The Reading Room

Rand al'Thor

1:43 AM

Woo, george-orwell is no longer in our top three tags!

4

Bookworm

3:11 AM

0

Q: What is Belle's secret?

The final pages of Death of a Ghost describe Mrs. Lefcadio looking at a self-portrait of her husband, and much is made of how different it is from the famous Sargent portrait of the man. And then she turns it over: Written across the back in the painter’s enormous hand was a single phrase: ...

BESW

@Bookworm This is something that's been bugging me for years, and I've gone out and bought books analysing her work to try and figure it out but they say nothing.

Bookworm

3:34 AM

0

Q: Was Wolf Hall originally written in the first person?

When reading Hilary Mantel's novel Wolf Hall, I noticed that the protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, is referred to as often as possible simply as "he"/"him" rather than by his name. This includes in contexts where "he" would more naturally be read as referring to someone else: many times when reading ...

hilary-mantel wolf-hall

Shokhet

5:03 AM

@Gallifreyan I got a little distracted on the way. You might want to see scifi.stackexchange.com/q/155738/41144 :)

Gallifreyan

7:40 AM

@Shokhet It's not a distraction if it's about Sandman (you'll see when you read further)

b_jonas

11:43 AM

@MartinEnder See mythology.meta.stackexchange.com/q/263/197 for a possibility of where to start

Martin Ender

Oh, thank you! :)

If it's part of the Prose Edda, I must have actually read that one before, but I'll probably try to read all of my four volumes again at some point anyway.

BESW

12:28 PM

My Allingham questions get upvoted, but nobody can answer them.

Martin Ender

I could say the same, minus "Allingham" :P

(And weirdly I think the highest-scoring one is the least interesting one, but voting just tends to be like that...)

BESW

> The eighteenth-century publishing industry helped create two nations of readers... one, a tiny minority, practiced discriminating fact from fiction by reading expensive, time-consuming books that commented self-consciously on their own epistemological and stylistic status; and the other, the vast majority, sought escape and self-improvement by reading cheap works that were rapidly consumed. - Mary Poovey, Genres of the Credit Economy

Mithrandir

3:04 PM

Hm, there's the Prime Directive in Hard to Be a God... (cc @Gallifreyan)

Gallifreyan

3:23 PM

@Mithrandir indeed. It is in fact a somewhat serious point, though the guys from ST violate it with much less serious consequnces

Ladies and gentlemen, the topic challenge has been announced to be Hard to be a God.

7

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Once April begins, I was thinking maybe you (or some other Russian speaker) could go and tell people in Russian Language and Stack Overflow на русском chat about the topic challenge - maybe some of them will be interested in joining up to participate. Let's aim for multiculturalism in our user base as well as our question base!

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor I could go right away, so that they can prepare as well

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Well, best not today - SE is quieter on weekends, and I bet that applies even more on 'professional' sites like SO or Russian SO.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor I don't think that'll be a problem for Russian Language....

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan o_o

Also, woo, pins.

Rand al'Thor

3:29 PM

@Gallifreyan Oh, one of those rooms/sites.

I bet RU.SO chat is super-busy though.

Gallifreyan

there should be another Russian Language SE here somewhere

... but its chat is dead as well...

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Hang on, what? How can there be two Russian.SEs?

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor same way there are two English language SEs

Rand al'Thor

Dafuq? :-O

Gallifreyan

One is geared towards Russians, the other towards learners

Rand al'Thor

3:35 PM

There really are two Russian.SEs!

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan yeh've still got rus.so

Rand al'Thor

[russian.se] and [rus.se] -> Russian Language and Русский язык

I never knew.

Always assumed those would be just the same site.

Gallifreyan

Stuck remembering how to say "challenge" in Russian

This is so frustrating

Riker

@Randal'Thor wait, are those 2 different sites?

@Gallifreyan cool!

Rand al'Thor

@Riker Yes! That's what's got me so surprised.

