Biro World seems amazing, but I share Eric's disbelief that it would ever happen. Eric seems to be coming into his own so to say, as he notices on page 232; he is slowly becoming the first Eric Sanderson. Eric has an intersesting thought: "Can nothing really be scraped away the same way that something can?" Is Eric's life of nothingness a cover for his old life, or was his old life completely stripped away? As I thought he might, Dr. Fidorous really does seem to be living in his own musings, or at least a part of them; he pops out of the papers and has pen lines on him synonymous with those on the papers. Hall does an excellent description of him on page 235: "What I could see of his face was wrinkled and brown like an elastic band ball, only more active and capable." Fidorous' work was pretty cool; he appears to create language memes, like "At the end of the day" and watch them work their way through society and eventually die out. I've often wondered how certain sayings come about, and for all we know something like this is going on. I'm not sure if I agree with Eric for being so distraught at the end or if I think he's just overacting. Yes, she was using him, but would it really have made much of a difference if she had told him the truth? I don't condone Scout's acts, but I can't say I'd do otherwise in her situation, telling Eric the whole truth would have been an extremely risky thing to do. I suspect amends will be made.
Throughout most of the reading we find Scout and Eric crawling hands and knees through a word tunnel made out of discarded pieces of paper. I imagined these papers being all of the random thoughts that come of the head of Dr. Trey Fidorous. Just like the unconscious mind, the tunnel files and stores of all his thoughts and/or ramblings into its walls so that he may find them at a later date. Hall’s description of the THERA path made me very squeamish at some moments, almost as if they were crawling through a large sewage system. It’s hard to tell whether this is another part of un-space but it there have been some slight hints as to the true nature of Fidorous’ secret word cavern.
Besides this whole sequence of events, we finally meet the person Eric has been searching for during the last 100 or so pages. Dr. Trey Fidorous is the perfect example of a “word genius”. He reminds of a lot like Einstein but rather than being an excellent physicist and mathematician, he is a literary genius and master linguist. The whole description of his work on language viruses is very interesting and creative. Yet again, Hall has managed to add a new form of a language or word concept and turn it into an evolved organism. Though viruses aren’t living themselves, they are very much apart of the microbiology of our world and thus a part of the “language organism” kingdom. Much like viruses, Fidorous’ language viruses multiply through “host emails” and spread through a culture as popular meme.
Going to the last part of the reading, I had a feeling that Scout still had one last secret she wasn’t telling Eric despite their intimate sexual relationship. And to her gratitude, I do think Eric was kind of being a dick and childish. Much like Scout said, I believe she really was leading him back to Fidorous for both of their benefits. She had to be justified in the way she acted: she had no clue how he might react to such disclosure that it was better not to risk his reaction and pull a Arnold Schwarzenegger, “COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE”.
I felt so bad for Eric in this section. He put all his trust in Scout and she just used him. She wasn't even helping him. She was using him for her own advantage. Fidorous seemed like he really didn't want Eric or Scout there and he was the person who told Eric the reason Scout brought him. I was upset learning that the relationship that Scout and Eric built was destroyed because Scout was lying and manipulating him. I thought that the map was very cool. Instead of it being a map where you go in one direction its actually a word which you have to follow. The references in this chapter are of The wizard of Oz scout being called Dorothy, Eric being called tin man and Ian being called Toto.
HAHAHA LMFAO she had a map the whole time woooooooowwww lol . the concept of the tunnel being created by paper is just too vivid, i can picture like myself going inside the Mc Donalds jungle gym and climing the tunnel backwards and picturing words along the whole tunnel. WShArKTeXts, wats missing ThERA. Now thats wassup haha. " Every loose page-as far as i could tell,every page making up the entire tunnel-had been covered, crammed, with rolling handwritten language." (pg.226) After reading the section of creating an igloo with books haha now i wanna go to the library and actually do it , whose with me? this is a very powerful line, "i think we're going to wear away from the world, just like the writing wears off old gravestones in the aisles of churches."(pg. 229) never mind i take it back this is a better powerful line " Sometimes its just hard to see what's in front of you. but once you do see it, or once something connected to the it touches you, i dont think theres any going back." (pg. 230) The doctor is such an asshole, i dont like him. eric worked so hard to get to where he is today and the doctor gives a beep... oh hellz nah thats just f-ed up. NOOOOOOO scout why did you have to lie to eric, you two deserve each other !!!!
