*

TWITTER | @martingruner

    31.5.07

    A typographical dilemma:

    The title of this blog is (...)

    (which I have never, btw, had to say out loud until today when somebody asked me what the name of my blog is. What should I say? "Dot dot dot"? "Parenthesis dot dot dot? Parenthesis"? I landed on the latter option, but I suppose the correct name for the blog really should be "deletia", because that's the technical term for the excised text in quotations.)

    Anyway: works should always be italicised, thusly: Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, A Five-Act Play Criticising Tom Stoppard For Being Far Too Clever For His Own Good, etc.

    But there is also a typographical rule that says that italicised parentheses should be put in the roman font.

    Which is to say not this: (but that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead).

    But this: (but that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead)

    Clearly there are two conflicting typographical rules here. What to do?

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    As a follow-up to the Clinton piece below, here's an enormous profile of Clinton in the New Yorker.

    (oh, and here's a completely nauseating, beatifying puff-piece on Clinton written by Alistair Campbell. It turns out that Campbell is not just good at sexing up dossiers that leads one to go to war under false pretenses, he can also sex up the confoundingly, neither-nor career of a president. Anyone who says that any president or national leader is right in everything that they do is just plain wrong, and therefore not your friend. That having been said, I long for the sunnier days of the Clinton presidency.)

    Completely unrelated: here is an article I found on an album of music recorded during tuning and between concerts. The cacophonic effect of the orchestra rehearsing separately in the same room is like listening to a flock of birds. Quite beautiful. Here's a sample track where the woodwinds go crazy. Listen for quite atonal readings of "Oh Suzanna" and "Deilig er jorden" (English title?). More clips in the NY Times article. (via Suttonhoo)

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    29.5.07

    Presidential Folli(cl)es

    I'm in the surreal, fugue-like state of being up for 36 hours straight, made worse by the anticlimactic release of handing in my MA thesis. Crossing Torgallmenningen in the warm sun, my newborn thesis still actually warm from coming off the printing press, I notice an unusual crowd. A gaggle of journalists up front, and an unusual mixture of people standing behind the barricades: teenagers, pensioners, academics and working class and the occasional punk. I wonder what celebrity could cause the police to carry sub-machineguns. With a little more presence of mind, I might have deduced that this might have something to do with the former President of the United States being in town. I do not. Staring like an idiot, I watch his handlers emerge with golf clubs, stuffing them into the waiting SUVs. Then, small, rodent-like men - his bodyguards - emerge from the hotel and form a perimeter leading up to the car. Finally, like a silverback gorilla stepping into the sunshine of some rainforest clearing, Bill Clinton, wearing an ugly yellow shirt, emerges from the hotel.

    The crowd goes wild; cheering, applauding. I'm desperately trying to claw my camera from its holster. He's red-faced and radiant and surely much shorter than Bill Clinton. He waves at the crowd with large, red hands; smiles a huge, electrical smile. He shakes some hands. Stops to speak to the press.

    (Later, I will see the interview on TV. It goes a little something like this:

    LOCAL NEWS REPORTER:
    about to shit himself
    What do you think the big issue is?

    BILL FREAKING CLINTON:
    helpfully
    ...
    You mean facing the world? Well, first off bla bla the environment bla bla international security bla bla first generation to really end extreme poverty forever bla bla.

    LOCAL NEWS REPORTER:
    rallying
    Say something nice about Bergen...?

    BILL HOLY SHIT CLINTON:
    Oh! Bla bla bla just gorgeous bla bla bla mountains bla bla fjords! bla bla golfing.
    steps into car. The clip of the convoy driving away lasts fifteen seconds too long. As though nothing else happened in the world that day.)

    Bill Clinton's hairdo II
    mr. Clinton's hair (right) adressing the cameras

    While he is talking to the reporters, I finally pop off some shots. They show nothing. I can only barely make out the president's hair. The object of interest is completely unsymbolically obscured by members of the free press. Lowering my camera, knowing I'm not going to get another shot, I start contemplating what it must take to become the kind of person who can step out of a hotel and instantly get an applause.

