The Reading Room

verbose

12:11 AM

@Randal'Thor Okay, you win

bobble

\o/

next milestone: 200 answers :)

verbose

@bobble Thanks for reminding me about it, @Bobble

a few days ago

bobble

name-significance? literature.stackexchange.com/q/8208/11259 (I'm already going to edit it to add a work tag, but one tag further than that can be squeezed in)

verbose

12:47 AM

@bobble yes I think so

Rand al'Thor

6:43 AM

@Tsundoku Filling the elene-dariani tag wiki probably requires enough research to answer the question I've asked about her :-)

@verbose Yay, congrats!

Now we just need @Spagirl to get a gold badge and it'll be everyone in the top 15.

Bookworm

9:49 AM

0

Q: what does "in flight from it" mean in the below text

this is a passage in a book called Missing Outm by Adam Philips: But the outrageous, pragmatic strong reader in this account reads as if he knows what he wants, and not as though he is conflicted about what he wants, or indeed is in flight from it (he might, of course, discover it through the re...

psychoanalysis

Tsundoku

1:34 PM

@verbose All very well, but my original comment was about Shakespeare's birthday, which is not a fixed feast, an official holiday or anything religious.

Tsundoku

1:46 PM

Can we send the tag indiana-jones to the Temple of Doom? I know that "novels" about that character exist, but that does not seem to be what the inspiration question is about.

Bookworm

0

Q: What is with this poem and its title?

Jacob's Ladder Hearken! Trim that swagger a trifle, you wretched lump of earth! Stamp those feet neither, nor act so haughty Hearken! You are but a tiny figure on the grand scroll A statistic, a number— a one-in-a trillion figure Cometh before you a legion had Hearken! Thou canst begin to count ...

poetry meter

Tsundoku

@Bookworm A Walt Whitman pastiche?

I have created the new tag les-miserables-musical for questions that are specifically about the musical rather than Victor Hugo's novel (les-miserables). Please have a look.

Fernão de Magalhães / Ferdinand Magellan died on 27 April 1521, almost exactly 500 years ago. -> 500. Todestag Fernando Magellans - Ein problematischer Held und Abenteurer on Deutschlandfunk.

Bookworm

3:04 PM

0

Q: What does it mean for literature to be “reflective”?

The book-review and -recommendation site The Storygraph allows users to categorise books in various ways such as adventurous, funny, inspiring, and reflective. Some (fiction) books I know have been judged to be reflective by many reviewers while others not at all, so there seems to be some agreem...

terminology style

bobble

3:45 PM

french-literature? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/18411/…

Bookworm

0

Q: Can "hollow" in "hollow as a Hopper painting" mean "meaningless and deceptive"?

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner That night at the studio they finished early. There were no taxis, so he walked. He didn’t know what time it was but thought it must be after two. The café was still open, hollow as a Hopper painting behind the empty bus shelter. Philip pa...

meaning the-childrens-bach helen-garner

Rand al'Thor

4:09 PM

@Tsundoku As a series tag, I'd say indiana-jones would be appropriate to use on any questions about the Indiana Jones character/universe which are considered on-topic here, even if they don't mention a specific novel.

@Bookworm Is this a self-written poem?

We had a meta about those, although not with an especially strong consensus.

bobble

The EL&U question says "Also, what is the point of the poem and why is it titled so?", which would seem to indicate that it was not they who wrote & titled the poem

Rand al'Thor

If it's regular users who are categorizing these books, I'd wager "reflective" means something different to each of them. — bobble 58 mins ago

@bobble Second sentence of the question?

bobble

"Reviewers" there refers to the regular users, and while there might be a consensus that doesn't mean everyone agrees on the meaning.

I mean, I can delete the comment if you think it isn't useful

Rand al'Thor

No, I just wondered if you'd actually seen that sentence in the question. It does seem a reasonable conclusion to draw, but the OP seems to have already thought of it and rebutted it.

bobble

I'm worried that we're being asked to read the collective minds of random Internet denizens

It's also perfectly possible that "reflective" has some specific and accepted meaning on that site (perhaps that site only) and maybe that would be documented?

I find it a bit odd that only the parts I changed (when un-quoting this section) are shown as unchanged

Tsundoku

8:29 PM

@Randal'Thor We do create character/universe for characters in literature. But the question is about the inspiration for a film character, and we don't create tags for non-literary characters. Or at least I don't see why we should.

@bobble I'm not sure. The question turned out to be perfectly answerable.

