Below is a sentence from Roberto Bolano's novel 2666:

"Morini, of course, was undaunted by the scant interest that Archimboldi’s work aroused in the Italian public, and after he translated Bifurcaria Bifurcata he wrote two studies of Archimboldi for journals in Milan and Palermo, one on the role of fate in Railroad Perfection, and the other on the various guises of conscience and guilt in Lethaea, on the surface an erotic novel, and in Bitzius, a novel less than one hundred pages long, similar in some ways to Mitzi’s Treasure, the book that Pelletier had found in an old Munich bookstore, and that told the story of the life of Albert Bitzius, pastor of Lützelflüh, in the canton of Bern, an author of sermons as well as a writer under the pseudonym Jeremiah Gotthelf."

The above sentence is needlessly long. Maybe it evokes the dizzying interrelations between the novels of Archimboldi as well as the small, overly cross-pollinated world of literary studies. Maybe.

I have edited the quoted sentence, and the edited version is much more clear in my opinion.

"Morini, of course, was undaunted by the scant interest that Archimboldi’s work aroused in the Italian public, and after he translated Bifurcaria Bifurcata he wrote two studies of Archimboldi for journals in Milan and Palermo. One was on the role of fate in Railroad Perfection. The other dealt with the various guises of conscience and guilt in Lethaea, which on the surface was an erotic novel, and in Bitzius, a novel less than one hundred pages long. The latter was similar in some ways to Mitzi’s Treasure, the book that Pelletier had found in an old Munich bookstore. Mitzi’s Treasure told the story of the life of Albert Bitzius, pastor of Lützelflüh, in the canton of Bern, an author of sermons as well as a writer under the pseudonym Jeremiah Gotthelf."

Maybe--maybe--the original version has some advantages over the edited version, but I don't think those advantages are worth the headache of rereading it multiple times. More to the point, some casual readers will be put off from reading a likely important novel for this reason. In fact, I'm willing to bet that at least one person, who doesn't read literature at all, was recommended 2666 by a friend and then stopped reading the book and literature altogether because of very long sentences.

As it happens, there are certainly sentences that merit their length, and one such sentence occurs early in 2666 that might literally be 2,666 words long, wherein our four protagonists, a group of literary scholars interested in a mysterious and reclusive author named Archimboldi, are attending a literary conference at which a speaker, referred to only as the Swabian, which AFAIK is an individual from a place called Swab, mentions that he once met Archimboldi in person before immediately launching into a digression consisting of a veritable deluge of details irrelevant to Archimboldi, the focal point of interest of our four protagonists, which veritable deluge--the weather in the town where the aforementioned Swabian met Archimboldi, the other townspeople in attendance at the tavern where Archimboldi's reading was hosted, a story told by one of the townspeople about her journey to Argentina--which induces in the reader the same sense of frustration the protagonists are feeling.

I'm interested to know if anyone had read Norman Douglas, he is in my opinion the greatest travel writer I have ever read. I first came across an old, yellowing paperback in a charity shop with the title 'Alone' on its cover, which I bought for 50p (I'm from the UK). I read a few pages on the spot and did not expect the high quality prose and satirical humour which had an immediate impact on me. I have since read a number of his other works which are equally unrivalled in its historical research and sharp, witty humour.

After visiting his wikipedia page, I'm surprised to discover the extent of this man's influence on writers such as James Joyce, Anthony Burgess and Vladimir Nabokov. It then became immediately clear to me that Humbert Humbert is modelled off of Norman Douglas: the lonesome wanderer, the neglected scholar, the malicious pederast (Douglas was been accused on multiple counts of pederasty). It is obvious Nabokov admired Douglas's work. In The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, one of the characters owns a copy of South Wind (Douglas's most famous book), and in Lolita a picture of Douglas hangs on Humbert Humbert's colleague's wall.

Has anyone come across this largely forgotten author? I'd be interested to hear your opinions on his work.

Hi guys, could anyone recommend me some impressionistic literature that isn’t Heart of Darkness, Virginia Woolf or James Joyce please?

I have just finished all the French Impressionist films I could find, am familiar with impressionism in painting, but don’t know much about it in terms of literature. I have already read the above works/authors though.

