Some Lit X Quotes and Thoughts

I decided that instead of writing these down in a document somewhere I'd write them down in my blog, so...here's some random Quotes and thoughts.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
-Excellent book, highly recommended
-Most of the valuable (lit x-wise) thoughts in this book were kinda implicit, but there were some pieces that I thought could be really helpful:

"Julián told me that a story is a letter the author writes himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise."

"For some time now, Julián had been wondering whether he'd gone out of his mind. Does the madman know he is mad? Or are the madmen those who insist on convincing hiim of his unreason in order to safeguard their own idea of reality?" (444)

Having read Godel Escher Bach as my last Lit X book, I viewed this book examining it in a similar light. A central element to this book is a parallel between Julian and Daniel, separated by a generation, and joined by Julian's books (though the story is far more complex). Basically, Julian sees himself in Daniel, and Daniel sees himself in Julian's books. Also, Julian becomes a different person after a series of crazy events, but his old self is still contained in his old ficition novels, which someone (read to find out who) sets out to destroy. All this drew up another question for me: What kind of "strange loop" is at work in an autobiography?

The first quote above also has to do with a system looking to itself from outside of itself. Godel Escher Bach presents 3 modes: the Mechanical, Intelligent, and Un-Mode where a system "turns itself off" in order to view itself. That's kinda like this. THis is the heart of godel's incompleteness theorem, which implies that no system, using its own rules and capabilities, can adequately describe itself. Not too difficultly, this notion of viewing yourself from outside of yourself leads into the second quote about madness and reality. This quote, in turn, leads into the mind-body problem, connecting a real physical state, madness, to its perception. Again, there is the dichotomy of reality vs. unreality. We have what is actually happening, perhaps sanity, and then what is perceived, perhaps madnesss. The paradox presented by this quote is very difficult to explain in words, but I trust that the reader can understand it by interpreting the quote for himself. It's late and my words aren't quite coming to me, but regardless you should be able to see the paradox of the two statements, and how they entail "strange loops" which lead to better, or at least more complete, understandings of a system.

Next: "Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our ehart and mind, and great readers are becoming mroe scarce by the day." (484)

The important part: "A book is a mirror that offers us only what we carry inside us." Again, interesting to see how when different systems interact, they are limited to each other. This reminds me of something, perhaps unrelated. I saw a TedTalk yesterday about consciousness by Dennett, co-author of The Mind's I. An interesting 15-min introduction making the use of optical illusions to illustrate an interesting point on consciousness. TED.com, by the way, is a fantastic site. Kinda like an always relevant, intellectually stimulating youTube. But there's also some good comedy and music, etc. there. I recommend it, too. Here's the Dennett talk for those interested: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/102 But really do explore TED.com, for those who haven't yet discovered it.


I feel ready to go to bed; this seems adequate for tonight. Really do read The Shadow of the Wind, too. It's a really great book. I knocked it off in 3 days. I've made progress with Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera) and I've begun Invisible Cities (Calvino). The Kundera book is just chalk-full of philosophical quotes, and plenty of them that pertain to my lit-x paper. I'll need to decide on a more focused guiding question before picking and beginning to analyze them. Merry Christmas.