'One of the first questions that comes to the reader’s mind in a time-loop story is why is this person stuck? What do they have to learn? Phil Connors, the weatherman played by Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993), is grumpy and selfish: he needs to be taught the value of being in a community. The Christmas-loving girl is greedy: she needs to learn to make do with less. What about Tara?'
—and the ending to this review is really lovely (and features Joanna Biggs reflecting on her own experiences reading Proust…a novel that is also about Time and Memory…)
My "Intro to Asian Philosophy" professor's syllabus had us buy and sample Mencius (the book), The Daodejing of Laozi (trans. Ivanhoe), The Bhagavad Gita, and a healthy dose of Buddhist works because he was also a local sangha teacher. These included The Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Thurman) and The Sutra of Hui-Neng (Cleary.)
I still have those (badly neglected) copies because I think Asian philosophy is one of the most slept-on intellectual pursuits of the Anglosphere today, though we're slowly realizing what we're missing.
thank you for sharing these titles! I really want to read more Buddhist works (my family is loosely Buddhist…it would be good to know where all these little rituals/practices/beliefs came from)
and I totally agree with you re: Asian philosophy—even reading a little bit of it has made my experiences of Chinese cinema, for example, feel a bit more alive and integrated into a broader cultural/intellectual landscape! and there are so many ideas that are fun to play around with and think through
One of the main reasons I’ve been putting off starting On the Calculation of Volumes is that I am still torn between going for the UK versus US covers! 😂
I really relate to this…if you want to keep a book in your life, covers are important!
I once purchased a copy of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows from the US to the UK, because I preferred the US cover…and something happened and I received the UK one instead 💔
I've been exploring how to improve our relationship with time and the premise of On the Calculation of Volume sounds fascinating! I'm putting it at the top of my TBR list
It's really good! I should also say that each volume feels quite short…the prose is very lucid and easy to flow through. Vol. I is great because there's a kind of detective-story feeling to it…the protagonist spends much of the novel trying to test the edges of her time loop (can she stay up late with her husband and 'bring him' into the next day? will her parents and sister believe her? her friends? what happens if she gets a small injury…will it heal? and so on)
Loved reading this! Fatale and the Life You Want sounds interesting and I'm definitely adding them to my TBR! I'm currently reading Humankind by Rutger Bregman—needing this especially in today's climate.
omg, Humankind seems very relevant to my interests…I think I am dispositionally inclined (but also intellectually do believe) that people are capable of profound generosity and altruism!
see: mutual aid, community fridges, Buy Nothing groups, volunteer Wikipedia editors, open-source software…
thank you for reading!!! it is (I'll confess) both terrible to write these up…so many quotes to organize in one place…but also really fun to reflect on what I'm reading and thinking about!
and I especially value being able to talk to other people about these works and encounter other recs, links, etc
I really appreciated this talk in particular because I think we share some of the same Ethos. One of my favorite quotes is "Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty."
It's a quote by Frank Herbert in his book Chapterhouse Dune. And it wasn't until several years ago that I started applying this to my life, I started a daily writing habit and I haven't missed a day in more than three years. That process gave me freedom in ways I could have never imagined before, that generative daily grind, has helped me to understand myself, and my own fiction and creative work in ways I wouldn't have and it was nice to see that other creators are employing this approach too.
This was great! Can't wait to read Fatale (that text you send to a friend convinced me lol) and I'm adding others to my tbr list... Thank you for sharing
hahaha it really must be read to be believed…there is so much ACTION going on in Fatale! I've heard Manchette's other books are excellent too, though idk when I'll be able to get to them
I enjoy your Substack a lot and the intellectual paths it sends me down. I will track down Zombie
Proust. It reminded me of a fascinating short book - Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp - which underscores the power and fragility of preserving knowledge and art.
