Ted Chiang

[drcpunk]

Well, it's Mythopoeic Season again, and one of the books on the list is Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life, which I recommend. A couple of non-spoiler thoughts.

1. In his afterword, Chiang comments that he thinks the Book of Job wusses out by having God restore Job's good fortune at the end. I remember taking a course in Biblical Greek -- we were reading the OT in the Greek equivalent of Medieval Latin. I dropped the course because I couldn't keep up, and took a class in Caaser, which Professor Bram was generious enough to let me take at different hours, but that's another story.

Anyway, we were reading the Book of Job. And Professor Green explained that many scholars thought that it originally ended with the Voice out of the Whirlwind, and that the happy ending was a later addition. She added that one of the problems scholars had was with the beginning, where there's actually a reason for Job's suffering. I asked if that part, the part where Satan gets permission from God to torment Job, might also be a later addition, and she said that it might.

Mind, I have no idea how one determines the evidence for this sort of thing.

2. In one of the stories, a comment is made that one quality of beauty is symmetry. As this is a character's opinion in a story, I shan't hold the author to it.

At a Halloween party, I asked a woman to decorate my face. She drew a flowery vine that curled around three quarters of my face, explaining that true symmetry was artistically dead and sterile. People's faces are asymmetrical, however slightly. I think she may have said that some study was done showing that a truly symmetrical face was disturbing, but I'm not sure, and in any case, she didn't give further details.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I've heard the theory that finding human symmetry attractive is one of those evolutionary things: Strongly asymmetrical people probably have something wrong with them, and this keeps others from breeding with them.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Comments, in backwards order:

1: Total symmetry is creepy and unnatural; it makes the face appear TOO perfect. Kind of like a reverse of the uncanny valley. Similar things can be thought of, like smoothness of skin and uniformity of pigment.

2: Generally, the two most common ways in which portions of a text are distinguished as being from different authors are:
a: Fragmentary texts. IE: A version of the text is found that is otherwise complete, or largely otherwise complete, but is missing a given portion. If it doesn't seem like the portion was lost or cut, this is considered evidence for that portion being added later.
b: Textual analysis. Most famously in this context, the names used for the deity in the various portions of not only the Tanach, but within the Torah itself. Elohim/Shaddai/Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey. This is taken as evidence for different "authors", and critics and researchers distinguish between priestly texts, nationalist texts, and otherwise.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I can buy that too much asymmetry is a sign that the breeding stock is bad. Well, maybe. agrumer theorizes that we have lotsa nearsightedness since nearsighted cavemen weren't killed, but stayed home with the women instead of hunting. I mean, all of these theories are oversimplifications at best. But too much asymmetry is too much meaningless noise, whereas too much symmetry may be dead silence. Hm, I think my metaphor becomes incomprehensible.

I don't have enough Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew to know what the OT actually says in the original Latin. (What is the OT in originally, anyway? Hebrew? Aramaic?) We were actually supposed to have been doing the NT in class, I think, but we didn't. I forget why.

Been reading Leinster's Med Ship stories. Golden Age SF. Gotta love it. Some of it's quite well done. Some is really, really silly.