The Reading Room

Rand al'Thor

09:25

@NapoleonWilson Well, there's nothing wrong with having more than one good answer to a question ;-)

@NapoleonWilson Yeah, that's unfortunate. I was thinking of promoting those questions to Ms Hopkinson on Twitter, but now I'm not sure if the second one will really give a good impression of our site. The last thing we need is a Twitter flame-war here.

Napoleon Wilson

Frankly, I still don't even get the problems of the question. But I guess that's just me being part of the problem. It sucks, though, that we're not able to discuss this without telling people "yeah, please don't try to even understand it, it just makes things worse".

But anyway, I said my part. I hope the answerer at least stays on the site and considers being a little more constructive.

Christophe Strobbe

Finished reading Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan F. S. Post. Worth reading, but I almost fell of my chair when the timeline at the end of the book claimed that Marlowe and Shakespeare were born in 1554 instead of 1564.

Rand al'Thor

09:40

@NapoleonWilson I think the latest edits to the final paragraph(s) were an improvement, to be fair. They made the answerer's attitude a little more clear and relatable.

Although I kind of wish your further comments had been taken to the already-existing chatroom instead ;-)

Napoleon Wilson

Sorry. It started out as genuine criticism of the answer which I felt was appropriate in a comment rather than some unrelated chatroom. But maybe it got out of hand.

I'll probably stop engaging this further anyway.

Napoleon Wilson

09:56

Anyway, I'd have the audacity to say that Ms Hopkinson would sure have appreciated your question and your urge to learn more about the topic. ;-)

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Well, I'd hope so. But she comes with a stream of Twitter followers - some of whom might take umbrage at the question as LitProf did, some of whom might take umbrage at the tone of the answer.

"Twitter" and "polarising" are a bad combination.

Napoleon Wilson

Sure sure.

Christophe Strobbe

10:31

Here are some other stories by Nalo Hopkinson: Can’t Beat ‘Em, Old Habits, The Glass Bottle Trick.

3

I have to admit that "Shift" made me curious about her novels. But I'm too busy with other books right now: currently Anne Frank's diary, Proust's Le Côté de Guermantes and a German book about how to interpret literature. After that: the next volume of Proust's Recherche, Miep Gies's memoir about Anne Frank, rereading all of Shakespeare's poems, Eagleton's How to Read Literature, some books about literary theory, ...

Does that sound as if I live to read? ;-)

Rand al'Thor

Around these parts, you wouldn't be the only one ;-)

Christophe Strobbe

I guess so ;-)

Rand al'Thor

Thanks for the links! I'll read them when I get the chance.

Christophe Strobbe

I've only read "Can't Beat 'Em" so far. Much less "experimental" than "Shift".

Rand al'Thor

Experimental? In what way?

Christophe Strobbe

10:40

"Experimental" for lack of a better word: the switching of pronouns.

Rand al'Thor

Ah OK.

More 'conventional'?

Christophe Strobbe

Yes, definitely.

Napoleon Wilson

10:59

Hmm, I'm only listening to the audiobook version of Artemis. ;-)

Napoleon Wilson

11:15

Heh, interesting. There might be some analogy in the idea of gruel being the "poor man"'s porridge, or porridge being the "advanced" and "classy" version of the originally primarily utilitarian gruel.

Christophe Strobbe

That had never occurred to me.

Napoleon Wilson

But I'm speculating, I have zero experience with both of them. ;-)

Christophe Strobbe

Looking up those Wikipedia articles also made me wonder what the proper English name is for the type of breakfast I sometimes eat: oatmeal, gruel or porridge. But that's not a Lit SE question. (Seasoned Advice?)

Napoleon Wilson

To a German ear gruel also doesn't sound particularly...tasty. But that might be a subjective impression.

Wikipedia says, though, that "From a literary, bourgeois, or modern point of view, gruel has often been associated with poverty."

So it may very well be that he's saying porridge is just an upperclass version of gruel. Or even just a rebranding to avoid it sounding like poor man's food.

