10 ways digital books are changing our literary live

The Hermitage Bookshop in Cherry Creek North, decidedly old-school with its oak furniture and elaborate Persian rug, isn't where you'd expect to find a fan of e-books, but listen to owner Bob Topp: "E-books have increased the purchase of print books," he says.

"It's easy for people to read the Sunday paper, look at a book review, and 10 minutes later, they've got that e-book on their Kindle. More people reading is good. I think it's way too early to say that the e-book will kill the hardback."

Topp doesn't use an e-reader, but his wife does. She praises its ability to store hundreds of novels in a slim, mobile device that weighs less than most of the venerable collectible books on the Hermitage shelves.

Certainly, digital publishing is changing the way people consume books — how and where they acquire books, and how and where they read. Here are 10 examples, old school versus new.

PRINT BOOKS: We joined book clubs.

DIGITAL BOOKS: We discuss them in booklogs. Readers extract favorite (or hated) passages from books to comment on in dedicated blogs, aided by Google, which is indexing and ranking individual book pages and passages, based on online chatter. Read a perplexing or inspiring passage and then instantly browse comments from other readers — effectively, a global book club. This option takes reading a book from being an individual activity to a group sport.

Some examples: bookblog.net, book-blog .com, and Kirkus Review's kirkusreviews .com/meet-the-bloggers, an aggregation of book blogs.

PRINT BOOKS: We find them in libraries, bookstores and bookmobiles.

DIGITAL BOOKS: For people who own personal computers, e-readers, smartphones, iPads and other tablets, there's 2 4/7 access to libraries and bookstores for purchasing, borrowing and downloading material.

However, people who don't own those devices are left behind. Underfunded schools, for example, barely have funds for printed books, much less e-books, e-readers or laptops, educators say.

"I hate to see our increasingly divided culture leave the poor further behind by making texts available mostly in unaffordable and impractical formats," says Denver School of the Arts literature teacher Gregg Painter.

PRINT BOOKS: Scribble notes in the margins.

DIGITAL BOOKS: We use Kindle's Public Notes virtual annotation application.

Want to see how this works? Go to kindle.amazon.com, click on "Most Popular," then "Books with the most public notes," then on a title to bring up a list of note-writers, and clicking the "+" sign next to each name to see an individual's notes.

Notes aren't necessarily illuminating — "Note: look up ostergarden in wikipedia," writes Joel Gianoli in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." (It's a farm in Sweden.)

But they could be. Imagine looking up the notes that previous students leave in e-textbooks. Or seeing Jon Stewart's comments in the margins of Sarah Palin's latest tome.

PRINT BOOKS: Write to a favorite author, hope for a response by mail.

DIGITAL BOOKS: Visit a favorite author's Facebook page to send a message and a friend request; follow that author's Twitter feed. Fort Collins author Lauren Myracle, whose latest book, "Shine," has its own Facebook page, maintains at least three Facebook pages that are followed avidly by fans who exchange views with her.

"Last night I read 'The Corsage' and you were absolutely right! Very scary stuff! It took me two hours to try and sleep last night," wrote fan Emma Dougherty.

Loveland historical mystery writer Charlotte Hinger calculates that she spends nearly as much time promoting her books on Facebook and other social media as she does researching and writing "Lethal Lineage" and her other books. Her Facebook page quotes Agatha Christie, and her wall updates fans on book signings, reviews, conferences and her progress on her new novel, "Hidden Heritage."

PRINT BOOKS: Collect an author's autograph at a bookstore reading.

DIGITAL BOOKS:Use Autography, which debuts next month. It's a software program that allows writers to autograph an e-book using an iPad. The writer calls up his book, inserts a blank page between the title page and the first chapter, and then inscribes the blank page. The process takes less than three minutes, and authors can e-mail their inscriptions remotely.

PRINT BOOKS: Want to publish a book? You'll need a proposal, an agent, an editor, a publisher and a marketing department

DIGITAL BOOKS: Want to publish a book? There's an app for that, and authors can be quite successful. Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath and Karen McQuestion all are authors as famous for their aggressive self-promotion as for their books. However, self-publishing isn't always a good thing.

