World Salad: Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente
For a while, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros loved nothing more than showing off. Give them the soggiest cast-off thigh-high stocking's worth of a tune and the most obnoxiously Campari-drunk open mic night reject half-sucked raspberry lolly of a lyric, and in one night, Dess and Mira and oort would turn around a glamgrind anthem perfectly crystallizing the despair of the young enslaved by the London real estate market crossbred with the desperate futuro-cosmic hope of murdering a Martian catwalk in a satin slip while guzzling a rubbish bin full of cheap ruby port, as sung by the comet-pummeled ghost of Oscar Wilde snorting stars like meth. Give them a hostile, empty stage with a lighting rig left over from a lesser-known BBC period drama, a putrefying zombie of a soundboard, and a room with more cigarette butts than people, and before you could say "No, stop, don't, why?" the place would be a new planet crawling with gorgeous post-postmodern broke-down fashion wraiths filled with the unfaceable existential horror of all unpaid interns, the pent-up sexuality of unwalloped pinatas, and cheap, infinite lager.
Ladies and gentlemen, my quest for literature that can be classed as "A Delightful Romp" has acquired a new trophy. Omigosh, this is SO AMAZING!
Readers of my bookposts may recall me gushing over Tom Robins as "the master of the sentence" and Douglas Adams as "the master of funny sci-fi."Space Opera makes me imagine that the two of them got stoned, had a rap battle, and decided to have fun with an infinite collection of words printed on refrigerator magnets. Except that they weren't involved. It was Catherynne M. Valente who has showed us how it is possible, with perfect ingredients and seasonings, to make a word salad, toss it with reckless abandon, and have every leaf, every julienned vegetable, every drop of awesomeic vinaigrette miraculously land in the right place, resulting in a masterpiece.
Wait--what's it about, I hear you ask? Plot is just details here. The point is the fun with words, highbrow and lowbrow earth culture, and romping. Yes, it does have a plot involving contact from the intergalactic community of alien life forms who will decide if earth is fit to exist by having a representative band compete in an intergalactic battle of the bands--but don't think too much about that. Just read and enjoy.
The words....Omigosh, the WORDS! Do people ask what the plot is in tom Robbins? Story details detract from the sentences!
I still have several Hugo-nominated novels to go as of this writing, but it's hard to see how anything else can dislodge Space Opera from my choice for number one. If they surprise me, I don't mind a bit.
Mean Fae: The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black
"I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcel me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this"--I throw his own words back at him--"this is the least of what I can do."
This one (on the Hugo ballot in the YA category) took me aback about halfway through. The main character is a mortal being raised in the fae world and bullied by the cruel prince of the title....while training to be a badass fighter. As a YA book, I found parallels between the beautiful, mean fae and the "beautiful" mean popular high school cliques that make life miserable for geeks. It works on that level...right up until the plot goes someplace completely different.
Harbinger of Howard Zinn: Imperialism, by John A. Hobson
If a tendency to distribute income or consuming power according to needs were operative, it is evident that consumption would rise with every rise of producing power, for human needs are illimitable, and there would be no excess of saving. But it is quite otherwise in a state of economic society where distribution has no fixed relation to needs, but is determined by other conditions which assign to some people a consuming power vastly in excess of needs or possible uses, while others are destitute of consuming power enough to satisfy even the full demands of physical efficiency.
Written at the end of the 19th Century and looking back at it with less than fond memories, Imperialism reads like a modern academic text, except in that it refutes arguments that aren't generally made any more (such as, imperialism is the White Man's Burden, in which Europeans, whom God has seen fit to make fitter to rule over others, are required to do so for the betterment of inferior races). As with Veblen last month, Hobson tells us what everyone already knows except professional economic/political scholars. All the pompous posturing about "natural law" and "the inevitable order of things" is really the assholes who claim ownership of everything making excuses to assert dominance. Fuck them.
The Bitter Dregs: The Best of Ambrose Bierce
"Prisoner, what is your name?"
"As I am to lose it at daylight to-morrow morning it is hardly worth while concealing it. Parker Adderson."
"Your rank?"
"A somewhat humble one; commissioned officers are too precious to be risked in the perilous business of a spy. I am a sergeant."
