The Reading Room - 2021-01-19

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12:16 AM

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Q: Why is death a redeemer in Robinson Jeffers's "Hurt Hawks"?

The poem "Hurt Hawks" by Robinson Jeffers is about a red-tailed hawk whose wing is so badly hurt that he'll never be able to fly again. Two lines of this poem are as follows: The curs of the day come and torment him At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head Why "death the...

poetry wording-choice robinson-jeffers

1:06 AM

0

Q: Looking for shoujo/romance one-shot manga

hi i am looking for a one shot about a girl (i think wearing glasses ) who cant speak loudly and her English is bad , even her teacher having a hard time with her and a guy who sees her get bullied and help her . i remember the guy good at fighting and at the end there was a competition the teach...

identification-request short-stories manga

1 hour later…

2:33 AM

literature.stackexchange.com/q/17218/139 "German book where a hiring manager hires his former bully" OP returned to edit his identification question, a good sign.

1 hour later…

3:51 AM

I just realized how many questions I have about the poems in Rose Under Fire so I'm going to ask them :D

4:02 AM

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Q: Why these specific "things that fly" in "Kite-Flying"?

Rose Justice, the main character of Rose Under Fire, writes several poems that appear in various places in the book. This is the second verse of Kite-Flying: Hope waits stubbornly, watching the sky for turmoil, feeding on things that fly: crows, ashes, newspapers, dry leaves in flight all sugges...

poetry symbolism elizabeth-wein rose-under-fire

5 hours later…

8:56 AM

@Bookworm @bobble wording-choice maybe?

Would push that tag to 50 questions and probably give Matt Thrower a Taxonomist badge.

@Bookworm Btw, this is a Watership Down question in disguise ;-) That Jeffers poem was the epigraph to the chapter "Kehaar".

2 hours later…

10:47 AM

@Tsundoku Congratulations! Thirty upvotes on this site is quite an achievement. It's also a great answer and deserves the upvotes.

I wonder, is there a list of the top rated answers on this site? In theory I think I have enough rep to access some site statistics but I haven't figured out how to actually use that access.

Same for top-rated questions. It might be good to have meta questions "How do I ask a good question?" and "How do I write a good answer?" and use examples from the top rated ones to illustrate.

11:07 AM

@verbose literature.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&q=is%3aa

-1

Q: Best books about the rise of the novel?

Ian P. Watt's Rise of the Novel is being criticised as outdated in its approach (analysing only 3 English authors of his choice). What would be the best more up-to-date books covering the beginnings of the novel with respect to the social/economic/political changes in the 18th century while discu...

history-of-literature

11:32 AM

@Bookworm Came across "The Wartime Rise of The Rise of the Novel": "This essay argues that Ian Watt's influential The Rise of the Novel (1957) was decisively shaped by his experience as a prisoner of war and forced laborer on the Burma Railway." Not an answer to the question (and I have no access to it) but sounds interesting nonetheless.

While a prisoner of war, Watt worked "on the construction of a railway that crossed Thailand a feat that inspired the Pierre Boulle novel Bridge Over the River Kwai and the film version by David Lean." (From Watt's obituary, December 1999) Coincidentally, I read the Wikipedia article about that novel just a week ago.

@Mithical Thanks! Enjoyed looking through them.

11:52 AM

@verbose The top-voted Q&A are often far from the best ones, thanks to the HNQ lottery. E.g. one of your top-voted answers is this one, which is a fine answer to that question, but hardly on the level of some of your detailed analysis of Tagore or Shakespeare or etc. My top-voted answer is this, hardly the one I'm proudest of.

That's the main reason I started the best-of series on meta, to gather a collection of quality posts, which searches by score can't really find.

Back in the early days of 2017, we even had some bad answers (e.g. unsupported opinions) getting a lot of votes. That doesn't happen much any more - usually the high-voted answers are at least worthy of upvoting, but they're not always worthy of being the top/"best" answers around.

@Randal'Thor Having looked through those answers, I agree. There's a very high proportion of them that are good, though. Like your answer on the idea of a true name, or some of Gareth's or Christophe's answers.