"There are a lot of crummy self- published books," says Colorado agent Jodi Rein.

"But a lot of good writers are choosing to go that route, too. It can be great for writers, because they can keep more of the profits. Who's going to be the gatekeeper? It used to be that you'd walk into a bookstore and know that the books had been vetted by editors and publishers. If anyone can get published, do books still have value?"

PRINT BOOKS: Donate used books to charity, sell them to a secondhand bookstore.

DIGITAL BOOKS: "Used books" don't exist. Purchased books remain indefinitely on e-readers. Amazon Kindle books are automatically backed up on Amazon servers, so if a reader loses a Kindle or wants to upgrade, the books on the old Kindle move to the new one. The Kindle app will do the same thing for an iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, plus Macs and PCs.

PRINT BOOKS:Swap books with friends.

DIGITAL BOOKS: Until recently, the options were mostly limited to loaning your e-reader (and the books on it) to friends, or resorting to pirated files. Amazon's Lendle allows users to share certain (not all) Kindle titles for 14 days, similar to the way libraries arrange e-book loans.

The borrower doesn't need a Kindle, just a Kindle reading application for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry or Android.

PRINT BOOKS: Find an unfamiliar word in a book? Get a dictionary, look up the meaning.

DIGITAL BOOKS:Use your e-reader to highlight the word and click on it, and the definition will display at the bottom of the page. This function is available on newer e-readers, including the latest Kindle, which includes the New Oxford American Dictionary.

PRINT BOOKS:Collecting rare books, including first editions and antiquarian books.

DIGITAL BOOKS:There's no equivalent so far. Hermitage owner Bob Topp says he sees quite a few new customers who've become fans of an author after reading several digital books.

"It's a whole new group of people discovering a new world of older books, a dimension they never knew about," he says.

"They come into our store, and the look in their eyes is 'Book! I just gotta touch a book!' They've read the e-book on the plane, but now they want a book they can hold in their hand."

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SOURCE: http://www.denverpost.com

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How is literature relevant today?

# I would argue that literature is relevant to today's generation in the same way it was relevant to my own (born in 1970) generation.

Literature has always been relevant only to those who care. Literature has been (at least since my youth) an optional thing. You could easily go through life without truly encountering "good" literature. I think it is the same now.

For those who care about it, literature continues to be relevant. It continues to allow people to explore and contemplate the human condition. That, too, has not changed.

So I guess I don't see a real difference between literature's relevance today and its relevance to my generation.

## I think there are all kinds of things in literature that are still relevant, and if you consider a rather wide range of books to be literature, even more are relevant.

If you read any science fiction, it is still a wonderful place where the moral and ethical questions raised by powerful new technologies are raised and dealt with. These can be particularly helpful to those willing to pay attention to them as our society generally fails to raise these questions and rushes headlong into any new technology without pausing for breath.


### Literature and technology are not mutually exclusive. In fact, with the use of technology, literature can reach a far wider audience than ever. Technology is merely a vehicle - literature is the passenger. Literature remains a great unifying and illuminating force - one of the ways in which we learn and celebrate ideas, share experiences, connect to our pasts, gain insights into other cultures and share in hope for the future.

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this quoted from www.enotes.com

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Literature is important for the Nation Civilization

Neglect of HB Jassin Literary Documentation Centre is a mirror of cultural decline of literacy in the country, which have an impact on the lack of appreciation of literature. In fact, literature has an important role in shaping the nation's civilization.

"Leaving the neglected literary documentation center showed destruction of our civilization," said Martin Aleida, prolific writer who wrote short stories and books, on Wednesday (23 / 3). He considered the policy makers ignore the PDS HB Jassin because they do not have a strong cultural literacy, so do not think most comprehensive documentation center in Indonesian literature as something important.

Due to lack of funds, manager of PDS HB Jassin plans to close the documentation center was established in 1977. Tens of thousands of collections of works of literature and documentation relating to the literature were threatened.