    But eventually, I emerge from my dream-like reverie to a sudden, deep focus on the ex-presidential hairdo. And suddenly I realise what they are all on about, all the people talking about his charisma and his charm. Once you've been in the presence of the former president's hair, you never really forget it. It's like nothing else in the world. Words fail me, but I feel compelled to try:

    Despite the silvery tone of mr. Clinton's hair, the impression really is one of warmth and intensity. It never lets you feel like you are getting less than 100% of its attention. It seems completely and overwhelmingly present. The hair is right there. It seems focused and efficient, but nonetheless also friendly. It really is hair that makes you feel like you are at the centre of its universe. It is the dignified hair of a leader, but not the (h)airy, distant kind. Mr. Clinton's hair, instead, gives off a sense of being rooted and connected to the rest of the world. It makes you feel like you've made a connection. It communicates, and gets its point across efficiently. You are never, for instance, in doubt as to the gap in intelligence between mr. Clinton's hairdo and president Bush's head. As it leaves, you have the distinct impression that those silvery waves will never forget you. You will certainly never forget it. It stays with you for the rest of your life, and you are honoured to have been in its stroked-back presence.

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    den litterære bloggen

    Denne posten (som er helt ute av kontroll, men som jeg nok heller må gi slipp på før den avler frem et nytt avsnitt, unnskyld kjære leser) er et svar til dette innlegg fra Susanne Christensen. Den ble litt stor for et kommentarfelt.

    Takk for Susanne for fint innlegg med mange gode ideer. Jeg syns at det er fint at hun leser min (noe trøtte*) blogg som en demokratisk aktivitet. Det er tett på intensjonen, men nok litt for ofte fjernt fra de faktiske forhold.

    Men altså: Hva er en litterær blogg? Jeg mener at en litterær blogg er en blogg, punktum, fordi alle blogger er litterære. I en ganske informativ artikkel skriver den amerikanske litteraturviteren og bloggeren Steve Himmer at
    Calling a weblog “literary” does not require content that is about literature or even content that aims to be literature. It is not an attempt at categorizing one weblog and its author as more worthwhile in a canonical sense than any other. To the contrary, I propose that every weblog can be considered literary in the sense that it calls attention not only to what we read, but also to the unique way we read it. The weblog is (to paraphrase Colin MacCabe) the performed result of a code of particular techniques, and this paper is an attempt to highlight the primary features of that code. The weblog collapses many of the common assumptions made about texts, as it complicates the distinction between author and audience through the multivocality of both direct commenting, and the reader’s ability to reorder the narrative in myriad ways. Owing to its ongoing creation over an undefined period of time, the weblog becomes a text that constantly expands through the input of both readers and writers. This absence of a discrete, “completed” product makes the weblog as a form resistant to the commoditization either of itself, or of any one particular interpretation.
    Jeg tror at han er inne på noe her. Så spørsmålet om bloggen er litteratur eller litterær er i grunnen like uinteressant som å spørre om Ulysses er litteratur: Selvsagt er den det, men det må da være det minst interessante utsagn man kan gjøre om den. Spørsmålet må snarere være hvorvidt den relevante bloggen er god (ergodisk) litteratur eller ikke, og i så fall hvorfor/hvorfor ikke. Kort sagt: Hva gjør teksten, hvordan, hvorfor og med hvem og hvilke? Man må altså gå til verket med en litterær, politisk, filosofisk, osv. kritikk.

    Men etter hvilke kriterier? Det er et annet av Himmers poenger som kommer i spill her: Bloggen unndrar seg de kanoniserende tendenser, og er vanskelig å diskutere og kritisere som verk så lenge den er i produksjon. Susanne lengter i sitt innlegg etter det uferdige, utprøvende, og det er nettopp dette bloggen formelt innbyder til– hele fokuset på tid osv. oppmuntrer til skisseaktige tekster, til notatboken som sjanger (for å sitere Røssaak) eller en performativ skrive-lese-tenkepraksis. Hvis man publiserte en ferdig roman på en blogg, så ville det f.eks. ikke helt være en blogg, men bare noe innhold som tilfeldigvis ble publisert i en blogg. Men jeg merker meg også at en del folk har publisert kanonisert litterært materiale som passer til bloggens format med heldige resultater.

