The Reading Room - 2020-04-15

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5:51 AM

@North It seems to be a reasonable question that could be answered by some analysis of the play. Perhaps not wholly objective, true, but many questions about literature are partly subjective - the key is to be good subjective, so that answers can be given based on facts and evidence rather than pure speculation.

@North Being a homework question is not a reason to close. Such questions may still be interesting and thought-provoking.

I guess one answer to "what makes a good question" is one that inspires good answers and teaches us something / adds to a useful repository of knowledge. If we required every question to include quotes/research, we'd be missing out on an awful lot of good answers and information that could be (and are) posted to brief minimalist questions.

1 hour later…

7:11 AM

I agree with Gallifreyan and Rand -- question quality needs to be treated differently on literature.se than on some of the other Stack Exchange sites. This is often a surprise for people who arrive at literature from the other sites, who bring some of the question-closing culture with them, and it takes a while to get people attuned to the different situation at literature.se

I used to spend time at Code Review, at there we used to close a huge proportion of questions -- I think around 40% were closed more or less immediately. But that was because they didn't include any code to be reviewed and so they were of no value to the site.

Even poorly expressed questions are of value to literature.se because they provides a hook on which to hang a good answer. In the case of the Hamlet question, it could have been better phrased, it could have been more specific, it could have quoted relevant passages, etc. But that wouldn't make much difference to people writing answers -- the essence of the question is quite clear as it stands

3

Anyone who is familiar with Hamlet will have wondered, "why is the prince being such a dick to Gertrude and Ophelia?" -- you can phrase it in a more sophisticated way, but that's the essence

Also there are practical considerations -- in my experience, trying to persuade people to improve their questions is largely ineffective. There are lots of reasons why this might be the case -- language difficulties, the complexity of the Stack Exchange interface, or natural reaction to being badgered or criticised. From a practical point of view, it seems more effective for experienced literature.se users to improve the questions, and hope that new users will learn by imitation

4 hours later…

11:03 AM

That would be worth gathering data about: whether persuading (new) users to improve their questions is effective. At least for questions that aren't blatantly off topic.

11:29 AM

Did you ping me @Tsundoku about my nomination post?

Yes, but it's no longer relevant.

alrighty then

2

A: How much of Ariadne Oliver's character is self-insertion by Agatha Christie?

Agatha Christie uses the character of Ariadne Oliver to gently satirize her own career as a writer of detective stories. A few of Christie’s personal characteristics also show up in Mrs Oliver, but Christie’s war work, marriages, travel, and daughter, have no counterparts—these show up elsewhere ...

@GarethRees ^ Nice answer. But your quote from Death in the Clouds doesn't say anything about how long the blowpipe is, so I don't understand what mistake Christie made about that.

1

Q: Are the Asterix comics about a drug culture?

The potions used in Asterix comic books resemble the methamphetamine usage of World War II. Has the drug culture within the comics ever been discussed?

12:40 PM

@b_jonas I updated the answer to explain the relevance of the quote

1:16 PM

Ah I see. I got confused by the units. The first quote says "and it’s really six feet", I thought of six inches.

1:38 PM

0

Q: What is the evidence that R. K. Narayan was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times?

When I suggested the currently running topic challenge on R. K. Narayan, I wrote that the author was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature (possibly several times) but never won it. This was based on the following statement in the Wikipedia article about the author: He was nomi...

nobel-prize r-k-narayan

@Bookworm Please excuse the circular reference ;-)

1:49 PM

user image

@b_jonas Christie didn't like the metric system as a consequence of her time as a dispensing chemist -- "The great danger of the metric system is that if you go wrong you go ten times wrong."

@CowperKettle And don't forget Alain Fourneau's Le Grand Marnier.

2:36 PM

@GarethRees Sure, it makes sense that Adriane Oliver said "six foot" and that you quoted her.

0

Q: Hoping someone can help tell me who the author of the following poem is, and what the title is? Thank you!

Follow, follow me into the South, And if you are brave and wise I'll buy you laughter for your mouth, Sorrow for your eyes. I'll buy you laughter, wild and sweet, And sorrow, grey and still, But you must follow with willing feet Over the farthest hill. Follow, follow me into the ...

story-identification poetry

0

Q: How to Improve Reading Abilities

I am an adult who struggles with reading. I can fully understand books up to about an eighth grade or high school level (books like Harry Potter, The Great Gatsby, writing of Hemingway, etc...) but I struggle with more complex works. I've recently tried reading Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Bertrand...

close-reading reading

3:06 PM

@Bookworm I hadn't even noticed we had a reading tag. But close-reading doesn't seem very relevant to that question; the issue described there is more basic.

Napoleon Wilson

In that case is it even appropriate here as opposed to English Language Learners or similar?