First of all, that is my kind of map! I am completely directionally challenged so I think following “Thera” would be a lot easier than following a regular map. Like we talked about in class I like Scout’s discussion of things “becoming history.” She says, “Sometimes things that nobody believed were possible just happen…but afterwards, it’s just a fact,” (229). I love how I would never really have thought of this but Hall and other books make me think of ordinary life in different ways. On page 232 I found a reference to the Crying of Lot 49. Eric says, “I’d been an empty nothing for so long, and not suddenly I was here, somehow an adventurer in a strange place.” This reminds me of Oedipa. Oedipa was this “nobody” who was called on this journey and then suddenly she felt as if she had meaning. After Scout and Eric travel through the tunnel they end up at Dr. Fidorous. He reminds me a lot of the Wizard of Oz from “The Wizard of Oz.” He seems to do that similar smoke and mirror, “man behind the curtain act,” that the Wizard does. I was disappointed to find out that Scout was using Eric just so she could use the Ludovician. I really was rooting for him and Scout to be together. I did think maybe Eric was being a little bit unreasonable. He should have token the time to listen to Scout and her reasoning.
Sorry this is posted in the other one, too, but this is the right one this time! It was really cool that Eric and Scout were going through a word tunnel following a word map. I liked the play with words and language in this chapter a lot. On pg 228, Eric asks, “It’s not only paper though, is it?” about the books making up the dome. Once paper has words on it, the simple wood pulp and ink represents a concept. Books have concepts and MEANING, even though they are “just paper”. This tunnel, which is made completely from books and paper, actually creates something tangible from something that is usually conceptual – words. There was another Wizard of Oz reference, when Fidorous calls Scout and Eric “Dorothy” and “Tin Man” respectively, which fit perfectly because she has no home, and he, without memory, has no brain. Fidorous seems like a language scientist or technician to me. He sees words and language as a science – he tests memes, phrases, effects of words, etc.
First off, I like that the title means pens. I think that's pretty cool. The map confused me at first. Almost all of this book is conceptual, but the map being made out of words was a little confusing at first. At the bottom of page 241 I really liked Hall's description, "The air inside the tunnel smelled like the pages of a second-hand Charles Dickens novel; yellowy paper, old print and finger grease, that pressed, preserved sort of smell." This line gave me a really good idea for the final, and also Hall's choice of words were really good. The way he puts sentences together to form an image is something beyond me. I thought it was interesting how Eric notices that every paper you thew away went into un-space and the making of the tunnel. On page 227 I was happy to finally understand the map. I also liked on page 229 the line, "The way I look at it, things are always happening. Sometimes things that nobody believed were possible just happen. Beforehand everyone says that's impossible, or Ill never live to see something like that but afterwards, its just a fact. It's just history. These things become history of every day." I feel like this is important especially considering Eric and everything he's gone through. He will never get to relive the days with Clio, and he has to keep moving forward. I enjoyed this section a lot.
I like the environment he is exploring and the concepts we are introduced to. I wonder why the map is in the shape of the Letters “ThERa”. Why are some of the letters uppercase and some lower? Dr. Trey Fidorous seems too unoriginal. He reminds me of many other characters in books and movies. Then again, I have never heard of a dr. of language. Although I like the cat coming along on the adventure, I find his presence is very unnecessary and only adds to Erik’s concern.
I like seeing Eric grow into his own skin and form his own ideas. It's interesting to see how he creates himself, or re-creates himself. There's still a sense of insecurity with him, which is obvious when he constantly compares himself to The First Eric Sanderson. I don't blame Eric for wanting to know what The First Eric Sanderson was like. It's a huge part of him, regardless of him not knowing or remembering what happened before he woke up in his room and had to start over.
The word tunnel is awesome. Go figure that the map to the word tunnel would be a word. I really like Yaya's theory about Thera being the first five letters to the title of the book. As if it's leading him to what's to come, and it's made of texts and words. It works in a weird way, which seems to be the only form of consistency in the book.
