.:. Another Likely Story

As mentioned in the Peter Grant series, which is a brilliant work that everyone should read, the real life UK law enforcement/London Met has an IT system called called the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System = HOLMES.  At one point, it is remarked that when the Met put out an updated version of the database they wanted to name it SHERLOCK, but nobody could make up a good acronym, so it was named HOLMES 2.

Well, I think Aaronovitch should hold a contest to find the Best Acronym. My entry would be Services/Historical Emergency Records of London's Official Constabulary of the King. (WHAT. I'm allowed to dream.)

Also, this led me down the path of pondering what would be a good substitute for HOLMES in the universe of BBC's Sherlock series (see: Celebrity Paradox). Current top two contenders: DUPIN and WOLFE. Other contenders: MARPLE, POIROT, WIMSEY. I love Father Brown but that name is  too common, and the series isn't terribly well known.

(Where have I been?  I've been doing far more nonfiction writing as of late than fiction, due to my Actual Timesuck Job.  I don't know how everyone else in the blogosphere seems to balance the two so well, kudos to each and every one of you.  I'm getting a few things ready for submission, but it's taking ages.)

(Perhaps I should've saved this for Sunday ...)

I'd like to steer gentle readers towards An Angel's Guide To Bureaucracy, a hilarious and profound short story by Pei Yi.  Set in an afterlife where each religion has its own department to handle the souls of the dearly departed, the story takes the reader through the hijinks that ensue between the Taoism and Christianity branches when it's discovered that a soul has made a last-minute religious conversion.

"A deathbed conversion?" she echoed, skeptical. "But it wasn't captured by the system at all. How did you get this data? Are you sure it wasn't a mistake on your side?"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure it isn't. Deathbed conversions can be easy to miss, so we have special receptors for that. Maybe the universal system missed it?"

"But the funeral rites?" She paused. "Oh, the Final Act."

"Right, funeral rites can be overridden by prior religious affiliations at the soul's own discretion," he quipped. After a long history of souls complaining when they'd been ignored and given the wrong religious rites by family members, enough consensus had finally been reached for the revision seventy years back. It was still recent enough to be the last act listed under the universal post-mortem processing laws - and it would probably take two more inter-religion wars before any new laws got close to approved.

The rest of the story can be read here!

1. In 1979, Jorge Luis Borges edited a 33-volume anthology of fantastic literature, in Spanish, titled The Library of Babel (like his own marvelous story of that same name).  The Rumpus has found the titles -- though not all are available online, and many are only available in Spanish -- and amassed a number of reading links for one's pleasure here.

2. Borges being one of my favorite authors, if not the most favorite -- I once found out that there was a Borges museum, and was distraught that I couldn't go.  The Significant Other consoled me by pointing out that the Perfect Borges Museum would simply stand you in the lobby, ask you to imagine the most perfect museum to Borges, and then send you out the door saying that was the entire exhibit.

I came upon Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Some Reflections on Dolls” in which he describes his nightmarish, visceral loathing of dolls. Granted he had a large assortment of issues to work out with dolls, the foremost being that his mother tried to pretend he was a girl and gave him dresses and dolls and called him "Sophie." Nonetheless, there's something more there:

... I pass over the intimate, the touching, the deserted, thoughtful aspect of many things, which, as I passed them, moved me deeply by their beautiful participation in human living; I will only cite in passing quite simple things: a sewing clamp, a spinning-wheel, a domestic loom, a bridal glove, a cup ... If we were to bring all this to mind again and at the same moment to find one of these dolls–pulling it out from a pile of more responsive things–it would almost anger us with its frightful obese forgetfulness ... it would lie before us unmasked as the horrible foreign body on which we had wasted our purest ardour; as the externally painted watery corpse, which floated and swam on the flood-tides of our affection ...

One: as L notes, "we’re freaked out by dolls and puppets and masks and distortions to the face because we’re programmed to carefully search faces, and abnormal patterns ring atavistic alarm bells." Two: I think that on top of ingrained human responses, Rilke really did see death in his dolls. There is a time when a child thinks a doll is a toy to be animated with imagination, and then the child realizes that humans are mortal, and begins to perceive dolls as lifeless things that don't respond to love and longing and sadness any more than people who have died. Other objects are warm and comforting because they have never changed and will not as long as you lavish care and attention on them, but dolls before and after the realization of mortality are two different things.  It is possible for dolls to die, and Rilke's did.