    Dette innebærer også at webloggen faller inn under et annet sett med estetiske kriterier. Jeg tillater meg selv et langt (og noe forskjønnet) sitat fra min stadig nybakte masteroppgave som for tiden ligger til avkjøling hos komiteen:
    At bloggen er bundet til å forholde seg aktivt til tiden og sin egen historiske posisjon fremmer en umiddelbar estetikk. Mens man tradisjonelt innenfor litteraturvitenskapen respekterer det enkeltstående verkets komposisjon og evne til å fremme meningsproduksjon, kompleksitet, erkjennelse, skjønnhet, osv., er bloggens estetikk noe nærmere jazzens. Bloggens estetikk handler om improvisasjon, om reaksjon på det umiddelbare, om forståelse av historien idet den skjer. Det man respekterer ved en blogger er ofte ikke den enkeltstående postens kompleksitet, men skriverens produksjon i både en konkret og Barthesk forstand. Evnen til å improvisere et komplekst verk, som danner mening både på kort sikt, innad i den enkelte posten, og utad, i bloggens storform, mens den blir til.

    Dette innebærer en evne til ofte å ha et verdifullt synspunkt, et jevnt høyt reaksjonstempo eller produksjonstempo, et konsekvent nivå i improvisasjonen og evnen til i en viss grad å forme – styre er et for sterkt ord – en stor, uregjerlig, tekstlig og kognitiv prosess. Bloggeren må [jeg kunne altså ikke huske at jeg var så normativ som dette, men det står nå sånn] ha en umiddelbar originalitet, et improviserende men effektivt språk og en evne til å se eller skape sammenhenger i samtidsfenomenene før de har utspilt eller avslørt seg. En vanlig form for post er også nettopp reaksjon, analyse og variasjon av samtidsfenomener.

    Dermed er også bloggen noe nærmere talen, og har (…) en sterk retorisk funksjon, knyttet til dens rolle som samtidig offentlighet. Kairos, talesituasjonen – vurdering av tid, sted, publikum, kontekst – er et langt viktigere og mer umiddelbart problem i bloggen enn i det tradisjonelle verket. Teksten taler umiddelbart til kulturen og svaret – leserens møte med teksten, hans dom eller kritikk – rammer øyeblikkelig.
    I tillegg til denne monologiske estetikken, som fokuserer på forfatterens egenskaper som blogger, kommer også en samtalens estetikk. Verket dømmes også ut fra sine medforfattere og lesere. Et sted skriver Michael Bérubé at

    [T]he best, most thought-provoking blogs are renowned not only for the quality of their writing but for the quality of writing they stimulate in response. (…) and it is in such give-and-take that blogs create the taste by which they are to be enjoyed. (Bérubé, 2006, Rhetorical Occasions: 289)
    Og det er også et godt poeng. Det litterære i bloggen er ikke kun forfatterens domene, men samtalens. Hva oppstår det i dynamikken mellom leser og skriver (og ikke minst vekslingen mellom de to posisjonene i alle de involverte parter)? Hvordan kan man reagere på et kunstverk som er demokratisk, når hele vår estetiske instrumentasjon handler om å fokusere på kunstneren? Paging mr. Bourriaud (en vinkling, btw, som jeg dessverre ikke hadde tid til å komme inn på i oppgaven). Relasjonell estetikk, muligens med noe diskursanalyse inne i det hele, er nok veien å gå om vi skal kritisere bloggen.

