In synopsis, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, a lapidary first work of fiction by Silicon Valley computer scientist Zachary Mason, sounds like an overly clever postmodern literary jest. This elegant collection of very short stories consists of 44 purported pre-Homeric variations on the legends of the Trojan War and the pragmatic Odysseus’s homeward wanderings, as recounted in the arch manner of a more recent blind poet, Jorge Luis Borges.
Borges (1899-1986), composer of metaphysical conundrums about infinite libraries, has become a Siren for bookish young men of the computer age.
I first read Borges several decades ago. Overwhelmed, I immediately began to write a short story in the style of that sightless librarian. I resolved to fictionalize the true but oddly Borgesian story of how the economist John Maynard Keynes, as tribute to his favorite hero of the Enlightenment, Isaac Newton, bought a trunk of the physicist’s unpublished papers, only to discover that Newton cared more for alchemy and numerology than for science. In Keynes’s words, “Newton was not the first of the Age of Reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians …”
Then, however, I found a girlfriend, and the world was spared my ersatz Borges story.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey might have turned out almost as dire. Mason presents a pseudo-translation of a “papyrus excavated from the desiccated rubbish mounds of Oxyrhynchus,” as he explains with Borges’s deadpan combination of intimidating scholarship (Oxyrhynchus is an actual archaeological site in Egypt) and adjectival extremism (not “dry,” but “desiccated”).
John Updike listed Borges’s fixations as “Dreams, labyrinths, mirrors, multiplications approaching infinity, … Zeno’s second paradox, Nietzsche’s eternal return, the hidden individual destiny, the hard fate of … warriors, [and] the manipulations of chance.”
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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20 comments:
How did Sailer go from champion of IDIOCRACY to an admirer of Borges? El mundo never fails to amaze me.
In addition, in Odysseus, that most capable of men, Mason has a hero through whom his quiet but strong emotions—nostalgia, regret, and resignation, chiefly—feel wholly earned. In one touching story beyond Borges’s range, a Kathryn Bigelow-like goddess Athena proposes marriage to her favorite mortal at the end of the Trojan War:
“I need hardly add that I could not accept her. … She is beautiful and quick and her mind is like a lightning flash but she is a god … Not long after that things went bad. I do not think she persecuted me—that would be beneath her—but I have felt her absence …”
ROTFLMAO. What are we to make of this? Kathryn-Bigelow-like-Athena? It seems Sailer is smitten with Bigelow and sees her as some kind of ageless goddess. ROTFLMAO. It could well be that Sailer--Odysseus was a sailor too btw--identifies with the 'capable' hero and imagines Bigelow proposing to him. ROTFLMAO. (I just hope Mrs. Sailer didn't read this article too carefully for meaning.)
Funniest of all, the idea of the great Athena proposing to Odysseus. I mean gimme a break!!! Odysseus was clever but a mere boy to the great Athena.
And the idea that the great Athena could be compared to Bigelow, who by the way, is probably closer to Artemis in spirit--though that too would be an insult(to Artemis of course).
Just how is this better than Borges? I never read him but the idea of a great goddess proposing to some clever trickster is on the level of Superman comics.
I first read Borges several decades ago. Overwhelmed, I immediately began to write a short story in the style of that sightless librarian. ...
Then, however, I found a girlfriend, and the world was spared my ersatz Borges story.
A face that sunk a thousand literary careers?
Hey, did you see Borges' latest book?
Neitehr did Borges.
Is this like SWPL's idea of the Classics?
Sounds perfect for Kindle. More like a text for playing around than going from beginning to end.
Book as puzzle game. Less to be read than inter-referenced with touch of buttons. No wonder some silicon valley geek wrote it.
Btw, Borges reminds me of Penelope who worked on the same weaving-stuff day in and day out for yrs and yrs and fooled everyone. Such cleverness, such obsession, such devotion, such deception.
It seems that if Kafka found the labyrinthine nature of thought and society oppressive as well as interesting, Borges seems to have found it rather fascinating and even liberating. Instead of fretting that he was going nowhere or was lost, he seemed to feel at home being nowhere-always-going-somewhere. Maybe it was part of being blind.
How much dreck has the world been spared due to the pity shown a hapless lad by a comely lass? Quite a load.
We get it -- you had a girlfriend.
Off topic, but they are mentioning Steve Sailer more than usual over at Commondreams.org: "I wouldn't favor reparations if I were aligned with people like Steve Sailer."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/08-6
I noticed this a few other times recently, but didn't save the pages.
he has a wife, not a girlfriend. It is much worse. no matter what the object believes
Hypocritical quote from Keynes. As Master of the Mint, Newton put his genius to work combating inflationary coin-clipping. He also switched the pound "sterling" from silver to gold, giving England a solid gold standard that was essential both to the Industrial Revolution and imperial expansion, including the prosperity of the American colonies. England's gold standard lasted almost three centuries. And even today, despite decades of inflation and devaluation, the Pound is the world's oldest currency that hasn't been replaced by a new currency.