Any guidance would be highly appreciated.

Hi all I’m not necessarily a big literature person (I’m a history major in college) but it does have a special place in my heart and I do appreciate it.

With that being said, history and literature are greatly intertwined, so obviously I come across some lit when studying history.

I already knew about the Inferno, but now I’m super curious. What was the point of writing it? How does Dante’s hell show something about his time and society? What is it supposed to tell us?

I’m not sure how to go about it. I’m thinking about jumping straight in and reading it, but I don’t want to go through the whole thing and not fully understand what Dante was trying to get at. How have you all approached reading it?

I'm writing an essay on the topic and I'm trying to write how Milton wrote the trope Born sexy Yestorday for Eve and as well as the Modanna-Whore complex as it seems to putting Eve in a bad light before even eating the apple yet they infitize her and virginalize her. When she eats the apple that goes out the window though.

If this is a bad topic idea I'd love to know, I chose this as an essay topic.

Given that I am currently on sabbatical, which my wife insists is well-deserved but about which I harbor some reservations, and, quite frankly, guilt, I have in fits and starts returned to the practice of reading literature, including but not limited to works by Banville, Murakami, and Dazai, and in the course of reading the early sections of Bolano's 2666 have had my experience of the endeavor vaguely troubled by sentences which on first, second, and sometimes tenth reading seem needlessly wordy, verbose, prolix, and perhaps meandering, which qualities, needless to say, seem not to have any positive impact on the reading experience, which experience caused me to wonder, as I was deciphering the same string of words again and again, whether others who read literature have had a similar response to sentences whose length seem not to add anything of value or, if value is added, whose value is outweighed by difficulties related to attention span and patience. Discuss.

EDIT: It seems that my use of a single sentence failed to capture the nuance of my actual position. (Why is that, I wonder?) In any case, I definitely think many long sentences NEED to be long. They produce a desired effect which could not be achieved without a long sentence. However, many sentences that are long do not seem to produce anything of much value, including many in 2666.

One of the finest works I just finished. The writing, The language and the expertise of Lamming in pointing out some burning issues in the books was done with nuance, finesse and a strange clarity which is engaging and at the same time mind provoking and complex.

Every single discourse intersected in this book and It was done so effortlessly. Really a must read.

Hey guys,

Wanted to ask what are some cool/important COTLB (Charge of The Light Brigade which is probably my favourite poem in 19th century literature so far) quotes in your opinion and what do you think they mean?

Just wanna see a discussion of COTLB in the comments in general lol

THIS DUDE… is a visionary. It feels like I’m reading a play-by-play of a souls-like RPG.

In verity, he walks onward knowing not his own fitness for the task, and you will also show him much sympathy in this task, for he doth walk in much strength and pride you have scarce to reproach for it is bound thereupon in the love of youth. And you shall believe him, if in utter truth you know to read, and have joy in the inwardness of life.

This b*tch… needs to get a grip. Every other paragraph he is telling me how much I’d benefit from knowing the truth of what he’s saying and that if I were there I would be equally unable to describe the shit he’s absorbing. It’s like a chauvinist Pilgrims Progress, believe me. Kinda hilarious at times, because the male-female dynamics he describes are… batshit crazy.

I'm a guy and i must confess i mostly read male authors. I'm just wondering what is considered bad and well written female characters? Do you guys have any examples i can read up (preferably without spoilers lol)

Also, do you guys think Nina Burgess in Marlon James' "A Brief History of Seven Killings" is a well written female character? I really love that character.

I’ve just finished reading the first part and before I continue I was wanna know what your thoughts where. -spoilers kinda past here-

I thought the books way of writing offered a almost discussion like quality to it. As if the author ,being the man from underground, was in a scripted discussion with the reader. In which the reader almost has to take a stance against the writer, as to understand his words. All of this facilitated by the actual author, Dostoyevsky.

I appreciate your help in choosing an English Novel: I‘d like to brush up on my English. I've made a list of english novels of world literature and now I am thinking about reading some of them in the original. But I don't know which one would be a good one to start. My level at School was Oxford B1-B2, I have to deal with English quite often in my everyday life. I would say it's solid, but not very good. The list I made follows below, but I am also grateful for other suggestions / orders!

