The Reading Room - 2020-10-30

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Knight wants Loong back

2:15 PM

Someone please recommend me a novel/play in which the main theme is pure love and the scandalization of the lovers.

Pure love means (what I intend it to mean) love that happened spontaneously, unknowingly and conqueringly. The scandal should be in society like 19th century Paris or England, or some other society which is comprehensible. I shall not prefer those kingly scandals (abduction and duel).

And with these themes the novel/play should have the tincture of realism in it. So, writers like Ibsen, Bernhard Shaw (I know Shaw didn’t write plays with those themes but see my stress on the word “like”), Flaubert, Tolstoy, Wilde. (The reason for this list is that I’m quite acquainted with these writers) are wanted.

The first suggestion anyone would come up with is Anna Karenina and yes it qualifies my above said qualifications but I already read it in May 2019.

@KnightwantsLoongback theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/18/…

Knight wants Loong back

@GarethRees No no no! I didn’t mean adultery. I don’t want read modern obscene novels.

(Don’t take any offence, it was not for you but for that site)

2:42 PM

@KnightwantsLoongback If you're not looking for novels like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, what are you looking for? I don't understand your request at all now

Prince North Læraðr

3:23 PM

@Tsundoku Is it too much if I edit the author tags to say "Questions about the works" to "Questions about the literary works..."?

hi North I will be lurking in this chat for today :)

Prince North Læraðr

Hehe I brought a friend over from Puzzling SE.

@Tsundoku She is the culprit responsible for turning me into a prince

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Our scope is wider than what many people consider "literature", so I wouldn't specifically add literary works.

Prince North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Okay

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Let's hope she doesn't turn you into a frog :-P

Prince North Læraðr

3:27 PM

Oh dear. Does Bobble need to kiss me in order to turn me human?

would tree-hugging work?

FrogPrinceNorthLæraðr ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

Oh dear, I am NOT changing my name into that :P

Would be a crowning achievement ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

*groans*

3:32 PM

(note: I just ran the Data.SE query for Literature, and you indeed do not have any questions eligible for Tour)

Prince North Læraðr

Lol

We typically have pretty lengthy responses cough garethandtsundoku cough because a lot of analysis usually means a lot of citations

Personally, I like the unicorn stuff. It was there when I first joined PSE I think

@KnightwantsLoongback Perhaps Gottfried Keller's A Village Romeo and Juliet (although there is no "scandal" there).

Prince North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Hm, I'm trying to find out how to cough improve our tag wiki excerpts. Should I reduce the size of the really lengthy tags like aleksandr-solzhenitsyn?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Do you want me to turn you into a frog? :-P

Prince North Læraðr

But I need tags to edddiiiittt

Guess I gotta flip through the entire tag list again to find all the terrible ones I wrote early on

3:42 PM

Well, all you need to do is post questions about authors and works that we don't have questions about yet.

Prince North Læraðr

That's true. I'll just post 245 brand new author questions!

@KnightwantsLoongback Perhaps also Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Prince North Læraðr

Well, I guess 245/2 so about 122.5 questions

It's that simple.

Prince North Læraðr

You're right. I'm just dumb

3:43 PM

LOL

Prince North Læraðr

It would dramatically increase our QPD count too

literature.stackexchange.com/posts/1040/revisions

What

Why did I write that

", sometimes considered to be the founder of modern Russian literature, or about any of his literary works."

That makes no syntactical sense

That bit was added by Rand

Prince North Læraðr

No, I added the "or about any of his literary works" portion

Except rereading the edit that I made, it makes no sense

And it makes sense, just put "sometimes.... literature" inside parentheses instead of commas

Prince North Læraðr

I guess, but it's still confusing. That last bit wasn't needed anyways

Ahah! Found some author tags needing some work!

wait so @Tsundoku when I'm writing excerpts I can just put "works" instead of "literary works", right?

3:53 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Yes. We don't need the excerpts to trigger scope discussions.

Prince North Læraðr

Right

Time to edit out "literary" from all of my poorly written excerpts

Oh whoops, Gareth made that tag edit.

Oh, we put the date of the authors?

I usually add year of birth and death (not full dates). I have also started writing "or his/her life as a writer" instead of "and ...", since questions don't need to be about both at the same time.

Prince North Læraðr

Oh, okay

"Questions works of Robert Lowell ..."?

