Saturday, December 22, 2012

Amateur philologist 'through the looking glass'

The current New Yorker has a fascinating and moving article by Joshua Foer about an amateur philologist named John Quijada. This middle-aged employee of the California Department of Motor Vehicles devoted his life to the creation of a language which contains the most distinctive features of other world languages, from the most common to the most obscure, in an attempt to create a more perfect language. The invented language, which he called Ithkuil, attempts to express concepts in a compacted fashion, so that, for example, a single word can express "that chin-stroking moment you get, often accompanied by a frown on your face, when someone expresses an idea that you've never thought of and you have a moment of suddenly seeing possibilities you never saw before."

The article, "Utopian for Beginners," develops like the usual wooly New Yorker article, taking as much time as is necessary to explain who Quijada is, why he grew interested as a youth in invented languages, and what he achieved with Ithkuil. But it is when he learns that his invented language, which he had published on the internet, had been taken up by a group of intellectual Russians and other post-Soviets, that the story suddenly becomes like a Bolaño novel.

Quijada is invited to attend a conference in an obscure corner of the forgotten USSR and finds that he is considered a hero by young students who are using his language in a discipline called psychonetics. Psychonetics turns out to be one of those quasi-mystical, quasi-scientific fields that Russians and other former Soviets tend to foster -- an allegedly scientific approach to changing how people think.

Quijada once hoped to become an academic, a professional linguist, but simply couldn't afford to go to grad school, and instead became a bureaucrat in a state agency. Now, still slightly mystified by his hosts' goals, he basks in the attention of scholars:

As the evening unfolded, he found himself perched barefoot and cross-legged on a sofa, with a group of young Russian students gathered on the rug at his feet.

"I was surrounded by all these people hanging on my every word. It was intoxicating -- especially for a loner like me," Quijada said. "For one day, I got to play as an academic. I got to live this fantasy where I took the other path in the garden. I got to see what it would have been like if I had gone to graduate school and become a professional linguist. The fates of the universe tore open a window to show me what my life could have been. That night, I went back to my room, took a shower, and burst into tears."

You'd think that this would be enough of a poetic ending to Quijada's story. But it's after this that things start to get weird.

Invited to another conference the next year, he gains an insight into what these "psychonetics" enthusiasts are really about. It turns out that one of the primary supporters of psychonetics is an ultra-nationalist who "talks of developing 'intellectual special forces' that can bring about the 'reëstablishment of a great power' in greater Russia, and give birth to a 'new race... that can really be called superhuman.'" It seems the psychoneticists want to use Quijada's "more perfect" language as a tool.

Appalled by their goals, Quijada withdraws from any further participation in post-Soviet psychonetics, and the article's author draws the usual wan New Yorker-ish conclusion that Quijada isn't the first person to invent a language and see it being used for means he never intended.

But I was impressed by the story's Bolaño-ish theme: How the actions of well-meaning people are adopted by a fascist movement, and the temptation this represents for ordinary people.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Oh, a media frenzy

Earlier this week, news media in northern California and Oregon especially were focusing on the aftermath of a mall shooting in suburban Portland, Ore. Driving through Oregon yesterday I heard some discussion about it, gathering the interesting fact (if it is a fact and not just something the reporter made up) that suburban Clackamas County is referred to locally as "Clackistan" and its denizens as "Clackistanis."

Three people including "the shooter" (and when did mainstream media begin using that term anyway, and did it come from Hollywood, from the military, from video games, or what?) died in that event, which seemed bad enough until today, when over two dozen died in a school shooting in Connecticut.

Mainstream media pushed the big red button that reads "Wall To Wall Coverage," so during my drive through eastern Oregon and over the Idaho border I heard "breaking news coverage" on NPR. And I listened to all of it, when they finally took a break and ran "Fresh Air" for an hour.

I asked myself, why listen to all that coverage which lasted, what, over three hours? I think the reason is, for once it's not drivel. Not that NPR is relatively high on the scale of broadcast drivel, which was epitomized for me this morning when I turned on the "Today" show while packing in my motel room. The hosts sat around chattering and "joking" without humor and laughing anyway, in that awful way straight people do when they have nothing to talk about but social time to fill.

So when the hours-long coverage of the school shooting came on today, it was actually a relief. Finally, something actually happened. Finally, people have stopped bullshitting for hours on end.

Of course that only lasts so long. I remember the moment on Sep. 11, 2001 when the incident had started to sink in. The moment was the point during the afternoon when, on network and cable news, the coverage acquired branding (recall the graphics reading "ATTACK ON AMERICA" and so on) and theme music which led onto and out of each news segment. And when they start the slow-mo, soft-focus montage of teddy-bear memorials, that's when you know it's really over.

