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Down the Rabbit Hole
Worldcon got me interested in SF again. I mean, I never stopped being
interested in SF, but I had pretty much stopped trying out new SF
authors. The only one of the Hugo nominees I'd read was The Algebraist.
Suddenly I'm back into it again, partly thanks to having read several
volumes of Dave Langford's reviews that I bought at the con, partly
through being back in fandom and hearing people enthuse about things
again. A half-dozen paperbacks arrived today from Amazon, and for a
change I'm going to read something other than computer books.
While I'm setting about fixing my reading habits, I thought I'd also try to learn something about Literary Theory. Up to now, I've worked on the assumption that the whole field is mostly obfuscatory nonsense -- I read Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's book Intellectual Impostures, and Sokal's ludicrous and hilarious Social Text hoax, which would certainly give you that impression. Anyway, there was a panel at Worldcon -- "Knit Your Own John Clute", or some such -- where the panellists were mostly academics with backgrounds in Theory, and the question was raised: is there a Magic Decoder Ring? How can a layman begin to make sense of this stuff? The panel unanimously recommended Peter Barry's Beginning Theory.
I've just started reading Beginning Theory, and I think I'm going to like Prof. Barry. By page 7, he's already reassuring us that "the whole body of work known collectively as 'theory' is based upon some dozen or so ideas, none of which are in themselves difficult ... we must not assume that the difficulty of theoretical writing is always the dress of profound ideas, only that it might sometimes be ... challenges are fine, but they have to amount to something in the end." Heh. He then proceeds to reduce these dozen ideas to a bulleted list, before setting off on a tour of the field, one chapter per -ism.
So: cover me, I'm going in. Oh, and if I start bibbling on at parties about jouissance and différance, please slap me until I return to sanity. Ta.
While I'm setting about fixing my reading habits, I thought I'd also try to learn something about Literary Theory. Up to now, I've worked on the assumption that the whole field is mostly obfuscatory nonsense -- I read Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's book Intellectual Impostures, and Sokal's ludicrous and hilarious Social Text hoax, which would certainly give you that impression. Anyway, there was a panel at Worldcon -- "Knit Your Own John Clute", or some such -- where the panellists were mostly academics with backgrounds in Theory, and the question was raised: is there a Magic Decoder Ring? How can a layman begin to make sense of this stuff? The panel unanimously recommended Peter Barry's Beginning Theory.
I've just started reading Beginning Theory, and I think I'm going to like Prof. Barry. By page 7, he's already reassuring us that "the whole body of work known collectively as 'theory' is based upon some dozen or so ideas, none of which are in themselves difficult ... we must not assume that the difficulty of theoretical writing is always the dress of profound ideas, only that it might sometimes be ... challenges are fine, but they have to amount to something in the end." Heh. He then proceeds to reduce these dozen ideas to a bulleted list, before setting off on a tour of the field, one chapter per -ism.
So: cover me, I'm going in. Oh, and if I start bibbling on at parties about jouissance and différance, please slap me until I return to sanity. Ta.
no subject
I thought this book was very good indeed
Bit of hard thinking needed in some places but very well explained, and lots of food for thought. Plus, very reasonably priced.