Comments on: Non-Holiday Holiday Reading

By: Froog

Froog — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 05:27:36 +0000

As an undergraduate, I studied Greek philosophy. Plato referred to the defining characteristic of something, its essential -ness abstracted from any particular physical manifestations of the thing, as a Form. I recall reading one commentary where the author, perhaps unwisely, had chosen to use the notation F to stand for the Form of something, leading to much faintly risible rumination on what constituted the F-ness of, for example, a table. Or a clock. In this author's view, the fundamental question posed by Socrates was, "What is it that makes F things F? One wag had written in the margin, "How the F*** should I know?"

By: John

John — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:09:12 +0000

Jules: I loved the lists of clockish words…

When I was in college, a history professor’s lecture once centered on how people came to think of things as those things — whatever they are — as opposed to any others. Consider a table, he said. Nowadays, if you asked someone what makes something a table as opposed to, well, a bench or something, s/he would get into the various uses to which tables (vs. benches) were put. But in the Middle Ages (I believe he said), a person would say that a table is a table “because it partakes of tableness.”

…which reminiscence was triggered when I saw that the ogress had looked into specialists dealing with — as well as “clockism, clockship, clockdom, clockation, clockition, and clockhood” — clockness.

(Admit it. You were wondering where I was going with that, weren’t you???)

cynth: You can read “The Veldt” online here, if you don’t mind small green print on a black background. If you DO mind it, of course, there are numerous ways to fix that…

“Nebulous and scary” is always good for me, too. The Missus and I were talking recently about the film of Stephen King’s “The Mist.” We both liked that, although the ending was pretty bleak; she told me that the short story/novella (which I haven’t read) ends in a completely open-ended way — I think I’d prefer that ending to the one the movie gave us.

By: cynth

cynth — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:17:13 +0000

Jules brings up a good thought. What were the stories we remember from our younger days? I read a Science Fiction story called “The Time of The Great Freeze”. I must have read it dozens of times. The last time I checked it was out of print, but I still remember the description of the world in a deep freeze. And the first time I read The Veldt, that great short story by Bradbury. I loved stories like that with endings that are sort of nebulous and scary.

By: Jules

Jules — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:24:50 +0000

Okay, that had me laughing outloud in spots.

And where can I get an old inspirationalist to keep me from worrying about stuff that isn’t worth worrying about?

I’m embarrassed that I went to look up psychronologist, just in case it was a real thing I just didn’t know.

I love to hear which stories from childhood stick with people. When I was young, my brother and I saw a short film adaptation (on HBO, of all places) of Ray Bradbury’s short story, “All Summer in a Day,” and it haunted us. It wasn’t till I was a teen that I tracked down the story.

And I love the notion of your teacher stopping to laugh at what he was reading to you all.