tarigwaemir

Stanley Hall on the Feast of St. John Gualbert

1. ( Real life update )

2. Issue 3 of India and the Conundrum is up, featuring cover art for Via Misadventure drawn by the lovely milchstrasse. Note to self: finish writing chapter 6! And actually write chapter 7 too, while I'm at it. I have an idea for fifthmus but need to work out the premise some more in my head; I think the only way to really write an interesting story would be to push it in a possibly unpleasant direction, but: (1) am I willing and (2) how far should I go? Oh, maybe I should just give up and write a dialogue for one of the other prompts; it would be easier to write but a lot less interesting. (I would not tolerate this sort of defeatist thinking in any other endeavor, but somehow I allow myself to get lazy about fiction-writing. Yet another reason why I was not meant to be a fiction writer.)

3. ( Lucia di Lammmermoor )

4. Alphabet blogging: sub_divided asked about kendo. ( Kendo )

twelve asked about (song) lyrics. ( Lyrics )

schwimmerin asked about memories. ( Memories )

5. magicnoire posted a TV Tropes meme quite a while ago:

If you want to play, comment here, and I will assign you three random(-ish) tropes from the TV Tropes Wiki. Pick one, and either:

A) Write a story based on that trope -- any fandom or pairing you want, no minimum length, just have fun with it.

B) Write meta about that trope (in general or in a particular fandom).

Post your story or meta to your own journal, or wherever else you want. Comment here with a link to what you've written.

Step right up and get your tropes here!

( Beleaguered Childhood Friend, Disposable Woman, Innocence Virgin on Stupidity )

6. ( Notes for myself )

All right, that's enough for today.

Yours &c.

Haste Street, on the Feast of St. Ildephonsus

Happy birthday silvermuse89! Just in time, I hope. ^_^ And happy birthday to svz_insanity in advance, in case I forget tomorrow.

jaebi_lit pointed out to me that Angela Gheorghiu (whom we saw in the San Francisco Opera's production of La Rondine last November) is returning to sing Mimì in La Bohème next season. ( SF Opera 2008-2009 season )

To add to the general temptation of hearing live classical music, the San Francisco Symphony is having a ticket sale this weekend too. ( SF Symphony season )

In other news, I've been feeling rather dispirited for no reason at all and have resorted to reading Wodehouse to cheer myself up. Luckily, Wodehouse is very amusing.

Yours &c.

Blair Hall Apts., on the Feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga

Forty pages in, and the overriding question is: The Name of the Rose = medieval!AU of Sherlock Holmes?

(I'm sure there are other numerous literary references at work, but I am too tickled to death by the idea of Sherlock Holmes as 14th-century Franciscan monk to notice them.)

My rudimentary dog Latin has been sufficient (so far) to keep me afloat in all the untranslated passages and phrases, but I wish I actually knew the language.

In other news, last night we went to Cunningham Park for one of the Metropolitan Opera's summer outdoor concerts. La Bohème with Hong Hei-kyung as Mimì and Roberto Aronica as Rodolfo. We managed to sit up fairly close to the stage and had a great view.

I'm probably spoiled by listening to recordings of Jussi Björling in the role, but the tenor sounded a little too energetic and brassy to fit my "image" (aurally speaking) of Rodolfo. He had no problems with volume, and certainly there was a nice color to his voice, but he expressed himself rather unsubtly. My mother said it was a problem of control: too abrupt a change in dynamics whenever he went to fortissimo. His best moment came at the end, when Rodolfo cries out, "Mimì! Mimì!" (The very first time I heard La Bohème was through a televised broadcast of a San Francisco Opera production when I was about seven, and this last scene still stands out in my memory as the moment when the whole point of opera really clicked for me.)

In contrast to the tenor, Hong Hei-kyung was spectacular. I watched her in La Traviata in another one of these outdoor concerts last summer, and she had sounded a little weak after two high notes in the first act. But she was in perfect form yesterday night; I think Mimì really must be one of her signature roles. During "Mi chiamano Mimì" in the first act, I actually had tears in my eyes when she sang, "Ma quando vien lo sgelo, il primo sole è mio, il primo bacio dell'aprile è mio!"--her voice was that beautiful.

It's easier to enjoy performances for operas you know very well because so much of the thrill lies in the anticipation of a beloved aria or phrase (or even note) and having that anticipation perfectly fulfilled.