Melville: Moby Dick / Dickens: Big Expectations / Faulkner: As I lay dying Capote: In Cold Blood / Updike: Rabbit, Run / Chandler: The Big Sleep, The long Goodbye / Hemingway: the sun also rises, for whom the bell tolls / Twain: Huckleberry finn

Hi everyone! I just got done reading this (modern) classic! I’d like to know your thoughts on the book?

I’ve been going through some reviews post having read the book and I’m quite surprised that some people did not like it and even called it racist and representative of white saviour complex.

I think those people missed the point. Atticus’ character deeply resonated with me as a man who stood up and fought for what he believed in no matter what the odds or consequences. If anything I think it attempts to breaks down racial barriers. If everyone strove for justice and stood up for their fellow man the world would be a better place.

As for the criticism that the book did not develop the black characters enough, you have to remember that it is being narrated from the perspective of an adolescent white girl. Most of what we know about the characters is based on inference from dialogue and not description.

I’d also like to clarify that I am not white, I am from Pakistan and belong to a persecuted community, and while I do not and will not pretend to understand the horrors of slavery and its legacy, I do understand marginalisation and not having true freedom. I think the book is a great lesson in how to raise your children and lead by example while standing on principle.

What do you guys think?

What a coincidence! Thinking of reading Sleep by Haruki Murakami (borrowed later), I watched Burning, the movie, without knowing it was an adaptation of Barn Burning, another short story from him. (I can't say we had a good time with the movie, but it left an impression.)

Then, knowing about the movie's adaptation, I went back to my initial objective, and first read Sleep. I enjoyed it, although I could not make any sense out of it, but it's fine. I then read Barn Burning to compare it with the movie.

My main point: without the movie, I would have never guessed the twist, what was really going on. Isn't it too cryptic or am I just blind and dense?

I then read other short stories from Murakami, and I liked those too. The humor of the character is easy to understand and to relate to. But I keep wondering: what if I missed something huge, each time? Like I would have missed with Barn Burning—I wouldn't have even realized there was something untold.

I guess I could look up on the web some cheat sheet about the short stories, to learn the twist of each. Or maybe this Barn Burning short story is an exception, as it was inspired by another from Faulkner (that I didn't read), and that the other short stories are just what they look like, nothing deep hidden to understand, just enjoy the ride. I would tend to think the latter after reading one of the author's interview.

So, what is your take on the matter?

It kind of dawned to me after hearing the news of Paul Auster's death that, we lost McCarthy,A.s Byatt, Martin Amis, Milan Kundera,Luis Gluck, Kenzaburo Oe last year

We have already lost John Barthe and Paul Auster this year.

László Krasznahorkai is 70

Margaret Atwood is 84

Alice Munro is 92

Thomas Pynchon is 86

Haruki Murakami is 75

Salman Rushdie is 76

Even Kazuo Ishiguro,Olga Tokarczuk, Jon Fosse, Yoko Ogawa are in their 60s. There must be many more. I am sure.

And I feel kind of sad because of that. You could call me naive and strange and parasocial, but when some of these people passed away I felt that I lost a dear friend. I am pretty sure that I will feel sad again in the future.

The only thing I could say is that they will live on through their fiction and poetry and the only thing I could wish is that they are able to find some sort of peaceful afterlife.

RIP Mr. Auster we will remember you.

My original theory was that he linked the idea of the humors to make Victorians question about their belief since the theory was disproved in about 1850 (I believe)show that their belief system, ideologies and morality was constantly changing - emphasised in the changing technology and medicine that began to challenge their philosophies. Otherwise, maybe a weaker point was perhaps Stevenson was presenting Hyde to cause devolution as he led these respectable Victorian men (ie Jekyll, Lanyon, Utterson, Enfield) to return to previous, inferior scientific theories as opposed to germ theory which could show that Hyde either has or causes an imbalance in the humors through the thickening of the blood (cold blood is thicker).

My teacher didn’t like these ideas though so I’m just putting my points out there since my exam is very soon and maybe I could use at least something from it or if I could get back any feedback on my ideas (maybe I’m waffling).

I’m doing a reread of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to get ready for Percival Everett’s new book, James.