The role of literature is very important to build civilization. Through literature, says Martin, one does not only develop the imagination that can be used to build the nation, but also as a medium to pass on the value of local wisdom to the young generation. Local wisdom that has shaped the national identity of Indonesia.

According to Martin, the neglect of literature stems from poor education system in Indonesia, which only entered the literature as reading material to memorize the story, not to be appreciated. Students read literary works through the synopsis prepared teachers. Students understand the outline of the story, but not capable of understanding the values ​​to be conveyed by the author.

This happens because most of the literary work in Indonesia was still in the area of ​​adults. Not many works of literature written back in easily understood language of children or adolescents, as has been done overseas.

Nirwan Dewanto author and poet said, through literature, language owned by a nation turned on and updated constantly. Through literature, people have the media to hang out and "play" with the language. "The development of language is characteristic of advanced human civilization," said Nirwan.

Effort to raise awareness of the literature, according to him, should continue to be done, not only move when already there are cases such as PDS HB Jassin. To save the PDS HB Jassin and other documentation centers, Nirwan saw the need for efforts from all parties, both government and society. For private parties want to get involved, the government need to encourage by providing incentives such as tax relief.

Neglect of documentation centers and libraries in Indonesia, according to Ninis Agustini, Lecturer Department of Information and Library Science Faculty of Communication University of Padjadjaran, Bandung, because people are reluctant to use it due to lack of information about the book or document sought.

This happens because the documentation center and library has not been handled by appropriate experts. There's an understanding that librarians simply a book keeper. "A librarian in addition be responsible for collection management must also be a consultant for visitors who want to access the collection," said Ninis. In some developed countries, librarians in the elementary course should be educated at least master the field of libraries.(

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Trash and Serious Literature in America

The opinion has often been expressed that literary criticism has merely been marking time since Aristotle invented it in his POETICS. This may or may not be an exaggeration. But the venerable Greek provided a couple of insights that are useful in understanding certain trends in contemporary American fiction.

In the century that just fizzled out, Plot was generally the province of trash literature, while Character, Diction and Thought were reserved for the serious stuff. This rift did not exist in the nineteenth century, when the best novelists tended also to be the most popular. Dickens was the prime novelistic technician and psychologist of his day, as well as the greatest myth-maker.

However, by the time Hemingway decided to blow out his brains with a shotgun in Idaho, the discontinuity between art and escapism had become wide as the Grand Canyon, so that even the average citizen couldn't fail to notice. It required the diseased genius of Madison Avenue to bridge the gap, or at least to stick a Lady Liberty-sized band-aid over it.

And Saul Bellow was right there, with his HERZOG--a book about a man who does nothing but write letters to dead people--to claim the dubious distinction of being the first author whose "novels" were sold to millions but actually read by several thousand, at the most.

Such hype, when exerted upon the rudimentary awareness of a world mesmerized by television, can even go so far as to garner the highest accolades for its beneficiaries. But, unfortunately, it has far less auspicious effects on the development of the work itself. Nobel Prize and multi-million-dollar bank account notwithstanding, Bellow is a classic case of arrested development, in the Aristotelian sense.

Premature recognition, especially in America, where fame brings an infinitude of distractions and temptations, almost inevitably stunts the growth of novelists. It's the sad story of American fiction, from Mark Twain to Mark Helprin; and Saul Bellow is one of the saddest episodes in that story. At the tender age of twenty-nine, he had his first book published, to the critical coos of his crowd. He realized, while still a tyro, that he was into something profitable. It takes a greater genius than Bellow, or a greater fool, to tamper with the goose that lays the golden eggs--even if the fowl does show the potential of becoming a swan.

"Beginners," says Aristotle, "succeed earlier with Diction and Character than with construction of a story." Bellow was just such a beginner, and a very promising one at that. But, having already amassed most of the money and ego-gratification he could ever hope to absorb, he had no reason to develop beyond his exquisite Diction and Character, and into the Action that could set his works firmly in the collective awareness of the human race.