Father woke me up at unholy hour this morning to go practice driving in a nearby parking lot. As expected, I'm exhibiting a very slow learning curve while driving. angelyrique and I have been taking driving lessons together for the past few days from an instructor, and both of us have been having trouble with turns despite having had three lessons already. Next lesson is next Wednesday so I'm trying to keep in practice by practicing with my father. Road test is in late July...ugh, I hope I pass. I have to pass.

I'm also supposed to be riding my bike regularly although I haven't for the past four days. My father's philosophical dictum: "You must become one with the bicycle." -_-

Yours &c.

Blair Hall Apts., on the Feast of St. Bartholomew

1. Meme from the last post: number 2 is right. schwimmerin, sub_divided and themadpoker were all correct. I looked back at the meme's instructions and realized that I wasn't supposed to post lies that were even slightly true, which means I cheated. (But "slightly" true? I work by Boolean logic here, either a statement is true or false.)

The first book I ever read on my own was "Cinderella" not "Sleeping Beauty" (the first chapter book was The Secret Garden). There are in fact four functional laptops in my house although no one's touched the last two (one of them dates back to 1994 and the other is the Sony Vaio I used in high school that is still technically functional despite its many other, um, issues). I was born in Korea but we first moved to Houston when I was five months old. I didn't move to New York until I was almost ten. My favorite German author is Hermann Hesse not Mann, and as tryogeru well knows, I don't in fact own all the Gundam Wing soundtracks (although I do own the first three OSTs plus the first Blind Target drama).

2. svz_insanity says that she likes the idea of a support group for blind_go writers. Anyone else up for it? I'll probably create a thread instead of an entirely separate community, but you can comment on it (anonymously, if you so choose) as much as you want.

3. For some unknown reason, I started compiling a character list for Ravages of Time. By the way, in the Korean translation, Meng calls Liaoyuan Huo "oppa" which means "older brother" but is only used by females (males say "hyeong" instead), even when she isn't dressed up as Diaochan. Is there a similar distinction in Chinese, and if so, does she use the female form in the manhua too?

4. Have been meeting people right and left, including sub_divided and her friend on Sunday for a Manhattan excursion, where we visited Kinokuniya, Midtown Comics, the Strand and the café in Barnes and Noble all in one afternoon. I came away with volume 7 of Ouran Koukou Host Club for paradiseraph's birthday present, and Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler and Gide's The Counterfeiters for myself. I...still wish I got that $10 huge hardcover edition of The Decameron with excerpts in the original Italian (because the translators felt they couldn't adequately convey the concept of "magic"). But I don't have any space on my bookshelves, and my mother would be annoyed. My impulsive bookbuying has been significantly curtailed by the problem of shelf space. -_-

5. On Tuesday we went to a free concert by the Metropolitan Opera in Central Park. La Traviata, starring Hong Hei-kyung as Violetta and Kim Wookyung as Alfredo. Yes, Koreans in both lead roles. Isn't it nice? Hong Hei-kyung started off brilliantly (my mother commented that her voice has a similar timbre to Renata Tebaldi's although Hong lacks the exquisite control) but she cracked on two high notes in the middle of the first act and sang very cautiously after that, going very softly on the high notes. Quite sad. She recovered a little in the second act and was back in full force after the intermission, enough to give a beautiful rendition of Violetta's dying scene. I did think her voice sounded a bit, hm, tired even in the last two acts, although that may have been affected to depict tuberculosis. Kim Wookyung is making is debut with the Met this season, and he has one of those truly sweet tenor voices (so sweet, my mother says, that you could fall in love with the voice alone). Very light though, sounds almost like popera at points. Still, it was a good performance. Unfortunately, I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have because there were people walking back and forth in the Great Lawn throughout the performance, not to mention all the flashes of cameras going off (I have no idea why, since it was outdoors at night). I also don't have an affinity for Verdi; I have to concentrate to appreciate his music, and I wasn't in a condition to focus. -_-

Back to writing...hopefully.

Yours &c.

Lowell House on the Feast of St. Matthias

I ♥ Google, and I firmly believe it is going to take over the world. The reason for my enthusiasm: Google Calendar. I've tried to use a lot of calendar applications before, but for some reason, Google's is the only one that makes me want to keep using it. Probably because there's no overload of useless features. Also because it's accessible from the Internet, which on campus means almost anywhere.

Also, Brother Consolmagno is my hero (link thanks to officialgaiman).

I've decided to attempt updating my recs journal, dragondormant, again. I've been keeping track of fics through del.icio.us now, and although I still forget to bookmark things, having that little button on my Firefox toolbar makes the process a lot easier.

