The director of the 2007 film “The Number 23” reportedly died today.
In his memory — An image that appeared in the Leary link of last night’s
post on “a combination of Kafka and Joyce, with a touch of Orwell” —
Monday, June 22, 2020
Serious Leary
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Thursday, October 1, 2015
Monday, July 23, 2012
23 Puzzle
For those who like puzzles—
What film's page at IMDb recommends
the following "also liked" choices?
The Interpreter (2005), Identity (2003), The Game (1997),
The Ghost Writer (2010), The Machinist (2004), The Number 23 (2007)
A similar puzzle: Related Books
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Saturday, February 4, 2012
Office Visit
From the screenplay of "The Number 23"—
INT. NATHANIEL'S INSTITUTE, STAIRWELL – NIGHT
Agatha climbs a dark staircase. Layers of dust
testify to years of neglect.
INT. 3RD FLOOR CORRIDOR – CONTINUOUS
Agatha finds ROOM 318. A rusting door plaque reads,
"DR. SIRIUS LEARY, M.D. PSYCHIATRY."
For related material, see "Leary + Cuernavaca" and "Prime Cut."
Happy belated 2/3 birthday to Walter Sparrow.
Related material— Two other occurrences of "318" in this journal—
in another horror story, "The Sweet Smell of Avon,"
and in a quote from the Feast of St. Nicholas, 2010—
"When Novelists Become Cubists," by Andre Furlani—
"A symbol comes into being when an artist sees that
it is the only way to get all the meaning in.
Genius always proceeds by faith" (312).
The unparaphrasable architectonic text
"differs from other narrative in that the meaning
shapes into a web, or globe, rather than along a line" (318).
[The references are to page numbers in
Guy Davenport's The Geography of the Imagination .]
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Serious
Today's New York Lottery numbers:
Continuing the Serious Hardy Apology sequence,
here is a reference to volume number 231 in the
Springer Graduate Texts in Mathematics series—
For some less serious work, see posts on 4403 (4/4/03)
as well as posts numbered 550 and 764.
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Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Wednesday March 7, 2007
For the philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who died yesterday, a Xanga footprint:
| North Carolina Weblog The Prime Cut Gospel (Mental Health Month, Day 23) |
3/6/2007 5:01 PM |
Related material:
The late writer Robert A. Wilson on
the number 23,
mathematician Robert A. Wilson on
the action of the Baby Monster (pdf)
on cosets of the Fischer Group Fi23,
the recent film “The Number 23,”
and, for North Carolina on
the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola,
The Footprints of God.
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Friday, May 23, 2003
Friday May 23, 2003
Mental Health Month, Day 23:
The Prime Cut Gospel
On Christmas Day, 1949,
Mary Elizabeth Spacek was born in Texas.
Lee Marvin, Sissy Spacek in “Prime Cut”
Exercises for Mental Health Month:
Read this discussion of the phrase, suggested by Spacek’s date of birth, “God’s gift to men.”
Read this discussion of the phrase “the same yesterday, today, and forever,” suggested by the previous reading.
Read the more interesting of these discussions of the phrase “the eternal in the temporal.”
Read this discussion of eternal, or “necessary,” truths versus other sorts of alleged “truths.”
Read this discussion of unimportant mathematical properties of the prime number 23.
Read these discussions of important properties of 23:
- R. D. Carmichael’s 1937 discussion of the linear fractional group modulo 23 in
Introduction to the Theory of Groups of Finite Order, Ginn, Boston, 1937 (reprinted by Dover in 1956), final chapter, “Tactical Configurations,” and
- Conway’s 1969 discussion of the same group in
J. H. Conway, “Three Lectures on Exceptional Groups,” pp. 215-247 in Finite Simple Groups (Oxford, 1969), edited by M. B. Powell and G. Higman, Academic Press, London, 1971….. Reprinted as Ch. 10 in Sphere Packings, Lattices, and Groups
Read this discussion of what might be called “contingent,” or “literary,” properties of the number 23.
Read also the more interesting of these discussions of the phrase “the 23 enigma.”
Having thus acquired some familiarity with both contingent and necessary properties of 23…
Read this discussion of Aquinas’s third proof of the existence of God.
Note that the classic Spacek film “Prime Cut” was released in 1972, the year that Spacek turned 23:
|
1949
+ 23 1972 |
Essay question:
If Jesus was God’s gift to man, and (as many men would agree) so was the young Sissy Spacek (also born on Christmas Day), was young Sissy’s existence in her 23rd year contingent or necessary? If the latter, should she be recognized as a Person of the Trinity? Quaternity? N-ity?
Talk amongst yourselves.
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