Literature Discussion Group: May 2015

21 May 2015

Avast Ye, Mateys!

Argggghh!

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Now that we've got all of those pirate cliches out of the way, let's talk about this month's book: Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow.

OFF TO A SLOW START

I'll admit it took me a while to really get into this book (somewhere around page 100), but even before I started enjoying the story, I found plenty of interesting issues to consider.

Squatter's rights, for instance.

And the simultaneous proliferation of homeless people and abandoned buildings.

And of course the whole idea of how being booted off the internet for a year would affect my life and the lives of my family members.

BIG ON IDEAS

That's the thing about Cory Doctorow. This is the third novel of his that I've read, and regardless of what I've thought of the plots (which, overall, have been good), they've all been full of fascinating ideas.

Ian, Evan, Ward, and I all went to hear Doctorow speak at a little bookstore in New Hampshire a few years back, and he was impressive. It is clear that he is a progressive thinker with a firm grasp on not only the technologies that currently shape our lives, but on the likely technologies of the future and the importance of staying on top of the laws and policies that seek to influence the way we interact with these technologies.

For a sample of Doctorow's insight on such issues, check out this 4-minute clip about the role of technology in our lives--as George Orwell imagined it and as Doctorow sees it.

DISCUSSION TIME

We'll likely be talking a bit about tech when we get together (for our last meeting!) on May 28th, and I'll have my usual list of questions, but for this discussion (our last one!), I'd really like it if each of you could come with one issue to discuss.

You can...

pose a question to the group (about issues raised in the book; its symbols, themes, or characters; the language or style of writing--anything!).
create something inspired by the book--an essay, drawing, sculpture, collage, photograph, video, or whatnot.
pull out a quote or two that you liked and get input from others on them.
link the themes of the book to modern issues and current events.

In essence, you can do anything!

Just do your best to bring something that will generate a minute or two of discussion or contemplation, which, given how smart you all are, could be (yep, that's right) just about anything.

See you in a week!

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Looking For Hamlet Scholar Talk

This is another event at the PPL in March in honor of the First Folio Exhibit, and it's on Wednesday, March 9th from 12-1:30pm in the Rines Auditorium.

"Focusing on Hamlet, University of Southern Maine Professor Ben Bertram will examine the way editors, directors, actors, teachers, and scholars choose among folio, quarto, or conflated versions of the plays. He will also be accompanied by actors who will perform Hamlet’s soliloquies and join in a discussion of how Shakespeare’s words make it from the page to the stage."

Get the full description here.

Definitions and Clarifications

pneumatic, adj. - literally, full of air. This term is often used to describe women in BNW, and seems to suggest that a woman like Lenina, who's "wonderfully pneumatic," is buxom, curvy, shapely, and yes, even bouncy. But pneumatic could also have a second meaning here, and that is to indicate that someone is a bit of an air-head, light on the intellectual matter, or not bogged down by weighty matters or considerations.

viviparous, adj. - a creature that is viviparous gives birth to live young that develop inside the body, as in the way mammals reproduce. Humans are viviparous (at least, they were until A.F. 632).

Malthusian, adj. - based on the beliefs of Robert Thomas Malthus, a British economist who argued that "population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease." - The Free Dictionary

Pavlovian Conditioning, n. - also called Classic Conditioning, it's a way of getting a subject to make certain associations between two previously unrelated things; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was the psychologist who discovered that if he always rang a bell right before feeding his dogs, they came to associate the sound of the bell with getting fed, and therefore would start to drool upon hearing the bell. Here's a great comic related to that experiment.

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