^ Rand al'Thor saves me from sounding like a broken record :-)

As for my own answers, well, one that I'm rather proud of got just one upvote and wasn't accepted ... even though (1) the question also was a good one and exemplary for this site (2) the answer answered the question precisely and in detail (3) it's about an excellent novel and (4) there's no other answer given. Meanwhile, "horse and buggy" gets 20 upvotes. 🤷🏽‍♂️

But my top three upvoted answers on this site are actually more substantial than the horse and buggy one, so I guess I'm luckier than you are. I guess the frustration comes from knowing that objectively better work one has done gets less recognition than something that just hits the lottery.

12:10 PM

Yeah exactly. But we can't force voters to vote according to quality (or what we see as quality, which is quite subjective anyway), so we just have to use our own votes wisely and hope for the best.

As the Geeta says, कर्मणयेवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन etc: you have control only over your work, not over its results. (I think this is the fourth time I've referenced that on this site.)

Even without the HNQ lottery, voting does not reflect answer quality across questions.

It is strongly related to what the community is interested in, so it's often difficult to get a lot of upvotes on answers about non-English literature. The Zweig question is an exception (and voting on it does not required any familiarity with his work).

And there's the popularity quotient. So many of the top rated q's and a's appear to be about LotR.

I did not want to bring that up again ;-)

I've never read LotR. If I had that much time to immerse myself in a world, I'd read Proust.

(which I intend to do anyway. Just haven't gotten around to it.)

12:15 PM

I did get around to it a few years ago. Still need to start reading volume 4, which has been in waiting for more than a year now ...

If I delay a bit longer, I might just as well restart from the first volume.

Hey people!

Anyone here from the UK?

No, I'm from the post-Brexit EU ;-)

@Tsundoku Oh..

@verbose So I like to encourage people to vote more, especially people like you who're knowledgeable enough to vote wisely. You're a top 10 user by reputation now, but not even in the first page of voters ;-)

I see that your location in profile page is European Disunion..

12:18 PM

@RandomPerson raises hand

@Randal'Thor oh.. cool!

Can you please do me a favour?

Well, if anybody's curious about what that "answer I'm proud of that nobody will ever read" is, it's this one. It won't make sense unless you've read that novel, though.

@Tsundoku yup, I know how that goes. Wanna read it together?

@Randal'Thor Fair point.

@RandomPerson I hope so. What is it?

@verbose Beginning from volume 1? We could try. I have a French edition from Livre de Poche (most 1990s with the Monet book cover, and some later reprints with a slightly larger font size, I think).

@verbose Huh, a rare example of an answer of yours that I haven't upvoted. I also haven't read that novel, so maybe that's why.

Btw I still need to read through your massive iambic pentameter answer :-) but I think I upvoted that one already

12:22 PM

Counterpoint, I was actually away from the site for more than two years, and I think I vote fairly often. I've just not read many of the questions and answers here. (Also, I tend not to vote on stuff I don't know about—like you and the Equal Music question.)

It would be great if you can contact Oxford University Press and find out some details of the poem Childhood written by Markus Natten (like in which book it was published, year of publishing and more details about the poet). Context: literature.stackexchange.com/a/17183

But yes, I should and will vote more.

@Tsundoku I don't have an edition in the original French, but my friend Dustin might. I could ask him.

(I actually have both a Livre de Poche edition and a Pleiade edition, so I have decided I should read the Livre de Poche edition before I "deserve" reading the Pleiade edition.)

It's half past four and I'ven't gone to bed yet. This autogolpe has me so frazzled I can't cope with anything any more. Can't concentrate, can't relax ... I've been working on a fairly simple answer for DAYS now. I know the answer (knew it when I read the question) but gathering the references and putting them together is just too taxing when my brain is so anxious.

oh well, I'm off to bed.

@verbose I'm not even in the USA and it has distracted me as well from other things. But anyway, good night.

12:37 PM

@Tsundoku What happened in the USA?

@RandomPerson You haven't heard of what happened on 6 January?

@Tsundoku yeah.. I know.. the storming of the Capitol..

I read that the security has been increased in the Capitol area..

Exactly. The storming as such lasted only a few hours, but the people who organised it are still around. This will probably have long-lasting consequences. The lies that led to it have not died yet.

@Tsundoku oh..

I recall seeing a video in YouTube in which one of the rioters was requesting for a presidential pardon..