"Of what regiment?"
"You must excuse me; my answer might, for anything I know, give you an idea of whose forces are in your front. Such knowledge as that is what I came into your lines to obtain, not to impart."
"You are not without wit."
"If you have the patience to wait you will find me dull enough to-morrow."
"How do you know that you are to die to-morrow morning?"
"Among spies captured by night that is the custom. It is one of the nice observances of the profession."
--from "Parker Addison, Philosopher"
I figured I needed to read some Bierce from the era. Unlike Twain's short stories, I did not go into it with illusions that it would be fun. Bierce can be as macabre as Poe, as pessimistic as Schopenhauer, and more cynical than Twain himself.
The collection I read was grouped into categories, which made reading them in order unduly repetitive. There are Civil War tales, which frequently have some soldier displaying what appears to be cowardice before following orders and killing what is later revealed to be a brother or father or some family member on the other side. There are the oldest style of supernatural tales in which the mysterious stranger turns out to have been someone who died years ago or the protagonist with no memory turns out to be dead (it's not Bierce's fault that The Twilight Zone made all of this into predictable tropes decades after Bierce set out for Mexico and was never seen again).
His best stories, it seems to me, are the darkly comic ones where, for example, a murderer asks the police to hush the whole matter up, and they agree with him that if his crimes were talked about, it might spoil his plans to run for the legislature.
Harvard Classics: The Banner of the Upright Seven, by Gottfried Keller; A Happy Boy, by Bjornstjerne Bjornson
“Try to acquire an equal knowledge of all branches and enrich your store of principles that you may not sink into the use of empty phrases. After this first dash allow considerable time to pass without thinking of such things again. If you have a good idea, never speak just in order to air it but rather lay it aside; the opportunity will come more than once later for you to use it in a more developed and better form. But should someone else forestall you in uttering it, be glad instead of annoyed, for that is a proof that you have felt and thought something universal. Train and develop your mind and watch over your nature and study in other speakers the difference between a mere tongue-warrior and a man of truthfulness and feeling. Do not travel about the country nor rush through all the streets, but accustom yourself to understand the course of the world from your own hearth, in the midst of tried friends; then, when it is time for action, you will come forward with more wisdom than the hounds and tramps."
--from The Banner of the Upright Seven
HE was called Eyvind, and he cried when he was born. But as soon as he could sit up on his mother’s knee he laughed; and when they lighted the candle at evening, he laughed till the place rang again, but cried when he could not get to it.
“This boy will be something out of the common,” said his mother.
--from A Happy Boy
Two more authors who are on exactly zero lists of "the western canon" except the Harvard Classics; both simple folktales. The first about a group of lovable old foolish but honorable Swiss guys who want to partake in the community festival but are too shy to make the customary speech; the other a Norwegian bildungsroman mostly about whether the protagonist is going to get a clue and figure out that the girl loves him back even though he's poor.
I mean, they're nice stories, but...raise your hand if you've even heard of either author, other than maybe Bjornson's plays?
The Edwardian Murders: The Ape Who Guards the Balance; The Falcon at the Portal, by Elizabeth Peters; Ambrose Bierce and the Trey of Pearls, by Oakley Hall; The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind, by Michael Pearce; The Seven Per-cent Solution, by Nicolas Meyer
"You may remove that ludicrous beard," Holmes said in the high pithced voice which he had displayed on the night he burst so melodramatically into my house, and used again the following day when I had visited him in his. "And kindly refrain from employing that ridiculous comic opera accent. I warn you, you'd best confess or it will go hard with you. The game is up, Professor Moriarty!"
Our host turned slowly to him, allowing for the full effect of his piercing gaze, and said in a soft voice, "My name is Sigmund Freud."
--from The Seven Per-cent Solution
I've been posting about most of these mystery writers all year now, and the next in their respective serieses are about the same, so the only one I'm going to talk about specifically this month is The Seven Per-Cent Solution, which is a modern classic and one of the better homages to Holmes.
