Late bloomers, Iliad, strategic romance, classic physics, Murdoch v Amis, Swift's grammar, opera boy, long sentences, Hayek/Mill/game theory

The irregular book review review. vol. IV

43 year old tennis champion

An incredible story in the WSJ. The 2024 Australian Open doubles championship was won by two late bloomers. Matthew Ebden, 36, has won tournaments before. This is Rohan Bopanna’s first doubles championship at a major tournament. He’s world No.1 for the first time too. He’s 43.

Larry David was a late bloomer

“In interviews, Larry frequently brings up the fact that his sense of humor didn’t develop until he went to college. But once he caught the stand-up comedy bug, Larry knew it was his calling. While his mother wanted him to be a mailman, Larry spent his 20s and 30s struggling financially while trying to make it in comedy.”

Why I fell out of love with Iris Murdoch

More people should have written about Murdoch for the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death. That the Times had only this ambivalent article (written by someone who last read her books as a teenager) tells you something about British literary culture. Quoting Martin Amis saying “The men all have names like Hilary and Julian. The women all have names like Julian and Hilary” might have been amusing, but that’s only true of some of the early books. It’s entirely uncharacteristic of works like The Sea The Sea, The Philosopher’s Pupil and so on— books, by the way, that were well beyond Amis’s capacity. His sub-Joycean, gonzo novels prioritise one sort of prose style above all. A large but limited achievement. Whereas, Murdoch was a thinker in the tradition of Eliot and the Russians: her novels have more readers, deal with more of life, and pose moral questions that are increasingly relevant with every passing year. Amis is a period piece, slowly hardening into 1990s high-brow entertainment. A.N. Wilson once said Murdoch would stand in relation to her times as Dostoevsky stood to his. Eventually our literary outlets will catch on, one hopes…

Teaching the Iliad to Chinese students

“I have heard the opinion voiced that works like the Iliad are too daunting or too boring even for university students. I disagree. My experience teaching the Iliad proved to me that even high school students can find the epic engrossing. Most teenagers need help to get there, however. In this post I am going to outline how I taught the Iliad to a gaggle of Chinese teenagers.” Top stuff in this post.

The grammar of the Tortured Poets Department

Why everyone can’t just assume Taylor Swift knows grammar is beyond me.

Murdoch lecture

Professor Anne Rowe’s lecture for the 25th anniversary of Murdoch’s death.

Jane Austen and game theory

A good piece about game theory in Jane Austen and the way “strategic romance” works today, drawing Michael Chwe’s truly excellent book. “One of Jane Austen’s talents lies in her ability to guide the reader through the considerations of higher-order beliefs that lay in the background of spoken interactions.” It took me years to see Austen’s works like this, at which point I was a major convert. I’ve been feeling the itch for a re-read of all of her novels and this might be the shove I need. I have written about P, S&S, and MP my favourite.

Physics classics

When econ student Pradyumna Prasad (who is very interesting and worth following) asked why we bother reading the philosophy classics when we don’t read the science classics (i.e. why Plato if not Newton) the response from humanities people… really could have been better. Maybe it’s because I was never a pure humanities person, but the response of this German Professor reinforces my ambivalence to so much of the humanities. Is that what the humanities is supposed to teach us? huh!? Along with teaching classes on Taylor Swift, this is one of those things that ought to show them why the crisis they believe they are in isn’t entirely out of their control. Anyway, Noah Smith has some interesting ideas that actually offer an answer to Pradyumna.

Growing up loving opera

Dana Gioia’s absorbing account of being a young aesthete who enjoyed opera, in a time and place when that marked him out as unconventional. Full of nice detail about the freedoms of his childhood and the eccentricities of his parents. “To treat art as anything but a brief diversion was dangerous. It made everyday living more difficult.”

Long sentences

Speculative but interesting. The idea that “there is no stylistic or artistic reason why you can't write like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Willa Cather or Charles Dickens or Samuel Johnson” seems false on its face, but I was glad to see someone making this argument. Golden Hill is worth reading while we’re on the subject.

Mill, Hayek, and game theory

Was Hayek wrong because he lacked Mill’s rationalism, or because basic game theory proves him wrong? If you are interested in that question, this is the essay for you. (I am, and it was.)