It Will Explain All Phenomena

It's hard to believe, but the first day of the eighth month of 2019 is already upon us, and that means that it's once again time for the annual blogging festival that is Blaugust. In accordance with long tradition, we're going to attempt to up the productivity of this usually dormant site over the month with a variety of regular features, but as August is once again a month of transition here at Leaflocker HQ, please don't expect daily updates or anything like that. We're not spring chickens with ceaseless energy any more, and if we can squeeze out three posts each week and somehow keep the household together, we'll be pleasantly surprised.

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It's now been five years since we started a seven year project to read all the greatest works of the western canon, in a project pretentiously titled 'the Great Conversation'. We're running a little behind schedule, but the project limps on, and this week represents the twenty-third post in the series, which is probably some kind of Leaflocker record, as sticking to projects has never been a strong point.

It's been a pretty hectic week here at Leaflocker HQ, without the amount of downtime required to really digest some of the readings, but thanks to a couple of long bus rides, a quiet shift watching the college gate and liberal use of text-to-speech software while washing the dishes, we got through the readings in the allocated time.

The Week That Was:

The History of Herodotus

Book IV

I was going to try and draw a map based on Herodotus' directions in this book, but part way through I realised that someone else had undoubtedly done that already and probably done a much better job of it than I possibly could, and of course if you do a quick google search you come up with hundreds of options.

This feels fitting, as this book felt like mostly a pretty dry geography lesson, with the occasional interesting anecdote thrown in, but nothing remotely as captivating as some of the gems from previous weeks. Herodotus seems to know this himself, as he repeatedly points out that 'there a no notable men' among the Scythians, but as far as geography lessons go it isn't as too bad, and seems to be based on some actually reliable accounts and solid measurements rather than than the mystical creatures from last years wandering around India. I think I prefer the silliness, but the puzzle of trying to lay Herodotus' map onto my own mental map of the world is an enjoyable diversion.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Chapters XIV

Hoo boy! I found myself just thinking "that's racist" in response to section after section in this reading, particularly when it comes to the relationship between Friday and Crusoe. Crusoe is quick to reassure us that the whole master-servant dynamic is all Friday's idea, and that he loves the idea of waiting on Crusoe for the rest of his life, being called Friday and all, but Crusoe's already been dreaming of making savages into his slaves before Friday just appears thanks to divine providence, so it all seems a little...convenient, doesn't it?

Still, Crusoe is one of the first English novels. It's three-hundred years old this year, and comes from a distant time when the attitudes towards slavery were vastly different to those we hold today. When Crusoe was written, the slave trade was 1/20th of the British economy, and attitudes towards Africans in particular were distinctly less than complimentary, so maybe we need to cut Defoe a little slack. Still, one can't help but feel that if the British everyman Crusoe had treated Friday as more of a person, an equal, then the generations of Britons who grew up reading Defoe and then running African countries might, just maybe, have thought a little harder about what they were doing.

That's a big charge to lay at the foot of a novel. Especially one that you haven't finished reading yet. Maybe there's more surprises to come. But honestly I'd be surprised if I come out of the end of this one thinking anything other than "that's racist".

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a certain kind of person that one bumps into on a semi-regular basis in an Oxford common room. This person has read a lot of philosophy and wants you to know it, and conversations with them inevitably end up sounding a little like Emerson does in this text. As attractive as a 'theory of everything' sounds in practice, inevitably when people go looking for one they quickly lose me.

It's possible that I'm just not cut out for philosophy, but my test for what is bunkum nonsense designed simply to sound deep and able to be ignored wholesale is this: does the text sound like it could be an excerpt from Time Cube? Read the following excerpt and then tell me with a straight face that it passes this test.

The motion of the earth round its axis, and round the sun, makes the day, and the year. These are certain amounts of brute light and heat. But is there no intent of an analogy between man’s life and the seasons? And do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ant’s; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to extend from it to man, and the little drudge is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime.

The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde

I think this is the only thing by Oscar Wilde that I've ever read, and I seem to recall that I only read it the first time under the mistaken impression that it was 'the Little Prince', the much-lauded novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I recall thinking that it was a pretty story, but certainly nothing to go Wilde about, and I have to say that on a second reading I just found it to be heavy-handed as a moral tale about selfless charity, and not particularly interesting as a story, with the possible exception of a cutting remark or two about politicians.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 

Volume II - Books IV to V

Ah Hugo. It is very important that I spend many chapters of description so that the reader understands in graphic detail the history, location and architecture of this building right here, because it is probably going to be an important plot point. No I am just kidding, we're just walking out the front door and never coming back. I had you worried though, didn't I? Aren't I a card? ... Never change.

The chapter from the perspective of Javert was a nice little change up. I have always been a fan of the man, and one of things I've been getting a kick out of in this reading has been seeing his human aspects as a man full of doubts and misgivings. Good stuff.

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens 

Chapters VII

Dickens makes an excellent attempt at the 'Full number of overs that are scheduled to be bowled that day' sketch here. It has its own chuckles, but as has become standard with Pickwick, many of the subtle or not even particularly subtle jokes go over the head of the casual modern reader, and I have to admit that this being the first day of the Ashes I'm just not in the mindset to be making fun of cricket. If I'd read this a couple of weeks later, once the dust has settled and my hopes of Australian cricket glory have faded a little, maybe I'd be able to give it a longer leash, but for this moment, cricket is sacred and I declare that Mr. Dickens ought to be more careful when choosing which aspects of British village life he chooses to take aim at.

Some Numbers: 

By my count, I read 115 pages last week but have somehow only increased the number of pages read by 107. Presumably something has gone wrong in my spreadsheet, but I can't work out what exactly so we're going to let the error stand and keep rolling on.

One number I am confident about is the page count in Les Mis after our efforts this week is now up to 365, so that means we're averaging a fifth of a page each and every day since we started it way back in the first week of August 2014. So that's something.

Pages last week: 115
Pages so far: 2569

Week XXIII: 

Dr. J's intended reading list for this week is still bogged down with Euclid and Usonian politics stuff that I dropped ages ago. This will mean that week XXIII is the first week since the beginning of the project that our list won't include a new or one-off reading, a phenomenon that I generally try to avoid, since one of the joys of our little Conversation has been the variety of the meal served up to us each day.

We'll make up for it with a frankly outrageously large excerpt from Les Mis with about as much Pickwick as I expect to be able to handle thrown in for good measure. All-in-all I expect it to be a generally easy-reading and enjoyable week to be reading the classics of the English canon.

The History of Herodotus

Book V (31 pages)

#gbbw #manandsociety #history #greek

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Chapters XV (8 pages)

#ggb #imaginativelierature #novel #english

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 

Volume II - Books VI-VIII (51 pages)

#non_gbww #novel #french

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens 

Chapters VIII-XI (30 pages)

#non_gbww #novel #english