The result is the unhappy spectacle of a man pushing a hundred, who provides us, every year or so, with a compilation of profound insights, well expressed, but going nowhere--in short, yet another novice work, marketed as a full-fledged novel. He's not a novelist at all, but an essayist, as the late John Gardner observed.

At the extreme opposite end of the spectrum wallows Stephen King, who has hawked more words and banked more royalties than any writer in the history of this planet. And the only advertisement his books require is his name and likeness on the dust jacket. The people who buy his books actually read them, voraciously, from cover to cover.

Old reliable Aristotle preemptively blew the whistle on Stephen King as well: "Plot is the end and purpose of tragedy. One may string together a series of characteristic speeches of the utmost best...and yet fail to produce the true tragic effect; but one would have much better success with a tragedy which, however inferior in these respects, has a Plot.... There can be tragedy without Character, but not without Plot."

Presumably the permissible deficiencies extend to the areas of Thought and Diction as well. In his tales of talking cars and cannibalistic toddlers, King is utterly virginal of Thought. And, of course, he eschews the delicacies of Diction so as not to offend the ears of his lowbrow clientele.

But he can tell a story. Why can he do it, and not Bellow, who is his superior in every other respect? The answer is almost certainly genetic, or at least congenital. Various young boys wander through King's books, effortlessly spouting well-shaped impromptu anecdotes. If they can be construed as self-portraits, we might assume that their creator is a natural-born story teller, a former prodigy in that primeval art form.

Chatterton, Mozart and Picasso notwithstanding, child prodigies are usually the least promising members of any artistic generation. It's a giant's step from semi-conscious infantile knacks to considered adult craftsmanship. In the field of music we hear again and again of the actual handicap that childhood genius can be. Yehudi Menuhin had to lay his fiddle aside for a time in adolescence, to give his heart and brain a chance to catch up with his precocious fingers.

Advertising agencies are full of natural painters, musicians and poets, who never mustered the gumption to make that explicitly moral leap into imaginative adulthood. And the bestseller racks are peopled with similarly idiotic savants, the most conspicuous today being Stephen King.

Go to the video shop incognito and rent PET SEMATARY. Steel yourself and observe the close-up of the small boy's face contorting in agony as the six-inch hypodermic needle is slowly inserted into his jugular vein. And ask yourself: is it possible to accuse Mr. King of being anything but ethically a child--and a very naughty one at that?

And yet he is a novelist, in a truer sense than Bellow, the great "Dean," can ever be.

If one were named dictator of the world tomorrow and asked which author's work should be set on fire in an attempt to expunge it forever from human awareness, one would be obliged to choose King's. But the irony is that, once their topicality has vanished in the smog of time, Bellow's works will be utterly forgotten, while King's, even if put to the torch, will undoubtedly survive in the more debased nightmares of the working classes and the nasty little jokes hissed around the campfire by pubescents at Boy Scout jamborees.

His works, and the works of other trash writers like him, are symptoms of our civilization's regression and decline, rather than curative agents which may arrest it. As Joseph Campbell, the late hireling of George Lucas, once observed, the stories which define vigorous societies are created not by the masses, but by the elite: Saul Bellows with moral imaginations and the psychic virility to weld them into mythos.

Needless to say, such a Saul Bellow is not on the scene today--or at least Manhattan has so far scorned his works. That very neglect, that sin of omission, is a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. Campbell's mythopoeic elite are not embraced by nations in the petulant throes of decline. Jesus had a reason for weeping over Jerusalem: she killed all her prophets.

There was a time in the neighborhood of Canaan when Moloch and the wicked Baalim held sway over the people's imaginations. Then Abraham came out of Ur. And now who commands (at least nominally) the most regiments, Abraham's god or Jezebel's? We are aware of the Ammonite practices of temple prostitution and baby sacrifice, but most of us perform less racy rituals on Sunday mornings, our vicarious behavior over the VCR the night before notwithstanding.