Gallifreyan

3:38 PM

@Riker At least that's how I explain their existence

Riker

ah

yeah, I was wondering whether 1 was a russian-language mirror of the other

but apparently not, questions are different

Gallifreyan

Both seem to fair pretty well Q&A-wise, but their chats are dead as dodo.

Riker

@Randal'Thor how come I keep getting random 20-40 reps from all my orwell answers then -.-

@Gallifreyan well, the english one has 1.6 questions per day

the other has like 10 according to the sidebar

> 10,937 questions
23,460 answers
98% answered
6,843 members
39,208 visitors a day

Rand al'Thor

@Riker So do I. People must be still browsing them, although the rate of new ones has gone down.

Riker

for the russian language russian language SE

@Randal'Thor yea

Gallifreyan

3:41 PM

Should we maybe post a meta on according websites?

Riker

I got 65 rep on mar 17 from animal farm + 1984

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan According??

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor The Russian ones, along the lines of "Come ask Strugatsky questions"

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Oh, you mean post on other sites' metas.

Sorry, I was thinking you were proposing a meta post here.

I dunno ... they might frown on such promotional stuff.

Gallifreyan

Yes. By the way, the people in Russian SO had the exact same confusion about the two Russian Language SEs.

@Randal'Thor Their fault if they don't have an active chat where I could ask such a thing. I don't actually lose anything if I ask... maybe? It only matters to me if the people here sanction this.

Rand al'Thor

3:46 PM

If you want to be sneaky, you could ask a good question on one of the Russian SEs about the use of Russian language in Hard to be a God, link it to the Lit topic challenge and say this is what inspired your question, and hope it hits HNQ ;-)

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Hmm. I even have a question in might, though I must admit I wanted to save it for the challenge here. Ah, the things I do for promotion :) I'll type it up in a moment.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Again, might it not be better to wait until April, or at least until a weekday?

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor I'll save it on my desktop just to remember later

Bookworm

4:30 PM

2

Q: What does Tiriel's blindness symbolize?

In Tiriel, it's mentioned several times that Tiriel is blind, first in Chapter I, line 27: Look at my eyes, blind as the orbless skull among the stones! And later again in Chapter II, lines 61-65: Soon as the blind wanderer enter’d the pleasant gardens of Har, They ran weeping, like f...

symbolism poetry william-blake

0

Q: In Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman", what do the Three Sisters represent?

The Three Sisters - the Hecatae, the Fates, the Kindly Ones - are ubiquitous in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (and in other works). They appear in the first volume to give Morpheus three answers: and then appear in almost every volume, in one aspect or another, until finally they appear as the Kin...

symbolism comics neil-gaiman the-sandman

Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm @Gallifreyan Do they have to represent anything? The Fates (and various other names) are a well-established thing in several mythologies: Greek, Roman, even Norse. They're not something invented by Gaiman for symbolism.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor I know, I just want to know what Gaiman intended them to represent. Dream is very serious about his responsibilities - I feel like they may have been a mirror answer to this, like him taking the responsibility for his other deeds. But that's just my speculation.

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor answered your question, just want to check that in answers you don't actually have to quote the book, an author interview is fine?

Bookworm

0

Q: Are there any good critical works on Hermann Hesse?

I am doing a study on Hermann Hesse for a class (specially on Demian, but also focused on Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game), and I am searching for critical works, analysis or any type of paper on the author. I am aware that Hesse is considering somewhat "low literature", per say, ...

symbolism german-literature

Beastly Gerbil

Um, is a question saying 'are there any good works' going to be on-topic @Bookworm?

Martin Ender

4:43 PM

Huh, "low literature"?

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Author interviews are acceptable sources, but they usually shouldn't be taken at face value, but instead analysed and criticised almost as if they're part of the text.

Beastly Gerbil

So is what I've done OK?

Rand al'Thor

In other words, "Mantel says this, end of story" wouldn't be a particularly good answer, but "Mantel says this, which makes sense because this, and matches what we see in the text in these places" would.