The way that Hall writes and expresses Eric's amazement with everything that happens in the word tunnel is great. It takes me back to when the book first started and I felt that I was learning everything with Eric. Yes, we still are, but it came back to the surface with the being in the word tunnel where in the past hundred pages or so I felt more that I was watching a movie.
It would be amazing if this book was made into a movie and we could see the tunnels covered with the pages of thousands of books. Wouldn't that be awesome to see? One of my favorite quotes of this section: "What a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours." Which is so true! The description of Trey Fidorous was very well written. I have a very clear image in my mind of how I imagine him to look like. It seems like Scout and Fidorous don't like each other at all, and we get another hint that Scout knows a lot more about Eric that she lets on, that that perhaps she really is Clio! I can't wait until we know for sure. Fidorous' 'Language Viruses' are very interesting. I love how he creates single celled conceptual memes! What an interesting idea!
Once again they are going down a rabbit hole. Trey Fidorous's tunnel seems like a hoarder’s dream. I would be so freaked out trying to shimmy down the first part of the tunnel because it seems like if you pushed one piece of paper out of place the whole thing would come crashing down!
I love all the different versions of ThERa there are. There's the Greek island and yaya's observation about it being the title of the book. I noticed that "h" and the "a" were in lower case while the rest of the letters were in capitals. If you take the lower case letters and put them in front of the capitals you get the word "hater". I don't know if that's a precursor to the hate Fidorous feels for Eric or the hate Eric feels for Scout after he finds out or maybe it doesn't meant anything at all.
I love that the tunnel forms a word! It's just one more protection against conceptual fish.
Dr. Fidorous's entrance is so dramatic! I was worried the shark had found them. The language viruses are really cool! That's awesome we finally have an explaination for why weird phrases come about.
I felt so bad for Eric when he found out that Scout had used him. It reminded me of Memento how everyone the two main characters trust end up using them. Why did Scout have to use him?!?!? It makes me rather mad.
More developments! I love how there's always something going on in this book, it's never just forcing you to sit through large stretches of inactivity. For a while though, this chapter is just Scout and Eric finding their way through the TheRa tunnel to get to Dr. Fidorous. Despite the fact that the idea is that these places are conceptual, I love the idea of the tunnels being made out of different kinds of discarded books and pieces of paper. I also really like Dr. Fidorous' description as being this crazy, conceptual hermit hiding away in his conceptual tunnels, tracking down conceptual fish. Quick question, why aren't there any other kinds of conceptual animals, like dogs, zebras, tigers or eagles? I know that their being fish is key to the idea of being conceptual, swimming through streams of thought, but I don't see any reason that there couldn't be other types of animals. Back on subject, Scout has been in this for her own reasons all along, or so Fidorous says. Scout's response to this is for Eric to stop being a baby, and get over himself. Needing the Ludovician to destroy Mycroft Ward, I'm a little confused as to how that would work. Obviously due to their own natures they would destroy each other, but Mycroft Ward is a vast mentality contained in many bodies, whereas the Ludovician is a singular conceptual entity. How do you get the Ludovician in a place where it can destroy Ward, when Ward's bet on immortality is that he can be in so many places at once? - Asher
This reading was not that interesting to me. I felt like there was no action in it. Thera…what is Thera? Is the beginning of the title of the book or what? Hmmmm, lots to think about. I agree with what Scout said at the top of page 229. All things are cool at one point when people think about inventions and how awesome they will be in the future. Then when it is invented, it is not seen with such enthusiasm as before. What is up with all the references to stories such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of OZ. I don’t understand what it means when they trace over the word Thera. It is kind of puzzling and interesting. I feel sad for Eric because Dr. Trey Fidorous doesn’t want anything to do with Eric. He doesn’t want to keep helping him with his condition. The title on page 235 is awkward because “The doctor of Language” does not make sense, unless you read it by changing the word doctor and language. What is up with all this awkwardness? After that, there is a lot of nonsense. Until we come upon the title “Hakuun and Kuzan”. After we discussed in class, we discussed that Hakuun is the founder of a Buddhist set and that Kuzan is some lazy man in a comic book. I would have never known this by just reading the title.
