The Reading Room

8:02 AM

One unfortunate effect of my periodic extended disappearances from this site: I knew exactly which story this was the minute I saw the question. I just didn't see it until today. Ah well.

The story was in one of my English textbooks in India, and at some point I won a different collection of short stories that included this one as a prize in some competition. The latter actually made its way from India to the US at some point ... some twenty years after I did. The house I grew up in was being torn down, and someone emptying the place in prep for that mailed me a bunch of my stuff that had just sat there undisturbed ever since I had left. Easiest story identification ever.

@verbose Sounds... full of sorrow and nostalgia

Do you mean the story being referenced or my story about how the book that had the story made it to me after a gap of some 20 years?

8:24 AM

@verbose I meant your story. The story from a textbook is just sad.

Q: What does "finish" mean and what does "things" refer in "most people can’t just 'finish' things with this software"?

@EddieKal Ah. Thanks. I don't feel too bad about it. The place was being torn down so that a better one could be built, and in any case, it has (and had) been decades since I lived or even visited there, so ...

@bobble Does "a creepy children's book" mean a book about creepy children, or a creepy book about children? If the former, isn't "creepy children" redundant? 🙃

Bookworm

9:20 AM

An excerpt from "When M.I.T. Artist Shouts, His 'Painting' listens," an interview with Professor John Maeda conducted by Claudia Dreifus. (NYT) Q. When you are creating your own computer art pieces, do you ever use prepackaged drawing programs? . A. Oh, yes, all the time. There are all kinds of ...

meaning

@Bookworm Question has nothing to do with literature, yo. I tried voting to close but there isn't a close vote reason that says "this question belongs on English Language Learners"

9:40 AM

Apparently OP migrated it to ELL so it's moot

10:37 AM

This is all @Tsundoku's fault

(not really, I've had Eagleton's book for years. The Culler one is new.)

I've actually met Eagleton a couple times. His wife, Willa, and I were in grad school together. Sorta lost touch but still facebook friends. Of course on principle I don't use facebook any more, so...however, if I ever went over to Lancaster I'd probably give her a shout.

Rand al'Thor

11:00 AM

@verbose It can happen even for someone without periodic extended absences. I'm mostly here every single day, but somehow missed this story-ID which I recognised instantly when seeing the post over a year later.

Apparently my only four-day absence from Lit.SE in the last two years was 27-30 June 2019. Can't remember why that was.

11:26 AM

@Randal'Thor ah. The unfortunate part about late IDs is that the OP might have given up and stopped checking for an answer. Of course that’s true for late answers to any question. Like, I was worried that the person who asked about the numbering of Petrarch’s sonnets wouldn’t see the answer, because it had been months.

But I have the impression that ID type questions are more apt to be the sorta “oh, this looks like a good forum to ask, lemme ask, oh I didn’t get an answer” and then the OP never comes back. At least something like the Petrarch q is of general interest even if the OP never sees the answer, not so sure it’s true for ID requests

though they are fun to tackle for the answerer

I’ve been gone at various times for various reasons. Looking after dying husband, traveling to clear my head after he died, working to depose the orange beast, that sort of thing

9 hours later…

8:34 PM

Several people consider the question Is Hamlet a misogynist? opinion based. Why would it be more opinion based than other character-analysis questions that we have?

bobble

maybe they think "misogynist" is an opinion-based label

@verbose I thought you would have the original editions of both books. The original edition of Culler's book was not yet in the pocket-size format of the current Very Short Introductions.

"Misogyny (/mɪˈsɒdʒɪni/) is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls." Wikipedia It may be broad, but it looks like a clear enough definition to base character analysis on.

bobble

That's what it means in a dictionary sense, but it's also been used as an attack/derogatory label in a looser sense. Not saying that's right, but people could be thinking of the more fuzzy definition

@Tsundoku Because people don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear something they consider normal could be racist, misogynist, homophobic, or heteronormative

@verbose Um... how old is Willa? I have met Eagleton, but I haven't seen his wife or ex-wife/wives. I know nothing about Eagleton's personal life besides what can be learned from his wiki page

> Eagleton was married to the American academic Willa Murphy, with whom he has three children. They have since divorced. Eagleton has two other sons by his first marriage, which ended in 1976 after ten years.

@EddieKal Are you saying that people may have been close-voting that Hamlet-and-misogyny question because they want to defend misogyny?

8:45 PM

@Tsundoku Defend the right to deny others pinning something as misogynist, more like

It's about who gets to define misogyny and racism. Everything is about this.

It's not like people are defending racism or misogyny -- while some may feel the urge to, the vast majority don't

But who gets to define what is and what is not is the focus of contention

@EddieKal I can see who close-voted that question and I doubt that your conjecture applies here.

@Tsundoku I am talking in broad strokes there. Again these things are always on a gradient. It is not black and white.

To make the point moot, people can simply move closer to one side of the spectrum as opposed to sticking to the other side

@EddieKal So are you on a gradient towards retracting your original conjecture? :-P

@Tsundoku No, if anything, I am standing by it. Case in point: improving that question could be helpful to the OP and our site, doesn't it? That is one step closer to feeling more comfortable with such questions. I will pitch in mine first.

Mithical

@Tsundoku *shrugs* I don't think it's close worthy, although the question really doesn't make much of a case.

8:54 PM

@Mithical I know, but "insufficient effort" isn't a close reason here. I have brought up that question in the chat room because I find people are quicker to close vote than to propose improvements to a question.

@Randal'Thor considerably younger than Eagleton, by about 20 or 25 years I imagine. I didn’t know they had divorced. Ah well.

@verbose Um.. I assume that's for me?

@Tsundoku Made some minor edits. Sweeping language removed. I was going to find more stuff from the original text to flesh out the question's context. I don't think I can squeeze it in. I will leave that to the OP or other people

@EddieKal Thanks for the edits.

@EddieKal sorry, yes, that was for you. I must have clicked on the wrong l’lle ➡️ sign

apologies to Rand as well