Beastly Gerbil

gotcha

I might expand and do what you just said if I can find a pdf of the book online, otherwise I'll just leave it

lo and behold

Rand al'Thor

5:25 PM

@Beastly I edited your answer to include more summarisation of the sources you cite, rather than just quoting them without comment, and also to give a more accurate title/summary for the whole answer. If you feel my edits have gone too far, feel free to rollback (but I may then undo my upvote).

Beastly Gerbil

Nope, looks fine. Thanks for telling me how to compose such answers too, will keep in mind for future answers

Rand al'Thor

5:49 PM

Writing good SE answers is a skill one has to learn, that's for sure.

4

Shokhet

@Randal'Thor Haven't read the question yet, but IMO a better question would be about the significance of their changed names in P&L. Dream calls them by some names, and they respond (paraphrasing here) that they don't go by those names anymore but now use other ones

Rand al'Thor

It's mostly transferable between sites, with some exceptions such as Puzzling or PPCG where answers are quite different just by the nature of the site.

Shokhet

Possibly related to the weirdness of 70 years of Dream's absence

@Gallifreyan

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor I still go UGH sometimes when I see my old stuff. I've fixed a bunch of stuff, but not everything.

Rand al'Thor

@Shokhet Ping @Gallifreyan - I know nothing about The Sandman :-)

Shokhet

5:51 PM

@Randal'Thor I did :-)

Rand al'Thor

Ah, jinx.

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor I made a quick edit to include this fact:

After a quick search, I found the book contains the word 'he' 5022 times, 'his' 2872 times, 'him' 862 times, but the book only says 'Cromwell' 63 times. There is no doubt this is purposeful.

And no, I didn't count...

Rand al'Thor

I just saw.

And holy ****. Only 63 uses of the word "Cromwell", in a massive tome of a book entirely about Cromwell and his life?!

Beastly Gerbil

Yep, and that includes chapter titles and stuff

It says 'Thomas' 247 times, though that includes Thomas More...

Rand al'Thor

Thomas More, Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Boleyn ... that book/period is full of Thomases.

Gallifreyan

5:56 PM

Huh, what did I miss?

Beastly Gerbil

This

Rand al'Thor

200,000 words, and only 63 of them are "Cromwell".

Yeah, that's deliberate all right.

And that must include people addressing him, or stuff about his father or family.

Beastly Gerbil

Gtg now, @Rand if you want to do some of your own searches the pdf is here and you can use ctrl+f

Rand al'Thor

Are you sure it's only 63, and you haven't missed a 0 on the end or something?

Beastly Gerbil

Check yourself

Only 63

Rand al'Thor

5:57 PM

OK, will do.

Thanks btw :-)

Beastly Gerbil

Yw :)

Actually should probably include how to do that in the answer. Will do later

Gallifreyan

@BeastlyGerbil Upvoted (didn't read but seems legit) :P

Beastly Gerbil

Hehe :P

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan ...

That's how crappy and wrong answers gain success.

(not saying BG's answer here is crappy or wrong, of course, just that you should make sure before voting)

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor What? :D We need rep as we're in beta

@Randal'Thor Seriously, you should be taking things I say as if they all had a giant ":D" at the end

Rand al'Thor

6:02 PM

@Gallifreyan PLEASE don't upvote blindly just because "we need rep".

5

(I know you're not serious, but that needs saying just in case anyone else might be.)

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor But of course, I do make sure before voting. My criteria for upvoting are simple - if there's research effort present, I upvote.

Beastly Gerbil

Well, there has to be research effort, and the answer has to actually answer the question

You could research Charles dickens for a Harry Potter question

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil And to be correct, or at least a reasonable interpretation.

Beastly Gerbil

Well there are very few questions which can have a 'correct answer'

Except for ones asking for facts

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Seems to me that "correct" is nothing but an outcome of reasonable, in which case we can have more than one "correct", especially about literature

@BeastlyGerbil Jinx!

