Ara 13. CovingtonMoore, Inc. 2007, Paperback, 224 pages, $12.68
Book Description: Beginning as a modern military civil affairs action, Drawers & Booths spirals into a metafictional journey, testing the boundaries of reader and author, narrative voice, and characterization–the wrapping for Ara 13’s satirical analysis of morality in light of evolutionary psychology.
From the Publisher: An “Outstanding Book of the Year” Bronze Medal “Storyteller of the Year” About the Award: Drawers & Booths won an IPPY—the world’s largest international book awards competition, independent or otherwise. Ara 13 competed against releases from production houses such as, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Yale, and other university presses, as well as Pulitzer finalist Dave Eggers’ production house, McSweeney’s, and Barnes & Nobles’ alliance press, iUniverse. Ara 13’s novel was selected from 3,175 entrants representing 16 countries: Trinidad to Thailand, Croatia to Czech Republic, and France to Finland. Drawers & Booths was one of 32 books to receive the moniker, “Outstanding Book of the Year,” and Ara won a Bronze Medal as “Storyteller of the Year.” According to 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards, Ara 13 exhibits “the courage and creativity to take chances, break new ground, and bring about change, not only to the world of publishing, but to our society.”
From the Author: About Metafiction: Metafiction is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously draws attention to its status as an artifact by challenging the relationship between fiction and reality. Metafiction reminds the reader that he or she is reading a fictional work. Often, when the boundary between reader and book is blurred, a metafictional device is employed. This can be mild, as with a first-person narrator acknowledging the reader; or it can be extreme and challenge the boundaries of reader and author, as with Drawers & Booths. This reading experience, though not spatially congruent is chronologically linear, which avoids reader disorientation. In short, the metafictional elements are meant to entertain, not confuse.
Arthur L. Kopit, End of the World With Symposium to Follow
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
Ira Levin, Deathtrap
Dimitris Lyacos, Nyctivoe
Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade)
Thornton Wilder, The Skin of Our Teeth
Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife
Federico García Lorca, Play Without a Title / Untitled Play (1935)
In his recent Scientific American article, Michael Shermer brings out some facts that may explain why and how untested stories—theories in search of an hypothesis, if you will—can trump scientific reasoning. I think that some of the facts about brain functioning that Shermer discusses also provide an insight into possible reasons for why the conflict between science and religion and other mythic types of thinking has persisted for so many centuries and appears set to persist for many centuries into the future.
Here is a quote from the article; you can read more via the link that follows;
We have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.
The July 11, 2008 Point of Inquiry interview with Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age involves the question of how does the glut of information and ongoing proliferation of information devices that contribute to this glut affect the quality of our thinking and ability to sustain creative attention to that which needs attending?
from the Point of Inquiry introduction:
In this interview with D.J. Grothe, Maggie Jackson discusses her controversial thesis about the downsides of the information age, and how the distractions from modern technologies lead to less critical thinking and less fulfilled lives. She explores the causes and effects of the erosion of attention, including media culture, the internet and personal communication devices . . .
Click here to go to the Point of Inquiry site and listen to the interview.
From the introduction to the June 27, 2008 Point of Inquiry podcast.
P.Z. Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris and the author of Pharyngula, the most heavily-trafficked science blog online.
In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, P.Z. Myers details his expulsion from a screening of Expelled, Ben Stein’s documentary which claims that the scientific community is limiting academic freedom by not allowing Intelligent Design to be taught or discussed in the schools. He explains the background of how he and other scientists were invited to appear in the film under false pretenses, and what his response has been. He addresses “focus groups” and other marketing methods for finding the best way to communicate science to the public. Calling himself part of the “radical fringe,” he elaborates on his view that leading science organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement for Science and the National Academies of Science are “playing a shell game” on the public when it comes to teaching the compatibility of science with religion, arguing instead that there is a direct link between science education and religious skepticism. And he also shares his thoughts about the future of the atheist and rationalist movement in the United States.