    Det mest interessante å snakke om i en sånn kritikk, er hvilke måter teksten kan utvide seg selv på, hvilke koder den kan bryte, hvilke nye den kan opprette. Hvordan kan man bruke bloggens formelle trekk til å skape nye måter å skrive på, nye måter å tenke på? Der er en masse strenger å spille på her, f.eks. den lek med identitet Susanne peker på, som noen ganger fordømmes med rette (Belle du Jour, f.eks., eller det tilfellet hvor en kreftsyk tenåringsjente som blogget ”døde” etter lang tids liding og medliding i offentligheten og plutselig viste seg å være skrevet av en mentalt ustabil kvinne i Midtvesten av USA et sted) og noen ganger er det nettopp en interessant lek med forventning og eksperimentering som fører til noe litterært interessant. Mange bloggere tar jo også nettopp på seg en slags persona for å bedrive sin skrivepraksis. Claus Beck-Nielsen er bare den siste som har brukt bloggen til denne typen skriving.

    Selv skriver jeg essayistisk og med ønske om deltakelse i en offentlighet (som det ikke alltid lykkes å nå. Lesernes gunst er rastløs). Det gjør jeg fordi bloggen virker utrolig velegnet til denne typen skriving, og fordi det er det som virker mest naturlig akkurat nå. Også det personlige, biografiske narrativ (den infamøse ”dagbok-på-nett”) er en interessant litterær form og det er mange som driver på med interessante ting innenfor den. Hva en poetisk skrivepraksis på bloggen kan være, virker stadig litt mindre avklaret så vidt meg bekjent, men det vet leserne av denne bloggen sikkert mer om enn meg.

    Men nå er jeg kategoriserende, og genredannende, og det har jeg ikke lyst til å være, for det er jo nettopp i det avkategoriserende at bloggens styrke ligger. La meg heller derfor avslutte med å si at det nok nettopp er den hybride, grenseløse, improviserende, naturlig grenseløse litteraturen (en konstruksjon, javel) som mest komfortabelt hører hjemme i bloggen. Altså skriften som så å si går der den vil, uten å tenke så mye på de økonomiske kravene som masseproduksjon på papir fører til.

    * Forhåpentligvis fordi jeg har vært trøtt, pga. nevnte masteroppgave.

    [I øvrig også en kort kommentar her som kan være av interesse i forbindelse med det jeg skriver her]

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    Lately, I've been listening alot to Harmonia, an online radio show devoted to early music, with extensive archives available online. It's excellent if you're into that sort of thing.

    25.5.07

    Bergen/Baghdad

    Siden Vagant 2/07 er tilgjengelig for salg her og der i Bergen nå {whoops - my bad. først den 5. juni.}, kan jeg vel nevne at jeg har en artikkel med i det. Den heter "Quiet, besides the occasional explosion - blogging i Baghdad" og er en introduksjon til to irakiske bloggere: Salam Pax og Riverbend. De har begge blogget om okkupasjonen fra innsiden av Irak. Om du ikke allerede har lest dem, kan jeg anbefale dem. Det er nesten ikke en eneste post i dem som ikke forteller en noe nytt om Irak.

    Ellers må jeg ærlig innrømme at jeg ikke er superfornøyd med artikkelen. Jeg skrev den mens jeg egentlig satt med hele hjernen dypt inne i masteroppgaven, og ikke hadde nok kapasitet eller tid til overs til å gjøre den så bra som den kanskje kunne ha blitt. Så språket er litt oppstyltet og artikkelen bærer også preg av at den egentlig er en forholdsvis tvungen sammenslåing av to versjoner av samme artikkel, med helt forskjellige utgangspunkter. Men som den er, tror jeg iallefall at den er en informativ og streit introduksjon til emnet.