Rand al'Thor

6:07 PM

You could research Lord of the Rings and argue that it's an allegory for interactions between the pigs in Tolkien's aunty's uncle's back yard. But I'd need a lot of persuading to upvote that.

Mithrandir

Oog. I'm sick of 'jinx'. My sisters use it all the time, and it's getting annoying.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Definitely. That's one of the interesting things about this site.

But, you know, "all interpretations are equal, but some are more equal than others".

;-)

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor ah, that's where those Hobbits disappeared to! ;)

The allegory is that just as nobody suspected what the Hobbits were capable of, we shouldn't underestimate people/animals just because they look like pigs. Those pigs did some very surprising things. There's also that pigs are notorious for eating, and hobbits are fat and eat 5 times a day. They also live underground, in the dirt.

Bookworm

0

Q: Origin of this contradictory poem?

Does anyone know where this poem originates from: One fine morning in the middle of the night, Two dead men got up to fight, Back to back they faced each other, Drew their swords and shot one another. I suspect it is from the Victorian era but would be interested to know if i...

poetry history-of-literature

Mithrandir

Pigs may look harmless, but they have sharp tusks.

... And I have no idea how to draw an allegory for pigs with LotR :P

Rand al'Thor

6:13 PM

Pigs don't live underground ...

But yeah, you see what I mean. It would need to be a very good argument to be worth upvoting.

Mithrandir

They live in the dirt

Rand al'Thor

Especially since Tolkien always said LotR wasn't intended as any kind of allegory.

Standback

6:48 PM

@Mithrandir :

literature.stackexchange.com/questions/1885/…

Not really, no :P

I'm thoroughly convinced the answer is 100% wrong.

I could write a new answer, buuuut it's not high on my list of priorities atm...

Mithrandir

@Standback ...okay then. You said that you were working on it, so I wondered if you had ever finished.

Standback

@Mithrandir Ah, no. That was before it was made clear how absolutely, entirely wrong my interpretation was. It turned out not to be an "edit and touch up" kind of thing...

Rand al'Thor

@Standback Really? :-( I upvoted it.

Standback

...but it's, well, wrong...

Wouldn't be the first time misinformation got upvoted, but... :P

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor <_<

Mithrandir

6:58 PM

7

A: Do shared link to ANSWERS also count for Announcer, Booster, Publicist badges?

No. These badges are specifically for linking to questions like the description says. The link must be clicked from outside the network in order for it to count for this purpose.

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Funnily enough, I didn't upvote that one because I thought it had too little original work :)

Mithrandir

...of course, answer links do count now, but I didn't think the out of the network changed.

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir Cheers!

Mithrandir

Cheers Gallifreyan — Bill Bow 4 mins ago

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir That must be outdated. I posted this answer with loads of in-site links and got all these the next day.

And why would I have linked to this post anywhere outside SE?

Gallifreyan

7:04 PM

@Mithrandir Cheers, Mithrandir!

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor Huh. So that answer now has absolutely no value :P

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Why indeed? :D

Mithrandir

So everyone can also go click on all of these :P

Shokhet

13

A: How does the announcer badge work?

But is this only when I share a link to this quesiton in one of my answer or can I also share the link (with my user id somewhere to count the accesses) somewhere else, maybe facebook? In order to gain the Announcer badge you must share a link outside the SE network. Sharing a link...

...there was a recent question on MSE that said that referrals count toward to the badge as long as the thing is not on the same SE site (IIRC)

Mithrandir

7:20 PM

*shrug* IDK.

Shokhet

9

Q: I received the Announcer badge for a link to a site-meta shared on a hot network question

I received the Meta Academia’s only Announcer badge for linking this question. If I am not very much mistaken, the only place where I shared this question was this comment on a popular question. According to this answer I should not be able to receive the Announcer badge for this, as I only share...

bug status-bydesign per-site-meta publicity-badges

Mithrandir

I have a feeling that I can get a good question out of how Falling Up by Shel Silverstein is arranged, but I can't think of one...