thank you for reading! and yes—I loved loved loved Czapski's Lost Time (another beautiful way to prolong the experience of Proust, and Czapski's life story is so interesting and moving)
I love the depth to which you pull from multiple disciplines and times ... and your book cover discussions!!! yes!!! such a joy to read as always and omg we read all the living at the same time! I am feeling a special joy that comes from reading the same book as someone very cool at the same time 😁
thank you for appreciating the book cover discussion…secretly this was my favorite part of THIS specific newsletter! books are experienced visually as well as intellectually…
also I agree, very cute to be reading the same book as someone else!! I'm so glad you picked up a copy of All the Living too (it really made me want to draw more! despite realizing that I will not be able to draw on that level…the playfulness and exuberance and range of Roman's illustrations was so inspiring)
This was a great podcast, Celine! It would be great to see you write here about the influences and methods you use for notetaking (and journalling too), and some of the sources you mentioned. Also how you move from those journals into formulating the questions that underpin your curriculum and articles, and how the notetaking informs that too! :)
Thank you for listening, Imogen! I'd love to discuss this more (I do occasionally get emails/DMs about this too)…I need to somehow carve out some time to write a post about it!
It's good to know that you, and hopefully others? would be interested
I would be!! I found it actually very freeing to hear you discuss the evolution of your note taking process through the different contexts of your masters degree until now - moving away from the idea of a “correct” way of doing things towards the sense of the best way that suits the current circumstances and situation. But I’d also love to hear more about what drives your interests and choices of research topics.
I'm with both you and your friend on the On The Calculation of Volume series, which I find both incredibly absorbing and incredibly boring. It is the good kind of boring I feel, when I'm reading those books. It's the feeling of being alert and at rest, at once. It is hard to reach that state in the modern age, I think, and for that reason alone I appreciate Balle's writing.
For various reasons, I have the first book from Faber and the second from New Directions, and now I'm going to have to choose whether to go with the US or UK on the next installment. I think US. I didn't like their covers initially, I thought their covers represented some kind of fuzzy 🥑, but I've come around.
omg, I have never interpreted the New Directions covers as an avocado…but I see it now!
I do agree that the books are 'the good kind of boring'…it's a very particular aesthetic experience, to be sort of lulled along and occasionally jolted by a surprising plot point (new characters, new discoveries about the nature of the time loop)
This is a wonderful interview, thank you for sharing! (And apologies for the late reply.) I particularly liked this bit, where he talks about what it means to 'get better' via psychotherapy, and why someone would continue—
PHILLIPS: The phrase “getting better” is ambiguous because the question is, “better at what?” But in the ordinary sense of getting better, certainly people get to a point where however much they like me, there are other ways in which they want to spend their time and money. People certainly do finish. And then there’s a whole range of people who don’t want to finish because they find this a useful part of their lives. Why would one want to give up a conversation one values and enjoys?
This newsletter is one of my favourite finds on Subtack so far. Every time I find a book to add to my list or a commentary on the current affairs I found insightful.
I found your mention of STEM vs humanities coded writers funny because I have categorized you as and few other writers from Substack who seem to have tech/STEM background similarly (think, Henrik Karlsson or Jasmine Sun). It feels like writers with such background structure and present their ideas in a somewhat similar way that, to me, carries an additional layer of clarity. I cannot put my finger on it yet but the idea is forming.
I'm coming to this comment very late—but thank you! for being a reader and stopping by to leave a comment.
Also, what you said about the tech/STEM-adjacent style of writing is so interesting. I do a decent amount of writing for my job (describing what user feedback we're getting for a feature, what features we want to build next, how they should work, etc) and clarity/specificity is really important. I find myself valuing that a lot in the things I read/write outside of work, too…very crisp language that conveys a lot of detail.
A fun exercise could be: what are the 'corporate' or utilitarian forms of writing people are used to, and how does that affect even their 'creative' and expressive work?
There's a big article on On the Calculation of Volume in the latest London Review of Books, generally favourable
Thank you for mentioning! Oh, and by Joanna Biggs, too—adding a link in case others are curious: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n05/joanna-biggs/bleeding-in-the-dishes
I love this—
'One of the first questions that comes to the reader’s mind in a time-loop story is why is this person stuck? What do they have to learn? Phil Connors, the weatherman played by Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993), is grumpy and selfish: he needs to be taught the value of being in a community. The Christmas-loving girl is greedy: she needs to learn to make do with less. What about Tara?'