    Og forresten, så er det utrolig vanskelig å fastholde en blogg i én lesning (også et stort problem i masteroppgaven min - et av bloggene jeg skrev om gikk ut av produksjon halvveis inne i skrivingen). I slutten av min artikkel skriver jeg:
    Pax og Riverbend blogger stadig, men sjeldnere og sjeldnere. Pax har ikke postet siden juli i fjor, og kan for alt jeg vet være død. Riverbend var vekk fra august til oktober 06, men er nå tilbake av og til. De er vel trøtte og resignerte, som resten av den irakiske befolkningen. Det har i grunnen vært en tendens som har ligget i bloggene deres siden begynnelsen. De dominerende følelsene har alltid vært sinne og resignasjon, men over tid har sinne glidd mer og mer over i resignasjon. (...) Som Irak selv er det nok rimelig å anta at disse menneskene ikke går en lys fremtid i møte.
    Og i lys av det er det interessant å se at Riverbend og familien hennes har bestemt seg for å forlate Irak:
    On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea- leaving ones home and extended family- leaving ones country- and to what? To where?

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    24.5.07

    Pretentious, Wittgensteinian Interlude

    6.4 All propositions are of equal value.

    6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.

    6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

    6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)

    -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    (my italics)
    I never saw this before, but you could actually build most of nonfoundationalist ethics on proposition 6.421.

    If I understand Wittgenstein correctly here, he's saying that ethics in order to have meaning or truth-value, they must be transcendental - that is to say outside the world and beyond language.

    This is also the first principle of nonfoundationalist ethics. Starting from the idea that God either does not exist or does not reveal Himself in the world to stand as guarantor for a transcendental code of ethics ("6.432 How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world."), it follows that there is no higher standard to which to hold any action. It follows from this that the rhetorical actions of the public sphere are where all ethics take place. It's all just us judging ourselves, and that's where we need to take our opinions about what should be the cultural standards.
    6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.

    6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the sense of life became clear to them have then been unable to say what constituted that sense?)

    6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

    6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science—i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy—and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—this method would be the only strictly correct one.

    6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
    I quoted Wittgenstein in my high-school yearbook. God God, I was pretentious. Glad I'm totally over that phase now.

    23.5.07

    tools and familiarity

    Software options proliferate extremely easily, too easily in fact, because too many options create tools that can't ever be used intuitively. Intuitive actions confine the detail work to a dedicated part of the brain, leaving the rest of one's mind free to respond with attention and sensitivity to the changing texture of the moment. With tools, we crave intimacy. This appetite for emotional resonance explains why users - when given a choice - prefer deep rapport over endless options. You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.

    Indeed, familiarity breeds content. When you use familiar tools, you draw upon a long cultural conversation - a whole shared history of usage - as your backdrop, as the canvas to juxtapose your work. The deeper and more widely shared the conversation, the more subtle its inflections can be.

    This is the revenge of traditional media. Even the "weaknesses" or the limits of these tools become part of the vocabulary of culture. I'm thinking of such stuff as Marshall guitar amps and black-and-white film - what was once thought most undesirable about these tools became their cherished trademark.
    //Brian Eno: @The Revenge of the Intuitive@
    Somebody at Apple probably read this one.

    On the other hand, a lack of familiarity with the tool can be interesting too. The most interesting moments with any new tool almost always happen in the first couple of weeks, while you\re still discovering its limits. I\m having a period like that //it\s lasted a few months now// trying to learn InDesign and Photoshop, and starting to understand what those tools can do. Or just last week, trying to learn the ropes of Mikkel B\s camera, while shooting pictures of his book launch *which, btw, I should post sometime soon). Looking over the results later, I realised I\d taken a lot of pictures which I thought I would never have taken normally.

    I think a lot of people, especially artists, actively pursue that feeling on unfamiliarity with their tools, or try to encourage a mix of familiarity and unfamiliarity. Like tuning your guitar in ways it\s not supposed to be tuned. Like if you change the EADGBE tuning to a CGDF#BF or something, and just play things you\d normally play. Suddenly you get all these crazy sounds that don\t sound anything like what you normally play. Eventually you find some riff that you think sounds cool which you\re certain you\ve never played anything like. And then you sit down and analyse the chords and notes and find out you\re just playing a completely ordinary chord progression you use all the time, you just happen to be playing it using timbres and rhythms you wouldn\t normally play it in.