I loved the idea of a map that is in the shape of letters. Trying to read a normal is hard enough but trying to read letters as a map seems very difficult. I love the way Hall has incorporated letters, words and concepts into almost every aspects of the book. He makes Mycroft Ward into a information, concept crunching villain while making Clio into a concept that must be found.
Hall also seems to have interesting ideas or expressions of ideas regarding history and memories. He states that things are impossible until they are accomplished and then they are just history. I really liked this idea because it that idea puts a new perspective on progress. Certain types of progress are impossible until they are accomplished. This makes all inventions part of history to be taken for granted by people.
I liked how this concept tied into what happened to Clio and Eric. History is just history and it is taken for granted by most. Eric could not make Clio's death into just history. This drive and desperate desire is what causes him to go on this journey. Having what happened to her was impossible for Eric and so he had to fight against it just becoming history.
I loved the description of Dr. Trey Fidorous as a nutty professor. It felt a little cliched but Hall has a way of using physical description to describe character that made Fidorous into more than just an archetype. The way he was hiding in paper and had pens sticking out of his hair I thought were good character traits for a man so obsessed with writing. His whole life revolves around writing. I loved his whole lab set up. The way he tracked words and phrases through language as a way of study, I thought was especially clever.
It seems to me there are more references to The Wizard of Oz than there are to Alice in Wonderland. Fidorous refers to Scout as Dorthy and this allusion is made throughout the book. I find the allusion to be interesting because it suggests that Scout is also on a quest. Maybe Hall is hinting at the idea that Scout was taken away from her home and she, like Eric, is also trying to find her way back. Fidorous calls Eric a Tin Man. I thought this allusion described Eric and his journey almost perfectly. Eric is looking for his heart: Clio. He went of a journey in search of the wizard: Fidorous. It also fits that his journey doesn't end with the completion of his goal. He must kill the shark to be truly free as Dorthy and her friends had kill the evil witch in the Wizard of Oz.
This section really tickled my brain, in a good way. Hall has a lot of brilliant ideas about memories and thoughts. My favorite one of these concepts throughout the book though is the word tunnel and map that we come across in this reading. In this section Scout and Eric crawl like children on a playground through a tunnel of words, made of scattered tiny pieces of paper. Each individual paper contains one thought. That's so cool, but that's not all. To get to this word tunnel however, there is a map. Of course, Hall would never just let it be any old map though, and it is actually a word! Thera. Yajaira also was quite clever in coming up with the idea that Thera could be the map because Thera is the first five letters of the title of the book, The Raw Shark Texts. The map leads you to the tunnel as the first five letters lead you to the rest of the title or the rest of the book. It really makes sense to me in my head, meanwhile as I attempt at writing this idea down or explaining it out loud, it doesn't sound like it makes much sense.
I would just like to say that when I read “Thera” I definitely thought of the beginning of “The Raw Shark Texts.” Yajaira, great minds think alike! Haha. Anyway, the concept of the tunnel was SO cool to me. “Every loose page - as far as I could tell, every page making up the entire tunnel - had been covered, crammed, with rolling handwritten language.” I definitely agree that if this book was made into a movie (well) it would be so cool and creative. I can’t even imagine how someone would do it! I really enjoyed the Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz references. I love both of those stories, so I was really entertained seeing them worked into the story. Just still kind of waiting for a reason they are there...
Thera is definitely an island with a famous volcano. Before the eruption, Thera was home to a Minoan settlement, the civilization the most highly associated with the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The palace of King Minos was supposed to be home to the Labyrinth where the Minotaur, half man half bull, was kept in captivity. The word tunnels of TRST's ThERa definitely resemble a labyrinth. Also, Clio and Eric were vacationing on the Greek island of Naxos when Clio died. After killing the Minotaur, Theseus won the hand of King Minos' daughter Ariadne, who had helped Theseus find his way out of the Labyrinth. However, he abandoned her soon after their marriage--on the island of Naxos, where she eventually killed herself/or died of a broken heart, it isn't clear.
