truly, a little learning is a dangerous thing

[truepenny]

Project Valkyrie
TIME: 25 min.
DISTANCE: 3.0 mi.
TOTAL: 6.0 mi.
NOTES: Got up to 8 mph, but couldn't sustain it. 7 mph is pretty much where I stick.
SHIRE-RECKONING: We have crossed The Water.

---

So while I row to Mordor, I'm listening to Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works--or perhaps I should say kibbitzing. (Repeat after me: "Fiction with scientific principles in it is not Science Fiction." NOTHING YOU DO TO IT can make "The Pit and the Pendulum" science fiction, no matter how beautifully the idea slots into your argument.) Professor Rabkin earned my wrath very early on by asserting that Hamlet's meeting with the Ghost is in the first scene of Hamlet (Act I, scene v, thank you very much), and, well, honestly, I'm a pedant. I nitpick. If you're going to quote "The Walrus and the Carpenter," or "Jabberwocky," you should be able to quote it correctly. If you're going to make a foray into biography and talk about Lewis Carroll's intense fondness for small children, get your details right. Because it's not all small children. Carroll did not like little boys and said so in his letters. His adoration was given to little girls. Which maybe matters and maybe doesn't (that's why this is a nitpick), but if you can dig up the details about his nude photographs of children and why he destroyed them, you could surely find this. Also the great Victorian photographer is Julia Margaret Cameron, not Margaret Julia Cameron.

The devil is in the details.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

. . . I think I'll move this down my queue of TTC lectures. Or possibly off it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

His arguments are mostly inoffensive, if not earth-shaking. By which I mean he hasn't given me anything particularly new to think about, and I sometimes disagree with him, but we've yet to reach the Not Even Wrong stage. But then, the Teaching Company's stuff is not aimed at me. At least not in the field of English literature.

[ruthannereid.livejournal.com]

*stares* Pit and Pendulum. Science fiction.

SOMEone has certainly been sampling some recreative drugs. ~_^

[txanne.livejournal.com]

It might be a crappy lecture, but without it I'd never have heard of Julia Margaret Cameron. So thanks.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Hmm, proving himself to be uninformed on a wide range of topics, quite impresive.

[larryhammer]

Janni tells me that Rowing To Morder should make the long boring paddle down the Anduin a lot easier.

---L.

[diannefox.livejournal.com]

At least in the original version of these lectures (in person, at the University of Michigan), Rabkin distinguished between scientific fiction and science fiction, and talked about how one grew from the other. I haven't listened to the lectures you're talking about, but obviously that portion wasn't included. It's too bad, because that part of the lectures was one of my favorites.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It is possible that when he gets around to talking about science fiction in detail, he'll go ahead and separate those out. (I hope so!) But in the lecture on Poe, he did not.

[ken-schneyer.livejournal.com]

I'm very fond of The Teaching Company, but I find that their lectures are all "101" level. Listeners who actually have any in-depth knowledge on the topic are invariably annoyed by the oversimplifications and missed subtleties.

So I was delighted with Garrett Fagan's History of Ancient Rome, for example, but Frank Cross's lectures on Contract Law left me drumming my fingers. (And I know Frank, and he really is a world-class teacher, but it didn't help.) When my wife (a musician) listened to Robert Greenberg's lectures on Tchaikovsky she rolled her eyes, but I loved them.

So I'm thinking, Monette listens to intro lectures on SFF? How long before she tosses the tapes overboard?