@bobble Are the English lyrics a translation of the original French lyrics? If yes, I guess the tag french-literature can be added. If the English lyrics merely take their inspiration from the French lyrics, I wouldn't add that tag.

bobble

9:02 PM

@Tsundoku The French version of the song appears to not have anything like those lines; seems the song was majorly reworked when the English version was produced. So I guess not

Tsundoku

Ah, that's what I half suspected.

bobble

Hmm, there's a post that I flagged > 1 month ago, and a mod poked them with a comment for improvement. If nothing has happened within that month, would re-flagging, or something else, be the correct course of action?

Tsundoku

I don't know. I find that too often, low-quality answers are flagged for moderator attention when the community should take care of them by downvoting or, if necessary, delete-voting them.

bobble

NAA flags don't necessarily go to mods, though. They can also be handled through the LQP queue.

Tsundoku

I have handled dozens of NAA flags. And I don't mean through the normal queues.

bobble

9:18 PM

If you think that the community should be handling more bad answers, leaving the flag alone so the post can go through the LQP queue is an option. Our queues are slower than larger sites, but bad posts should eventually get enough delete/Recommend Deletion votes.

Tsundoku

9:42 PM

On 12 April, we still had 9234 users; now we have 8997.

bobble

d'yah want the spam-profile users in the 11k range? I made a list of them yesterday...

Tsundoku

You can post them. I'll check if they still exist today ;-)

bobble

11033, 11319, 11342, 11421, 11456, 11699, 11984 - these all existed as of first period of school yesterday

Tsundoku

Thanks. I'll take a look tomorrow.

bobble

Mar 9 at 4:22, by bobble

Would an author interview explaining their thoughts on a certain line, be a valid thing to cite in an answer to a meaning question about that line?

this answer uh got a little big

it's 3 pages of Google Doc, finished writing, should be out tonight or tomorrow once I edit it to my satisfaction

Found an answer to this question ("no evidence he ever said that") on Quote Investigator; how much would need to be reproduced from the QI site to count as an answer?

Tsundoku

9:56 PM

@bobble Short answer: it would be valid but not necessarily the last word.

bobble

The answer is structured as a TL;DR, then the author-interview quote to set the stage (as the rest of the answer will basically agree with it), then analysis of the text to support the author's interpretation.

@bobble I should note I'm perfectly fine with someone else "stealing" this answer as I'm unsure how to write it myself

Tsundoku

@bobble I assume this is about the author interview question?

Should be fine.

bobble

@Tsundoku yep, when I was originally looking for information on the quote I stumbled on the interview by accident. The answer could stand on its own without the quote but I feel it makes the answer stronger.

Tsundoku

OK.

The room is relatively quiet tonight. People are obviously still hung over from celebrating Shakespeare's non-birthday.

bobble

Earlier today I was concentrating on studying for the upcoming AP Physics 1 test; that's done for now so I went to Lit :)

Tsundoku

10:03 PM

I read a bit about Rabelais and washed clothes. Exciting.

bobble

Is "Hindoo" an acceptable way to say "Hindu"? Google says it's archaic and might be derogatory.

Tsundoku

I have never in my life seen that spelling, but I can imagine it may have been used in 19th-century English texts.

bobble

> in some Hindoo scriptures and Indian cultures

line from one of Knight's questions that I am editing for other reasons already

Tsundoku

If it's not a quote, I would update the spelling.

@bobble It turns out I had destroyed those already a few hours ago, except for the two last ones.

bobble

Is that enough to make a spam musubi?

Tsundoku

10:18 PM

More than enough. I'm beginning to ask myself whether I should become a vegetarian.

If I were a parrot, I bet spam would kill me.

Rand al'Thor

11:43 PM

@bobble QI is a pretty damn good source for quote-source questions. If they say he never said it, I'm inclined to believe them, though of course it's hard to prove a negative. They seem more uncertain than usual on this one, though ("QI would tentatively attribute the saying to a Russian peasant; however, there is considerable uncertainty").

In terms of how much to reproduce, I'd say you can ignore a lot of the stuff giving specific instances of that quote/idea. Just give the original Gorky quote attributing it to a peasant, maybe one or two of the other sources attributing it to a Russian peasant via Gorky, and quote the bit where QI says there's no evidence for it originating from Shaw.

bobble

There's an answer to be had here. I'm just not sure how to write it

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Definitely archaic. Dunno if it's derogatory, but doubt it since I think the OP himself is from that culture.

Although I kind of associate the spelling with old British imperialists who barely knew or cared about the cultures and peoples of Asia. Which gives it a pretty sour taste (to me) even if it's not actually derogatory itself.

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