menardian

[jazzfish]

Language, Languages, and Dialect in Aspects, an essay by Andrew 'Draco Concordans' Plotkin. I got to the line near the end of the essay where he reiterates the essay's secret title and I started laughing so hard I couldn't explain myself for about a minute, because GODDAMMIT MIKE.

Even if you've not read Aspects, if you've any interest in linguistics or conlangs ('constructed languages') I imagine it's a fascinating read. (And then you'll want to go read Aspects, but that's only proper. I'm itching for a reread myself.)

Also a shout-out to my ENGL1204 teacher, Dr Elizabeth Richey, who I believe was at Tech on loan from somewhere in South Carolina. She introduced me to Borges, without which I would not have cracked up nearly so much. As someone whose name I have forgotten (probably on Making Light) said, the real benefit of a classical education is that you get all the jokes.

Comments

[reedrover]

If you are talking Jose Luis Borges, then I’m right there with you. He’s amazing and difficult and twisty in both original and translation. If you have Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols, it helps with some of the weirder parts a lot.

[jazzfish]

(Jorge) Yes, absolutely! Dr Richey handed out a copy of "The Aleph" for class, and I was enthralled enough to immediately dig up a copy of his collection Ficciones. I loved "The Library of Babel" and "The Garden of Forking Paths" in particular but pretty much all of his stories are just so great.

[davidgoldfarb]

Sounds interesting (Zarf is a very interesting guy) but I haven't yet read Aspects and I fear spoilers. Can you allay those fears?

That last quote sounds like TNH to me but I wouldn't be astonished if it were abi or someone else.

[jazzfish]

It's as close to spoiler-free as possible, I think: lots of character names, a little about the nature of two, discussion of a couple of jokes. Absolutely no plot or character-development notes. (Also, read Aspects! :)

It does sound like TNH but for whatever reason I don't think it was her.

[davidgoldfarb]

I own Aspects, I just haven't gotten to it yet. Soon. (As in, certainly before the end of this year, probably before the end of this quarter.)

[davidgoldfarb]

Just hit this sentence:

This post is for people who have read Aspects. If you haven’t, go read it. Then come back here. I am going to go into detail about some, ah, aspects of the book.

...and no, I think I'm going to put it off.

[jazzfish]

Fair enough! I believe it's "this will be rather confusing without having read the book" rather than "this spoils things from the book" but that is a perfectly reasonable position. And the essay will still be there when you get done. :)

[davidgoldfarb]

True! I appreciate the pointer.

[davidgoldfarb]

I just finished Max Gladstone's Last Exit (recommended) and started on Aspects. Thought you might be interested to hear.

[jazzfish]

I am excited to hear what you think, of both the book(-fragment) and Zarf's essay.

(And yeah, Last Exit was quite good. There's some way in which it rubbed me not-quite-right, and that might just be down to it being a mostly quite grim book despite being fundamentally hopeful. But I am glad I read it, and glad I have a copy so I can reread it.)

[davidgoldfarb]

I did think that Last Exit went on a little longer than it might have. It didn't help that I guessed a key part of the ending well in advance — I've been thinking about that particular Lovecraftian trope for some small time now, sparked both by stuff Kurt Busiek has done in Astro City and by Paul Cornell in his "Witches of Lychford" series.