I hope the inauguration will happen in a peaceful manner.

12:57 PM

Serendipity: 6 January Dictatorship: "royal dictatorship established in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Kingdom of Yugoslavia after 1929) by King Alexander I (r. 1921–34) with the ultimate goal to create the Yugoslav ideology and single Yugoslav nation".

1:23 PM

@Tsundoku Perhaps zemblanity rather than serendipity?

@RandomPerson I was also looking at that question. It's remarkably hard to find any information whatsoever about Markus Natten; I'm wondering if it might've been a pseudonym. Apparently he was Norwegian, so it might be more fruitful to write to a Norwegian library or such than an Oxford one?

@verbose Here's hoping this week won't see more political violence in your country.

2 hours later…

3:13 PM

@Randal'Thor added :D

4:13 PM

0

Q: Sonnet 39 of Astrophil and Stella: Are these epithets or metaphors?

This is Sonnet 39 of Astrophil and Stella, known as Come Sleep! O Sleep: Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, The indifferent judge between the high and low. With shield of proof shield me from ou...

astrophel-and-stella philip-sidney

2 hours later…

6:19 PM

0

Q: What did Tara Westover mean in the book Educated?

What did Tara Westover try to imply when she compared the accident, her family suffered in her childhood with Choices, numberless as grains of sand, had layered and compressed, coalescing into sediment, then into rock, until all was set in stone.

6:39 PM

@Randal'Thor He was an entrant to the 1979 Annual Children's Literature Competition, sponsored by W. H. Smith, so it seems he did not grow up to become a writer, or otherwise famous

6:59 PM

'Burgess reveals in his autobiography (You've Had Your Time; p. 243) that the Joysprick manuscript was stolen while he was living in Rome, and he had to write it out again from memory. "It was probably better the second time," he wrote.' (Wikipedia)

1 hour later…

8:19 PM

So, the busiest review queue this year has been Suggested Edits, and more reviews there have been handled by moderators than by other community members. Thanks @PrinceNorthLæraðr and @Tsundoku :-)

Advance warning for anyone trying to upload an image (which doesn't happen much here anyhow): uploading is broken.

I was just reading about that in tSL chat.

Prince North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Is this a good thing or bad thing? :P

How are there like 1000 suggested edits?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Why are you acting so surprised? :-D

@PrinceNorthLæraðr 3,627 reviews all-time

Prince North Læraðr

8:28 PM

@Tsundoku Well... maybe because I've only made like 400-ish edits?

Compared to only 2,591 First Posts, and less in all the other queues.

Prince North Læraðr

That can't be all me and Tsundoku :P

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Well you aren't the only editor around :-)

2

Q: 2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web: We designed the Stack Exchange netw...

discussion moderation statistics

bobble did a lot of suggested edits too, especially before hitting 1k rep.

Prince North Læraðr

8:31 PM

@Randal'Thor True, but you'd need to be below a certain threshold of rep to be suggesting edits :P

I'm just not sure where all the numbers are coming from -_-;

I believe Brahadeesh also made many suggested edits.

Prince North Læraðr

Ah! Yes

Especially in Meta

I was like "there had to be one or two more users suggesting a lot of edits"

It turns out that we had more suggested edits in 2020 than in 2018 and 2019 combined.

It's a pity we don't have a statistics meta post for 2017.

Prince North Læraðr

Isn't each suggested edit worth 2?

Or like review

Because each suggested edit needs to be reviewed by two users (unless mod)

The edits, yes. The reviews are free of charge ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

8:39 PM

That's a LOT of edits though

Ah, wait, it's not exactly the combined total of the two columns

@PrinceNorthLæraðr So who do you want to overtake this year? ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Probably just Gallifreyan

I'm not sure I'd be able to surpass you or Rand :P

Do we want to keep the tag the-avengers by the way?

Also quick suggestion: make the tag for marvel as marvel-comics and just synonymize it

@PrinceNorthLæraðr For a moment, I was tempted to synonymise marvel with andrew-marvell, but it turns out we don't have a tag for that author yet :-P

Prince North Læraðr

I'm not sure what to put for the tag description

Do we want all comics published by marvel to solely use the marvel-comics or at least have the superhero in question tagged as well? I'm inclined to lean towards having all superheroes published by Marvel to just be tagged under marvel-comics because there's a lot of spin-offs and crossovers that can get hairy

Keep things simple

Strictly speaking, Marvel Comics is a publisher rather than a series of comics. Or is it both?