What is marvelous, amazing, about nature is that it was here before us and will be here long after we are gone. In the meanwhile we sit around the campfire and entertain ourselves with stories.
The following selections from a recent popular book on cosmology, Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang by Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, would make for good reading at a campsite under a dark, star-filled desert night sky:
Cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe, has some unique limitations that call for a high degree of caution. Scientists cannot perform direct experiments on the universe, and they cannot travel back in time. The best they can do is gather indirect information about the history of the universe through painstaking observations of distant objects that emitted their light a long time ago and try to piece together a logical account. But the evidence is uneven, with highly detailed information about some epochs and little or no information about others. Even if one story fits all the available evidence well, there is always the possibility that another story might fit just as well, or better (7-8).
The history of the universe can be compared to a play in which the actors–matter and radiation, stars and galaxies–dance across the cosmic stage according to a script set by the laws of physics. The challenge for the cosmologist is to figure out the story line after arriving at the show 14 billion years too late, long past the crucial opening scenes (18).
For some time now, a year, two years? the word “narrative” is more or less being continuously used by almost every journalist, reporter, commentator, politician, and critic with access to a microphone or pen.
And now another word is being similarly co-opted for its figurative punch: “brand.” So far I only hear it used by politicos; we’ll see how far it penetrates.
“The Republican brand. The Democratic brand. Obama’s brand. McCain’s brand.
ould there be a more important or timely question than that of how, in 2008, to interpret the Second Amendment? Today in a 5 to 4 decision the Supreme Court ruled that Americans do indeed have the right to own and bear arms for self-defense and hunting.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
What most interests me here, apart from the future effects of this ruling for public safety, is Antonin Scalia’s use of the phrase “historical narrative” to support the majority decision. I’m not sure that “historical narrative”–what has been, no matter whether right or wrong, false or true, ugly or beautiful, cruel or kind–is a good enough, sufficient reason to be for something.
Questionable if not immoral, even horrific, practices and behaviors can be “supported” by “historical narratives” of one sort or another. History purports to tell us why or how events and things came to be; the law should be more concerned with “oughts” that are founded in compassion and reason, not an “historical narrative.”
I am not saying I disagree with the decision. But I do want to point out that “historical narrative” is vague in a way that legal terms like stare Decisis are not.
I will have to read the entire decision with the majority and minority views laid out in full before I decide whether to agree or disagree with the majority.
Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for stare decisis:
In other words, stare decisis applies to the holding of a case, rather than to obiter dicta. As the United States Supreme Court has put it: “dicta may be followed if sufficiently persuasive but are not binding.”
The doctrine that holdings have binding precedential value is not valid within most civil law jurisdictions as it is argued that this principle interferes with the right of judges to interpret law and the right of the legislature to make law. Most such systems, however, recognize the concept of jurisprudence constante, which argues that even though judges are independent, they should rule in a predictable and non-chaotic manner. Therefore, judges’ right to interpret law does not preclude the adoption of a small number of selected binding case laws.
im Russert to our dismay and shock passed away this June 13, 2008, 2 days before father’s day, about which, fatherhood, he had so much to say—of his dad, big Russ, and his son, Luke. Farewell truth’s friend.
It has been 4,209 years and 4 days since the writing down of what may be the earliest known recorded narrative, the Sumerian "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta." A series of accounts describing the conflicts between Enmerkar, king of Unug-Kulaba (Uruk), and the unnamed king of Aratta (probably somewhere in modern Iran or Armenia). It is notable for its strong parallels to the Tower of Babel narrative of Genesis. [Wikipedia]
The oldest story can be bought at Amazon. EPICS OF SUMERIAN KINGS: THE MATTER OF ARATTA. Click image for more info.
Mimesis and narration have returned from their marginal status as aspects of “fiction” to inhabit the very center of other disciplines as modes of explanation necessary for an understanding of life.
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