Prince North Læraðr

Oh no, it's starting again

4:08 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr neil-gaiman

Prince North Læraðr

ok

4:23 PM

arthur-conan-doyle

Prince North Læraðr

Wow, there' a lot of tags that need the dates

Yesssss

Will be working on hunting those down

Knight wants Loong back

@GarethRees I have already read Anna Karenina. Actually, to be clear I don’t want sexual passion in the novel. Even if there is a sexuality in the novel then it should be as hidden as it in “Anna Karenina” and “The Picture of the Dorian Gray”

Oh! I think the word “scandal” might have confused the users here, in modern days scandal is synonymous to adultery but two people can be a victim to society even without doing sex.

Like for example let’s have early 19th century Paris, if a young man is constantly watching a woman in an Opera (imagine they are in their respective boxes) then surely they will make people talk.

5:13 PM

0

Q: In what context did Joyce Rachelle say this quote?

I often see this quote from Joyce Rachelle being posted: “Don't be afraid to make mistakes. But if you do, make new ones. Life is too short to make the wrong choice twice.” I was wondering if anyone knows when she said it? Or in what context? Was it a speech? One of her books?

quote-identification

2 hours later…

6:59 PM

@Bookworm I wonder if the use of the word "Fem-Ents" is based on something in the Swedish translation? (I'm guessing, without having used any mod tools, that the multitude of one-post unregistered users asking LotR questions are all the same person.) We had a question on SFF some months ago where someone wrote "mountain of fate" instead of Mount Doom, which apparently is a direct back-translation from the German (or Dutch? I don't remember) translation of LotR.

@KnightwantsLoongback Maybe something Thomas Hardy like Jude the Obscure would fit the bill. Without mentioning spoilers, the love between the two main characters is pure and life-changing, but seen as scandalous by society and they are partially ostracised because of it. The characters are ordinary people, no kingly scandals, no abduction or duels, and completely realistic for the time it's set in.

It was even controversial in real life, and people burned copies of it because they found it so scandalous.

@Randal'Thor for religious reasons?

@Bookworm This question inspired me to reverse the direction of a dupe-closure on SFF, where I was the first close-voter back in 2015 :-) It doesn't seem right to have a question with a good detailed answer closed as a duplicate of an older question with a bunch of one-paragraph answers.

@EddieKal I suppose Victorian-era puritanism, inspired by religion indirectly if not directly. Although apparently one of the notable book-burners was actually a bishop.

Knight wants Loong back

7:34 PM

@Randal'Thor Thanks. That’s really what I was seeking. I have heard about Thomas Hardy and his works.

0

Q: Looking for the name of a children's book about hobbit-like people

I read this book 10+ years ago at a libary and now I cannot for the life of me remember the title. Plot things that I remember: In the first book, there are two groups of hobbit-like people. The first group live like us in houses and have schools. The second group all live together in one group u...

story-identification

8:26 PM

We now have more than 1000 unanswered questions.

9:10 PM

How should "what is the symbolism of _" questions be answered? On browsing I found an old one which I feel I could answer by connecting it to other parts of the text (I have the book, I could quote from it) and essentially making a mini-essay. Would that be considered to opinion-y?

(I hope you're happy, North, this is all your fault)

9:28 PM

@bobble No. I don't think you should worry about accusations of being "opinion-based" that may or may not surface. Analysis has to be opinion-based, and so is reading for that matter. Any answer to "What does that passage mean?" is decidedly opinion-based, regardless of how popular that opinion is.

Even if that opinion comes from the author, it is still an opinion.

Makes sense, thank you!

NP!

Prince North Læraðr

9:44 PM

@bobble Haha!

so you plead guilty

Prince North Læraðr

Not guilty

oh, you're totally guilty

Prince North Læraðr

You joined completely on your free accord

I haven't joined... yet

Prince North Læraðr

9:46 PM

@bobble Here, opinionated means something that is essentially speculatory, and even then, it's very lax here

But this weekend I plan to write an answer

Prince North Læraðr

Then how are you in the chatroom?

Oh wait you can be in any of the chatrooms

Yeah, once you have 50 rep on any site you can enter any chat

Prince North Læraðr

Actually, the question of "opinionated questions" brings up a good discussion. @anyone interested: I think it would be wise to modify (if it is possible) the description of "opinionated" or hash it out altogether (though I personally don't agree with the latter choice".

> Opinion-based:
"This question is likely to be answered with opinions rather than facts and citations. It should be updated so it will lead to fact-based answers."

