Matt Thrower

@ClaraDíazSanchez I don't think there's anything wrong with your answer on "rent" - not sure why you deleted it?

@verbose edited, thank you

Either way, I fully agree this is a topic for meta and worthy of wider discussion and, since it's a @Randal'Thor question, I'm entirely happy for him to decide whether or not this constitutes an answer to his question and undelete it if so.

Second - and I could be about to make myself look foolish here - are we certain that poster is the author as claimed, or is it possible it's an imposter? I felt the dismissal of it as "mundane or existential" sounded odd: it's very self-effacing and existential things tend not to be mundane

@Randal'Thor OK, so I took that decision on two points. Firstly, the question opens with "This question seeks an analysis" and closes with "What can we tell about his attitudes towards the different places from the way that he personifies them". The answer as posted doesn't seek to address either point and therefore, in my opinion, does not constitute an answer.

@Randal'Thor Been a bit preoccupied as I've been put up for redundancy from my day job, although I've been sure to be here to mod stuff. Besides, I've got no hope of keeping up with @verbose long term :)

@Randal'Thor I'm on a hiding to nothing trying to keep up with them :)

@Randal'Thor thanks, it was you accepting an answer that tilted me over the threshold :)

Apparently my favourite author, Cormac McCarthy, has passed away :(

A lot of other scholars have labelled Fish as a postmodernist so I'm hardly alone in that interpretation, although I believe he himself rejects the label.

You can also see elements of post-structuralism in the ideas around the subjective meaning of words like "glarph" ;)

@verbose just realised I never accepted your answer to my question about Fish and found poetry so there's some more rep :) I also never replied as to why I felt his approach was postmodern. Broadly, by insisting on the value of interpretive communities, he's echoing the postmodern concept of discourse analysis whereby meaning in communication is derived as much, or more, from social context than from the words themselves.

@verbose maybe so, but I've lost the long race and deservedly so, to someone who clearly has more knowledge and passion than me :)

@ClaraDiazSanchez Okay, I've replaced "normal" with "classical" and rewritten the reference to entanglement to be more vague, in line with my limited understanding of what it means.

@Randal'Thor perhaps we should keep it for books that are particularly fresh and innovative? ;)

@Randal'Thor misclick. I'm trying to do this on mobile and the chat UI is terrible on touchscreen

So I think to be classed as a polymath you actually have to be good in all the fields you study. I'm just a dabbler :)

I picked up the journalism almost by chance after blogging about my hobby for years just for fun. Q Now I'm back at the point where I want to can my day job and do the literature degree after all :)

@verbose at 18 I had a choice between English literature or biochemistry at university and chose the latter. Went on to do a doctorate in biology but ballsed it up, then taught myself to program as a way to get into an IT career. It was the middle.lf the dotcom boom & places were so desperate for programmers that lack of qualifications wasn't an issue.

@ClaraDiazSanchez I can imagine. I'd love to know how it could be improved. My background is biology & chemistry so my knowledge of quantum effects is limited to their results (i.e. the shape of orbitals) rather than any of the theory plus some pop science reading. It's a subject I'm very curious about so would appreciate hearing your suggestions.

@Randal'Thor I have essentially given up hope of getting back on the all time top row :)

@PrinceNorthLæraðr thank you :)

@Randal'Thor it might do better than some we've had

@Randal'Thor well in truth it's not something I particularly -wanted- ... but I wanted it more than to see a shortfall of quality candidates if that makes sense.

@Randal'Thor I believe I put it on there. I neglected to mention that I'm an author of fact, not fiction.

@verbose It's more common than everyone thinks. The literature, not the rugs. I can remember being told off by tutors for mixing arts & science courses before finding out from other students that there were quite a few of us who did.

@Mithical oh no :(

(and @verbose - but they already suggested they were unlikely to run - and @GarethRees and @spagirl who've been fairly silent on the matter AFAIK)

Well I've put my nomination post up as promised. Really hope to see @Tsundoku and @bobble nominate themselves, too.

Having a bad literary day today trying to learn more about Lost in the Funhouse. There are times I feel I need to unlearn all my years of scientific education to be able to think "loosely" enough to do well with books. How on earth do people find all these cunning little allusions and connections?!

@Tsundoku ah, I didn't realise Beckett wrote novels and short stories. I only know his work as a playwright.

Just read this short story by John Barth and I don't think any single piece of literature has ever made me feel so stupid. I need a paper copy, enough time for repeat readings, a pencil for annotating, a sunny day and a strong drink to get my head around this. Quite extraordinary. There may be questions incoming. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1967/11/lost-in-the-funhouse/…

@GarethRees fair enough, I wasn't intending to denigrate your (or anyone else's) efforts that have made HNQ - it's just been my personal experience and there's a hint of frustration there too. Thanks for the explanation.

It's a bit frustrating that only low-effort Q's and A's from here ever seem to make it to HNQ. I don't suppose anyone knows enough about the algorithm to see if we can do anything about that?

@Mithical I mostly read in bed, and mostly ebooks on my phone. I've increasingly realised that this is a terrible way to read more demanding texts. You're not predisposed to think about the text more widely because you're tired, and you can't make notes in the margins. But I'm going to carry on because it's convenient and it's often the only time I can carve out in the day to read.

@verbose It's a bit less time consuming to watch a movie than read a book.

@Randal'Thor that's kind of you to think of me, although I doubt I have that much comparative expertise - we've never really discussed it since the early days but I get the sense there are several users with considerably more than me, Tsundoku, you two other existing mods, Verbose and Gareth Rees among them. But as I said before, if it would be helpful to have more candidates, I will be happy to stand.

@Mithical OK, thanks for clarifying. Broadly my position is that I'd prefer not to take on moderation responsibilities (and I'm not sure I'd be very good at it), but this is an important community to me and I'd be willing to shoulder the burden and try my best if it was beneficial to the evolution of the site.

Ah, sorry, ignore me - I didn't see the followup post

Given the responses to this meta question, is there any scope for changing the policy on "movement" tags? literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1734/…

@Randal'Thor it's funny what you can learn about each other through SE :)

As a vegetarian, personally, I would be happy to eat lab-grown meat. But I certainly know vegetarians who have said they will not do so, because animals must have been harmed early on in the research required to grow the meat. So the idea that it's fine for vegetarians because any particular given piece of lab-grown meat hasn't directly come from an animal is false.

@Mithical I need the scream emoji for this

Oh god, I'm terrified to touch anything!

@Randal'Thor edited

@Starckman well I would, yes, but then again I personally think Bukowski was a talentless hack :)

Beat writers are certainly treated as a legitimate artistic movement in America but perhaps less so in Europe (I'm British FWIW)

I don't mean to diminish the values of the individual works of beat writers by saying this - only that in sense of an artistic movement it seems to have gained an intellectual regard beyond that which you might expect from the size and quality of its body of work. As I said before I think it's because that small corpus had a very large impact on American culture in the 50s and 60s.

@Starckman Interesting. It seems almost the opposite to me - that they're overly legitimised. That's what I meant by the disconnect. Beat literature consisted of a handful of writers who produced perhaps three great works, and they had no coherent motives or goals until Ginsberg wrote some down in the 80s well after the movement was spent intellectually. Constrast it with modernism which had self-concious goals from the outset and encompassed dozens of writers.