    I think about this now, because I stumbled on the Eno article, and because I\ve suddenly had a lot of tools gone restrictive on me> the guitar in the house only has three working strings, my cell phone charger has gone AWOL and I have no way of getting in touch with anyone, and my keyboard seems to be going through a phase, creating all the @interesting@ punctuation you see here.

    Also, I can feel a fit of blogorrhea coming on. I\ve been unable to think out loud for months now. But I can\t write about a presidential hairdo with this crazy keyboard. That demands some dignity.

    22.5.07

    Ok, so the Zeno joke wasn\t very funny *ancient greek philosophers and references to obscure philosophical paradoxes, as well as inside blog humor_?how could that joke possiblyhave gone wrong__?). Now my keyboard seems to have taken a premature vacation, but I just wanted to stop by to promise that more substantial posting resumes tomorrow, first with a lengthy post concerning Bill Clinton\s hairdo, and to point you towards this gem of the internets {: the aptly named Shorpy. It\s a weblog which posts the most wonderful photographs from before the 1950\s and all the back to the invention of the photograph. It\s almost guaranteed to raise goosebumps every time.

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    Zeno of Elea, noted Ancient Greek Philosopher, Murdered Near Home

    (AP) - Ancient Athens, Ancient Greece.

    Noted ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea was found dead by slaves today outside his residence in Ancient Athens. Details of mr. Of Elea's death are still sketchy and unclear, but the city guards have released information indicating that mr. Of Elea had been brutally murdered while attempting to leave his house.

    Sources close to the household said that mr. Of Elea had been struck in the chest by several arrows. Ground nearby seemed to hold many turtle tracks. Tortoistic involvement is suspected by city guards.

    Said one nearby gentleman: "had it coming, 'e did."

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    12.5.07

    I Ching

    Homer V
    Because I can't say no to someone who just lost a grandparent, I made a new Flickr set of the I Ching patterns in the Blindern library. Homer (above) showed up and things became very Sino-Grecian, if you know what I mean.

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    News Flash: Europe not center of known universe after all

    Hey everybody,

    I'm going to be a little longer with the MA-thing. I've gotten an extension until the 22nd of May because of some logistical issues.

    But I just wanted to share something I learned today completely by accident. As it turns out, Gutenberg didn't invent movable type first after all. In fact, a fellow named Bi Sheng did, in China, way back in the 1040's sometime. His type was made out of baked clay, which was later turned into wooden type by others.

    And as if that wasn't enough to shake my eurocentric view of the universe, it turns out that Michel de Montaigne was not the first essayist, either! Well, I knew that, actually. He just popularised it, and created a really elegant style in it. But I was intrigued by the introduction to this Wikipedia article on Shen Kuo, a Chinese polymath and scholar:
    The Dream Pool Essays (Pinyin: Meng Xi Bi Tan; Wade-Giles: Meng Ch'i Pi T'an Chinese: 梦溪笔谈) was an extensive book written by the polymath Chinese scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031-1095) by 1088 AD, during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) of China. Although Shen was previously a highly renowned government official and military general, he compiled this enormous written work while virtually isolated on his lavish garden estate near modern-day Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. He named the book after the name he gave to his estate, the "Dream Brook". The literal translated meaning is Brush Talks from a Dream Brook, and in his biography in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990), Shen Kuo is quoted as saying:

    Because I had only my writing brush and ink slab to converse with, I call it Brush Talks.
    ...Because this is basically the biography of Michel de Montaigne, set in China. Montaigne was a noted statesman and occasional soldier who sort-of-retired from public life to a country estate near Bordeaux (which he was also elected mayor of twice, while being sort-of-retired from public life). He spent his days reading and writing in his tower and occasionally combating the plague in nearby Bordeaux.

    Lesson: the Chinese do everything before we do, and get only a fraction of the credit for it.

    Oh, and if you haven't read Montaigne, you really, really should.

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