Christophe Strobbe

When I was reading the story, I thought of "gruelsome", but then it turned out that is just a contamination of "gruesome" with "gruel".

Bookworm

11:21

1

Q: Significance of 'There was a time they called porridge “gruel.”'

In Nalo Hopkinson's short story Shift, Caliban has a relationship with a "golden girl". At some point, Caliban mentions she is cooking oats. At an earlier point in the story he says There was a time they called porridge “gruel.” I have no idea how this fits into the rest of the story. The W...

Christophe Strobbe

I see.

Napoleon Wilson

But of course that depends on the surrounding context in the story. It does seem to generally fit into the themes of the story, though.

Christophe Strobbe

It helps to know about these connotations but I'm still not sure why Caliban makes that comment.

Napoleon Wilson

Hmm, before he says that the girl is actually making "porridge" (or asking him if he likes it). So it might just be used as a device to make the connection to a callback to more ancient times, which he does in the following paragraph.

Christophe Strobbe

Yes, but in these former times, he was "richer", so he had no reason to call porridge "gruel". Or did he?

Napoleon Wilson

11:31

Though, I admittedly had my difficulties with that paragraph to begin with, as well as the first Ariel monologue right before it.

@ChristopheStrobbe But they called porridge gruel.

Christophe Strobbe

That's right. But this leads to the question who "they" are.

Napoleon Wilson

Sure.

Maybe it was a time when "they" didn't pretend they were better than him? But...I'm really just grabbing for straws. Looking forward to an actual answer.

Christophe Strobbe

I will also have another look at the story. Later.

Napoleon Wilson

(Or a time when they weren't too much more "civilized" than him to begin with.)

Christophe Strobbe

Sometimes it happens that I write a new Lit SE question and while looking for resources to flesh out the question, I find the answer I'm looking for. Happened today with a question related to the anti-Stratfordians.

Napoleon Wilson

11:37

Happens. That's what the BlogOverflow option is for.

Christophe Strobbe

Oh, I thought Stack Exchange had gotten rid of the blogging part. Or are you referring to something else?

Napoleon Wilson

I'm talking about the checkbox to "Answer your own question" that you can tick when asking in order to post your answer together with the question in unison.

Christophe Strobbe

Ah, I might use that then :-)

Napoleon Wilson

It's great for use-cases like this where you have a really interesting question and already have a good answer to it.

Of course if it's just random Wiki-trivia, the value of such self-answers is debatable. But I'm going to assume it's an interestng question with an insightful answer. ;-)

Christophe Strobbe

Yes. I have answered a number of my own questions so far, but those required extra research after I had posted the question. (Especially search queries that I had not thought of while writing the question.)

I have refrained from using the immediate Q&A-type of contributions because I once read a comment in this chat room from someone saying they didn't like self-answer questions.

Napoleon Wilson

11:47

It's...difficult. Some people consider them "rep-grabs" or something. But it's actually encouraged by the network itself.

It also depends on the community a little. On some sites they fare better than on others.

Christophe Strobbe

But if I start writing more Q&As, that should be good for the site statistics :-)

Well, since everyone is allowed to use that feature, I don't see it as unfair or anything like that.

Napoleon Wilson

I personally think they're a really nice tool for sharing good content. But I also tend to have a higher threshold for how interesting/relevant your question should be to go to that length than with "normal" questions.

Christophe Strobbe

Hmm, I have noticed I am really bad at predicting how "popular" my own questions will be. Really bad.

Napoleon Wilson

But if it's an interesting question/answer that you'd be proud to have on the site if asked by someone else, it shouldn't matter who asked/answered it and we're better with the question and answer than without.

Mithrandir

@ChristopheStrobbe Self-answers are to be encouraged. Go right ahead with those. :)

Christophe Strobbe

11:50

@Mithrandir Thanks for the encouragement!

Napoleon Wilson

I've probably only done it once, but that went really well. And I'd also rather see people do more of these than not asking the question at all (or doing strange sock-puppet magic to reach the same result).