Early in the book, there’s a grim bit of physical comedy in which Huck’s father drunkenly stumbles over a washbasin. It’s followed by this:

and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too; but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.

So who the heck is Sowberry Hagan? I consulted an annotated edition and the internet, neither of which had much to say on the subject. (Though there is a band that has taken the name, apparently.) I don’t see any evidence that this was an actual person, and it seems out of character for Twain to casually invent a master of profanity and then fail to elaborate in any way.

Does anybody know anything about this?

Hi all, I am very new to the realm of literature in the theoretical sense. I received my masters in history last year but have since become vastly immersed in the intersection between literature and history. So my question is, where the hell do I start? I just finished reading Thomas Foster’s “How to Read Literature like a Professor” as an entertaining but rather simplified introduction. So please send me other recommendations. These could be purely academic books and articles on theory or literary history or just brilliant must read pieces of literature. The way my historical brain works, I like to start further back. I am actually finishing up the Epic of Gilgamesh right now. But any and all recommendations are welcome 📚

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-nine_Novels

I've decided to read this list. what do you think about this list? Some titles are very intriguing and completely unfamiliar to me and since I'm very tired of well known books, I think it's time to start this journey.

I read John Williams other two novels, Stoner and Butcher’s crossing, and I loved them so much.

I am admittedly not a student of Roman history. But four chapters into Augustus, I am utterly confused. I have no idea who anyone is, it keeps flipping POVs, and it seems like everyone is named Marcus.

Does this book get easier to understand?

It begins like this: Listen: I can't say I'm a Bukowski fan And ends with Poo tee weet

Listen: I can't say I'm a Bukowski fan, I'm a regular of his text. Which often leads to Ask the dust.

I'm 50 pages in. My final question will be: does it get good?

It disturbed me how much of an idiot Bandini is, kinda spoiled brat and an emotional mess. Is it begging for money to his mom, calling himself a genius a genius a genius. The sentence he talks to himself "the world would be better if you were dead" it's so imature.

I did a little search for other people opinions and it could be said: "oh! But there are books which the main chatacter is not likeable and that's the thing!" I can't be convinced by that from Fante, thus Bandini. It doesn't carry a message, taking American psycho for comparison, it's silly and self centered, and the nonsense racism is really awful.

It can be said! "Buuut the expeeeerience you can reeeelaaate to it. Because it's colloquial and stuf"

Are you empathising with looking at 40 burlesque butts going to your room writing on your diary THEYLL ALL BE MINE HAHAHA. C'mon.

Does it get better? Is it worth going to the end if I didn't like it till here?

As promised:

Poo tee weet

I just finished reading The Razor’s Edge (1944) by W. Somerset Maugham, a social-study sort of novel that explores a posh group of trans-Atlantic richies whose lives take remarkably different paths. Though the cast starts out in life in the same privileged milieu, their progressing character studies are diverse: there’s an early hippie who looks for enlightenment in the East, a calculating socialite who uses marriage as a safety net, and literature’s biggest snob perhaps, who embodies impossible but inspirational Wildean standards. Maugham’s characterizations are classical and complex, reflecting realities that elicit genuine empathy. His style is akin to having an honest conversation with a friendly aristocrat with his casually elevated diction. His greatest strength though is his tone, his pragmatic English honesty, with its ability to admire another’s virtues and ideals without feeling guilt for rejecting them. This openness to explore the variety of human experiences without passing judgment makes this a lovely book for socially curious souls.

If you've read it did you think of Larry (the hippie) as the main character or did it have more of an ensemble feel? I've also never seen either of the film adaptations, I can't imagine a successful attempt at adapting this book. It's too exploratory and character driven. One version stars Bill Murray? Not as Larry I would hope.

Like the title says this is a review of the novella by H.G. Wells. This is including spoilers*. I would love to see what anyone thinks about the ideas presented in the story, if anyone has other interpretations or agrees with mine.

The stories of H.G.Wells are rich and captivating worlds where he makes the unfathomable seem plausible. Wells uses concepts from the sciences readily in his writing as a base of reality. His protagonists tend to be inquisitive types that posit questions about the state of the world, often giving and testing their hypotheses along a surreal adventure. In The Time Machine our protagonist is simply and ambiguously labeled the Time Traveler. He has just transformed physics forever by creating a vehicle that can fold and traverse spacetime. Now he aims to demonstrate to his civilized friends his unbelievable achievement. In a way this demonstration is both a primer for them and a reassurance for himself that he is not in a fantasy.

