"Got some sleep and went to the cafe with my son and wrote and then went for a walk. feel much better."

I wrote about this idea: literature today is reduced to the sum of 1's and 0's and digitized. The writers today write for money, fame, and utilize man made techniques developed by technological innovation. The result is that the "masterpiece" for a writer under this pressure is elusive, and at most a "babble. What are we to do? I know I am a conscious writer, an invader from the past, who sees the literary traditions being eroded to the point where the "art of writing" has been reduced to a "piece of shit."

One goal, since I am a writer, is to lead a Renaissance in literature to inspire excellence in the "art of writing" to ensure that the literary "masterpiece" does not become "extinct." I hope to inspire others to do the same for humanities, painting, classics, music, architecture, et al.

There. I got that out of my system; I said that to inspire the individual to do, rather than be part of the mass collective consciousness.

I don't know about her, or even if she is (as some suggest) a Lit student, but I'm over a decade out of a couple of English degrees (so I'm not newly minted). I understand the point that it may seem limiting in some way since often studies in Literature (aka "English") are primarily English. As for me, I felt like I never had the formal exposure to as much of the international literary world as I would have preferred. Translated works, especially, are left to other departments, such as Comparative Lit. Since my graduation, I have far less time to read with a career and a young child, but I do my best to seek out works that were less familiar to me and it has been remarkably satisfying.

As for We, I had a dystopic lit kick way back before starting university and enjoyed it then (thanks to my handy-dandy public library--so I guess I'm only partially sympathetic to Heidi's observations). Am looking forward to re-reading it since reading this article. Also will take another look at Anthony Burgess's 1985, which was his take on 1984. I would recommend it, though I also read that during my “dystopi-manic” phase quite a while back, so maybe it is not as good as I remember.

Gilliam's dystopic vision still shocks and upsets well after its appearance way back in 1984-and-a-half.

It's also somewhat creepy, with its plastic-surgery obsessed plutocrats and non-stop terrorist bombings mirroring our own current predicament.

derPlau wrote:

... taking the limit of x/y as y goes to zero yields infinity ...

Exactly. One might say that Zamyatin is taking the limit, not dividing by zero.

My note about Heidi's immaturity wasn't meant to be mean. I've been where Heidi seems to be -- working on the English degree and all set to show off my newly minted knowledge. Several years later (I won't say how many) I see things differently. After reading her "apology" I thought I would do her favor and point out how she's coming off to save her further embarrassment.

I haven't read We (yet), but the mathematics bit brought to mind Robert Musil's Young Torless (1906). I wonder if Zamyatin may have been familiar with that work. The novel includes philosophical discussions of the meaning of the mathematical notion of imaginary numbers (the square root of -1) as a metaphor for calculating with the unknown, the instinctual, the irrational and the irreducible -- god, sex, love, soul. All things -- and certain equations -- have a second, hidden nature underlying their apparent function.

As for Orwell, I'm definitely of the opinion that Nineteen Eighty-Four is more relevant with each passing day, sad to say.

No, I'm not a mind reader, and you're not a very good arguer. I'm a professional reader of others' books. Once you have mastered the meanings of good mature writers, picking up on the snarkiness of heidi's message is not exactly rocket science. I would have hoped that my references to the canon paragraph and heidi's ironic sneer at "intelligent Salon readers" would have been enough detail to support my assertion. Sorry, but representative examples are all I'm offering, not an exhaustive survey of dear little heidi's rhetorical booboos.

all I can say is, it must be great to be such a talented mind reader.

For example, D writes that "bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of that fraction known as happiness," and that thanks to the "Lex sexualis," "the denominator of the happiness fraction has been reduced to zero and the fraction becomes magnificent infinity." Of course, dividing by zero yields nothing; it is an illegal operation -- probably Zamyatin's sly joke on the impossibility of ever really eradicating envy.

Dividing a number by zero is indeed undefined. But taking the limit of x/y as y goes to zero yields infinity (or, more precisely [if more confusingly}, it yields y times infinity).

But anyway, the quote about true literature coming only from madmen, hermits, rebels, and heretics is true. Irrevocably true: look at all the greats, they are the nuts who are right on the border of being functional enough to write and observe all that the normal people cannot. Just look at our American greats: Sontag, Vidal, Vonnegut, they're all pretty much, or were, crazy rebels who speak truth few can see, and that's why I love 'em.

heidi's "apology" was an excuse to snark. Please read her trying-to-condescend paragraph on the canon (she must have really been taking notes like crazy that day in soph lit)and her driveby snippery re: the intelligent readers of this magazine.

And, while she deserves praise for admitting that she has not read Joyce, she probably shouldn't be spending time talking down to us about canon till she has started coming to terms with the poster boy for twentieth century lit in English.

In what sense is Brazil "Lowbrow"? Simply because it's a film?

Gilliam's dystopic vision still shocks and upsets well after its appearance way back in 1984-and-a-half.