Christophe Strobbe

I think it's also a way of getting more content about non-English literature on the site. Although with me being such a Bardoholic ...

Rand al'Thor

12:37

I thought the "gruel" thing was simply a way of leading in to the discussion of 'olden times', since it's a more old-fashioned word than "porridge".

But I'm hesitant to post that as an answer, since there may well be some deeper significance tying in to the main themes of the story.

@ChristopheStrobbe I agree with Napoleon and Mithrandir, but if you're still worried about immediate self-answers being poorly received, you could write up the question and then wait a while before pulling together all the info you found for an answer.

Christophe Strobbe

@Randal'Thor I'll think I'll try it out, though, and see how it fares.

Napoleon Wilson

12:53

Given the circumstances and how I experienced this site so far, my gut feeling says it might fare quite well.

Christophe Strobbe

13:59

Nalo Hopkinson has been the most successful reading challenge since May 2018, when we had Le Guin's works as a challenge, with 8 questions. And we have almost 10 more days.

Napoleon Wilson

\o/

Christophe Strobbe

:-)

Napoleon Wilson

Last I checked it were 3 questions, though. o_O

I thought this site does the author tags always thing.

Christophe Strobbe

Well, everything is relative.

Mithrandir

I'm just finding the dialect difficult to read :/ I'm working my way through it, but I'm unused to this way of writing English. But that's the point of the challenge ;)

Rand al'Thor

14:11

@NapoleonWilson Are you going for a rural dialect? ;-)

@NapoleonWilson Yes - did you find a question we missed?

Mithrandir

Like... what does this mean?

> him did know what fe say

Christophe Strobbe

Ah, that reminds me: I wanted to post a question about "fe". That also stumped me.

That would make four questions!

Mithrandir

From context, it looks like it means "to".

e.g.

> he know how fe have respect.

also backed by thedialectdictionary.com/view/search/Jamaican/1214

Rand al'Thor

I also more or less understood all the dialect except "fe".

I wondered if it might be a misprint in the online version of the story.

Mithrandir

@ChristopheStrobbe If you're not going to, I will :)

Christophe Strobbe

14:25

@Mithrandir No worries. Go ahead!

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor No.

@Randal'Thor Well, there are 3 questions tagged nalo-hopkinson, so if there's 8 for the challenge, there were apparently 5 missed.

Mithrandir

@ChristopheStrobbe I'm slapping together a different question about the dialect at the moment so you have until tomorrow to change your mind ;P

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson I think he meant we had 8 questions for le Guin.

@ChristopheStrobbe And only one story so far!

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Oh. So...what makes this one more successful then?

Rand al'Thor

Imagine how many we'll have after reading more Hopkinson stuff ;-)

@NapoleonWilson Most successful since that one.

Napoleon Wilson

14:27

Oh, now I get it. Most successful excluding the other one.

Rand al'Thor

The supremum of the set of all challenges strictly later than the le Guin one.

Christophe Strobbe

We have three questions for Nalo Hopkinson. That's more than in the other challenges since Le Guin.

@Randal'Thor Don't laugh. It has 50% more questions that last month's challenge!

Rand al'Thor

Double, now.

Napoleon Wilson

I'm not sure replacing "nuh" with "no" really makes no sense there, given the boundaries of sense laid by the odd grammar to begin with.

Wait, that should make sense as a genuine comment even.

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Even in the first case?

Mithrandir

14:35

> Is no that turn her bitter?

Rand al'Thor

Hmm, I wonder if we have any Jamaican users here.

Mithrandir

That could conceivably mean "is it any wonder that...", but...

Napoleon Wilson

"Doesn't that turn her bitter?" Would be my context-less intuitive try at transliterating.

Bookworm

0

Q: What does "nuh" mean here in "Shift" by Nalo Hopkinson?

In reading "Shift" by Nalo Hopkinson, I came across this paragraph: In my mother and father, salt meet with sweet. Milk meet with chocolate. No one could touch her while he was alive and ruler of his lands, but the minute him dead, her family and his get together and exile her to that little ...

short-stories nalo-hopkinson

Napoleon Wilson

Or maybe "Wouldn't that...", considering the context.