On realizing that I really want to watch the movie, I've been trying to finish the book Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  I quite like it so far, you can really tell the author was one of them (or do I only imagine I think that became we all know Le Carre worked for MI6 ...?).

The plotting is stellar thus far.  With some envy, I note that a good intelligence agent, analyst, etc. is probably as good as many writers are at plotting, since their job is to put together plots, and they deal with much higher stakes than I do.  Also, if you've ever skimmed through any official cables, you find that many people in foreign-based services and such are excellent writers; their reports are often quite delightful and even hilarious to read.  I forget who told me this, but I was once informed that the diplomats et al are generally extremely motivated to write excellent reports, because they know that the cables are basically forever.

Picked up Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy/In The Labyrinth, I don't know what possessed me to give this a try. Maybe I've been reading too much Eco? But here I am, and sunken cost fallacy be damned I will finish this book. Barthes' intro essay was interesting (and I haven't read Morrissette's or Minor's essays, sorry I went for the name I recognized) although it took 2000 more words than necessary to say that Robbe-Grillet has the amazing skill of writing a novel like one might write problems in a mathematical text, ie, when he describes something you don't really take it in as anything more than factual phenomena. Why is the table 1m wide? It just is and to think otherwise is to miss the point.*

Which is I suppose is legit an achievement, since most writers tune the mood of the world up or down to accompany their story. One might think that at the worst end of the scale sits dystopic fiction writers who make it feel like the universe is out to get you -- but Robbe-Grillet's universe is at the absolute zero: there exists no meaning one way or another, which in a sense is even harsher and colder than the universe's boot in your face.

* for the record: I don't agree with this universe; I agree with William Gibson (and I can't for the life of me remember the interview where he said this) that you can pick up a mass-manufactured disposable hot coffee container and write a whole book on how its materials, dimensions, and other specifications came to be. But that's a ramble for another day.

Reading more of Perdido Street Station, reading madly. What's truly amazing is that Mieville isn't actually creating that much new stuff; 99% of these are tropes I've seen before, but he handles them so well. I'm sure this is a total cliche but I do feel like New Crobuzon is an excellent metaphor for his own writing -- crowded with a million styles and genres that all are tied together by some mysterious junction that links all his works. A friend whose taste I trust has already mentioned that Perdido Street Station has a Bad End so I am on tenterhooks, but enjoying the ride so far ...

(Also, is it just me or is this book seriously obsessed with body fluids. It's like a 14yo boy trying to see how many times he can get excrement into a book.)

Went to Borders last night, trying to take advantage of their liquidation. Of course the rest of the city had the same thought and I didn't find most of what I wanted. But I did pick up a copy of Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail, which I bought actually because I read a somewhat critical review whose criticisms made me really, really interested in the book.  We'll see how this turns out.

After everyone else in the world already has ... I finally started reading China Miéville's Perdido Street Station. I am really enjoying the fantastic worldbuilding.

“Ged,” Isaac asked. “What can you tell me about the garuda?”

Ged shrugged, and he grinned with pleasure at imparting what he knew.

“Not very much. Bird-people. Live in the Cymek, and the north of Shotek, and the west of Mordiga, reputedly. Maybe also on some of the other continents. Hollow bones.” Ged’s eyes were fixed, focused on the remembered pages of whatever xenthropological work he was quoting. “Cymek garuda are egalitarian…completely egalitarian, and completely individualistic. Hunters and gatherers, no sexual division of labour. No money, no rank, although they do have sort of uninstitutional ranks. Just means you’re worthy of more respect, that sort of thing. [...]”

[...] “Well, seeing as you know so arsing little about them, I might as well just stop talking to you,” said Isaac.

To Isaac’s astonishment, Ged’s face fell.

“Joke, Ged! Irony! Sarcasm! You know fucking loads about them. At least compared to me. I’ve been browsing Shacrestialchit, and you’ve just exceeded the sum of my knowledge. Do you know anything about…uh…their criminal code?”

Ged stared at him. His huge eyes narrowed.