Holmes fandoms have shipped the Holmes canon with Dracula, with Jack the Ripper, with Oscar Wilde, with pretty much every real and fictional highlight of the Edwardian era. Meyer's masterful homage has Holmes join forces with Sigmund Freud (who I'm also reading a lot of this year), first as a patient, and then as a fellow investigator in a matter where psychology provides vital clues. And...it works. Not the least because both big heads are really full of themselves. Highly recommended.
Tywin Lannister's "We're In Charge Forever" speech: The End of History, and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama
The end of history would mean the end of wars and bloody revolutions. Agreeing on ends, men would have no large causes for which to fight. They would satisfy their needs through economic activity, but they would no longer have to risk their lives in battle. They would, in other words, become animals again, as they were before the bloody battle that began history. A dog is content to sleep in the sun all day provided he is fed, because he is not dissatisfied with what he is. He does not worry that other dogs are doing better than him, or that his career as a dog has stagnated, or that dogs are being oppressed in a distant part of the world. If man reaches a society in which he has succeeded in abolishing injustice, his life comes to resemble that of the dog. Human life, then, involves a curious paradox: it seems to require injustice, for the struggle against injustice is what calls forth what is highest in man.
I almost feel sorry for Fukuyama. He wrote this book in 1992, right after the collapse of the USSWere, when there was talk about downsizing the military and giving Americans a "peace dividend" (My father died waiting for his in 2005, still occasionally reminding everyone that we hadn't yet gotten our promised peace dividend), choosing that little snapshot moment in history to bring forth a thesis that we had reached the zenith of civilization and that everything was going to be just peachy from now on.
Yeah, how'd that work out?
Fukuyama argued that liberal democracy was the best form of government and the ultimate end of history, citing as evidence the late 20th century collapse of fascist military dictatorships in Latin America, and of communist states in Eastern Europe and Asia. At the time, the biggest threat to his thesis was not yet Christian fanaticism but radical Islam; the Islam is still around, but now the great threat to civilization is right here in America (and as I write this, spreading to Australia and Europe) from Evangelical white supremacist zealots who deny not only liberal democracy in favor of race-based authoritarianism but who also deny science, education, manners and human decency. Looks like history has a ways to go.
I looked up some online criticism of Fukuyama and found Newtists who claimed him as a conservative mostly for claiming communism defeated by capitalism (and never mind that "liberal democracy is the end of history" is the central thesis of the book; leftists denouncing him because they believed the Newtists; and People Unclear On The Concept who thought "the end of history" meant not the ultimate goal of human progress, but that nothing was going to happen any more.
Like I said, I almost feel sorry for Fukuyama. This book was influential in its day, but has been proved more wrong in a short time than Marx ever will be.
Irish Bull: Mr. Dooley's Philosophy, by Finley Peter Dunne
“It looks to me as though th' raypublican is wr-rong,” said Mr. Hennessy, with the judicial manner of a man without prejudices.
“Iv coorse he's wrong,” said Mr. Dooley. “He starts wrong. An' th' dimmycrats ar-re r-right. They're always r-right. Tis their position. Th' dimmycrats ar-re right an' the raypublicans has th' jobs. It all come up because our vinerated party, Hinnissy, ain't quick at th' count. Man an' boy I've taken an intherest in politics all me life, an' I find th' on'y way to win an iliction is to begin f'r to count th' minyit ye've completed th' preliminaries iv closin' th' polls an' killin' th' other judges an' clerks.
“Th' dimmycrats counted, but th' count come too late. Be th' time th' apparent an' hidjous majority iv th' raypublicans was rayjooced to nawthin' an' a good liberal, substantial, legal an' riotous dimmycratic majority put in its place be ordher iv th' coorts, th' commonwealth iv Kentucky an' Jack Chinn, th' raypublican has been so long in th'job an' has become so wedded to it that ye cuddent shake him out with a can iv joynt powdher. It seems to him that there niver was a time whin he wasn't gov'nor.”
My third excellent collection of Mr. Dooley columns. As usual, the written dialect challenges readability, but if I mutter it out loud to myself in an Irish accent, I mostly get it. All of the books have my highest recommendations for both humor and wise insight.
I Have Kippled: Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the road. He had seen the money pass.
‘Halt!’ he cried in impressive English. ‘Know ye not that there is a takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter the Road from this side-road. It is the order of the Sirkar, and the money is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the ways.’