18 comments:
Biro World seems amazing, but I share Eric's disbelief that it would ever happen. Eric seems to be coming into his own so to say, as he notices on page 232; he is slowly becoming the first Eric Sanderson. Eric has an intersesting thought: "Can nothing really be scraped away the same way that something can?" Is Eric's life of nothingness a cover for his old life, or was his old life completely stripped away?
As I thought he might, Dr. Fidorous really does seem to be living in his own musings, or at least a part of them; he pops out of the papers and has pen lines on him synonymous with those on the papers. Hall does an excellent description of him on page 235: "What I could see of his face was wrinkled and brown like an elastic band ball, only more active and capable."
Fidorous' work was pretty cool; he appears to create language memes, like "At the end of the day" and watch them work their way through society and eventually die out. I've often wondered how certain sayings come about, and for all we know something like this is going on.
I'm not sure if I agree with Eric for being so distraught at the end or if I think he's just overacting. Yes, she was using him, but would it really have made much of a difference if she had told him the truth? I don't condone Scout's acts, but I can't say I'd do otherwise in her situation, telling Eric the whole truth would have been an extremely risky thing to do. I suspect amends will be made.
Throughout most of the reading we find Scout and Eric crawling hands and knees through a word tunnel made out of discarded pieces of paper. I imagined these papers being all of the random thoughts that come of the head of Dr. Trey Fidorous. Just like the unconscious mind, the tunnel files and stores of all his thoughts and/or ramblings into its walls so that he may find them at a later date. Hall’s description of the THERA path made me very squeamish at some moments, almost as if they were crawling through a large sewage system. It’s hard to tell whether this is another part of un-space but it there have been some slight hints as to the true nature of Fidorous’ secret word cavern.
Besides this whole sequence of events, we finally meet the person Eric has been searching for during the last 100 or so pages. Dr. Trey Fidorous is the perfect example of a “word genius”. He reminds of a lot like Einstein but rather than being an excellent physicist and mathematician, he is a literary genius and master linguist. The whole description of his work on language viruses is very interesting and creative. Yet again, Hall has managed to add a new form of a language or word concept and turn it into an evolved organism. Though viruses aren’t living themselves, they are very much apart of the microbiology of our world and thus a part of the “language organism” kingdom. Much like viruses, Fidorous’ language viruses multiply through “host emails” and spread through a culture as popular meme.
Going to the last part of the reading, I had a feeling that Scout still had one last secret she wasn’t telling Eric despite their intimate sexual relationship. And to her gratitude, I do think Eric was kind of being a dick and childish. Much like Scout said, I believe she really was leading him back to Fidorous for both of their benefits. She had to be justified in the way she acted: she had no clue how he might react to such disclosure that it was better not to risk his reaction and pull a Arnold Schwarzenegger, “COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE”.
I felt so bad for Eric in this section. He put all his trust in Scout and she just used him. She wasn't even helping him. She was using him for her own advantage. Fidorous seemed like he really didn't want Eric or Scout there and he was the person who told Eric the reason Scout brought him. I was upset learning that the relationship that Scout and Eric built was destroyed because Scout was lying and manipulating him. I thought that the map was very cool. Instead of it being a map where you go in one direction its actually a word which you have to follow. The references in this chapter are of The wizard of Oz scout being called Dorothy, Eric being called tin man and Ian being called Toto.
HAHAHA LMFAO she had a map the whole time woooooooowwww lol . the concept of the tunnel being created by paper is just too vivid, i can picture like myself going inside the Mc Donalds jungle gym and climing the tunnel backwards and picturing words along the whole tunnel. WShArKTeXts, wats missing ThERA. Now thats wassup haha. " Every loose page-as far as i could tell,every page making up the entire tunnel-had been covered, crammed, with rolling handwritten language." (pg.226) After reading the section of creating an igloo with books haha now i wanna go to the library and actually do it , whose with me? this is a very powerful line, "i think we're going to wear away from the world, just like the writing wears off old gravestones in the aisles of churches."(pg. 229) never mind i take it back this is a better powerful line " Sometimes its just hard to see what's in front of you. but once you do see it, or once something connected to the it touches you, i dont think theres any going back." (pg. 230) The doctor is such an asshole, i dont like him. eric worked so hard to get to where he is today and the doctor gives a beep... oh hellz nah thats just f-ed up. NOOOOOOO scout why did you have to lie to eric, you two deserve each other !!!!