The Moloch myth, as currently expressed in Stephen King's fiction, emerges in the darker moments of human history. It caters to the appetites of vicious merchant civilizations, such as doomed Carthage and the USA of today. The wholesome tales of Miriam and Moses, of Joseph and his brothers, of John the Baptist and his younger, brighter cousin, are not being retold now.

The time is ripe for Abraham Redivivus. He'll come looming out of the desert and chase away the cannibal pantheon with fresh monolithic insights into the individuated human psyche.

The new Abraham's spike will be raised over Isaac's jugular, blunt and gruesome enough to capture the jaded attention of the American people. But when he lowers it, unmoistened with blood, his gesture will be so mighty and beautiful that all who see it will be transformed. And no more forests will be flattened to produce deluxe editions of Stephen King's works, and Madison Avenue will drop Saul Bellow just as it did the Hula Hoop.

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Tom Bradley's short stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. One or two were translated into Japanese, or so he's been told...His essays appear in Salon.com, McSweeney's, Exquisite Corpse, Poets & Writers Magazine, and lots of other places.
email: tom@tombradley.org
website: http://tombradley.org
Identity Theory article: "The Bloodsucker of Nagasaki"

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Prof. Faruk: Multimedia Discloses sensibility of Literary Text

"Disclosure is not disclosure of which is spatial, static, and final, but the temporal, dynamic and processual. In this respect the finality of a work does not lie in 'kedisanaan'nya, the availability and the existence of an objective, but on his involvement in the processes of aesthetic , cultural, social, political, economic and even in space and time, "said Pro. Dr. Faruk, SU in the Senate Hall on Wednesday (9 / 3) when inaugurated as Professor of the Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM.

Ontologically the works of postmodern literature is a literary work that presents itself in such a way as an open discursive and historical process, not something that is final. By way of existence, according to Faruk, humanities challenged to try to find the methodological tools that can capture and understand the process, dynamics, change and variety, not something static, fixed, invariant. "Surely the answer to this challenge is easy to say, but difficult to implement," he said.

In view of the difficulty becomes greater Faruk considering the study of literature itself has been busy with the discussion and exploration of theoretical rather than methodological. Rarely there are books that discuss the issue in the research methods literature. "It is not surprising that Indonesia itself, precisely since the late 1970s until the 1980s when discussion of the theory is so warm there, scientists still can not be impressed literature distinguishes theoretical problems with methodological problems," said faculty FIB UGM.

The trend can be seen, for example in the dissertation-dissertation produced in that period, for example dissertations in the humanities who pertma at GMU, there is the Hikayat Hang Tuah: Analysis of Structure and Function (Sutrisno, 1983) and diertasi I. Kuntara Wiryamartana entitled Arjunawiwaha who maintained in 1982 and published in 1990.

"As such, literary scholars, especially in Indonesia needs to give more serious attention by performing more extensive explanation and intensive on methodological issues, particularly related to the phenomenon of literary works postmodernist sensibility born of multimedia," said the man born in Banjarmasin , February 10, 1957. [tranlated from the official website of Faculty of Cultural Science, Gadjah Mada University, http://fib.ugm.ac.id]

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Serious literature marginalized in China

Should literature address more social issues, or should it get closer to the writer's own heart and focus on one's own experiences?

People visiting book stores are more interested in popular writings while serious literature has been marginalized. (Photo: China Daily/Jing Wei)

This was a question debated by several literary authors and critics last weekend at the 6th Chinese Literature Media Awards in Guangzhou. The event, together with a week of speeches, forums and tours, was organized by Southern Metropolis Daily.

There was a consensus among the literati that serious literature has been marginalized in China. People reminisced of the 1980s - the golden age of literary writing - when poems and novels were devoured by tens of millions and a single piece of work could spark a nationwide fire of passion and frenzy.

The emergence of sociology, economics and law effectively pushed literature to the sideline as these subjects can better tackle difficult issues of our society, especially when it has been going through such dramatic changes.