At the moment I'm sitting in a McDonald's in Mountain Home, Idaho, where my order of a salad from the menu so flummoxed them that they took 10 minutes to prepare it and gave me a fried apple pie for free by way of apology. (The wi-fi works here, hooray.) They have a TV on the wall playing Fox News, where Mike Huckabee just assured gun owners that "You can't legislate prevention of events like this" because "this is not a law issue, it's a heart issue." I doubt very much he feels that way about abortion or drugs, but at least they are not showing teddy bears yet.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Another road trip

On my way from San Francisco to Pocatello, where I'm heading to visit a friend who teaches at the university there, I stopped in Weed last night (A) and in Burns, Ore. tonight (C):

Based on previous experience, I knew not to expect 3G service for my smartphone inbetween towns, but I thought there was a chance at my destination. No, not with Virgin Mobile. Good as their coverage is in metro areas, this is not in anyone's metro area. Problem: I forgot which motel I had reserved at, and I needed to check my email for the reservation. So I needed wi-fi somewhere. Usually a McDonald's is good for it, but when I stopped a the one here, it wasn't working right.

I noticed a small bookstore-gift shop on the main street, and I went in to ask them where I might find wi-fi. They had free wi-fi, bless them! And they sell espresso, too. It was a little late in the afternoon for me to have a cappuccino, but I bought a book. Stop by the Book Nook when you're in Burns, Oregon.

Okay, but the drive. For many years I've wanted to check out the northeast corner of California, because it's such a mystery. It's not on the way to anywhere; there is no reason ever to go there, unless maybe you're a hunter or fisherman, or you're driving from, say, Weed, California to southern Idaho.

Several times I'd driven through part of this country on US 97 just south of the California border, where it passes through a strange "national grassland" -- the only one so obscure it as "NO WEBSITE":

So if the grassland was so obscure, you can only imagine how curious I was about the part of California east of that. Well, it's high desert -- which means there is almost nothing out there but sagebrush, with the occasional smattering of pine trees in certain advantageous places. But the amazing thing about the drive is that there is nothing else out there. No shacks, no trailers, no ranches, no electric poles, no cell phone service, no billboards. I drove 30 miles before I even saw a sign reassuring me I was on a US highway. And the part in Oregon is, if anything, even more desolate.

It's a real change from the southern California desert which I've visited so often. There it's difficult to find truly empty vistas. There's always a railroad or a microwave tower or a power pylon or some abandoned shack in the picture.

Zero time taking pictures, unfortunately. For part of the drive the shoulders were snow-covered, though almost no snow fell on me. Been lucky with the snow so far.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Facing yet another extended drought, Texas wakes up to water shortages

There is no doubt that Texas is in dire need of a well-funded water plan, and lawmakers on both Republicans and Democrats appear ready to do something this year. Part of the impetus comes from experiencing the worst single-year drought in Texas history in 2011. The rest comes from the realization Texas isn't ready for the next one. ...

Next year lawmakers will hear from a number of constituents with competing interests on water. Timber companies don't want any more East Texas land flooded, many high-tech companies need water for new plants, ranchers don't want pipelines cutting across their land, farmers want a share of river water for irrigation and fisherman need freshwater flowing into Gulf Coast estuaries. Not to mention growing cities like Dallas, Austin and San Antonio that need more drinking water.

The Legislature must also decide what to do with a Texas Supreme Court decision earlier this year that guaranteed landowners the right to all of the groundwater beneath their land, subject to only limited regulation. Most states abandoned the so-called Rule of Capture long ago in order to more carefully manage the flow of water through aquifers. But in Texas, where landownership reigns supreme, the state relies on a law that dates back to medieval Europe.

In the 21st century, though, the Texas Water Development Board reports that in every corner of the state, the Streamflow Index ranks from abnormally low to exceptionally low, the worst possible condition. Groundwater levels are also dropping fast. Climatologists are warning of another drought in 2013.

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Philip K. Dick's weaknesses in writing 'literary' fiction

It's well known that Dick really wanted to write "literary" fiction and, above all, achieve mainstream success. He wrote over ten non-[science fiction] novels in an attempt to climb out of the gutters of pulp fiction and become a "real" writer. Only one of these, Confessions of a Crap Artist, was published during his lifetime.

Part of the problem was Dick's prose. Chronically strapped for cash, he tended to write at lightning speed, completing entire books in a matter of days and attending to concepts more than things like language and characterization. But even when he "took his time" (a month or two for a book, still rather fast and furious), his writing almost always favored ideas over plot, story, social and emotional resonance, etc. — at least according to mainstream standards. More importantly, many of his novels get bogged down in loose ends and weird departures, violating formulae that literary fiction deeply cherishes.

Interesting points for anyone who recently completed a novel for National Novel Writing Month.