First of all, that is my kind of map! I am completely directionally challenged so I think following “Thera” would be a lot easier than following a regular map. Like we talked about in class I like Scout’s discussion of things “becoming history.” She says, “Sometimes things that nobody believed were possible just happen…but afterwards, it’s just a fact,” (229). I love how I would never really have thought of this but Hall and other books make me think of ordinary life in different ways.
On page 232 I found a reference to the Crying of Lot 49. Eric says, “I’d been an empty nothing for so long, and not suddenly I was here, somehow an adventurer in a strange place.” This reminds me of Oedipa. Oedipa was this “nobody” who was called on this journey and then suddenly she felt as if she had meaning.
After Scout and Eric travel through the tunnel they end up at Dr. Fidorous. He reminds me a lot of the Wizard of Oz from “The Wizard of Oz.” He seems to do that similar smoke and mirror, “man behind the curtain act,” that the Wizard does.
I was disappointed to find out that Scout was using Eric just so she could use the Ludovician. I really was rooting for him and Scout to be together. I did think maybe Eric was being a little bit unreasonable. He should have token the time to listen to Scout and her reasoning.
Sorry this is posted in the other one, too, but this is the right one this time!
It was really cool that Eric and Scout were going through a word tunnel following a word map. I liked the play with words and language in this chapter a lot. On pg 228, Eric asks, “It’s not only paper though, is it?” about the books making up the dome. Once paper has words on it, the simple wood pulp and ink represents a concept. Books have concepts and MEANING, even though they are “just paper”. This tunnel, which is made completely from books and paper, actually creates something tangible from something that is usually conceptual – words.
There was another Wizard of Oz reference, when Fidorous calls Scout and Eric “Dorothy” and “Tin Man” respectively, which fit perfectly because she has no home, and he, without memory, has no brain.
Fidorous seems like a language scientist or technician to me. He sees words and language as a science – he tests memes, phrases, effects of words, etc.
First off, I like that the title means pens. I think that's pretty cool. The map confused me at first. Almost all of this book is conceptual, but the map being made out of words was a little confusing at first. At the bottom of page 241 I really liked Hall's description, "The air inside the tunnel smelled like the pages of a second-hand Charles Dickens novel; yellowy paper, old print and finger grease, that pressed, preserved sort of smell." This line gave me a really good idea for the final, and also Hall's choice of words were really good. The way he puts sentences together to form an image is something beyond me. I thought it was interesting how Eric notices that every paper you thew away went into un-space and the making of the tunnel. On page 227 I was happy to finally understand the map. I also liked on page 229 the line, "The way I look at it, things are always happening. Sometimes things that nobody believed were possible just happen. Beforehand everyone says that's impossible, or Ill never live to see something like that but afterwards, its just a fact. It's just history. These things become history of every day." I feel like this is important especially considering Eric and everything he's gone through. He will never get to relive the days with Clio, and he has to keep moving forward. I enjoyed this section a lot.
I like the environment he is exploring and the concepts we are introduced to. I wonder why the map is in the shape of the Letters “ThERa”. Why are some of the letters uppercase and some lower? Dr. Trey Fidorous seems too unoriginal. He reminds me of many other characters in books and movies. Then again, I have never heard of a dr. of language. Although I like the cat coming along on the adventure, I find his presence is very unnecessary and only adds to Erik’s concern.
I like seeing Eric grow into his own skin and form his own ideas. It's interesting to see how he creates himself, or re-creates himself. There's still a sense of insecurity with him, which is obvious when he constantly compares himself to The First Eric Sanderson. I don't blame Eric for wanting to know what The First Eric Sanderson was like. It's a huge part of him, regardless of him not knowing or remembering what happened before he woke up in his room and had to start over.
The word tunnel is awesome. Go figure that the map to the word tunnel would be a word. I really like Yaya's theory about Thera being the first five letters to the title of the book. As if it's leading him to what's to come, and it's made of texts and words. It works in a weird way, which seems to be the only form of consistency in the book.