Rand al'Thor

15:01

@Christophe Beat me to it :-)

I'd also found that website/link, and was planning to put together an answer.

Christophe Strobbe

@Randal'Thor I also found some example of "nuh" in Rihanna lyrics.

Rand al'Thor

@ChristopheStrobbe Dunno who that is - is she Jamaican?

Christophe Strobbe

Actually Barbadian, according to Wikipedia, but she worked with a Jamaican band at some time.

"Nuh" is also documented in Leeward Caribbean Creole English.

Napoleon Wilson

15:21

> If he prick us, is nuh we bleed? If he tickle us, is nuh we laugh?

Christophe Strobbe

I wonder if there is an influence from French, i.e. the particle "ne" (pronounced with a schwa), which is also used in negations.

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson rofl

Christophe Strobbe

@NapoleonWilson Yep, famous quote from The Tempest ;-)

Napoleon Wilson

Shakespeare in the original Carribean. ;-)

Christophe Strobbe

@NapoleonWilson No, it's from the "bad quarto" of The Tempest, that no one ever knew existed. Scholars believe that The Tempest was first published the the First Folio of 1623, but I have that "bad Quarto" right next to me.

It's going to have quite an impact in academia when I publish it on 1 April next year :-P

Christophe Strobbe

15:37

On YouTube, you can listen to Rihanna's "Work work work" ("Me nuh care" etc.) Some people thought Rihanna was talking gibberish when they heard it for the first time. Not my cup of tea, either.

Napoleon Wilson

Hmm, the connection from "nuh" to "no" seemed rather intuitive to me. And "me no care" isn't particularly uncommon a phrase either.

Reminds me of DiCaprio's continuous "huh"-spam in Blood Diamond.

Christophe Strobbe

I have added the links to those Nalo Hopkins stories to the meta post, where other people should be more likely to find them.

Rand al'Thor

@ChristopheStrobbe Good idea.

Christophe Strobbe

15:55

@NapoleonWilson We looking for more Nalo Hopkinson questions, huh?

Napoleon Wilson

Well, I'll try to look into some of the stories you linked above.

Short stories work well for this, since the threshold of engagement is much lower for a 1-hour effort than a full-fledged novel that might not interest me to begin with.

They also tend to have a more stringent story-telling with less irrelevant detail. Bringing a topic to the point, rather than building a huge construction around a rather straight-forward theme.

Bookworm

16:38

0

Q: What does this line mean, about Anna Karenina amounting to false papers?

What does Kundera mean by this line, towards the end of chapter 2 in The Unbearable Lightness of Being? The copy of Anna Karenina under her arm amounted to false papers; it had given Tomas the wrong idea

meaning the-unbearable-lightness-of-being czech-literature milan-kundera

Christophe Strobbe

I found a seven other stories by Hopkinson and added them to the meta Q.

Bookworm

18:54

0

Q: What is the relevance of the title of Nalo Hopkinson's "A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog"?

I've just read Nalo Hopkinson's short story "A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog" (available for free online from Apex Magazine). It's an odd, quirky tale about an orchid-loving lady who's constantly setting off the fire alarms and sprinkler systems in the flats where she lives, and the orchidnated rat whi...

poetry short-stories title nalo-hopkinson

Christophe Strobbe

19:08

My seventh reading challenge suggestion is another Chinese author: Lin Yutang.

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

0

A: Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here!

Author challenge: Lin Yutang (林语堂) Lin Yutang (1895 – 1976) was born in China but after 1935 he lived mostly in the United States. He died in Taiwan, where his home was turned into a museum: the Lin Yutang house. After his death, The New York Times wrote wrote: Lin Yutang, poet, novelist, hi...

Feeds

We're wondering about the title "A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog" for this short story by Nalo Hopkinson - does anyone know the answer? (cc @Nalo_Hopkinson) https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/8229/58

Tweeted by StackLiterature on August 21, 2018 at 6:59 PM

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