The Tycho of Eisenstein and Latour has become the incarnation of textual, social, and epistemic order. But just how credible is this Tycho? There is something altogether too neat, too immaculate, about the figure and his achievements. As Philip Marlowe put it in The Big Sleep, such testimony displays «the austere simplicity of fiction rather than the tangled woof of fact.»
THE NATURE OF THE BOOK. Print and Knowledge in the making. ADRIAN JOHNS. THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS.CHICAGO AND LONDON
This entry is not about the book and its nature. It is about the things one finds out reading unrelated books to writing [if printing culture is not related to writing fiction since I think it is related]. That quote is from a book I have on the “to be read” pile and perhaps, I started but found boring[1]. Coincidences some people will stubbornly classify as “fated” or “causal”. More like random stuff shaping the outcome of knowledge pursuit and the reasons why I write about writing fiction.
It is also, about how fiction is really way simpler than reality. Reality grows facts and a disparity of contradictions that ends up being incoherent to the least. Like me. I complain about the green owl but I do my one lesson every day. Just in case.
Fiction is one of those realms where people can feel safe because the patterns are patterns. The causes come out any moment to give us a known result. If not an anticipated one.
How safe is your fiction? Pasto kalo.
[1] Not sorry, Marlowe couldn’t keep my attention in the read aloud function of some digital book app. Hereby, the book ended up unread.