The way that Hall writes and expresses Eric's amazement with everything that happens in the word tunnel is great. It takes me back to when the book first started and I felt that I was learning everything with Eric. Yes, we still are, but it came back to the surface with the being in the word tunnel where in the past hundred pages or so I felt more that I was watching a movie.
It would be amazing if this book was made into a movie and we could see the tunnels covered with the pages of thousands of books. Wouldn't that be awesome to see? One of my favorite quotes of this section: "What a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours." Which is so true!
The description of Trey Fidorous was very well written. I have a very clear image in my mind of how I imagine him to look like. It seems like Scout and Fidorous don't like each other at all, and we get another hint that Scout knows a lot more about Eric that she lets on, that that perhaps she really is Clio! I can't wait until we know for sure.
Fidorous' 'Language Viruses' are very interesting. I love how he creates single celled conceptual memes! What an interesting idea!
Once again they are going down a rabbit hole. Trey Fidorous's tunnel seems like a hoarder’s dream. I would be so freaked out trying to shimmy down the first part of the tunnel because it seems like if you pushed one piece of paper out of place the whole thing would come crashing down!
I love all the different versions of ThERa there are. There's the Greek island and yaya's observation about it being the title of the book. I noticed that "h" and the "a" were in lower case while the rest of the letters were in capitals. If you take the lower case letters and put them in front of the capitals you get the word "hater". I don't know if that's a precursor to the hate Fidorous feels for Eric or the hate Eric feels for Scout after he finds out or maybe it doesn't meant anything at all.
I love that the tunnel forms a word! It's just one more protection against conceptual fish.
Dr. Fidorous's entrance is so dramatic! I was worried the shark had found them. The language viruses are really cool! That's awesome we finally have an explaination for why weird phrases come about.
I felt so bad for Eric when he found out that Scout had used him. It reminded me of Memento how everyone the two main characters trust end up using them. Why did Scout have to use him?!?!? It makes me rather mad.
More developments! I love how there's always something going on in this book, it's never just forcing you to sit through large stretches of inactivity. For a while though, this chapter is just Scout and Eric finding their way through the TheRa tunnel to get to Dr. Fidorous. Despite the fact that the idea is that these places are conceptual, I love the idea of the tunnels being made out of different kinds of discarded books and pieces of paper. I also really like Dr. Fidorous' description as being this crazy, conceptual hermit hiding away in his conceptual tunnels, tracking down conceptual fish. Quick question, why aren't there any other kinds of conceptual animals, like dogs, zebras, tigers or eagles? I know that their being fish is key to the idea of being conceptual, swimming through streams of thought, but I don't see any reason that there couldn't be other types of animals. Back on subject, Scout has been in this for her own reasons all along, or so Fidorous says. Scout's response to this is for Eric to stop being a baby, and get over himself. Needing the Ludovician to destroy Mycroft Ward, I'm a little confused as to how that would work. Obviously due to their own natures they would destroy each other, but Mycroft Ward is a vast mentality contained in many bodies, whereas the Ludovician is a singular conceptual entity. How do you get the Ludovician in a place where it can destroy Ward, when Ward's bet on immortality is that he can be in so many places at once? - Asher
This reading was not that interesting to me. I felt like there was no action in it. Thera…what is Thera? Is the beginning of the title of the book or what? Hmmmm, lots to think about. I agree with what Scout said at the top of page 229. All things are cool at one point when people think about inventions and how awesome they will be in the future. Then when it is invented, it is not seen with such enthusiasm as before. What is up with all the references to stories such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of OZ. I don’t understand what it means when they trace over the word Thera. It is kind of puzzling and interesting. I feel sad for Eric because Dr. Trey Fidorous doesn’t want anything to do with Eric. He doesn’t want to keep helping him with his condition. The title on page 235 is awkward because “The doctor of Language” does not make sense, unless you read it by changing the word doctor and language. What is up with all this awkwardness? After that, there is a lot of nonsense. Until we come upon the title “Hakuun and Kuzan”. After we discussed in class, we discussed that Hakuun is the founder of a Buddhist set and that Kuzan is some lazy man in a comic book. I would have never known this by just reading the title.
