See also William Boyd in this journal.
Friday, June 7, 2019
Language Association
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Monday, June 3, 2019
University Square
For Radu Surdulescu, who . . .
"participated in the 1956 reclamatory movements
of the students in Bucharest. He was among the
organizers of the demonstration to be held in
the University Square on November 5, 1956."
— Wikipedia (Google translation from Romanian)
See also squares and Surdulescu in "From Tate to Plato"
(Log24, November 19, 2004).
Those who prefer fiction may consult William Boyd and
Terry Gilliam.
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Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Review
A later article about this same William Boyd —
"In the end, it’s this indifference on the part of the tastemakers
that makes Boyd’s project a worthy one, pointing as it does to
their ability to treat as real whatever they choose, and to deny
the reality of other things simply by redirecting their gaze."
Also on November 14, 2011 —
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Monday, March 17, 2014
Narratives
Or: The Confessions of Nat Tate
“A convincing lie is, in its own way, a tiny, perfect narrative.”
— William Boyd, “A Short History of the Short Story” (2006)
“A novel written in the first-person singular has certain powerful
narrative advantages, especially when it takes the form of a ‘confession.'”
— William Boyd, “Memoir of a Plagiarist” (1994)
From a Log24 post yesterday —
For Little Man Tate —
Related material — Wechsler in this journal and an earlier Siri Hustvedt
art novel, from 2003 —
Mark and Lucille, Bill and Violet, Al and Regina, etc., etc., etc. —
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Sunday, August 3, 2008
Sunday August 3, 2008
Kindergarten
Geometry
Geometry
Preview of a Tom Stoppard play presented at Town Hall in Manhattan on March 14, 2008 (Pi Day and Einstein's birthday):
The play's title, "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour," is a mnemonic for the notes of the treble clef EGBDF.
The place, Town Hall, West 43rd Street. The time, 8 p.m., Friday, March 14. One single performance only, to the tinkle– or the clang?– of a triangle. Echoing perhaps the clang-clack of Warsaw Pact tanks muscling into Prague in August 1968.
The “u” in favour is the British way, the Stoppard way, "EGBDF" being "a Play for Actors and Orchestra" by Tom Stoppard (words) and André Previn (music).
And what a play!– as luminescent as always where Stoppard is concerned. The music component of the one-nighter at Town Hall– a showcase for the Boston University College of Fine Arts– is by a 47-piece live orchestra, the significant instrument being, well, a triangle.
When, in 1974, André Previn, then principal conductor of the London Symphony, invited Stoppard "to write something which had the need of a live full-time orchestra onstage," the 36-year-old playwright jumped at the chance.
One hitch: Stoppard at the time knew "very little about 'serious' music… My qualifications for writing about an orchestra," he says in his introduction to the 1978 Grove Press edition of "EGBDF," "amounted to a spell as a triangle player in a kindergarten percussion band."
Review of the same play as presented at Chautauqua Institution on July 24, 2008:
"Stoppard's modus operandi– to teasingly introduce numerous clever tidbits designed to challenge the audience."
— Jane Vranish, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Saturday, August 2, 2008
"The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through
My instrument
And his song is in my soul."
— Dan Fogelberg
"He's watching us all the time."
|
Finnegans Wake, Book II, Episode 2, pp. 296-297:
I'll make you to see figuratleavely the whome of your eternal geomater. And if you flung her headdress on her from under her highlows you'd wheeze whyse Salmonson set his seel on a hexengown.1 Hissss!, Arrah, go on! Fin for fun! 1 The chape of Doña Speranza of the Nacion. |
|
Reciprocity From my entry of Sept. 1, 2003:
"…the principle of taking and giving, of learning and teaching, of listening and storytelling, in a word: of reciprocity…. … E. M. Forster famously advised his readers, 'Only connect.' 'Reciprocity' would be Michael Kruger's succinct philosophy, with all that the word implies." — William Boyd, review of Himmelfarb, a novel by Michael Kruger, in The New York Times Book Review, October 30, 1994 Last year's entry on this date:
The picture above is of the complete graph K6 … Six points with an edge connecting every pair of points… Fifteen edges in all. Diamond theory describes how the 15 two-element subsets of a six-element set (represented by edges in the picture above) may be arranged as 15 of the 16 parts of a 4×4 array, and how such an array relates to group-theoretic concepts, including Sylvester's synthematic totals as they relate to constructions of the Mathieu group M24. If diamond theory illustrates any general philosophical principle, it is probably the interplay of opposites…. "Reciprocity" in the sense of Lao Tzu. See Reciprocity and Reversal in Lao Tzu. For a sense of "reciprocity" more closely related to Michael Kruger's alleged philosophy, see the Confucian concept of Shu (Analects 15:23 or 24) described in Kruger's novel is in part about a Jew: the quintessential Jewish symbol, the star of David, embedded in the K6 graph above, expresses the reciprocity of male and female, as my May 2003 archives illustrate. The star of David also appears as part of a graphic design for cubes that illustrate the concepts of diamond theory:
Click on the design for details. Those who prefer a Jewish approach to physics can find the star of David, in the form of K6, applied to the sixteen 4×4 Dirac matrices, in
A Graphical Representation The star of David also appears, if only as a heuristic arrangement, in a note that shows generating partitions of the affine group on 64 points arranged in two opposing triplets.