Rest of the alphabet drabbles are postponed until after my last final next Monday. Sorry for the wait! I really should stay off the computer, but my take-home final requires me to use Matlab. -_- Also, as soon as that last final is over, I'm going to head to the Coop to see what all the excitement over His Majesty's Dragon is all about. ^_^ Never say that I wasn't one for jumping on bandwagons.

EMI is releasing an incredibly cheap new series of famous recordings called EMI Classics Historical. ( Opera blather )

Yours &c.

Lowell House, on the Feast of St. Roderic

This weekend marks a milestone in the short history of our blocking group, thanks to it being our dear schwimmerin's birthday on Friday. To celebrate, we took a perilous journey to the Assembly Square cinema in Somerville to see Constantine. None of us had ever been to the theatre before, so we plotted out our journey carefully, but we still missed the bus we were supposed to take and ended up riding the T to Sullivan Square instead. With nothing to go on except the directions provided by a lab tech at the CGR, we journeyed across highways through the slushy snow only to discover the theatre was in the same district where Jenny and I had gone with the kendo club to play laser tag during Gasshuku. ^_^ Interesting. The district was very sketchy, as they say, but we still had a great time. I rather enjoyed Constantine, despite Keanu Reeves' utter lack of acting ability. (Could he speak with a more deadpan voice? I had to stifle the urge to giggle at certain serious moments because his vocal expression was nil.) Seriously though, I liked the feel of the film--very sleek--and the story was awesome, aside from gratuitous plot devices to get shots of main heroine in wet white tank top with black mesh bra underneath. Honestly. (Well, at least they didn't give into the temptation of actually contriving a makeout scene.) The girl couldn't act either, but the supporting characters were fascinating, especially Gabriel, who just flabbergasts me with her? his? its total insanity. Anyway, if you don't go in expecting a great Oscar-worthy movie, Constantine is pretty fun. I think I am going to check out the comic books if I ever get the chance though, since the concept was the best part of the film.

On Saturday, we, along with Daera's cousin, who is visiting from Duke, went to see the Lowell House Opera. schwimmerin was House Manager, and we were all justifiably proud of her "mad lighting skillz". ^_^ Don Giovanni was delightfully Mozartian, although the lead tenor didn't really have much of a voice (he saved up for his main aria, where he really let loose and would have managed to impress me if he hadn't spoiled it by hitting two wrong notes). The acting was typically operatic, but not as stilted as usual, and the sopranos were all pretty impressive. The baritone who played Leporello was excellent too, although his voice seemed fatigued at points. For an amateur production, it was indeed brilliant, although I have to admit that the modern set and costumes did not impress me. (I feel that unless the opera itself is a modern composition, one ought to keep opera sets lavish and overdone, in the traditional style. The typical convolutions of an opera storyline can't really be supported by a minimalist set.) Actually, the orchestra was the most impressive, which is pretty much expected since Harvard does not lack for first-class instrumental performers.

This morning, to finish off our celebrations, we went to the Cheesecake Factory at Cambridgeside Galleria. (The Galleria makes the Queens Borough Mall look downright dinky by the way.) I stuffed myself on an eggplant sandwich and then a slice of chocolate peanut butter cookie dough cheesecake, which reminded me that yes, I do have a chocolate threshold. >_> I know, I know, one can never have too much chocolate, but! that cheesecake nearly killed me. It would have been a happy death, though. We all ordered different cheesecakes and got a taste of each one. Daera got the monstrous Mud Pie confection which was so enormous and came with a charming little cup of hot fudge. She had to have most of it wrapped up. Actually, I don't think the rest of us managed to finish our cheesecakes either. We just sort of sat there, comatose from the overstimulated taste buds (well, I was comatose). I make it sound so miserable, but I did enjoy every bite. Next time though, I won't order such a large entré and just splurge on cheesecake. Just that single slice would have filled me. ^_^ I took a three hour nap afterwards to digest (my system really did just shut down completely), but I'm still full from that meal.

Anyway, while I haven't gotten any work done, I have managed to take care of various "administravia" (Is that actually a word? Prof. Morii likes to use it.) regarding scholarships, jury duty, etc. I still find it amusing, by the way, that I got called for jury duty before either of my parents, even though I'm the one who can't possibly respond to a jury summons. Oh, and I think I've just figured out a way to spend an all-expenses-paid week in Korea! There's a KSEA (Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association) conference there this June, and I think the lab won't mind if I took just a week off to go to a science conference. Of course, there's no way I'm going to see Korea properly in a week, but still, a week is better than nothing. Not to mention, all the airplane tickets and hotel fees are covered by the organization. ^_^ Free is good. Now if only I can manage to pull off something similar for the summer Gasshuku.