3:30 PM

I don't know whether problem resides in dealing with a certain level of linguistic complexity generally (vocabulary, syntax, sentence length), with texts that represent an older state of English, with a certain level of complexity of concept and thought (possibly not; see the math degree) or more something like dyslexia.

It's possible to offer advice on how to learn to read older varieties of a language. It is also feasible to suggest a path from relatively simple to more complex literature (but recommendation questions are off topic here).

0

Q: Trying to remember a poem that I only have a snippet of

I'm trying to find some lost poems that were favorites of mine in high school. This one, I only have one line that I remember clearly. Not much to go on, I know, but if anyone recognizes it, I would be grateful. Thanks! The line I remember is as follows, and I believe it is the starting line: To...

story-identification poetry

But difficulty dealing with linguistic complexity or anything like dyslexia looks beyond the scope of our site.

4:03 PM

@Bookworm Project Gutenberg is still (or again?) blocking IP addresses from Germany :-(

Napoleon Wilson

Last I heard they wanted to make you pissed at the government (rather than them, which would be more appropriate) on their behalf.

Huh, when I use this link, I get a page saying that all IP addresses from Germany are being blocked. But I can access the home page just fine. Gutenberg will be turning in his grave.

@GarethRees Hm, I guess that makes sense. Coming from PSE, there's a heavier emphasis on question quality over there (since half the fun in PSE is actually making puzzles) and anything that could be found online is pretty much considered a duplicate

@Tsundoku Is it just in Germany? Because I use Project Gutenberg a lot for much older literature

Huh, works fine in the U.S.

Are copyright laws different in Germany/EU? I thought all materials in Project Gutenberg were long in Public Domain

@North The error message says, "A Court in Germany ordered that access to certain items in the Project Gutenberg collection are blocked from Germany. Project Gutenberg believes the Court has no jurisdiction over the matter, but until the issue is resolved, it will comply.".

@Tsundoku Huh, weird

4:16 PM

I think I should install the Tor browser to cloak my IP.

*Do you not want your internet hacked? Want to access illegal material? Use ~~NordVPN~~ ~~ExpressVPN~~ this video is sponsored by ~~someVPN company~~

So now I have Tor but the connection to Gutenberg.org times out.

Installing software is so comfortable on Linux when you use a distro with big repos :-)

Here are the details: "The plaintiff, S. Fischer Verlag, GMBH, demanded that the project block access to 18 ebooks by the three German authors Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, and Alfred Döblin or remove the books entirely from the catalog."

but ... why?

Are they like pro-Nazi books or something?

(not a joke by the way)

Heinrich Mann died in 1950, Thomas Mann in 1955 and Alfred Döblin in 1957. So they died less than 75 years ago, which I think is the period after which their works would become part of the public domain.

Ah

I feel like copyright laws get a little too excessive sometimes though

4:29 PM

Thomas and Heinrich Mann lived in exile during the Nazi regime.

That 75-year period is excessive.

Yeah

Copyright was introduced so authors can live from publishing their work. If you extend copyright until 25 years after their death, their children also benefit from that protection. At 50 years, the grandchildren may even still benefit from it. At 75 years, it should be obvious that this is just for the sake of the publishers, not the authors or their children.

I think like 25-30 years seems somewhat reasonable

Isn't Walt Disney the one that pushed for extended copyright laws? Ironically using major characters from the Public Domain

I had no idea, but apparently the USA has something that has been derisively called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act (from 1998).

Yea

Disney is the one that pushed for the extension of copyright laws to some god-forbid extended length of time

It used to be (I believe) 25 years after the death of the author

4:38 PM

For works by anonymous authors or unknown authors, the protection is 120 years long.

There is a nice diagram in that article showing how the duration of that protect evolved over time.

wait 120 years after their death?

That's basically 200 years!

120 years after the work was created. If the author is unkown, you can't know when they died.

@Tsundoku Ah so overkill, 120 years is to make sure that they're dead

Exactly.

I mean isn't 80 years reasonable. I highly doubt that a book of literature that significant is written by like a 5 year old

Gross

"The 1998 Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever end is earlier."

4:49 PM

Of course, 80 years is sufficient. But this was not determined for the sake of authors but for the sake of publishers and other companies.

rolls eyes

Of course

Why else, if not for the corporate benefit?

So Disney can keep on marketing Mickey Mouse, which should be in the Public Domain by now, but Disney's definitely not giving him up anytime soon

Ohoho, ohoho, the air you breathe? It's owned by Disney now! Fined!

You also can't publish images of the Hollywood sign. But as far as I know, the trick to prohibit that is even more ridiculous than copyright: they trademarked it.

See Tom Scott's video Why I Can't Show You The H******** S***.

Wait does trademark last as long as the corporate company?

It lasts as long as someone is defending it, apparently.

That's... dumb

4:59 PM

I like the ambiguity of S*** in that video title, though.

Yeah, it's pretty funny

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