Having thus, as the New York Times advises, paid tribute to a Jewish symbol, we may note, in closing, a much more sophisticated and subtle concept of reciprocity due to Euler, Legendre, and Gauss. See |
"Finn MacCool ate the Salmon of Knowledge."
Wikipedia:
"George Salmon spent his boyhood in Cork City, Ireland. His father was a linen merchant. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin at the age of 19 with exceptionally high honours in mathematics. In 1841 at age 21 he was appointed to a position in the mathematics department at Trinity College Dublin. In 1845 he was appointed concurrently to a position in the theology department at Trinity College Dublin, having been confirmed in that year as an Anglican priest."
Related material:
Arrangements for
56 Triangles.
For more on the
arrangement of
triangles discussed
in Finnegans Wake,
see Log24 on Pi Day,
March 14, 2008.
Happy birthday,
Martin Sheen.
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Wednesday, September 3, 2003
Wednesday September 3, 2003
Reciprocity
From my entry of Sept. 1, 2003:
"…the principle of taking and giving, of learning and teaching, of listening and storytelling, in a word: of reciprocity….
… E. M. Forster famously advised his readers, 'Only connect.' 'Reciprocity' would be Michael Kruger's succinct philosophy, with all that the word implies."
— William Boyd, review of Himmelfarb, New York Times Book Review, October 30, 1994
Last year's entry on this date:
|
Today's birthday:
"Mathematics is the music of reason."
Sylvester, a nineteenth-century mathematician, coined the phrase "synthematic totals" to describe some structures based on 6-element sets that R. T. Curtis has called "rather unwieldy objects." See Curtis's abstract, Symmetric Generation of Finite Groups, John Baez's essay, Some Thoughts on the Number 6, and my website, Diamond Theory. |
The picture above is of the complete graph
Diamond theory describes how the 15 two-element subsets of a six-element set (represented by edges in the picture above) may be arranged as 15 of the 16 parts of a 4×4 array, and how such an array relates to group-theoretic concepts, including Sylvester's synthematic totals as they relate to constructions of the Mathieu group M24.
If diamond theory illustrates any general philosophical principle, it is probably the interplay of opposites…. "Reciprocity" in the sense of Lao Tzu. See
Reciprocity and Reversal in Lao Tzu.
For a sense of "reciprocity" more closely related to Michael Kruger's alleged philosophy, see the Confucian concept of Shu (Analects 15:23 or 24) described in
Kruger's novel is in part about a Jew: the quintessential Jewish symbol, the star of David, embedded in the
Click on the design for details.
Those who prefer a Jewish approach to physics can find the star of David, in the form of
A Graphical Representation
of the Dirac Algebra.
The star of David also appears, if only as a heuristic arrangement, in a note that shows generating partitions of the affine group on 64 points arranged in two opposing triplets.
Having thus, as the New York Times advises, paid tribute to a Jewish symbol, we may note, in closing, a much more sophisticated and subtle concept of reciprocity due to Euler, Legendre, and Gauss. See
Monday, September 1, 2003
Monday September 1, 2003
The Unity of Mathematics,
or “Shema, Israel”
A conference to honor the 90th birthday (Sept. 2) of Israel Gelfand is currently underway in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The following note from 2001 gives one view of the conference’s title topic, “The Unity of Mathematics.”
Reciprocity in 2001by Steven H. Cullinane
|
Related Reading
For four different proofs of Euler’s result, see the inexpensive paperback classic by Konrad Knopp, Theory and Application of Infinite Series (Dover Publications).
Related Websites
Evaluating Zeta(2), by Robin Chapman (PDF article) Fourteen proofs!
Zeta Functions for Undergraduates
Reciprocity Laws
Reciprocity Laws II
Recent Progress on the Langlands Conjectures
For more on
the theme of unity,
see
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