Via an article from BookSlut:

French philosopher-writer Jacques Derrida was also seen as a possible winner of the 10-million-kronor $1.37 million prize.

“He is one of the biggest names in post-structuralism,” Thente said. “And Academy secretary Horace Engdahl and member Katarina Frostenson are known to be big fans of his.”

As much as I enjoy the intellectual games of criticism, I would be pretty horrified if they actually did that. The article talks at the end about the betting odds on different writers, which reminds me of the “market-pricing” approaches to determining who will win the presidential election.

I started reading this mighty tome, and I suspect it will take me forever to read it, but so far it is highly entertaining and just the thing after a long day of work.

If anyone knows any good references on convergence vs. number of data points for the largest eigenvector in the singular value decomposition of the sample covariance matrix, you will earn my undying gratitude, especially if it leads to a conference publication.

by John Arden. This British play, from 1959, is stunningly relevant to our situation today. John Musgrave, a army serjeant, has deserted with three other soldiers, carrying with them a Gatling gun and a skeleton of a murdered comrade. He goes to the victim’s town, a small mining village in the middle of a dispute between the colliery workers and the owners in order to impress upon them the horrors of war, and the terrible arithmetic and Logic of murder. He calls all the town together and unveils the skeleton, dressed in uniform, in order to incite the workers to kill the mayor.
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by Maria Irine Fornes. I read a book on modern American theater earlier, with an emphasis on the legacy of Gertrude Stein, and it reminded me that I never had read anything by Fornes. Unfortunately, this was the only play of hers that I could find in the Berkeley Doe library. I say unfortunately because after reading it I want to read more of her plays.
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by Caryl Churchill. I read this in one sitting in the Morrison Reading Room while taking a break from research papers. It was a surreal, disturbing break that reminded me of why I think Caryl Churchill is one of the top playwrights in English.
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(Yes, I still read plays, and now I’m going to write about them again. Call it inspiration or call it procrastination).
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In tomorrow’s Times, John Leonard takes Dale Peck to task. It made me laugh — to better appreciate it, read one of Peck’s reviews first. Hating can get so dull after a while. We don’t need no hateration in this magazine…

I just read Snow Crash for the first time, and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed, but not because I thought the book was trite. It is, after all, a product of its time, and its vision of avatars in the Metaverse has affected the discourse on the way in which we view human-computer interaction. I was disappointed in myself for not having read it earlier, say in high school, when my friend Usama was ranting about what a piece of genius it was.

It’s not the same feeling as wishing you had discovered an author or book earlier. For one thing, I had very strong feelings about when I should have read it. I would have spent more time digesting some of the more tedious connections like “language is a virus” and “the operating system of a society” to understand them. The second difference is that I felt reading it now diminished the book’s power. Not only did I give some of the analogies short shrift, I felt that they detracted from the narrative drive.

This led me to wonder about whether other books have their time and place in people’s lives. The Catcher In The Rye is a good candidate, but what about Lord of The Rings? Are there books that should be read ideally upon reaching middle age? Upon retirement? Reaching college? Losing your virginity? I don’t believe that every book should be associated with a rite of passage or vice-versa. But I do think some books have maximum punch at a certain time in your life, and while you can put yourself in that position again when you read it, it’s not the same as being there.

By Edward Albee. Every so often I get it into my head that family dramas are boring apolitical bourgeoise conceits that don’t really get me excited about The Theatre, but then I read something by Albee and realize how effectively and intelligently he cuts through our ridiculous facades in way that says something profound while remaining thoroughly theatrical. Martin, a 50 year old architect who has just won the Pritzker Prize and a huge new commission, has a dreadful secret.

In Scene One he is getting ready to be interviewed for TV by his childhood friend Ross, and bustles about the house with his wife Stevie. They love each other very much, and they love their gay son Billy. All is well. Martin is too distracted for the interview and Ross cancels it. They quarrel and make up, and in the process Martin confesses to Ross that he has been having an affair with a goat named Sylvia. Ross is incredulous and threatens to tell Stevie.

And in Scene Two, Stevie has the letter from Ross and she and Billy are letting Martin have it. Billy is sent to his room — Stevie and Martin continue to have it out. She trashes the apartment in her rage and threatens to hurt him as much as he hurt her. She storms out.

In Scene Three, Billy comes back down to find Martin in the ruins. They make up, sort of. Ross enters at an inopportune moment — Ross and Martin have it out, and at the end Stevie returns with Sylvia, the latter’s throat slit. A powerful stage moment if ever there was one.

It’s an amazing little piece of work, for the simplicity of the writing and the way in which the little beats in the dialogue build the characters for us but also further the action. There’s an economy in Albee’s writing, but it’s not an economy of text. It’s more that he doesn’t waste time in exposition, in having the characters have long reminiscences about events in the pre-story or speak of the present as an analogy to the past. It’s all in the present more or less, and the backstory is made part of the frontstory. I think the biggest lesson to take away as writer is that small things can be built into big things, and to let your dialogue scurry about — eventually it will find its way up.

by Michael Chabon. It’s been a while since I had to stay up past my bedtime to finish a book. Summerland was a nice breath of fresh air though my brain, a good way to welcome in the spring. Chabon’s first children’s novel doesn’t quite have the breadth of Kavalier and Clay, but it has inventiveness to spare. I didn’t find it as delightful as Haroun and the Sea of Stories, but it was fun, witty, and pulled me along for the ride.

Unlike Neil Gaiman, who’s Ragnarok-inspired American Gods delighted me with its innovative moderization of ancient pantheons, Chabon conflates the Native American Coyote with Loki, conjures up a mournful She-Sasquatch, and adds a healthy dose of English folk magic as well. A good original fantasy is beholden to no particular mythos, and Chabon picks and chooses his cultural references with gleeful abandon. Part of the joy for me as an adult reader was picking out these folkloric references.

The only downside in my opinion was that the whole book was about baseball. Everyone (giants, werefoxes, and Coyote himself) plays baseball, and I’m just not a baseball fan. Perhaps it’s an even stronger endorsement of the book that I liked it despite its obsession with our national game.

I’m now re-motivated to look at some of my old plays, including A Head For Ganesh to see if I can whittle down the lumpiness therein. There’s a world of difference between a novel and a play, but they both try to tell a story, and in this case, both in a magical way.