Pynchon does me the favor of making a long list significantly longer, etc

Thomas Pynchon has been more compared to James Joyce than anybody still alive. I've been excited lately to find that he has recently written and published another book, and some critics are calling it his best since Gravity's Rainbow which he published in 1973. I've been excited, though I have not bought his new novel Against the Day as of yet. It will remain on my reading list for quite some time now, on the very low side of estimates, I will not even begin to read it for a year. The longest it'll take me to finally pick this one up is a decade. (I'd like to read at least one of his others, V., before then.) Partially, I think this is exciting news to me because it is like seeing something important within our lifetimes. We're seeing a master of writing like Joyce publish again.

This, I should mention, has made me look at my reading list again. I mentioned James Joyce twice in the last paragraph. He might be next. The only Joyce I've read are some short stories. I mean to read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and perhaps, if I'm ambitious and want to start another giant, obscure book, Ulysses. While creating this blog, I noticed the previews for the templates do not use 'Lorem Ipsum' as filler text but instead lines from the English epic Paradise Lost. Another book I need to read. Fortunately, that one isn't totally giant. For my philosophical interests, I'd like to read Fear and Trembling, and I was just loaned some essays by Bertrand Russell. On the technical side of philosophical interests, I've also been loaned by my philosophy professor a book on mathematical logic. While I have it, I may as well do my best at trying to understand Gödel's theorems and Church's Theorem. Just getting the notation in that book down will be a task.

This week has been crazy if only for the little sleep I've been able to get: there is a subtle tradeoff with some classes: they might not have a final, you might not have to study much, but you'll need to write papers. I have chosen to be ambitious and write a paper for my philosophy class that I'll have to think about, I'll be developing some basic theory on personal identity and the survival or continuity of personal identity. No, I don't really have one yet, I'll come up with enough ideas to answer the problem which is posed (a rather simple one) and just move on to what such a theory could imply given more complex ones. (These more complex ones, specifically pertaining to the division of brain and consciousness, I have no immediate answer to, and will not be satisfied with what I conclude, most likely.) I'm in the process of writing a paper about gender and sexuality as it was for the Greeks and Romans and how it is today for, say your first year college student in our society. I am aware of how general this is, and that my report of sexuality in either society will be incomplete, but what can you expect? I'm trying to make apparent the contrast between modern thinking about sexuality (the perhaps falsely categorical look at it as gender-preference, the mental exclusion of homosexuals from normal terms) and the thoughts of the Greeks and Romans in antiquity (preservation of masculinity, detestability of passivity for the male, the occasionally ridiculous contrast they made in considering gender.) Looks like Foucault will be useful. Has anybody heard the statistic that more homosexuals come out of the closet as such in their first year of college than any other point in their life? If you know a source that says this, or something like it (even contrary to it) and can be cited, it'd be useful for this paper. For my philosophy paper I wish I could find my copy of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, it may hold insight which is more important for theory on brain and identity than was anticipated when it came out. Damn. I think I left it at home. Point is my papers will hint at these theses: The English paper will note that it is perhaps not naturally logical to make the strict, categorical distinctions between sexualities which we have made, and that though the Romans and Greeks weren't ideal either, their example perhaps shows this. My philosophy paper will argue that a continuance of consciousness and self-awareness while the seat of consciousness is also continuance qualifies for survival and maintains identity. (The brain, to me, is the seat of consciousness, both hemispheres together, with only one consciousness may be severely different, therefore perhaps not actually 'preserved'.)

This post probably wasn't that interesting for most of you, but it's a paper writing week: what can you expect? They'll get better. I promise.