• “Can an instantaneous cube exist?”

This is a question the Time Traveler asks his dinner party audience in order to introduce the concept of Time as the 4th dimension. He claims you need “duration” for anything to truly exist. If a cube only exists for an imperceptible instant then did it really exist? It’s a question that provokes a bunch of thoughts. How long is an instant? If an instant is measurable then the cube did exist for a time, no? But without the evidence of creation or decay of the cube how can we be certain that it existed? This question is a seemingly untestable hypothetical. 

• “But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?"

The idea of memories being a way to time travel brings into thought a swell of philosophy. Is time really just a figment of consciousness. A way for humans to make sense of the world, to traverse it, to learn from it. Many scientists seem to think so (1). A mind altering realization that I can’t truly grasp fully. But what if in a way thinking of time as just a construct of the mind might reveal an ultimate interpretation of this extraordinary tale that’s being told. I’m sure it’s read that way by some.  

Also, ‘if ever a creature could figure out time travel it’s humans’, believes the Time Traveler. His distinction between “civilized” man and a “savage” is problematic to say the least, but we’ll revisit that later because it has major bearing on how our protagonist sees the world. 

Distinguishing the 4th dimension of Time as another measure of existence (like the 3 Euclidian measures of height, length and width) is a way for the reader, and the dinner party audience, to conceptualize it as a plane that we can move along. Today scientists still haven’t cracked the code of time travel and some contest Time being the 4th dimension at all. (2)(3)

• “The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered: I was, so to speak, attenuated— was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way: meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction-possibly a far-reaching explosion-would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making the machine”

Here the Time Traveler is describing his first, future time warp. Imagine flying through time and seeing your home, and world as you knew it, vanish. It reads as an incredibly disorienting experience. And this possibility of stopping at the wrong time and fusing with some obstruction in his position seems like a massive red flag. The logic that Wells presents shows how deep he went in imagining what time travel would be like. He intuitively analyzed many of the potential pitfalls that could occur. 

• “What might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness, a foul creature to be incontinently slain.”

And here begins the traveler’s speculative musings on the futurity of man. I enjoy this aspect of the story in particular because of my own fascination with humanity’s future. Here he contemplates what we might turn into. Projecting forward, knowing that our species has a long history of warring against each other, it would be a safe bet that that would continue. It has for some time. But is it intrinsic to what our species is? One read of this quote is that the Traveler thinks cruelty is currently uncommon, and that we might devolve into being cruel creatures. Wells and the Time Traveler are from England. They grew up as citizens of a colonial power, used to a culture of cruel conquest. They are also used to thinking that to maintain their civilization some other peoples need to be on the sacrificial end. This dichotomic mentality deems all other lives expendable on their route to control, and maybe this line of thinking from the Time Traveler is an example of that mentality bleeding over into his predictions. When I read that last sentence of the quote I couldn’t help but think about the British colonist’s warped rationale for incontinently slaying the indigenous peoples of Australia or N. America. A bit of projection maybe?

Now he’ll actually stop at a time, far different than his own. A moment in time where mother nature’s diversity has been restored, while humanity is “upon the wane.”

• “You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children- asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! … A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain.”

The anticipation of a progressive revolution speaks to his belief in humanity’s continued evolution (whatever that means). It can be coming from a societally egoistic perspective or a self-ego perspective, being that the Time Traveler can see himself as a revolutionary inventor. Thinking that we will always be progressing doesn’t take into account the pitfalls that come from our expansion.

I think that Wells actually does a nice job in creating this character that doesn’t get lost in himself too much, and tends to stick to ideas about the world. He rolls with the punches of having some of his hypotheses turn out wrong. He is human of course and does have brief episodes of existential dread, but the plot is more important than character to this story. In a way it is more captivating that way. The protagonist can be an amorphous entity for the reader to plop themselves into to experience the imaginary world of time travel. 

