Platypus of Truth

My students have passed on from Beowulf to the wonderful world of Shakespeare. This year's offering from the bard features the mad prince of Denmark, Hamlet. As an axis of analysis for the text, I've chosen the opening line "Who's there." I remember hearing that this was significant, but not an explaination of why. Reading the play through with the students has driven home to me that this is really the central question of the play. "Hamlet" is awash in ambiguity. For every read you could give of a character or a situation, there are at least two or three others that are just as likely. A character's self-presentation often conflict with his or her actions, or what other characters in the play say about them. Unlike "Othello," the motives of the characters in "Hamlet" are increadably opaque. Even Hamlet, whose silioquies offer us the greatest window into the mental world of any of the characters is difficult to nail down. ...

A friend loaned me a copy of the 1931 sci-fi epic "First and Last Men," by British Philosopher Olaf Stapledon. I knew Lewis had read and disagreed with Stapledon so, naturally, I was intrigued. A look at the work, however, points me in the dirrection that Lewis not only disagreed with him, he wrote his Ransom Trilogy, in part, as a sort of refutation of Stapledon. Perhaps that's not news, but it makes a read of "First and Last Men" fascinating. If you've already read the Ransom Trilogy, then you can almost here Lewis dailoging with the author as you read the book. As an odd end note, I attended a debate on bioethics last friday. Listening to the speakers, it seems as if, after almost eighty years, the debate hasn't changed.

I just finished the first draft of my novel. It's been a long time since I've actually finished one.