—and the ending to this review is really lovely (and features Joanna Biggs reflecting on her own experiences reading Proust…a novel that is also about Time and Memory…)
My "Intro to Asian Philosophy" professor's syllabus had us buy and sample Mencius (the book), The Daodejing of Laozi (trans. Ivanhoe), The Bhagavad Gita, and a healthy dose of Buddhist works because he was also a local sangha teacher. These included The Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Thurman) and The Sutra of Hui-Neng (Cleary.)
I still have those (badly neglected) copies because I think Asian philosophy is one of the most slept-on intellectual pursuits of the Anglosphere today, though we're slowly realizing what we're missing.
thank you for sharing these titles! I really want to read more Buddhist works (my family is loosely Buddhist…it would be good to know where all these little rituals/practices/beliefs came from)
and I totally agree with you re: Asian philosophy—even reading a little bit of it has made my experiences of Chinese cinema, for example, feel a bit more alive and integrated into a broader cultural/intellectual landscape! and there are so many ideas that are fun to play around with and think through
Thanks, Celine! What a nice way to find out that my book sold out 😳
One of the main reasons I’ve been putting off starting On the Calculation of Volumes is that I am still torn between going for the UK versus US covers! 😂
I really relate to this…if you want to keep a book in your life, covers are important!
I once purchased a copy of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows from the US to the UK, because I preferred the US cover…and something happened and I received the UK one instead 💔
I've been exploring how to improve our relationship with time and the premise of On the Calculation of Volume sounds fascinating! I'm putting it at the top of my TBR list
It's really good! I should also say that each volume feels quite short…the prose is very lucid and easy to flow through. Vol. I is great because there's a kind of detective-story feeling to it…the protagonist spends much of the novel trying to test the edges of her time loop (can she stay up late with her husband and 'bring him' into the next day? will her parents and sister believe her? her friends? what happens if she gets a small injury…will it heal? and so on)
Loved reading this! Fatale and the Life You Want sounds interesting and I'm definitely adding them to my TBR! I'm currently reading Humankind by Rutger Bregman—needing this especially in today's climate.
omg, Humankind seems very relevant to my interests…I think I am dispositionally inclined (but also intellectually do believe) that people are capable of profound generosity and altruism!
see: mutual aid, community fridges, Buy Nothing groups, volunteer Wikipedia editors, open-source software…
(and thank you for reading and commenting!!)
I love these posts and have started anticipating them eagerly - thank you Celine!
thank you for reading!!! it is (I'll confess) both terrible to write these up…so many quotes to organize in one place…but also really fun to reflect on what I'm reading and thinking about!
and I especially value being able to talk to other people about these works and encounter other recs, links, etc
Really enjoyed this conversation.
thank you Michael!! really appreciate you listening
I really appreciated this talk in particular because I think we share some of the same Ethos. One of my favorite quotes is "Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek discipline and find your liberty."
It's a quote by Frank Herbert in his book Chapterhouse Dune. And it wasn't until several years ago that I started applying this to my life, I started a daily writing habit and I haven't missed a day in more than three years. That process gave me freedom in ways I could have never imagined before, that generative daily grind, has helped me to understand myself, and my own fiction and creative work in ways I wouldn't have and it was nice to see that other creators are employing this approach too.
This was great! Can't wait to read Fatale (that text you send to a friend convinced me lol) and I'm adding others to my tbr list... Thank you for sharing
hahaha it really must be read to be believed…there is so much ACTION going on in Fatale! I've heard Manchette's other books are excellent too, though idk when I'll be able to get to them
I enjoy your Substack a lot and the intellectual paths it sends me down. I will track down Zombie
Proust. It reminded me of a fascinating short book - Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp - which underscores the power and fragility of preserving knowledge and art.
thank you for reading! and yes—I loved loved loved Czapski's Lost Time (another beautiful way to prolong the experience of Proust, and Czapski's life story is so interesting and moving)
Thank you for the shoutout!