Despite my good mood, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. (Again!) Oh well. I'm really glad I don't have that much work this weekend because none of it is getting done. And that's an end to the cryptic message of the week.

Yours &c.

Post-script: How could I forget? ( Belated Fanfic Author Appreciation Week, day 1 )

This reminds me that I should make that fic recs post soon.

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

Ahahahahaha! Touya-kun is so cute! Just after he's had this huge argument with Shindo, he defends him with this earnest little expression on his face, saying, "Don't underestimate Shindo just because he's a beginner dan!" and the poor man to whom he's been speaking turns around with a confused expression and asks Ichikawa, "....weren't they fighting?" ^_^

I forgot to tell you all about Luhrmann's production of La Bohème. Firstly, please do not say, "Oh, isn't Rent based on that?" (You have no idea how many times I heard that from the people sitting around me, going, "Oh, yes, this is just like Rent." -_-) Yes, Rent, a most excellent musical, is based loosely on Puccini's opera. But the similarity is mostly superficial. What is the most essential part of an opera? Music, mood and characters. None of these have transferred over to Rent, which has only really modernized the plot and nothing else. Of course, there are also character counterparts, but don't tell me that the poetic and idealistic Rodolfo is anything like bitter and cynical Roger. Nor sweet, innocent, "alone in my room" Mimi of La Bohème anything like the flamboyant and bright Mimi. Schaunard does seem to have a similar personality as Angel sometimes, but with his deep baritone and sheer jolliness, the resemblance is fleeting. And Colline is simply not Collins. I'm sorry. He isn't. The only real parallel is Musetta with Maureen, both being fickle flirts and glorified mistresses/prostitutes, with tempers to match, but Joanne is hardly the pompous and utterly ridiculous Alcindoro. And sorry, Marcello isn't Mark. Marcello is bold, the real leader of the four Bohemians, and he is certainly cynical, but never depressed. I think the real difference is that Marcello isn't a tenor and sounds much more, well, macho. Not in a sporty or obnoxious kind of way, but...Marcello would never sing "The Tango Musetta" with Alcindoro, let me put it at that.

Furthermore, there's just the music: La Bohème is opera at its best, with soaring, lyrical arias sung in fluid and ever so melodramatic Italian. The music is a far cry from the modern beats and tones of Rent, which is certainly far from traditional even in the musical world. While La Bohème is the most accessible of operas to modern audiences, with the most convincing storyline and the most appealing characters, it is still very much the traditional opera, and the music reflects that. Mother thinks that La Bohème won't be too successful, considering the empty seats in the theater, and I think it's because no matter how amazing and brilliant Lurhmann's staging is (and no matter how young and beautiful the singers are), an opera is still an opera, and you can't go see La Bohème expecting a musical, not even a dramatic musical like Les Misérables, which some people call an opera. But Les Miz isn't an opera, I'm afraid, and even with all its epic drama, it does nothing to prepare you for Puccini. So give both Rent and La Bohème their full due. Rent is much more than a modern rendition of La Bohème, but a complete, original musical in its own right, with a bit of inspiration from Puccini. And La Bohème is something you should appreciate on its own merits as an opera, so don't go see it simply because you liked Rent. (You won't really enjoy or understand it on those terms, I'm afraid.)

The singing was a bit weak, though much better than expected. It's not Metropolitan Opera quality, not by a long shot. The singers have good tones (especially Rodolfo, who sounds exactly like the dreamer he is) and good potential, but their voices need to develop a little more. They sound off on some of the high notes, too uneven a performance. But oh...the staging! Wow! You need a movie director to think up scenes like that! Luhrmann was really arrogant: there were no curtains so we could see the stage crew do all the scene changes, including watching them fill the stage with smoke and sprinkle "snow" on the ground. Once they're finished, the chorus and singers walk on the stage, freeze in place, and there's this black-and-white (well, more in sepia tones, I guess) photograph scene, which looks incredibly real, although a little dull. But then! The lights come on, and the entire stage is lit up in color, blues and oranges and reds, against smoky black, and you have a rooftop apartment, the Latin Quartier at night, the customs booth at the French-Belgian border come to life! Hyperreal, if that's a word! It's amazing, like with a snap, the scene is transformed, even though nothing's really changed except the lights. The second scene was so awesome, and it felt like you really were in the middle of midcentury Paris, with its gaudy nightlife all around you (complete with prostitutes displaying themselves in windows). The Metropolitan Opera would never have the courage to create a scene like that. It was movie drama, anyway, not opera drama, but I think it was perfect. I loved the staging best, and the singers acted wonderfully, if their singing was a little under par. By the end, the singing weaknesses didn't matter, and I teared up as Rodolfo cried out, "Mimi!" and fell weeping onto poor Mimi's dead body. ;_;