Like, the poem "Safe". It's about checking before crossing the street, and then there's an illustration of a safe falling out of the sky on her head.

And the one about pets, in which the girl says all these nice things about her pet and how mean the hotel is that they won't let it in and shows a picture of a monster.

Or the poem about the eels, one of which got a new job on a different page of the book, and if you go to that page you see it.

...I could continue.

Like, can they be enjoyed without the accompanying pictures drawn by the author?

Gallifreyan

7:39 PM

@Mithrandir There is a whole Russian anecdote about that: two guys prepare to cross the street. One of them looks on the left only, the other looks first left, then right. The first asks: "Dude, why did you look right?", to which the wiser one replies: "We're in Russia, mate. I'd also look up if I was you."

Mithrandir

One way street, I take it?

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir <_< yes, sure, if you want to be boring :D

Rand al'Thor

7:56 PM

@Gallifreyan My favourite Russian anecdote is the one about the bird and the cowpat.

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor it seems I made an error on the cromwell question

'Cromwell' appears 307 times

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor I don't think I've heard it :)

Beastly Gerbil

Nope scratch that, 374 times

Still, not that much

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil There we go. I did think 63 seemed remarkably low, given the number of people who address him by name over the course of the book.

But yeah, 374 is still surprisingly low in a 200,000-word book.

Beastly Gerbil

I searched ' Cromwell ' with a space either side. That took out things like 'Cromwell's', with an apostrophe immediately after

Rand al'Thor

8:00 PM

Tut, tut. Need to improve those searching skillz ;-)

Beastly Gerbil

Apparently 187,240 words...

Rand al'Thor

That would be a sensible thing to do with a shorter word that could be inside other words, but something like "Cromwell" isn't going to be part of anything else other than trivial variations like "Cromwells".

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor yeah I was using that tactic for searching for things like 'he', otherwise it came up with words like 'the'

Rand al'Thor

I had one memorable occasion many years ago when I mass-replaced "orc" by "goblin" in a story I was writing and ended up with words like "scgoblinhed".

Beastly Gerbil

0.2% of the words in the book is 'Cromwell'

2.7% of the words is 'he'

Gallifreyan

8:04 PM

The assistant that checked our CS (MATLAB) labwork told me I'd do great in CS department

Beastly Gerbil

4.7% of the words is 'he/him/his'

Gallifreyan

Now I'm seriously considering it.

Rand al'Thor

@Beastly Well, saying that "Cromwell" is less common than "he/him/his" isn't much evidence by itself, since a common pronoun is always going to appear more often than any single proper noun, unless the author has made a real effort to avoid it.

The interesting thing is that "Cromwell" appears so few times when the book is all about him.

Beastly Gerbil

But the difference is staggering

^^

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Pick a random book and see what the difference is between "he/him/his" or "she/her" and the protagonist's name.

I bet there's still a lot more "he/him/his" in the Harry Potter books, say, than "Harry" or "Potter".

Gallifreyan

8:07 PM

Is noon-xxii-century a good tag name? The book appears to have been translated as Noon: 22nd Century to English

Beastly Gerbil

@Randal'Thor but I bet 'Harry' takes up more than 0.2% of the entire words

Considering I have a Harry Potter pdf open I will test....

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan You can put numbers in tag names. Was it translated as Noon: 22nd Century or Noon: XXII Century?

@BeastlyGerbil Exactly, that's my point.

3 mins ago, by Rand al'Thor

The interesting thing is that "Cromwell" appears so few times when the book is all about him.

Beastly Gerbil

Oh I thought you were making the opposite pint sorry :P

Rand al'Thor

I expect "he/him/his" will be proportionally less common in HP than in Wolf Hall, since there are more prominent female characters.

Beastly Gerbil

'Harry' makes up 2% of the entire words in Azkaban...

Rand al'Thor

8:11 PM

But that difference will probably be negligible compared to the proportional difference between "Harry"/"Potter" and "Cromwell".

