I've spent years defending the importance/relevance of the Nobel lit prize. It's not the end all be all but I always thought it did well as the standard bearer of literature's impact and place in society.

2016 just makes me feel like an idiot. Everyone who has said the Nobel is a farce has been proven correct.

If the Nobel were a serious prize Borges would've won. But alas, he supported the right wing dictatorships of South America.
I'm not gonna lecture you about the fact that the Nobel is as political as it is technical because you already know that. But look at the last two winners: a journalist and a musician. It is obvious that the committe is challenging traditional notions of what constitutes literature.

Also, it is a big fuck you to every American critic who has whined for the last 20 years about Bloom's Big Four not being awarded the Nobel. They already said why they didn't win - American literature is too insular -, but people kept pestering them, saying it was a travesty that Roth or Pynchon was not a laureate(as if there weren't a ton of other countries with equally worth writers in them).

I'd not be surprised if Stephen Sondheim or some screenwriter wins it in the coming years.

Surth

Germany456 Posts

October 13 2016 21:50 GMT

#263

fuck music, when will forum posts be worthy of nobel consideration?

Nyxisto

Germany6287 Posts

October 15 2016 19:44 GMT

#264

I read Inherent Vice earlier this year and thought it was pretty good, but this is really driving me nuts. I think I'm 90 pages in or something and I have absolutely no clue what's going on. There's new characters on every page, they're called Eigenvalue and McClinticSphere, people are hunting alligators in the sewers, I was pretty sure 'V' was a person but then it also seems to be a nightclub and I have absolutely no idea whether the story is taking place in New York or Egypt at the moment. Also there are sentences that just never end, and suddenly people start to sing in Italian

This book might be too much for me

Flicky

England2673 Posts

October 18 2016 12:04 GMT

#265

Speaking of Pynchon, I read The Crying of Lot 49 recently and I've no idea how much I liked it. Not sure how I'd do in a second language reading it. I read it to see if reading Gravity's Rainbow was worthwhile but I'm not sure if I can get through a 760 page book if it's going to be as much as Crying of Lot 49 was. I do like the self-contained world being immediately self-referencing but yeah. Who knows.

farvacola

United States18866 Posts

October 18 2016 12:10 GMT

#266

Gravity's Rainbow is significantly more difficult to get through than TCoL49, so be prepared for exhaustion. The beginning has stuff about banana pancakes and smoking tropane alkaloid laden plants, so there's that to look forward to

corumjhaelen

France6884 Posts

October 18 2016 16:04 GMT

#267

I'm of the opinion that there are a lot of other books, long or short, easy or difficult, pomo or not, that have more to offer than Gravity's Rainbow. I guess what I enjoyed and got from it was mostly already in the Crying, which has obvious advantages if you disregard content.

dmnum

Brazil6910 Posts

October 18 2016 20:37 GMT

#268

I prefer McCarthy and Roth.

Sabbath's Theater and Blood Meridian kick ass, and Portnoy's Complaint is the funniest book I've read. It's not that Pynchon is bad, but in my view he's in a level below.

Anyway, I'm reading this:
[image loading]

It's pretty good, there are a lot of misconceptions about learning out there.

IgnE

United States7681 Posts

October 18 2016 21:06 GMT

#269

what's the biggest misconception you had that the book enlightened you on

dmnum

Brazil6910 Posts

October 19 2016 01:22 GMT

#270

Mainly that spaced rereadings is the best way to learn(the best way is spaced retrieval, i.e. trying to remember what you studied) and that quizzes should be done after studying a topic, but not before(studies show that you learn more if you do quizzes before and after studying).

Edit: also that you learn better when the studying is easy(it's better to have some difficulty, as long as you can overcome it).

IgnE

United States7681 Posts

October 19 2016 03:22 GMT

#271

On October 19 2016 10:22 dmnum wrote:
Mainly that spaced rereadings is the best way to learn(the best way is spaced retrieval, i.e. trying to remember what you studied) and that quizzes should be done after studying a topic, but not before(studies show that you learn more if you do quizzes before and after studying).

Edit: also that you learn better when the studying is easy(it's better to have some difficulty, as long as you can overcome it).

the bolded seems contradictory to me

and i'm not sure what your edit means

dmnum

Brazil6910 Posts

October 19 2016 05:48 GMT

#272

Sorry, was in a rush and couldn't reply properly.

Anyway, on the quizzing before and after testing, they basically did a study where they made one group students try to solve a problem before being told the answer, while another group was presented with the answer being made to solve the problem. One month later they did quizzed both groups and the first one did better than the second.

The part about studying being better when it's hard branches into a lot of studies, so I won't cite them all, but here's two examples: once again they took two groups of people to teach how to play hockey: one practiced a part of the game(skating, for example) until they had mastered it, and then moved on to the next task(let's say shooting the puck), while the other practiced a little bit of skating, then moved on the shooting the puck, and so on, before training skating again. The latter group felt frustrated about being made to move on to another thing before mastering the first because, according to them, that made them feel like they learned almost nothing; however, on latter tests, they did better than the first group;
On another test, they made one group read a topic twice, while another group read it once and then tried to remember what they read without looking at the book; the second group learned better.

There's a bunch of examples, and all the studies mentioned in the book were published in peer reviewed periodicals, so it's credible.

This article presents some of the points made in the book: https://info.maths.ed.ac.uk/assets/files/LandT/what_works_what_doesnt.pdf

Of course it doesn't go in depth into the topics, and the book contains a lot more information, but it's only 8 pages so it's worth a quick read.

Surth

Germany456 Posts

October 19 2016 10:20 GMT

#273

none of this has anything to do with learning

IgnE

United States7681 Posts

October 19 2016 14:46 GMT

#274

why not?

IgnE

United States7681 Posts

October 20 2016 16:45 GMT

#275

On October 19 2016 14:48 dmnum wrote:
Sorry, was in a rush and couldn't reply properly.

Anyway, on the quizzing before and after testing, they basically did a study where they made one group students try to solve a problem before being told the answer, while another group was presented with the answer being made to solve the problem. One month later they did quizzed both groups and the first one did better than the second.

The part about studying being better when it's hard branches into a lot of studies, so I won't cite them all, but here's two examples: once again they took two groups of people to teach how to play hockey: one practiced a part of the game(skating, for example) until they had mastered it, and then moved on to the next task(let's say shooting the puck), while the other practiced a little bit of skating, then moved on the shooting the puck, and so on, before training skating again. The latter group felt frustrated about being made to move on to another thing before mastering the first because, according to them, that made them feel like they learned almost nothing; however, on latter tests, they did better than the first group;
On another test, they made one group read a topic twice, while another group read it once and then tried to remember what they read without looking at the book; the second group learned better.

There's a bunch of examples, and all the studies mentioned in the book were published in peer reviewed periodicals, so it's credible.

This article presents some of the points made in the book: https://info.maths.ed.ac.uk/assets/files/LandT/what_works_what_doesnt.pdf

Of course it doesn't go in depth into the topics, and the book contains a lot more information, but it's only 8 pages so it's worth a quick read.

none of those methods really make sense for self-study of philosophy and theory. they are memorization techniques. and they shit on "marking the text". what am i to do?

Surth

Germany456 Posts

October 20 2016 18:02 GMT

#276

you are to burn down university!
i cant tell you why until next year, but i thought "burn down university" was a snappy title for a thesis. ill find the reasons later.