That would, theoretically, nullify a lot of questions here. Is it possible to create a modified description of this?

14

Q: Should communities be permitted to change their close reasons?

On the Russian Stack Overflow site we've had some discussions about changing the wording of close reasons. There was one point brought up that I feel warrants some consensus from the wider Stack Exchange community: Причины на первой странице — это причины, единые для всей Сети. Они — результат д...

discussion close-reasons localization

meta-fu!

10:00 PM

@bobble Go for it! I seem to recall that the symbolism in Ender's Game is pretty straightforward, much of it being explained in the text.

For example, "Perhaps it’s called the end of the world because it’s the end of the games, because I can go to one of the villages and become one of the little boys working and playing there, with nothing to kill and nothing to kill me, just living there."

As long as you back up your points with evidence from the text, there's no need to worry about it being just your opinion.

Great :) I'll probably finish the answer sometime this weekend

And you appear to be the Other Gareth that North refers to sometimes

Prince North Læraðr

Yes. This is our very own Gareth :)

No, Gareth M is the other Gareth

Nope, you're the Other Gareth

The other thing you can do if you're worried about opinion is to survey critical commentary. Here's a recent answer of mine that surveys critics about the meaning of a passage in Macbeth

There's quite a bit of Ender's Game criticism out there, you might find some of it is relevant

Prince North Læraðr

10:05 PM

@GarethRees What exactly counts as an opinionated response, btw? Ik suggestions and genre are already off the table, but I can't think off the top of my head other "opinionated" questions

Here's an answer that seems to be largely opinion

Prince North Læraðr

Well not an answer, but a question which invites opinionated answers. I'm trying to think of a way where we can clarify/specify the opinionated close reason.

@GarethRees Right, but that's also largely because it's unsupported by evidence

Huh, we don't have a "needs citations" or "opinionated" or something of that line for flagging answers?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Yes, that's my point! Without evidence, any claim is just an opinion

Prince North Læraðr

@GarethRees Hm, but how do we specify that for our questions? Perhaps something like "This question invites largely speculatory responses and/or cannot be sufficiently supported with valid evidence"? Of course, whether or source is valid or not would probably start a huge rabbit-hole so that wording probably has to be changed

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Here's a deleted question that's angling for opinons — What was the point of making those mega-budget movies of The Lord of the Rings when they were nothing at all like the books?

Prince North Læraðr

10:12 PM

well I can't quite see deleted posts

Ah, I see. Yeah, well not only is that off-topic, but also speculatory

Maybe that's it. Instead of calling it opinionated, change the wording to speculatory

Or prompts discussion, which we avoid in any SE site

There are two issues here — (i) There are some types of questions which can only be answered with opinions, for example "who would win in a fight, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?" These are off-topic. (ii) There are also cases where the question is good but someone writes an answer that consists only of opinion.

Prince North Læraðr

Well, I guess our close reason is sufficient then. The whole "facts and citation" portion of the close reason

@GarethRees Does the latter require a downvote and perhaps some nudging comment on needing citations?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I'm not sure there's any evidence that "nudging comments" helps. In the early days of the site, user111 put some effort into asking people to improve their answers and led to this post on meta

Prince North Læraðr

Isn't 111 Aza? Or was it Hamlet?

See comments on this answer for a sample of user111's style.

Prince North Læraðr

10:26 PM

Eek. Yeah, I would just be ashamed to write anything more after that

I mean yes, it's a bad answer, but wow

1 hour later…

11:48 PM

@bobble welcome to Lit chat!

North said I should pop in :)

Adding to the discussion of "opinion-based" as it applies to this site (cc @PrinceNorthLæraðr), I thought I'd drop my two cents from a couple of old metas:

7

A: Can we change the wording of the primarily opinion based close reason?

I don't think we need to change it. Let's have a look at the wording of the "primarily opinion-based" close reason, which appears in the close banner on every question put on hold for this reason: Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to ...

Prince North Læraðr

Ah

5

A: Should we replace the "Primarily Opinion-Based" close reason with the old "Not Constructive" close reason?

What's wrong with "primarily opinion-based"? Let me play devil's advocate for a moment here. Do we really need to change the existing close reason? Yes, many of our good questions are subjective and may not have a single correct answer, but the close reason doesn't say "opinion-based": it says "...

Prince North Læraðr

Of course you would have posted... two meta posts about it :P

11:54 PM

how do people write meta posts so fast

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