Bricolage 1
First in a series of links, asides, quick hits, quips, and the like
Bricolage. 2. An object or concept created or constructed by appropriating a diverse miscellany of existing materials or sources, particularly (in Art) of found objects. Also in weakened sense: a miscellaneous collection of accumulated objects or detritus.
— The Oxford English Dictionary. This meaning first attested (as was this author) in 1971.
If you read my introductory essay, you will recall that I said this newsletter would (roughly) alternate between real essays and “a more newslettery, blog-like thing”. This week is the first of those.1
1.
A brief note on subscriptions here. Several of you who have subscribed have either inquired about the “support this publication” button, or actively clicked it to make a donation that will come into effect if I decide to monetize it. For this offer of support, I am extremely and most humbly grateful. (It really was quite unexpected!) But I want to stress that at the moment I have no intention of turning this substack paid. (Indeed, I’m slightly irritated that they keep asking people; I had not realized before this that this happened on free substacks.2)
This doesn’t mean that I won’t be asking for your support! This substack is, as I hinted in the introductory post, just one half of a two-pronged attempt3 to get my writing out before, well, everyone whom I can. The other half will involve fiction, and will involve asking people to make (very modest) purchases. That half will debut here in two weeks, so in the meantime stay tuned.
And there is another form of support that you can give right now, and that is to share this substack with someone! Ideally with a personal note! I’m not disdaining money (“Everybody needs money: that’s why they call it money.”), but honestly I am at this point far more eager for readers. So please, if you want to support this publication and/or me personally, share Attempts with someone (or many someones) that you think might be interested:
Oh, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do. It’s free!
2.
It is probably too much to hope that anyone will have been sufficiently moved by my essay on John Crowley’s sublime work Aegypt to go and read it. But on the off-chance that anyone has been at least tempted, four quick notes regarding four long volumes:
First, it is quite long—four books forming a single novel—but, as I noted, Crowley has written three others which are just as fine, ranging from the short but quite brilliant Engine Summer4 to the long-but-not-four-books-long Little, Big, which is probably most people’s introduction to Crowley (the fourth is Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr). So if length gives you pause, try one of those.
Second, the very first section of Aegypt, the “Prologue in Heaven”, is not the easiest piece of writing to get into; it is, in fact, a bit foreboding. It is followed by a “Prologue on Earth” which is a lot easier, and then by the utterly fabulous chapter one. If you want a taste of the novel at its best, try chapter one, and if you like it, go back to the two prologues. (For those playing along at home, having two prologues, so-titled, is taken from Goethe.) The whole first chapter seems to be available on Amazon’s look inside, so you could check it out that way. I think chapter one is a fairer test of whether you’ll like the whole than the prologue in heaven is.
Third, I mentioned in passing, I believe, that the first quarter of Aegypt has been released as an audiobook, narrated by Crowley himself. He is a superb reader of his own work, and I think it adds a lot to the book to hear him voice it; the main problem is that only the first volume was recorded! But if you find the opening to Aegypt hard going, you might consider letting Crowley read it to you & see if that helps.
It really is truly splendid, a magnificent work of art, and, admitting that it will take some effort, it is very much worth that effort.
3.
From the New York Times on Wednesday, February 8, “Why the Odds are Stacked Against a Promising New Covid Drug”:
For all of its promise, though, the drug — called pegylated interferon lambda — faces an uncertain road to the commercial market. Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration late last year told the drug’s maker, Eiger Biopharmaceuticals, that they were not prepared to authorize it for emergency use. Eiger executives said part of the problem seemed to be that the clinical trial did not include an American site, but rather only sites in Brazil and Canada, and that it was initiated and run by academic researchers, rather than the company itself.
I will admit that I had been previously unaware that biology changes so rapidly upon crossing the border that test results from Brazil and Canada aren’t indicative for those of us here in America. It’s just not grade-A research, I guess: B and C won’t cut it. (Good thing the trials weren’t in Denmark or, heaven help us, France!)
But I must say that I am frankly puzzled by the second point. Surely the fact that academic (presumably independent) researchers conducted the trials rather than the company—which by the nature of things has a severe conflict of interest—is a good thing? What possible sense does this make?
I hate it when the U. S. Government produces libertarian propaganda, I really do.
4.
A few recent links that I found interesting:
I find Freddie de Boer persuasive on Francis Fukuyama, although unlike FdB I’ve read only about the book (and articles by FF), not actually read the book.
I find Ted Chiang persuasive on ChatGPT. And while we’re on the topic…
“it's a very common thing for a human to fall in love with an idea, rather than the reality”: I suspect a lot of people will find this—How it feels to have your mind hacked by an AI—interesting, although I will guess that reactions to it differ greatly: derision? pity? horror? sympathy? (Although if you don’t have a rough notion of the current worries of a takeover by AGI (including what “AGI” means), your response might well be “bafflement”).