What's really cool is that I first watched La Bohème in a televised broadcast of the Australian Opera's production (way back in 1990, though I think I saw it a little later, like 1993), and Luhrmann directed that too. (That wasn't so amazing in terms of staging, but the singers were all young and beautiful and top-class singers. It's hard to get all three, you know, they're usually fat with wonderful voices or thin and gorgeous with not-quite-so-wonderful voices. But the Australian production was all three, and I sobbed at the end, romantic cynic though I was, even at the tender age of seven or eight.)

( Quizzes and battle imps )

...Tari

Post-script: Two more notes. One thing I didn't like about La Bohème on Broadway is the loose translation. I mean, I understand they want to make it modern and accessible, but when the soprano is clearly singing, "Grazie," you have to be pretty stupid not to realize that it means, "Thank you," not "Maybe," or whatever useless word they put in there. I mean, "Maybe" made sense in context, because Mimi was sort of acting coy in a shy way, but honestly, she sings out very clearly and audible, "Grazie," not whatever the Italian word for "maybe" is. It wouldn't have killed them to be literal.

Also, Mother and I rented Bridget Jones' Diary from the library yesterday, because I knew she liked romantic comedies. It wasn't so bad, but Mother missed most of the jokes because they spoke too fast in an unfamiliar accent. But what really struck me was that the entire plot of the movie was Pride and Prejudice, and not just because it had Colin Firth playing a character named Darcy of all names. You have Bridget Jones harboring a secret crush on her boss, Daniel Cleaver, who is really a very sleazy and slimy sort just like Wickham. Mark Darcy and she however do not get along at first, just like Lizzy Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. (That's putting it mildly, they really don't like each other at all.) Then Darcy starts to see Jones' charm, while she gets embroiled in an affair with Cleaver, who tells her all sorts of lies about Darcy (again just like Wickham). Cleaver dumps Jones, Darcy confesses, then Cleaver comes back, huge fight between the two rivals, Jones rebukes Darcy, she dumps Cleaver and finds out the truth, and then after a few more mishaps, Jones and Darcy are happily reunited once more. Isn't that a complete Pride and Prejudice ripoff?

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

Look, I took the same quiz that Lyd-chan (lush_rimbaud) did!



Um...how coincidental. Weird. O_O

The reason why I didn't get Merry was because I don't smoke. The reason why I didn't get Frodo or Sam is because I conspicuously avoided those choices. Personally, I wish there was a "Which Middle-Earth Elf Are You?" quiz, but I suppose there wouldn't be too many pictures for that yet. Oh well.

I am definitely turning into one of those people who put quiz pictures all over their weblog. Here's the results of the Fruits Basket selector:



Which Fruits Basket Character are you?

Hiro-kun is precocious, arrogant and very sarcastic. Just like me. ^_^

I am still in the middle of The Myth of Sisyphus, by Camus, or rather I returned to the book after a week of avoiding it. The subject matter is probably way over my head. After reading for three pages without really understanding what was going on, a sentence finally clued me into what the last section was about. >_< You see, Camus is describing in languid analogies the paradoxical state of expecting a rational world and living in an utterly irrational reality, in the context of the uncertainty of all empirical experiences. He then goes on for quite some time about how this describes the state of the absurd, the "desert" as he calls it, and what is one is forced to accept and not accept about it. Except what he is really doing is exploring every nook and crevice of the same paradox, and I didn't even realize that he was describing a paradox until now! Oy vey! I mean, I was trying to understand why he was saying one thing and then something else which completely contradicted it! He could have simply said, explicitly, "I am discussing a paradox," instead of letting me suffer. You probably won't understand why I had no clue for three pages, unless you've been reading the same translation I have. And unless you're as dense as I am. But seriously, I don't think I'm that dumb. I was paying attention! I think Camus was being too obscure! Okay, I'll stop ranting.

