The Raven

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Shakedown Crews

If there's one thing we don't put up with around here, it's that line of academic literary criticism that hyperinflates the power of the written word until you aren't reading a book anymore, but rather a text that "informs" the reader who perforce "interprets" not the book, but its "messages." You know the kind of thing we're talking about. Which is why we're glad to see some clarity from a U.C. Berkeley Emeritus professor of English—pretty much the last place we'd expect to find it.

Frederick Crews has redeemed his institution by writing Postmodern Pooh, a sequel to his 1963 satire The Pooh Perplex: A Student Casebook. Basically, you take A.A. Milne's Winnie corpus and subject it to the rigors of high-end academic criticism, whereupon laughs richly abound.

N Mack Hobbs, the final contributor to Postmodern Pooh, concludes with a cynical recommendation that academics "kick back and acknowledge that we're in this criticism racket together, not for the sake of 'truth' but just to earn a meal ticket by tooting our little horns."

How refreshing!

Point-and-Click Narrative

In last month's New York Review of Books, there was an article by Tim Parks titled, "Tales Told by the Computer," that explored some of the ways authors have been using hypertext to redesign the function of the novel. The link above only takes you to an abstract, unfortunately, but Parks's key idea is this:

For the way we tell ourselves stories—our sense of the opening, development, and closure of a plot—still largely determines the way we think of ourselves and of our progress, or otherwise, between cradle and grave.

If, then, the very structure of a story is intertwined with the psychologists' idea that we are the archetypal heroes of our own mythos, then what will happen as we begin to immerse ourselves increasingly here on the Internet where each mouse-click turns an independently chosen page? Most unlike reading a book, no two Net users move through a Website in the same way, which is why good Web design allows for multiple approaches, entry points, and different means of navigation and exit. It turns out that some authors have been trying to write texts that work in the same fashion, like the poem "Bites and Bams." If they succeed, then our orientation of being heroes on a life quest could change into something more akin to being neural synapses in a distributed network. Then not only are we part of a larger cognitive apparatus, but we could become a global thinking organism.

Until then, however, we're stuck with Maxim and Elimidate.
4:40:34 PM

Wind and Water

Put those two Chinese characters together and you get Feng Shui. Pronounced "feng-schway" by those in the know, this ancient system of "Ethan Allen" attracts interest every now and then by Westerners looking for that little something extra to enhance their homes and offices.

One thing we do know for sure about Feng Shui: It contributes to the financial well-being of consultants who will charge you big bucks to tune your surroundings into a harmonious balance of shape, texture, and color. The Seattle Times takes a look today at some corporate offices in the Rainy City that have implemented a Feng Shui makeover and now claim to be zipping along on prosperous currents of peaceful and energetic good feelings.

With the rise in feng shui's popularity, a host of practitioners have surfaced to pass on their expertise to homes and offices.

You can see these guys coming a mile away, with their nehru jackets and fold-out bagua charts, and worried pensive expressions.

"Hourly prices range from $50 to $100 but can reach as high as $300."

You don't need this. Save yourself some money and try the Raven's Guide to Feng Shui. Walk around the space you want harmonize. Look for plastic crap and clutter and clear it out. Replace cheap stuff with metal, glass, stone, and fabric. Move some furniture around. When something looks like it's in the "right" spot, leave it there. Because ultimately, what it's all about is focusing on your surroundings and paying attention to how space and light are being used. In India, they have a similar system called Vastu, and if you look into it you'll see that the Chinese don't have a mystic headlock on this idea, they're just unsurpassed at marketing it.

I Feel Safer Already

Over in Michigan, the U.S. Border Patrol is getting ready to implement random, rotating checkpoints. They'll be looking for "illegal immigrants, terrorists and drug or weapon smugglers," or anything else they don't like. The Federalistas will have the power and authority to ask those they stop any questions they feel are appropriate, and require no probable cause.

According to an obscure but long-standing federal law, the government can conduct searches and surveillance within 25 miles of any international border.

The funny part here is that foreigners will have to produce ID, but Americans won't. How do you suppose they'll make that determination?

8:49:46 AM