8:51 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr marvel should be a tag synonym for andrew-marvell

Prince North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Strictly speaking, Marvel Comics is indeed a publishing company. It's also a brand.

The brand represents the universe where the superheroes are in (aka, the Marvel Universe)

Well, that's just marvellous, isn't it?

Prince North Læraðr

The thing is, there's A LOT of series and editions and superheroes and a ton of other stuff involved with Marvel.

So here's the main reason why I don't want sub-tags for Marvel Comics

Say we have the Avengers, right? Which Avengers are we talking about?

The Avengers (comic book)

The Avengers is the name of several comic book titles featuring the team the Avengers and published by Marvel Comics, beginning with the original The Avengers comic book series which debuted in 1963. == Publication history == In 1960, DC Comics launched a comic book series featuring a team of superheroes called the Justice League. Impressed by that book's strong sales, Martin Goodman, the owner of Marvel Comics predecessor Timely Comics, asked Stan Lee to create a title featuring a similar team of superheroes for Marvel. Lee recounts in Origins of Marvel Comics: Martin mentioned that he had...

SFF SE uses marvel as the main tag and synonymised marvel-comics with it. Of course, they don't have questions about Andrew Marvell.

Prince North Læraðr

Who's Andre Marvell?

And why would Marvel be synonymized with him?

8:58 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr A seventeenth-century English poet, author of To His Coy Mistress.

Prince North Læraðr

Do people spell his name as Marvel?

That poem contains the famous lines, "Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime."

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I haven't seen it spelled like that. It's just that I think his work is worthier of Lit SE questions than any of the Marvel Comics ... ;-)

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I assume it's a joke by people more familiar with classical literature than popular comics :-)

Prince North Læraðr

Ah

Actually, bobble's the Marvel expert, not me

@bobble Opinion if questions involving Marvel Comics should include the superhero group/person in question/series or just Marvel Comics?

opinion is not held

9:04 PM

We haven't used character tags for novels or plays, so I don't think we should start creating them for comics.

Prince North Læraðr

Okay

I thought some person might want tags for the series, but I think it goes way too far into the rabbit-hole of what tags are worth making

Keep it simple, just any and all questions about Marvel get the marvel-comics tag. No sub-tag needed.

I'd also vote against character tags, mostly based on experience at SFF, where tags in general have been a much-argued-about topic but character tags in particular are among the most controversial and seemingly most people would like to get rid of them completely, if some of them weren't already so big.

May 9 '18 at 20:53, by Rand al'Thor

@ChristopheStrobbe I would vote no. Nobody is likely to be an expert in one particular character in a work of literature, or to search for questions about that character - and most characters won't get enough questions about them to be worth their own tag anyway. (FWIW, my experience on Science Fiction & Fantasy also suggests no: character tags are among the most controversial topics on a site with many tag controversies. I think most people want to burn them with fire, but they're just too big to handle now.)

@PrinceNorthLæraðr What about author tags?

@Randal'Thor they could be handled very easily with merges if people could agree on anything

Prince North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Ah. Good question. And genuinely not sure.

I'm going to make a controversial claim and say we shoudn't have author tags for marvel-comics and also dc-comics (if we ever get questions about batman or superman)

There's just a lot of people involved in making comics

Quoting the words of an infamous king, "Burn them all!" :-P

Prince North Læraðr

9:13 PM

One of the big uses for the author tag is to find "experts" or someone who has a lot of interest or knowledge about a certain author right? Stan Lee is inevitably tied to a bunch of Marvel stuff. Unless there's a question about like a book Stan Lee published (if any) or his life, I'm not sure we need to add it to Marvel

And it's worse with DC because DC is just an amalgamation of a whole slew of different authors, writers, and artists involved in different issues. At least Stan Lee is kind of seen as the "founder" of Marvel and most of its superheroes, but DC is just a mess when it comes to citing authors

@Tsundoku I think that argument has been made verbatim on SFF meta ;-)

LOL

Prince North Læraðr

9:34 PM

I gtg for a moment, I'll be right back o\

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Jan19

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