of course!! really excited for what you write next
I love the depth to which you pull from multiple disciplines and times ... and your book cover discussions!!! yes!!! such a joy to read as always and omg we read all the living at the same time! I am feeling a special joy that comes from reading the same book as someone very cool at the same time 😁
thank you for appreciating the book cover discussion…secretly this was my favorite part of THIS specific newsletter! books are experienced visually as well as intellectually…
also I agree, very cute to be reading the same book as someone else!! I'm so glad you picked up a copy of All the Living too (it really made me want to draw more! despite realizing that I will not be able to draw on that level…the playfulness and exuberance and range of Roman's illustrations was so inspiring)
This was a great podcast, Celine! It would be great to see you write here about the influences and methods you use for notetaking (and journalling too), and some of the sources you mentioned. Also how you move from those journals into formulating the questions that underpin your curriculum and articles, and how the notetaking informs that too! :)
Thank you for listening, Imogen! I'd love to discuss this more (I do occasionally get emails/DMs about this too)…I need to somehow carve out some time to write a post about it!
It's good to know that you, and hopefully others? would be interested
I would be!! I found it actually very freeing to hear you discuss the evolution of your note taking process through the different contexts of your masters degree until now - moving away from the idea of a “correct” way of doing things towards the sense of the best way that suits the current circumstances and situation. But I’d also love to hear more about what drives your interests and choices of research topics.
I'm with both you and your friend on the On The Calculation of Volume series, which I find both incredibly absorbing and incredibly boring. It is the good kind of boring I feel, when I'm reading those books. It's the feeling of being alert and at rest, at once. It is hard to reach that state in the modern age, I think, and for that reason alone I appreciate Balle's writing.
For various reasons, I have the first book from Faber and the second from New Directions, and now I'm going to have to choose whether to go with the US or UK on the next installment. I think US. I didn't like their covers initially, I thought their covers represented some kind of fuzzy 🥑, but I've come around.
omg, I have never interpreted the New Directions covers as an avocado…but I see it now!
I do agree that the books are 'the good kind of boring'…it's a very particular aesthetic experience, to be sort of lulled along and occasionally jolted by a surprising plot point (new characters, new discoveries about the nature of the time loop)
here’s an interview with Adam Philips if you haven’t seen it. I appreciate his take on “gurus” and how people seeking experts on life actually want to be controlled. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/literature/adam-phillips-is-no-ones-guru
This is a wonderful interview, thank you for sharing! (And apologies for the late reply.) I particularly liked this bit, where he talks about what it means to 'get better' via psychotherapy, and why someone would continue—
PHILLIPS: The phrase “getting better” is ambiguous because the question is, “better at what?” But in the ordinary sense of getting better, certainly people get to a point where however much they like me, there are other ways in which they want to spend their time and money. People certainly do finish. And then there’s a whole range of people who don’t want to finish because they find this a useful part of their lives. Why would one want to give up a conversation one values and enjoys?
This newsletter is one of my favourite finds on Subtack so far. Every time I find a book to add to my list or a commentary on the current affairs I found insightful.
I found your mention of STEM vs humanities coded writers funny because I have categorized you as and few other writers from Substack who seem to have tech/STEM background similarly (think, Henrik Karlsson or Jasmine Sun). It feels like writers with such background structure and present their ideas in a somewhat similar way that, to me, carries an additional layer of clarity. I cannot put my finger on it yet but the idea is forming.
I'm coming to this comment very late—but thank you! for being a reader and stopping by to leave a comment.
Also, what you said about the tech/STEM-adjacent style of writing is so interesting. I do a decent amount of writing for my job (describing what user feedback we're getting for a feature, what features we want to build next, how they should work, etc) and clarity/specificity is really important. I find myself valuing that a lot in the things I read/write outside of work, too…very crisp language that conveys a lot of detail.
A fun exercise could be: what are the 'corporate' or utilitarian forms of writing people are used to, and how does that affect even their 'creative' and expressive work?