But it was Keynes who branded gold "a barbarous relic," which led to Nixon taking the U.S. off the gold standard in 1971, after which followed the rest of the world. Nixon declared, "We're all Keynesians now," as he launched the 1970s "malaise" decade of stagflation (stagnation and inflation). We're still suffering from inflation jamming middle-class incomes into high-income tax brackets. Reagan indexed incomes to inflation, but didn't make it retroactive.
And the 2000s were another decade of vast inflation because Bush-Greenspan and Obama-Bernanke followed Keynes instead of Newton. The housing boom/bust and the Bush Depression followed. And the end of our miseries is not in sight.
Sir Isaac may have been an alchemist trying to turn lead into gold; but in practice he turned a gold standard into lasting prosperity.
Sign a petition to have Steve post the comment about Kathyrn Bigelowesque Athena being a case of ROTFLMAO.
I don't get it. I think I am now demonstrably dumber for having read the article. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
"How did Sailer go from champion of IDIOCRACY to an admirer of Borges? El mundo never fails to amaze me."
A free ranging genius, that's all.
"John Updike listed Borges’s fixations as “Dreams, labyrinths, mirrors, multiplications approaching infinity, … Zeno’s second paradox, Nietzsche’s eternal return, the hidden individual destiny, the hard fate of … warriors, [and] the manipulations of chance.”"
As opposed to what? John Updike's fixation on middle-aged men desperately looking to score some p**sy? Which is the more uplifting? Which of those two - Borges or Updike - will be read in a hundred years?
Keynes's comment about Newton's interest in alchemy is a classical example of judging people of a previous age by today's standards. Transmutatory alchemy was not considered superstitious or 'alternative' in the seventeenth century. It was the received science of matter. Only later did the impossibility of elemental transmutation by chemical means become generally accepted.
Alchemists were capable of precise quantitative analysis, particularly in the assaying of precious metals. As John Seiler has noted, Newton became Master of the Mint, and such knowledge was essential to him.
We might better view economics today as being at about the same level of development as astronomy or chemistry were in the seventeenth century. Consider that the great astronomer Kepler cast horoscopes at the bidding of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, while the (al)chemist Sendivogius, who identified what we now call oxygen, and had a correct understanding of its role combustion almost two centuries before Lavoisier, attempted transmutations for him.
The obvious present-day parallel to the astrologers and alchemists employed by seventeenth century rulers is found in the role of the government economist. Politicians today want predictions of the future - economists supply them instead of astrologers. Politicians seek ways to get out of their financial problems - and think economists can provide them, just as princes and potentates thought alchemical transmutation could fill their empty treasuries.
We have hived off the supersition and charlatanry from astronomy and chemistry in the past four hundred years. How long will it take to purge them from economics?
Volume 2 will consider the myriad ways one can wander around Dublin.
Keynes's comment about Newton's interest in alchemy is a classical example of judging people of a previous age by today's standards.
Traditionally, the best magicians were the best scientists. (Newton, Galileo, Bruno, Parsons) Science and magick were never enemies of each other - but both were enemies of organized abramic religion.
Anon. of 3/11, your examples are not well chosen.
Newton was, indeed, a believer in chrysopoeia (transmutatory alchemy). That did not make him a 'magician,' a follower of alternative or rejected knowledge. The feasibility of transmutation was received opinion among the savants of his day. Boyle and Locke also believed it. The modern understanding that the metals are distinct elements, rather than being composites of the four Aristotelian, or the three Paracelsian elements, came later.
Galileo was not a 'magician' at all. He was vehemently opposed to the belief in astrology. He denied that the moon had any influence on the tides, because that concept was too reminiscent of astrology to suit him. You'd have been better off to use Tycho Brahe or Kepler as examples, since both of them are recorded to have cast horoscopes.
Bruno was certainly a magician, and a sort of pagan or Hermetic theologian, as well as being a dramatist and poet; but he was not much of a scientist. See Dame Frances Yates, "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition." Bruno's heliocentrism was purely incidental to his Hermeticism. It was in no sense an advance in the practise of astronomy, since Copernicus had already revived the heliocentric theory, and it was not theoretically refined or empirically demonstrated until Kepler and Galileo, respectively.
Jack Parsons was an unusual character, a follower of Aleister Crowley, and as the inventor of the JATO, contributed foundationally to the development of the modern solid-composite fuelled rocket as used in the space shuttle booster. Even so, it is quite a stretch to put him in the same league as Newton or Galileo. With Bruno, maybe - although Bruno wrote much better poetry.
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