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UNLIKELY_PLACES

                                             August 9, 2010

   A phrase that's been echoing
   around in my head of late:          Sometimes the phrase phrases itself as
   "looking for enlightenment          "looking for wisdom in unlikely places".
   in unlikely places".

       In general, it's
       something I do too
       much of, I suspect.

       There are a few things that can be
       said in it's defense: if you're going
       to try to have original thoughts, it
       makes sense to put some unusual               SLUSH
       things in your head to work with.

       And sometimes, every now and then,
       neglected masterpieces are
       discovered, elevated in retrospect:
                                                And sometimes I agree the
         How can that happen                    elevator got to the right floor.
         if no one is                           But not always:
         willing to look in 
         the dark corners?                          MOBY_DICK
                            
         DARK_CORNERS                   
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            
                            

   Some exercises:

   "The first sentence test":

   Pick up a large stack of
   "poetry journals", of
   any vintage (I have a         Publications I have reason to
   few feet of them, myself).    respect (e.g. "Poetry", itself)
                                 should probably not be included.

   Go through the stack, looking at
   every article or poem,
   reading only the first 2-3
   lines.  Tag ones that seem at          TWO_LEVEL
   all promising.  Go back and dig
   through those for one that look        The hope would be that
   worthy of close attention.             most authors have the
                                          sense to put the good
                                          stuff up front as a hook.



   "Read the thing you never read":

    What is it I never touch?

    An old answer for me was
    "Romance novels", so I read          ROMANCE
    one.  But that was some time
    back, and I would guess the
    new breed of young adult          Oh, and I tend to ignore categories like
    romance novels must differ.       feminist/gay/black presuming that it's
                                      just whiney "identity politics" that
    Another was "self-help            doesn't even have anything to do with my
    books", so I've                   identity.
    periodically dipped into
    Carnegie... but I've                                 But gender, sexual
    read very little of his                              preference, etc. are
    many imitators.            CARNEGIE                  near the core of what
                                                         it's about to be
    Still another was "rock-bios"                        human.  There's many
    so I've looked at a few.                             an interesting work
                                                         resting beneath my
       DIONYSIAN_SOAP                                    gaze in every one of
                                                         those sections that
    What else?  There are other                          "are not for me".
    celebrity bios, like hollywood
    books for example.                                   This suggests a
                                                         dice game in a
    It occurs to me that I may not                       used book store...
    have ever read a single work of
    military history.                                    DICE

    I'm very light on the original
    published journals that much
    of the adventure fiction I read
    was based on (e.g. "Two Years
    Before the Mast").

    I suppose I could read some of
    the fiction reviewed in the
    "New York Review of Books", but
    that's going a little too far.


    "Bottom feeding"

     Do a web search (on what terms?)
     but intentionally drill down
     to near the bottom of the ranking,
     trying to find the unregarded.


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