The disappearance of investigative literature, or baogao wenxue in Chinese, is a case in point. Writers used to delve into "big issues" and come up with in-depth reporting. But that was during a time when a newspaper in China typically had four pages and could not possibly accommodate features of this length. Nowadays, a metropolitan paper may have 100 pages or more, and stories like the Chongqing "nail-house" played out in the press like a drama series. Serious literature cannot compete in this area.

"The best story-telling is printed in The Southern Weekend," jokes Xie Youshun, "as it has all the great details and creates endless waves of repercussions." The influential weekly he mentions offers news stories - often controversial ones - in fascinating minutia.

Xu Chunping, editor of Literature Journal, maintains that Chinese culture as a whole is moving in the direction of entertainment. There are new genres like "cellphone literature, online literature and movie fiction" that did not exist before. "Literature as we know it gets purer and contends with only the ultimate issues, and new literature tends to provide solace rather than soul-searching capabilities." She faults the mainstream media for the decline. "Belles-lettres are shriveling to an elitist enclave," she laments.

As literature recedes from the public limelight towards inner self, writers mount a feeble but heroic attempt to rationalize the withdrawal. Li Jingze, a critic, points out that fiction of the old days was devoid of individuality. "The characters did not open their mouths except to pontificate. Everyone of them talked like that," says the editor of People's Literature, who interprets the "withdrawal" more as "a great achievement in opening up and creating personal space in the arena".

Nan Fan, a Fujian-based essayist, sees the phenomenon as "the private inserting itself into the public and changing the latter's core values". Literature of old times dealt in sweeping generalities. The epics told of exploits by giants and mythological characters. Morality plays did not even give unique names to their characters. "The richness of the private space has made literature more diverse and added to its value," he contends.

Xu Xiao, a Beijing-based essayist, believes that writing is ultimately a personal experience and should be loyal to one's inner feelings. "Only when you are true to yourself can you strike a chord with a wider readership."

The writers did not object to exploring the outside world. They mentioned those with rural backgrounds writing about land reform, and those brought up in towns and cities reflecting on the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). But some disapproved of works that talked down to readers. Yu Qiuyu, a towering figure in literary essays, again became the center of attention even though he was absent. He was criticized for ramming foregone conclusions down readers' throats. But an audience member defended Yu's writing for "creating a panorama of Chinese history and culture".

Peking University professor Chen Xiaoming argues that literature has been edging back towards "public space" since the 1990s. "It's possible to get into public discourses," he says, adding that he hopes writers act as "public intellectuals". However, one should not only pay attention to the lower classes. His definition of "realism-based aesthetic exploration" is much wider. "I see a new beginning for Chinese literature," he enthuses, encouraging a hall of students to take up writing literature as a career.

Many writers see the press as the main rival. "We are brothers; we learn from each other, fight with each other and compete for readers' attention," says Dong Xi, a professor of Guangxi University of Nationalities. He lambasts some media for "resorting to fiction when truth is hard to obtain". Others carped that media critics tend to have inconsistent values when it comes to literary criticism. However, Han Shaogong, a Hainan-based novelist, says he values media reviews more than academic evaluation.

"Is the true voice relevant when you cannot even have it heard?" asks Ge Fei, an avant-garde novelist who is also a professor of Tsinghua University. He argues that the media has been under increasing pressure from market forces, which will only "cover up true thinking".

Most of these writers have day jobs as professors, editors or with organizations such as writers' associations and cultural unions. However, most writers support new genres such as blog writing, agreeing that there is good writing floating in cyberspace.

In the end, many advocate pluralism for literature. While literature, they believe, should refrain from striving to be topical, it should not retreat from hot issues of the day. The key is to raise questions, but not to attempt to solve them; to provoke thinking rather than to hand out clear-cut nuggets of wisdom.

"It's always about how, not if," elaborates Li Jingze, the critic, who was reading Raymond Chandler on the flight to Guangzhou. "Finding truth for literature is like finding the criminal in a detective story. The vociferous ones are on the surface. We should look for the vastness between public and personal spaces. It's like the silent majority within ourselves. If you look at it this way, our best writing is yet to come."