‘And the bellies of the police’, said Kim, skipping out of arm’s reach. ‘Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came from the nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law. Hast thou ever heard the name of thy brother?’
‘And who was he? Leave the boy alone,’ cried a senior constable, immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the veranda.
‘He took the label from a bottle of Belaitee Pani (soda water), and affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who passed, saying that it was the Sirkar’s order. Then came an Englishman and broke his head. Ah, brother, I am a town crow, not a village crow!’
The policeman drew back abashed, and Kim hooted at him all down the road.
‘Was there ever such a disciple as i?’ he cried merrily to the lama. ‘All earth would have picked thy bones within ten miles of Lahore city if I had not guarded thee.’
This tale of a merry street ragamuffin and the conflicts between his white English heritage and his cultural upbringing in the teeming slums of India (I’m still wondering whether India has any normal slums, or whether they all teem) was billed as an exciting good spy novel for adults and children alike. I may have been tired, but I kept drowsily losing track of the plot, as the Huck Finn of the Ganges and his friend the spiritually wise but worldly foolish holy lama wander from one disjointed encounter to another. The stiff upper-lipped English and their Indian officials, semi-independent tribal chiefs and their officials, Hindus, Buddhists, peasants and spies pretending to be same make for a fancy and often confusing portrait of one of the most contradictory cultures ever to exist.
I daydream about India a lot. But it’s a fantasy India, with a dozen Taj Mahals, pleasant curry smells, and everybody smiling for the tourists in a safe environment. The real experience, now and a century ago, is more likely a darker, more pungent version of down the rabbit hole, in which everyone speaks nonsense and you can get hurt.
Little Rabbit Hole on the Prairie: Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather
Her husband put on his coat and boots, went to the door, and stopped with his hand on the latch, throwing over his shoulder a crafty, hateful glance at the bewildered woman. “Here, you! Come right along, I’ll need ye!”
She took her black shawl from a peg and followed him. Just at the door, she turned and caught the eyes of the visitors, who were looking after her in compassion and perplexity. Instantly that stupid face became intense, prophetic, full of awful meaning. With her finger, she pointed them away, away!—two quick thrusts into the air. Then, with a look of horror beyond anything language could convey, she threw back her head and drew the edge of her palm quickly across her distended throat—and vanished. The doorway was empty; the two priests stood staring at it, speechless. That flash of electric passion had been so swift, the warning it had communicated so vivid and definite, that they were struck dumb.
Four Willa Cather books, and my favorite is still O Pioneers. Cather clearly spent some time in New Mexico, as this is the second with a solid presence there. Unfortunately, she has chosen to tell the story of two venerable, kindly Spanish missionaries of the 19th Century, in a my, what-good-men-they-were sort of way, and I know too much about what the Spanish from Father Serra onward spent centuries doing to the indigenous peoples to swallow it.
As usual with Cather, it’s such a pity that the original frontiersmen, who all loved the land and knew they belonged there from the moment The Lord created it in 1492 or so, have to weep as the marching morons show up 50 years later and spoil it all. I kept waiting for their faithful guide Jacinto to look unimpressed at their complaints and say “Tell me about it”.
Beauty Myth: The Belles, by Dhonielle Clayton
They ask us to reset their milk-white bones. They ask us to use our gilded tools to recast every curve of their faces. They ask us to smooth and shape and carve each slope of their bodies like warm, freshly dipped candles. They ask us to erase signs of living. They ask us to give them talents. Even if the pain crescendos in waves so high it pulls screams of anguish from their throats, or if the cost threatens to plummet them into ruin, the men and women of Orleans always want more. And I'm happy to provide. I'm happy to be needed.
Another selection for the YA Hugo ballot, and it deserves to be there. I'm seeing "court intrigue' as a frequent theme this year, and The Belles runs with it well.
In the world of Orleans, people are born grey and featureless, and the Belles are the cast of highly valued women with the powers to make them "beautiful', to modify their bodies in almost any possible way. People spend fortunes to out-Gertrude McFuzz their neighbors, and because the Belles' work is physically too exhausing to meet demands, they are both treated like royalty and also robbed of agency. And this is before taking into account the court's ultimate "mean girl."