But now it's getting pretty interesting. He is saying that all the existentialists before his time chose to escape the absurd through religion, by deifying and surrendering to the utter irrationality of the universe, but in the same moment denying and rejecting the absurd, because the absurdity of the irrational world does not exist if we no longer struggle to see it rationally. And BTW, irrationality is not simply refusing to argue logically or leaping to unfounded conclusions. Irrationality is the inherent inability for us to know anything about ourselves or the world around us. In that sense, it is the complete opposite of the empiricists who claimed that we can only know through experience, because it says that we cannot know, but it is also the consequence, the child as it were, of empiricism. Isn't that weird? Come to think of it, that was what Camus was discussing in the third section, even though I didn't get it at the time. Anyway, Lyd-chan, if you're reading this, this means that the irrationality we're discussing here is not your type of irrationality, but a confrontation with the possibility of nihilism which you completely refuse to acknowledge. Or at least I hope you refuse to acknowledge it. Otherwise you'll still be depressed and unhappy.

So according to Camus, the previous existentialists were caught up in the paradoxical state of escaping the absurd by embracing it. He says that this is unacceptable, because he can only be certain of one thing and that is the absurd. (If you look at that statement closely, it's another paradox: certainty of only uncertainty.) He must seek a new way to live with the absurd without ending up denying it and without ceasing to struggle against it. Yeah, I know, you must be thinking, "Eh?" How on earth is that possible? Well, one of the options is suicide, which we know only because Camus opened up by considering the "problem of suicide," as he calls it. But because in the introduction, he says that he ultimately concludes that suicide is not legitimate after all, we'll just have to wait and see what the other option is.

Anyway, I didn't realize that he was talking in paradoxes in order to discuss the paradox of the absurd until now.

One thing came to mind while I was reading on the subway. All those existentialists prior to Camus, Sartre, and the rest of their generation are indeed the "theistic" existentialists, as my mother's philosophy professor told her in college. And Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir and the rest of them, whoever they were, are considered the "atheistic" existentialists, precisely because of what Camus says in The Myth of Sisyphus: they are unable to accept religion as a way to live with the absurd because they see it as an escape and a denial of the absurd even though it is also an acceptance. Kierkegaard with his leaps of faith into the irrational, religious stage of existence is what Camus refuses to accept. I was wondering whether historians of philosophy recognized this split between the "theistic" and "atheistic" existentialism simply because Camus pointed it out first or whether because it is obvious.

On a lighter note, apparently I will be able to attend the Metropolitan Opera before I go to college. Mother and I want to see Turandot, but then we would have to go by ourselves, because the opera buff at our church likes the grandes romances better than elaborate fantasies. In other words, La Traviata or Aida. But frankly, Mother and I both prefer operas like La Boheme or...well...Turandot. We like Turandot because it is essentially a fairy tale at heart and there is an archetypal or mythic feel to the storyline which carries over into the music and moves us more deeply. While the grandes romances are just melodramas or, as Mother says, "soap operas" at heart. Comment: Character development in Turandot is poor (I mean, she falls in love with the prince at the end, but there's hardly any psychological buildup to it), but it is still a "better" story. It has more meaning. Do "mythical" stories tend to slant towards "philosophy" rather than "psychology"? I'm not going to explain what I mean by philosophy vs. psychology, because it takes too long and hopefully by now you've stopped reading anyway. I know that modern literary fiction, at least to me, is primarily "psychological" rather than "philosophical." I consider it a great failing of twentieth-century culture. But what's interesting is that the more "mythical" stories--like Lord of the Rings and the best of fantasy and science fiction--do have the "philosophical" content that a lot of modern literary fiction lacks. Not that "philosophical" and "psychological" are mutually exclusive; for example, Dostoyevsky's works are masterpieces of both.

Essentially the distinction I'm talking about is the emphasis on new ideas and attempts at general truths versus the emphasis on the subjective state of mind. "Psychological" stories by nature must have excellent character development. "Philosophical" stories must have excellent ideas underneath. While stories can be both "psychological" and "philosophical," a mostly "philosophical" story like Turandot has very little character development. And while not all fantasy and science fiction are "philosophical," many of them still follow the trend with less emphasis on character development. Take, for example, Harry Potter. Now, the Harry Potter books do have great character development, but for me, it's not exactly the central focus of the book. In fact, I think that the appeal of the Harry Potter books is that without such detailed exploration of the psyche, the characters are general enough to allow the reader to fill in the gaps with aspects of his or her own personality. In other words, archetypal rather than realistic. And thus, what "psychology" there is becomes more like "philosophy." I know, I'm using really vague terms.

In any case, purely "psychological" stories lack this archetypal appeal. Which is why Mother and I don't particularly want to see La Traviata, even though it has great arias.

...Tari