The Reading Room

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8:59 AM

@Gallifreyan The site event for the February-March topic challenge, visible in the sidebar of the main site, says "March-April 2020 topic challenge". (Can't believe I just noticed this now ...) Can you edit, or delete and recreate the event if necessary?

2 hours later…

Bookworm

11:22 AM

Q: Why is Cormac McCarthy's prose so often described as "sparse"

It is not uncommon to hear the work of American author Cormac McCarthy described as "sparse", "terse", "spartan" or some other similar descriptor. Some examples: An extensive body of criticism focuses on the sparse style, on what Donoghue calls the “neuter austerity” (267), characteristic of...

IkWeetHetOokNiet

11:50 AM

Just seen on Twitter: Traditional Inuit folk tales are not for sissies. Indeed, don't read that tweet if you self-identify as a sissy.

4 hours later…

Bookworm

3:24 PM

Q: Are Alexander Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas one man?

Recently I have read several internet texts (in Russian) supporting the conjecture that Pushkin's death was faked and after the fake death Pushkin reappeared in France as Dumas père. First I thought it is just a funny crazy theory. But the conjecture is very hard to refute. The main points supp...

history-of-literature alexandre-dumas-pere alexander-pushkin

Bookworm

3:44 PM

Q: What is meant by "saints of forties and sevens" in this traditional Turkish hymn?

In the article "Ritual Change in a Turkish Alevi Village" by Thomas McElwain, I found a description of a sacrifice ritual which includes the following nefes (hymn?) recited for a ram: Erler evliyalar kirklar yediler Oniki imamlarin kurbaniyem ben, Verildi tekbirim döndüm kibleme Oniki i...

symbolism oral-tradition turkish-literature

IkWeetHetOokNiet

4:22 PM

@Bookworm I hope we won't need a tag for conspiracy theories :-(

Napoleon Wilson

Interesting points, though, if true.

IkWeetHetOokNiet

"Dumas' ancestry can not be justified. It is known only by the words of Dumas himself." sounds rather debatable, if his father really was Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. Family trees of noble families are well documented in France and several other European countries.

If Pushkin's second language was Russian, how do they explain that Dumas père did not know Russian.

Moreover, what would motivate Pushkin's fake burial?

Napoleon Wilson

I don't actually get the part about not knowing Russian anyway. If he translated Russian works, then where does the claim that he didn't know Russian even come from?

@IkWeetHetOokNiet To disappear and become someone else somewhere else. That's a lot harder to do if your original personality isn't believed dead.

Rand al'Thor

4:40 PM

@Bookworm wh ... uh

Napoleon Wilson

@Bookworm Would this be a candidate for the hot new reception tag?

IkWeetHetOokNiet

@NapoleonWilson I need facts before I accept such a "theory". Hypotheses and vague similarities don't trump facts.

Also, it's not even true that none of Dumas' works before Pushkin's death had been successful. That sort of "creativity" with facts should raise suspicion.

Napoleon Wilson

@IkWeetHetOokNiet I'm not saying it's true. But if it was true, then it seems a reasonable part of the plan to fake his death as part of this scheme.

(Unless you are asking for the motivation for the entire scheme, in which case I might have misunderstood your concentration on the burial.)

IkWeetHetOokNiet

Indeed, why would Pushkin want to disappear (at least in Russia). He was in debt, which the theory could have mentioned if it applied. I guess it's only a summary of some of the main points.

Napoleon Wilson

Seeing how Russian intelligence is involved, the interesting espionage backstories are probably manifold. ;-)

IkWeetHetOokNiet

4:56 PM

I'm afraid I know nothing about the intelligence of Russian intelligence.

Napoleon Wilson

If they genuinely pulled this off for the last 150 years, it can't be that low.

Rand al'Thor

The Past Recaptured: Dumas Takes on Pushkin’s Genealogy

> my reading proposes that [Dumas] explores his own origins and their relation to personal, national, and authorial legitimacy by rewriting Pushkin’s genealogy

> [Dumas] was the person who chiefly contributed to making Pushkin known outside of Russia

@IkWeetHetOokNiet ^ maybe that could be proposed as a motivation

IkWeetHetOokNiet

Writing about somebody else's life and work or his genealogy is a completely different thing from taking on a new identity.

IkWeetHetOokNiet

5:17 PM

I won't be moving on to that more "modern" stuff so quickly after all. I've just discovered Before the Muses, a 1044-page anthology of Akkadian literature. It even includes spells against headache and flatulence. Who can resist that?

Rand al'Thor

5:46 PM

@IkWeetHetOokNiet Of course, but it's an interesting connection.

And Dumas rewriting Pushkin's genealogy in order to explore his own would be all kinds of doublethink if they really were the same person ;-)

IkWeetHetOokNiet

But if he were Pushkin, wouldn't it make more sense to avoid anything to do with him, in order to avoid rousing suspicion?

Rand al'Thor

It would if he hadn't been well enough trained by Russian intelligence.

Napoleon Wilson

6:10 PM

Also, he might have wanted to deliberately arise obvious suspicion in an effort to dispel it, provided he anticipated that line of thinking.

1 hour later…

Gallifreyan

7:37 PM

@Randal'Thor thanks, fixed now

JohnnyApplesauce

8:00 PM

Is there a name for that genre of fiction where you just have a document (like a research paper or a product review) and it has a greatly realism-oriented tone, but its contents are simply false and the author doesn't expect you to believe them? Epistolary fiction only covers messages, even if those are emails.
Also, could I please have more of pieces that fit the mold that I just described? I really like those stories.

Gareth Rees

8:48 PM

@JohnnyApplesauce I think "epistolary fiction" is the most common term — as it says at Wikipedia, "The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used"

I like "The Dictionary of the Khazars" by Milorad Pavić, "The Documents in the Case" by Dorothy L. Sayers, and "Turtle Diary" by Russell Hoban

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