Very high recommendations, both for an increasingly suspenseful tale and for raising important questions about body image, identity, and the price paid for seeking to become a physical ideal.
More Hidden Figures: The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
That's the image they showed in the National Times. First there's my plane, tumbling out of control. And beside it, a photo of me, laughing in the arms of my husband with a crowd of people standing around us.
Those are the only photos of me, because as soon as we got off the airfield, I locked myself in the bathroom. Every time I thought I was together enough to go back out, I could hear the voices of reporters in the hall and got queasy all over again. So I waited until the air show was over, and my stomach was empty, and Nathaniel's worry when he knocked on the door was too much to ignore.
It would make more sense to be afraid of the crash, but I was afraid of the reporters.
And I was ashamed to be so weak.
I never did see Mad Men. I did see, and thrill to, Hidden figures, and was surprised to find that it did NOT inspire Mary Robinette Kowal to write The Calculating Stars, because the plots almost dovetail. Kowal had already written most or all of this Hugo-nominated novel before the movie serendipitously came out and made it more topical.
I wish it was topical only for that. The truth is that the 50s prejudices about women's suitability for STEM fields, which seem like archaic, counterproductive, idiotic superstitions in Kowal's setting are returning in the late 2010s with a vengeance and, as I write this, are one Supreme Court appointment away from being codified as law consistent with Democracy. I shake with white-hot anger just thinking about it, and cannot presume to think what women must be going through.
But yes. The story--in its simplest form, a pilot with a gift for equations who wants to be an astronaut and faces ridiculous obstacles because Lady Astronaut--is a gripping and suspenseful one. To bring the space program into the 1950s, Kowal has postulated Dewey becoming President and an extinction-threatening global emergency requiring space migration pretty damn quick. Kowal's protagonist is clearly one of the most competent, capable choices to be an astronaut (and is deflected from Mary Sue allegations by the need to cope with her unintentional racial faux pas and her battle with debilitating anxiety disorder) whose disqualification because of gender prejudice not only threatens human decency but also possibly threatens the future of the human race.
Very highest recommendations.
Rhymes With Dude: The Unconscious; Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, by Sigmund Freud
But this attitude of ours towards death exerts a powerful influence upon our lives. Life becomes impoverished and loses its interest when life itself, the highest stake in the game of living, must not be risked. It becomes as hollow and empty as an American flirtation in which it is understood from the beginning that nothing is to happen, in contrast to a continental love affair in which both partners must always bear in mind the serious consequences. Our emotional ties, the unbearable intensity of our grief, make us disinclined to court dangers for ourselves and those belonging to us. We do not dare to contemplate a number of undertakings that are dangerous but really indispensable, such as aeroplane flights, expeditions to distant countries, and experiments with explosive substances. We are paralyzed by the thought of who is to replace the son to his mother, the husband to his wife, or the father to his children, should an accident occur. A number of other renunciations and exclusions result from this tendency to rule out death from the calculations of life.
Two more short tracts by Freud, the first one not so much about the "unconscious mind" as postulating the existence of a moderate "preconscious mind", a sort of foyer where suppressed neurotic impulses go to bang on the main door of the mind and cause problems. The second, more interesting tract has little to do with sexual obsession, thankfully, but first does a general psychoanalysis of the warmonger's mind, similar to that of a toddler deprived of what it wants and throwing a tantrum; and secondly discussing the biggest taboo of all, the contemplation of one's own death (which, according to Freud, cannot even be imagined, because the act of imagination requires consciousness. In the contrapositive of Descartes, if one does not exist, therefore one cannot think.
Bad Girl: Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman
It was like kicking the beggar under the bridge. Something terrible in her kept bursting out, beyond her control. It never went away, even if it quieted while she walked. Walking only suppressed her inherent awfulness. It wasn't a cure. Maybe there was no cure. She'd been born bad, and she was dragging her bad carcass through the wilderness to no avail.
This is the sixth of the nominated YA books. Having gone through four novels and 6 YA offerings on the ballot, I am seeing a lot of common themes. Courts with intrigue and stifling rules. Girls and women told that they're not allowed to do stuff, and doing it, and being punished for it. Protagonists burdened not only by the conflicts in the plot, but by mental health issues as well. And of course, women ultimately kicking ass.
