin Colfer is a cautionary case study in wells drying up?
• Didn’t we already see, with Mostly Harmless (and to a lesser extent, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish), that Douglas Adams is also a cautionary case study in wells drying up?

Hitchhiker’s is finished. Let’s move on.

This week’s selection: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) by Vladimir Nabokov.

In brief: There are many things I wish I’d known before I started reading this alternate-universe family saga of phenomenology and incest, and Russian is one of them.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on Ada, or Ardor, keep reading below.)

Continued »

This week’s selection: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) by Truman Capote.

In brief: Short, simple, and sweet, Capote’s novella is one of those stories that packs every postwar anxiety about the American Dream into one very enigmatic character. There is something mature about fiction that reflects on the idealism of the individual spirit, and asks us to do the same, through immersing us in a deep sense of wistfulness rather than outright disillusionment.

(The Wednesday Book Club is an ongoing initiative of mine to write a book review every week. I invite you to peruse the index. For more on Breakfast at Tiffany’s, keep reading below.)

Continued »