(Source: China Daily, April 2009)

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Fiction vs. philosophy

Philosophy seeks to create systems of thought, to neatly explain reality; and usually operating from an armchair, with little knowledge of the real world, philosophers will try to fit a square mankind into a round system. So a few cuts on the edges will have to be made on Mankind in order to fit, but it'll always be a crude piece of work.

Fiction, on the other hand, shows that the world can't fit into any system. Fiction is chaos, discord, doubt, uncertainty, mockery. Characters do not exist to mouthpiece their creators' ideals. If that were so every novel by Dostoyevsky would be filled with orthodox Catholics who rspect the Czar's power. But instead they're filled with anarchists, nihilists and hedonists too.

And even if Dostoyevsky were using some characters as mouthpieces, the fact remains that a nihilist like Stavrogin, who embodied everything the author despised, is treated with much autonomy and actually ends up being more seductive and fascinating than the mouthpieces.

And what to say of the religious John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost to justify the ways of God to men but instead created an enduring figure of rebellion - Satan.

Only mediocre writers like Ayn Rand use fiction for strawmen arguments. Real writers know that the world is above all a huge mass of uncertainty and doubt, and use dozens of fictional voices, contrary and contradictory, to reflect what a complicated, fragmented world we live in.

what about you?

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Why does philosophy become drivel

I'm all for getting my hands dirty in a philosophical discussion. Questioning everything and taking nothing at face value is how I try to live my life. However, when does philosophical reflection cross the border into the Republic of Rubbish? And Why?

From my own personal experience, I've noticed it gets people's eyes rolling when the situation is tense and they want direct, concrete answers to a problem or crisis. Is a truly philosophical view only tolerated when people have the luxury of time? Outside of the world of Academia, at what point does Philosophy become something far less helpful or desirable?


#Philosophy is complete waste of time.

No, it's not. Penicillin and moon missions cannot cure the void that the consciousness creates between life and its purpose or meaning. All our scientific prowess is keeping us alive and busy; busy, because idleness and silence yield to thoughts, and then you sink into the sea of tranquility that not only questions the worth of your existence but also the why of it.

Every aspect of modern humans -- be it the social structure, politics, science, law, religion and even business has stemmed from the roots of philosophical investigations of everyday life. To deny philosophy is to deny thoughts and wisdom. But then it would be only philosophical to question the importance and relevance of questioning itself.

Is philosophy dying? Yes, the academia is killing it. They have reduced it to a formal set of analytical tools, and only the professionals are licensed to think.


#2

You've reminded me of a philosophy class I took in junior college on the study of ethics. I love philosophy, and the fact that the ability to think and mentally construct all of these different notions of life is something the human race has apart from other species on the planet. Thinking, and/or (? ) is one of those aspects unique to us and as such we're able to relate to outside circumstances and other people. I agree that philosophy has had groundwork within other branches like science and politics. However, the class I took was three hours in duration, 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. on a Monday night after working a job full time that day. Sitting in a seminar under these circumstances can DEFINITELY stalemate one's interest in philosophy and leave one a bit frustrated that there "are no right answers" - especially lacking dinner.

So I agree that in a practical and life living busy scenario...dealing with philosophy can seem pretty much like rubbish. Yet I value it highly and in its proper time.

Just my bit of rubbish!!

join this topic at online literature forum

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Translation and Intertextuality

Intertextuality, something which covers many areas of texts, including many that some people would refer to as 'context', is clearly important for translations. History, literature, science are important for interpretations and every translation is based on a (often unspoken/intuitive) interpretation, so they are just as important to a translation.

I do, however, often come across translators who, I feel, are overdoing it. They 'translate' the references, too, by exchanging the allusion for a domestic one. Say, a famous American actor for a famous German actor. I tend to recoil at that.

But on the other hand, the way a text exploits intertextuality is often closely attuned to culture and language. Does a reference to Tom Jones work in German the same way that it works in English?

My answer: footnotes, explaining the significance. But as far as I monitored discussions and actual translations so far, that issue is far from resolved.[follow this topic and discuss here

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