“What you up to, Isaac? They’re so egalitarian…well…Their society’s all based on maximizing choice for the individual, which is why they’re communistic. Grants the most uninhibited choice to everyone. And as far as I remember the only crime they have is depriving another garuda of choice. And then it’s exacerbated or mollified depending on whether they do it with or without respect, which they absolutely love…”

“How do you steal someone’s choice?”

“No idea. I suppose if you nick someone’s spear, they don’t have the choice of using it…What about if you lie about where some tasty lichen is, so you deprive others of the choice of going for it…?”

“Maybe some choice-thefts are analogies of stuff we’d consider crimes and some have absolutely no equivalent,” said Isaac.

“I’d imagine so.”

“What’s an abstract individual and a concrete individual?”

Ged was gazing at Isaac in wonder.

“My good arse, Isaac…you’ve made friends with some garuda, haven’t you?”

Isaac raised one eyebrow, and nodded quickly.

“Damn!” Ged shouted. People at the surrounding tables turned to him with brief surprise. “And a Cymek garuda…! Isaac, you have to make him--him? her?--come and talk to me about the Cymek!”

“I don’t know, Ged. He’s a bit…taciturn…”

“Oh please oh please…”

“All right, all right, I’ll ask him. But don’t get your hopes up. Now tell me what the difference is between a fucking abstract and concrete individual.”

“Oh, this is fascinating. I suppose you aren’t allowed to tell me what the job is…? No, didn’t think so. Well, put simply, and as far as I understand it, they’re egalitarian because they respect the individual so much, right? And you can’t respect other people’s individuality if you focus on your own individuality in a kind of abstract, isolated way. The point is that you are an individual inasmuch as you exist in a social matrix of others who respect your individuality and your right to make choices. That’s concrete individuality: an individuality that recognizes that it owes its existence to a kind of communal respect on the part of all the other individualities, and that it had better therefore respect them similarly.

“So an abstract individual is a garuda who forgot, for some time, that he or she is part of a larger unit, and owes respect to all the other choosing individuals.”

There was a long pause.

“Are you any wiser, Isaac?” asked Ged gently, and broke off into giggles.

Isaac wasn’t sure if he was or not.

“So look, Ged, if I said to you ‘second-degree choice-theft with disrespect,’ would you know what a garuda had done?”

I finally decided to start reading up on semiotics, which is the study of symbols/signs -- in the ways that humans generate, parse, and use them -- and all the processes that depend on symbols/signs, such as semantics, communication, etc.

You'd think I had already done some reading if only for the sake of appearances, ahem, but I had always resisted. My resistance was not based on not believing in semiotics. On the contrary, I believe it too much. Humans by necessity process the world in signs and symbols because face it we just don't have the cycles to do otherwise. When I see an object from many angles in multiple instances, I compress them all into one symbol that signifies the object, instead of thinking each view represents a different object altogether*. When I receive many experiences, I learn from them by generalizing to "the big picture" -- another "sign". In fact we do this to our detriment (thinking everything is a monolith is just one of many symptoms ...). In the end we need symbols and signs for shorthand, we need keys to efficiently retrieve the tons of data entries swimming in our brains.

So as you can see it would be so easy for me to become (if I haven't already skirted that line) something like a first-year philosophy major who goes around analyzing EVERYTHING OMG EVERYTHING IS A SIGN AND WHAT DOES THAT SYMBOLIZE and thinking that eeeeverything is miiiiindblowingggg. Woooooooooo! I couldn't stand that much obnoxiousness and neither could you.

And yet, having blathered all about this, I've been pretty engrossed in the reading, especially because I think that semiotics is a valid angle to approach how we think, and thus informs slightly more "practical" (or at least more provable) fields like, oh, linguistics and natural data processing, etc. I don't really intend to work on those things but I'd be silly not to think they matter and will be very powerful when they are finally worked out better. And it also gets at things that I like to read and write about, namely memory and experience. It's always helpful to have more material/resources if only for bullshitting purposes, and if that's the way my interests lean ...

(Especially since now that I've read up on the basics ... suddenly Italo Calvino's The Uses of Literature makes 80% more sense than before. But that's a ramble for another day.)

* Borges said this much better in his brilliant short story Funes, The Memorious.