I loved the idea of a map that is in the shape of letters. Trying to read a normal is hard enough but trying to read letters as a map seems very difficult. I love the way Hall has incorporated letters, words and concepts into almost every aspects of the book. He makes Mycroft Ward into a information, concept crunching villain while making Clio into a concept that must be found.
Hall also seems to have interesting ideas or expressions of ideas regarding history and memories. He states that things are impossible until they are accomplished and then they are just history. I really liked this idea because it that idea puts a new perspective on progress. Certain types of progress are impossible until they are accomplished. This makes all inventions part of history to be taken for granted by people.
I liked how this concept tied into what happened to Clio and Eric. History is just history and it is taken for granted by most. Eric could not make Clio's death into just history. This drive and desperate desire is what causes him to go on this journey. Having what happened to her was impossible for Eric and so he had to fight against it just becoming history.
I loved the description of Dr. Trey Fidorous as a nutty professor. It felt a little cliched but Hall has a way of using physical description to describe character that made Fidorous into more than just an archetype. The way he was hiding in paper and had pens sticking out of his hair I thought were good character traits for a man so obsessed with writing. His whole life revolves around writing. I loved his whole lab set up. The way he tracked words and phrases through language as a way of study, I thought was especially clever.
It seems to me there are more references to The Wizard of Oz than there are to Alice in Wonderland. Fidorous refers to Scout as Dorthy and this allusion is made throughout the book. I find the allusion to be interesting because it suggests that Scout is also on a quest. Maybe Hall is hinting at the idea that Scout was taken away from her home and she, like Eric, is also trying to find her way back. Fidorous calls Eric a Tin Man. I thought this allusion described Eric and his journey almost perfectly. Eric is looking for his heart: Clio. He went of a journey in search of the wizard: Fidorous. It also fits that his journey doesn't end with the completion of his goal. He must kill the shark to be truly free as Dorthy and her friends had kill the evil witch in the Wizard of Oz.
This section really tickled my brain, in a good way. Hall has a lot of brilliant ideas about memories and thoughts. My favorite one of these concepts throughout the book though is the word tunnel and map that we come across in this reading. In this section Scout and Eric crawl like children on a playground through a tunnel of words, made of scattered tiny pieces of paper. Each individual paper contains one thought. That's so cool, but that's not all. To get to this word tunnel however, there is a map. Of course, Hall would never just let it be any old map though, and it is actually a word! Thera. Yajaira also was quite clever in coming up with the idea that Thera could be the map because Thera is the first five letters of the title of the book, The Raw Shark Texts. The map leads you to the tunnel as the first five letters lead you to the rest of the title or the rest of the book. It really makes sense to me in my head, meanwhile as I attempt at writing this idea down or explaining it out loud, it doesn't sound like it makes much sense.
I would just like to say that when I read “Thera” I definitely thought of the beginning of “The Raw Shark Texts.” Yajaira, great minds think alike! Haha. Anyway, the concept of the tunnel was SO cool to me. “Every loose page - as far as I could tell, every page making up the entire tunnel - had been covered, crammed, with rolling handwritten language.” I definitely agree that if this book was made into a movie (well) it would be so cool and creative. I can’t even imagine how someone would do it! I really enjoyed the Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz references. I love both of those stories, so I was really entertained seeing them worked into the story. Just still kind of waiting for a reason they are there...
Thera is definitely an island with a famous volcano. Before the eruption, Thera was home to a Minoan settlement, the civilization the most highly associated with the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The palace of King Minos was supposed to be home to the Labyrinth where the Minotaur, half man half bull, was kept in captivity. The word tunnels of TRST's ThERa definitely resemble a labyrinth.
Also, Clio and Eric were vacationing on the Greek island of Naxos when Clio died. After killing the Minotaur, Theseus won the hand of King Minos' daughter Ariadne, who had helped Theseus find his way out of the Labyrinth. However, he abandoned her soon after their marriage--on the island of Naxos, where she eventually killed herself/or died of a broken heart, it isn't clear.
There's a class that teaches TRST? Where?
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