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor The former; I'll accept it as the name for the tag

Beastly Gerbil

'Potter' only 0.1%...

But then Rowling doesn't say 'Harry Potter' every time she mentions him, she just says 'Harry'

Rand al'Thor

Sure, but some people address him as "Potter".

But then, I suppose some people address Cromwell as "Thomas" or "Tom".

It's just much harder to filter there, because the whole book is FULL of Thomases.

Beastly Gerbil

I can't really accurately search for 'Thomas' because of that

Rand al'Thor

So I suppose comparing "Cromwell" in WH with "Harry" in HP is fair.

Beastly Gerbil

8:13 PM

But when people talk about Cromwell, they do call him 'cromwell', not 'thomas'

Nowadays anyway

I edited to update with these facts anyway...

Mithrandir

Every Harry Potter Movie but only the words "Harry" and "Potter"

►

Beastly Gerbil

I'm not quite sure how this is possible, but searching ' Cromwell' comes up with a few less results than 'Cromwell'

Mithrandir

^video is serious annoying

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir I added j-k-rowling to my ignore list only to see HP videos in chat... Why?

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil But nowadays isn't what counts. The book is set in his own time.

Gallifreyan

8:17 PM

Beastly Gerbil

Haven't read it, in the book do people address him as 'Thomas' or 'Cromwell' @Rand?

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan :O

Rand al'Thor

@BeastlyGerbil Because of things like "Cromwell, ...

Mithrandir

O_o

Beastly Gerbil

Ah right.... Speech marks

Rand al'Thor

8:19 PM

@BeastlyGerbil Mostly "Cromwell". His family presumably address him as "Thomas" or "Tom", and maybe a few others like the cardinal.

But when he's referred to in the text, I think it's always as "Cromwell". He thinks of himself as Cromwell, sort of.

Gallifreyan

To date, I still didn't see a single blue circle to indicate I have a chat flag to review

Beastly Gerbil

Okay thats good for me

Rand al'Thor

> The whole bench of bishops is assembled. The king answers to his name, in a full, echoing voice, speaking out of his big bejewelled chest. He, Cromwell, would have advised a motion of the hand, a murmur, a dip of the head to the court’s authority. Most humility, in his view, is pretence; but the pretence can be winning.

Beastly Gerbil

'Thomas Cromwell' appears 37 times... Mostly in chapter names and stuff though

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan haven't seen a lot of chat flags recently...

Beastly Gerbil

8:23 PM

I just realised I haven't flagged anything here yet for some reason...

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Only 9 chat flags raised in the last 3 days.

Riker

we should nuke this answer prolly

8

A: Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here!

Hard to Be a God by Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky “A thoroughly good book . . . robust, imaginative, satisfying.” — Ursula K. Le Guin This novel is considered a masterpiece of Soviet science fiction, and one of the lesser-known gems of worldwide fiction. While it is a part of the Noon Unive...

Beastly Gerbil

Right I'm off, see you tomorrow. Night!

Riker

it's been done now

@BeastlyGerbil night!

Gallifreyan

@BeastlyGerbil Night!

Mithrandir

8:30 PM

@BeastlyGerbil night!

Gallifreyan

@Riker I think it should just get a status-in-progress

Rand al'Thor

22 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

We can also delete this answer, but let's wait until April when the challenge actually starts. At this point it's all about visibility, so it makes sense to leave the original proposal in place for extra visibility.

Riker

hm, good idea for now

@Randal'Thor ah, okay

Beastly Gerbil

before I go, @Gallifreyan was the odd one out, he put a capital N on 'Night' :)

Rand al'Thor

Night @BeastlyGerbil!

@Shokhet :

215

Q: Ban LMGTFY (let me google that for you) links

I've just asked a question on Stack Overflow which was a prime candidate for googling. I admit it was a poor question and with a little bit of research I would have found the answer. It annoyed me that someone put a let-me-google-that-for-you link in the comments. It got right up my nose. I find...