Tess of the Road has all of the above. The plot alternates Tess's forward-moving adventure with her back story; she has plenty in common with Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles, and if you've read and been moved by Hardy, you'll find this emotionally upheaving. The protagonist is continually told by her horrible mother that she is evil, rotten, nasty, irredeemably born for Hell, and her weak retiring father does little to contradict Mom. By the time the story arc of the novel begins, young adult Tess has fully internalized her existential rottenness and making it into a self-fulfilling prophecy where the innocent foolish choices of youth give way to problems that really are of her own making.
Reader, I wept for her. I was given that psychological burden too, and I wanted to reach into the book and take Tess someplace safe. But, of course, that is a journey the protagonist gets to make alone.
I found it gut-wrenchingly gripping for the PTSD, and suspenseful for the plot. My highest recommendations.
For the record, I'm ranking the YA books on my ballot as follows:
- Tess of the Road
- Dread Nation
- Children of Blood and Bone
- The Cruel Prince
- The Belles
- Invasion
All are deserving. I ranked Tess higher than Dread Nation simply because it moved me so much, but Dread Nation's command of alternate American History is astonishing, and it was a close choice.
Thinky-Thoughts: Introduction to Metaphysics, by Henri Bergson
There is a reality that is external and yet given immediately to the mind. Common sense is right on this point, as against the idealism and realism of the philosophers.
This reality is mobility. Not things made, but things in the making, not self-maintaining states, but only changing states, exist. Rest is never more apparent, or, rather, relative. The consciousness we have of our own self in its continual flux introduces us to the interior of a reality, on the model of which we must represent other realities. All reality, therefore, is tendency, if we agree to mean by tendency an incipient change of direction.
This stand-alone essay is what the Great Books set offers as representative of Bergson's philosophy. It is short, somewhat entertaining, and to me, not very convincing (like Berkley in that respect). The central thesis is that Metaphysics is that branch of epistemology that does not use symbols, and that intuition is a greater way of "knowing" things than scientific analysis.
So...at the turn of the century, most or all of the other philosophers were going after scientific or logical analysis as the perfect way to know things...and it might well be the best, but there are problems. Bergson discloses the problems, but is far less persuasive offering up one's unquantifiable "intuition" (putting your soul inside an object and FEELING it, really grokking or digging it, man) as a more valid substitute. It sounds too much like the kind of argument that justifies some doofus who--all together now---Thinks With His Gut, and belittles you for having actually studied the issue at hand.
Her Last Bow: Conversations on Writing, by Ursula K. Le Guin
A very interesting case in point is using "they" as a singular. This offends the grammar bullies endlessly; it is wrong, wrong, wrong! Well, it was right until the eighteenth century, when they invented the rule that "he" includes "she". It didn't exist in English before then; Shakespeare used "they" instead of "he or she"--we all do, we always have done, in speaking, in colloquial English. It took the womens' movement to bring it back to English literature. And it is important. Because it is a crossroads between correctness bullying and the moral use of language. If "he" includes "she" but "she" doesn't include "he", a big statement is being made, with huge social and moral implications. But we don't have to use "he" that way--we've got "they". Why not use it?
This very short set of edited transcripts of radio interviews with David Naimon is on the Hugo ballot this year in the "related work" category, probably because it is the last original book of Le Guin's work ever, and she is deservedly a beloved grandmaster, and possibly the greatest writer from my native Oregon to have lived so far (though if you want to put her second behind Kesey, I won't fight you). But the set of interviews themselves are not what she will be forever remembered for. This is a celebration-of-life courtesy nomination.
It's not her fault. Think of how many times you have seen a celebrated guest interviewed on a late-night show, or heard one on the radio. Most of the people interviewed are interesting professionals, many of them highly educated, many of them extremely gifted speakers--and how many of them do you actually remember, right now? If you're like me, you remember something of the attitude, maybe a bon mot or two, but not much else. And Conversations on Writing is no different. I had a pleasant hour or so reading it, found myself nodding in agreement, well aware that this was a wise and gifted mind...and then moved on and forgot most of it again within the hour. If your mileage varies, that's cool.