Meeting the Eloi people in this moment shatters the glass of that societal ego. Our traveler was so looking forward to ascertaining the future’s wisdom. My interpretation is that The Time Machine is unwittingly prophetic in distinct ways. And that the future’s wisdom is revealed. More to come.

• “For the first time I began to realise an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life-the true civilising process that makes life more and more secure-had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!”
• “Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise.”

He finds a world where the small population of Eloi are thought to be our last descendants. There is very little modern architecture left, and even less not fully claimed back by vegetation. Wondering why there are so few people left and why no one is doing any work, he speculates that it might be the logical order of a fully realized civilized world. A utopia of sorts where life is so easy that we have adjusted to a life of physical and mental sloth. The idea of the exponentially increasing civilizing process is a prevalent idea in present day thought. First it assumes that civility = collective good, when practically speaking only a subset of our population benefits from this modernity while the other part either toils to maintain it or gets excluded from it. Which brings up another variable when projecting forward, which is; what happens to class and human exploitation. The trend of modernity, industrialization, civilization or whatever you want to call it hasn’t necessarily been in effort to make life easier in those respects. Some technologies and medicines have of course had positive effects, but toil and hardship has stayed steadfast (4). You can even argue that there were many ‘primitive’ societies that lived more sustainably and with less toil than us (5). What I’m ultimately saying is that “ameliorating the conditions of life” can be helped of course by developments in our understanding about the world (such as in medical science and tech), but that one of those developments has to be an egalitarian and democratic society. At least if we want to shoot for utopia. 

Anyway, this timeline of history doesn’t entirely hold up as the Time Traveler searches for more clues.

• “Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!"

We cannot fully affirm the Time Traveler’s conjecture anymore because he has proven himself fallible. Yet he does make some convincing arguments for certain aspects of the changed world. These must be considered. I like that he’s not an all knowing narrator. He is trying his best to have educated hypotheses about this confusing new age.

• “Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great help—may even be hindrances—to a civilised man.”

Here I agree with him that our proclivity for battle is a negative. I feel linking “physical courage and the love of battle” either doesn’t translate well to today (and I’m not understanding) or they are distinctly separate tendencies. You can be courageous and put your body on the line for the greater good of humanity; hence it wouldn’t be a hinderance. That can be through battle or it can be through other means like protest. And once again the Time Traveler makes a distinction here between civilized man and humanity in general. His use of vocabulary like “savage” and “civilized” throughout the novella depict a man who sees himself as a distinct version of humanity or an entirely different being in general. One that’s superior to other peoples. This thinking is in line with 19th century European views and informs their creation of the defunct classification of race (6).

• “The Time Machine was gone! At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world.”

After a day getting acquainted with his surroundings he gets this heart stopper. Coming to the conclusion that his invention must have been moved deliberately, he begins his search for the culprit. It couldn’t have been the “indolent” Eloi. He befriends one of them that he names Weena and she joins the traveler on his explorations.

• “But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper World were not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, ob-scene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.”

His first encounter with the Morlocks, the Eloi’s underground counterparts. 

• “At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer, was the key to the whole position.”

I had to stop and think about this one. Could it be possible for a class divide of peoples that stretches on for millennia to actually produce distinct creatures? I think 800,000 years is long enough for a species to evolve some changed features, especially moving down into a subterranean environment. Still, the people that lived there would have to have been forced to live there by the upper worlders. In a Capitalist vs laborer dynamic we know from history that uprisings would likely occur amongst the subjugated class which would make it difficult for the dynamic to stay so divided. Especially if the Eloi ancestors were dependent on the labor that the Morlock ancestors were producing, as the traveler hypothesizes. As long as humans have been organizing together there have been some who selfishly try to extract a bigger piece of the pie at the expense of others; at the expense of equality. I think Wells recognizes an existing class divide and extrapolates out from there to create a semi-logical science fiction future. From a capitalist’s perspective having a labor force trapped underground, unable to complain or taint the image of your exclusive eden, seems ideal. This imagery is extremely reminiscent of another classic short story called The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin (7). Wells’ conceives of many possible variables that might’ve shaped his world, but leaves room for a reader to interpret. I want to take some of his prophetic descriptions and offer up my own reading after the following quote.

• “I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun.”

