No, they don't owe posterity anything. But I think little of academe in the first place, for the same reasons-- they have their priorities backwards, their values messed up, and their sense of perspective, nil.
How so? Priorities backwards how--perspective and values screwy how? You can't make a provocative statement like that and then not provide some data! *g*
I've been thinking about this over the weekend. I suppose my problem with academe is the fact that I as yet have no answer to this question: what, ultimately, does it contribute?
Almost all scholarship seems to me to be minds employed to think for the sake of thinking. (Note that I differentiate scholarship and teaching.) Are they building some sort of scholastic version of a unified field theory with their conclusions? Is there any interdisciplinarity, by which I mean a sort of academic cross-pollenation?
Is anyone made wiser?
They have no perspective. As Richard Russo says in Straight Man, the reason most academic feuds are so bitter is that so little is at stake. Who really cares whether scholarship is gratified or not by the letters a writer leaves behind? Would the boost to the scholarship really contribute anything really new anyway? Does it ever accurately portray the writer as he or she really was? Does it matter if it fails to? But the worldviews of scholars don't encompass such humbling thoughts, at least not to
( ... )
Hmmm...I agree in some aspects--there is so much foolishness in academia--and yet I do treasure the dissemination of knowledge, whether it's collecting, translating, or explaining.
Beata_mish wrote: THOU SHALT NOT DESTROY HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS, does that apply to one's own? And if not, what of one's executor who have orders to burn anything that an untimely demise left one unable to attend to personally?
Calimac avers: Keeping privacy is one thing, but to put out false information in the place of real is quite another. I agree that honesty is a virtue, but what of those who use it to preserve their privacy? I seems not so much disengenous as conflicted for a writer to both love writing (and to enjoy making her living thereby) but to loathe inquiries into their lives. C.f., for example, Georgette Heyer and all the authors who've used pen names to that purpose.
Another consideration: In an automated "information age" isn't there a value to seeding the 'net with mis-information simply to deter crooks, cons and stalkers?
Yeah...I do think the greatest protection from hackers and con artists is to be both boring and broke, which I am very glad I am.
I don't see it as conflicted at all. I realized when I was younger, and had some adventures, and attempted others, that I would never want to race in the Indy 500--though I might like reading about another's experience. I would never want to be on a mountain-top looking for the One True Artifact, though it might be fun to imagine myself in the seeker's shoes for a story.
By that thinking, the story is itself, it must stand or fall as entertainment. (I will never aspire to art, that seems the way of gasbags, at least when one has no talent, just a lot of drive, as do I.) My private life is my private life, it is not an adventure to be shared with strangers. But I like strangers to buy my books.
The conflict is in the likely outcome of a successful pursuit of the goals: successful writer / successfully private. I agree that there's no necessary internal conflict involved.
We're all curious, and I love memoirs, letters, diaries, biographies with a huggy passion, and I also love to see what I think may be the roots of genius in their lives, but if they don't want to offer their lives as a part of the finished work, then my feeling is, let it be so. I want the work to stand on its own merit.
Does anyone disagree? What am I not seeing?
There's the work, and then there is the context the writer was writing in. Cyteen in part deals with "what created Ariane Emory, and what is it that has to be done to recreate a true clone of her, that will have her abilities and contribute to the society/fill the need in the society that the original Ariane Emory filled
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On September 17th, 2005, 05:42 am, sartorias commented: The observer being part of the event segment of the equation is something I haven't seen adequately addressed in many time travel novels.
It's in The Technicolor Time Machine by Harrison,and in a de Camp short story (not a novel, but...) and of course Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies."
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Almost all scholarship seems to me to be minds employed to think for the sake of thinking. (Note that I differentiate scholarship and teaching.) Are they building some sort of scholastic version of a unified field theory with their conclusions? Is there any interdisciplinarity, by which I mean a sort of academic cross-pollenation?
Is anyone made wiser?
They have no perspective. As Richard Russo says in Straight Man, the reason most academic feuds are so bitter is that so little is at stake. Who really cares whether scholarship is gratified or not by the letters a writer leaves behind? Would the boost to the scholarship really contribute anything really new anyway? Does it ever accurately portray the writer as he or she really was? Does it matter if it fails to? But the worldviews of scholars don't encompass such humbling thoughts, at least not to ( ... )
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Beata_mish wrote: THOU SHALT NOT DESTROY HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS, does that apply to one's own? And if not, what of one's executor who have orders to burn anything that an untimely demise left one unable to attend to personally?
Calimac avers: Keeping privacy is one thing, but to put out false information in the place of real is quite another. I agree that honesty is a virtue, but what of those who use it to preserve their privacy? I seems not so much disengenous as conflicted for a writer to both love writing (and to enjoy making her living thereby) but to loathe inquiries into their lives. C.f., for example, Georgette Heyer and all the authors who've used pen names to that purpose.
Another consideration: In an automated "information age" isn't there a value to seeding the 'net with mis-information simply to deter crooks, cons and stalkers?
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I don't see it as conflicted at all. I realized when I was younger, and had some adventures, and attempted others, that I would never want to race in the Indy 500--though I might like reading about another's experience. I would never want to be on a mountain-top looking for the One True Artifact, though it might be fun to imagine myself in the seeker's shoes for a story.
By that thinking, the story is itself, it must stand or fall as entertainment. (I will never aspire to art, that seems the way of gasbags, at least when one has no talent, just a lot of drive, as do I.) My private life is my private life, it is not an adventure to be shared with strangers. But I like strangers to buy my books.
Reply
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Does anyone disagree? What am I not seeing?
There's the work, and then there is the context the writer was writing in. Cyteen in part deals with "what created Ariane Emory, and what is it that has to be done to recreate a true clone of her, that will have her abilities and contribute to the society/fill the need in the society that the original Ariane Emory filled ( ... )
Reply
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The observer being part of the event segment of the equation is something I haven't seen adequately addressed in many time travel novels.
It's in The Technicolor Time Machine by Harrison,and in a de Camp short story (not a novel, but...) and of course Heinlein's short story "All You Zombies."
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