Matt Yglesias has a persuasive, counter-intuitive take on why pople don’t trust the media.
5.
From Lincoln Michel’s substack, from the post Fairy Tale as MFA Anecdote:
I often start my MFA courses with a discussion of fairy tales.… I also love starting with fairy tales because they violate more or less every single rule of fiction writing that is drilled into us in creative writing classes. Instead of “show don’t tell,” fairy tales prioritize telling over showing. Instead of demanding “round characters,” fairy tales embrace flat ones. Instead of logical “worldbuilding,” fairy tales operate with a surreal dream logic in abstract settings. Instead of starting “in media res,” they start “once upon a time.” Instead of “telling the story only you can tell,” fairy tales ask you to retell stories that have been told for centuries. So on and so forth. Almost nothing you are taught about setting, character, voice, or structure in MFA classes or craft essays applies to the fairy tale form. And yet the form endures.
See also his follow-up, A Literary Fairy-Tale Syllabus, which recommends some books which I know to be marvelous and some others which I now want to read.
6.
I have been hesitant to “recommend” (that is, formally Recommend, using Substack’s software) other substacks, since I have yet to see one that is doing what I take myself to be doing (which doesn’t mean there aren’t any, of course). In addition, as I alluded to before, my interests are perhaps unusually broad, so what is of interest to me will more likely not be to others. And then there’s the fact that these days some very noisy people tend to conflate “I think some of this writer is worth reading” with “I agree with everything this writer has said”.
But upon reflection essays are always personal, different, about a wide range of concerns; I should sufficiently trust my readers only to follow those paths that look inviting to them to offer up alternatives for them to consider; and people who conflate “I think some of this writer is worth reading” with “I agree with everything this writer has said” are silly. So at or around the time this Bricolage posts, I will commence the Recommending process with three substacks:
First, Erik Hoel’s The Intrinsic Perspective: Hoel is is a novelist, and also also a neuroscientist, and he writes about science and contemporary culture and all sorts of things. Good places to start are here or here or here. And this essay of his influenced my re-starting this substack, and the publication project that will be announced here in two weeks (stay tuned!)—probably more than was strictly rational, but such is the way of essays.
Second, Astral Codex Ten by Scott Alexander, who is one of the best essayists working today (and if you don’t think so, you either need to read more of his work, or are blinded by what you think his politics are or, worse, what the politics of his commentators are). Come to think of it, Alexander has written a novel too. But regarding his substack, you could start here or here or here (or, for other Alexander essays, here).5 This short story is brilliant & quite arguably worth subscribing for at least a month so you can read it.
And finally, that of Brink Lindsey, The Permanent Problem. Lindsey, unlike the other two, is writing something that is not really a series of essays, but is writing something which is probably best understood as a serialized book. But it’s a really interesting book about today’s society and economy and culture and is very highly recommended. Unlike the others, however, this is one where it very much pays to start at the beginning and read through in order. Lindsey, oddly, has written no novels that I’m aware of.
There are lots of other good substacks out there, of course; but those are some that I would not only recommend, but which I would, it seems, Recommend.
7.
From A New Universal Etymological English Dictionary: Containing not only Explanations of the Words in the English Language; And the Different Senses in which they are used; with Authorities from the Best Writers, to support those which appear Doubtful; But Also Their Etymologies from the Ancient and Modern Languages: And Accents directing to their Proper Pronunciation; Shewing both the Orhtography and Orthopeia of the English Tongue. Also, Full and Accurate Explanations of the Various Terms made use of in the several Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, and Trades. Illustrated with Copper-Plates, by N. Bailey, revised edition by Joseph Nicol Scott, M.D. (London, 1772):
This marvelous work is, delightfully, available online.
God they knew how to title books in those days, didn’t they?!
Unless you count the first announcement essay, which would be very reasonable to do; after all, it was after all just an announcement! But while that was probably the first, most people probably didn’t think that claim applied to the thing they were reading, so they’ll experience this as the first.
Which is odd—I’m a free subscriber on a bunch of substacks; you’d think I’d have noticed! But I didn’t. I suppose I just wave these things away without thinking about them; maybe I’m inherently less generous than my Noble Readers.
Yes of course that was intentional.
Engine Summer is presently most easily available in the omnibus volume Otherwise, which collects his first three novels, including Beasts, the only Crowley novel I would hesitate to recommend, and The Deep, one of only two I have not read, so if you get it, my advice is to go straight for the final third, which is well worth the price of admission, all on its own.
These were ridiculously hard to pick, even given the fact that I am well into the “the band used to be better” stage of fandom (which always hits, however good or bad the band is or was), and find that most of my favorites were in Alexander’s pre-substack days. I almost mentioned this one or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one instead of the three I (rather arbitrarily) picked from my list of favorites. Nor did I consider any of this book review contestants, as they were written by other people, but they were on his substack and were terrific, so maybe I should have.