Well Wells, maybe it was hotter because of human induced climate change. There are plenty of anecdotes in the story that describe humanity as the main arbiter of earth’s future changes. We all tend to acknowledge that as a matter of fact. The agricultural and industrial revolutions proved that we, more than any other species, shape the landscape of the world. But having the hindsight of 21st century knowledge really informs how I see The Time Machine. In the story humanity has decreased in numbers drastically, has devolved in its intellectual capacity, and our infrastructures have collapsed. Humans no longer are “progressing” in the modern sense where progress gets unnecessarily linked with expansion, extraction, and exploitation. Perhaps they are just living sustainably like any other creature. I know a small mention about the climate being hotter doesn’t explicitly point to climate change being the culprit for the Eloi’s reality. Still, could it be that the big existential crisis of our time was never remedied and this led to mass degradation of human society? Some of our smartest minds tend to think this is what’s coming for us (8). Maybe the forces of change ran half of humanity underground and that’s what birthed the Morlocks. Maybe traversing time in The Time Machine was in effort to glimpse into our unassured future.

• “However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear.”

A great example of the simplistic inclination we have to sympathize with who/what-ever looks most like us. It’s not to say it’s not practical because instinctually we gravitate towards our families who of course resemble us the most. But to overlook the science in favor of habit and familiarity has put humanity at odds with itself and the ecosystem. No matter the race, nationality, or however we choose to divide, the science says that we are all practically the same, with the same basic needs and desires. The same is true of us and the rest of the biosphere full of carbon based life forms. Disassociating ourselves from that collective has given us the illusion of invincibility. The repercussions will be severe.  

• “I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss.”

Finally after many dramatic happenings (that I can keep listing but I genuinely recommend you read) the Time Traveler has found his machine and is able to return to a more familiar time. Recounting his experience is almost like thinking on a dream. His friends will hardly believe the tale and maybe some part of himself doesn’t either. Remember, if time is truly a construction of a conscious mind then maybe the time machine was merely a device that allowed the traveler to explore their own minds imagination of a prospective future. An experience akin to a deep psychedelic trip or lucid dreaming. In that case he might have thought that progress was inevitable but subconsciously knew that civilization “must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end.” Surely some will think he’s just mad. I choose to believe the traveler’s account and take the revelation as what’s possibly to come on our current path.

• “No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?"

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-an-illusion/ 
2. https://medium.com/@imshub13/why-time-is-not-the-fourth-dimension-c520161ea6d9 
3. https://phys.org/news/2012-04-physicists-abolish-fourth-dimension-space.html 
4. https://books.google.com/books?id=eHT43wfyw-sC&lpg=PA1&ots=edPFq4SIKR&dq=ancient%20hours%20working%20lives&lr&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=ancient%20hours%20working%20lives&f=false 
5. https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4326670/
7. https://www.ceremade.dauphine.fr/~ekeland/lectures/Mathematical%20Models%20in%20Social%20Sciences/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf
8. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/climate-change-predictions-2070

I’ve been aware that the writings of Dostoevsky have influenced many great minds in their thinking, and even psychology and philosophy as a whole, to some degree, too, and recently became interested in exploring them first-hand.

I had no idea where to start; I’m somewhat of an amateur in the reading world, compared to many who are able to blaze through entire books in a week, and I’m not all too familiar with fiction. But after some research I landed on Notes From Underground - I saw many people suggest that it serves as a good introduction to his work, it’s a novella (which made it slightly less daunting) and I also know that it’s recommended highly by Jordan B Peterson, who I admire a lot.

Now, having made it to chapter VII (15%), I’ve been enjoying reading the book but I’m already feeling lost - For the first 2 chapters, I was following. I thought I understood III, although it seemed partly contradictory to me. By IV, I thought I was picking up a theme in the character’s analogies, and was beginning to grasp the idea, but V made me think I had it all wrong.

I know there’s still 85% of it left to read, and it’s obvious that the character often rambles, but he always seems to be making points that I feel I should be finding consistency in.

So, I wondered if anyone else has read the book and would be happy to discuss it with me or offer any guidance.

I’m probably just overly analysing it all but I don’t want to continue reading if I’ve potentially misunderstood a valuable foundation on which the premise will continue to develop.

Thanks!