The pen is mightier

As a young man (this was like twenty minutes ago), I remember reading that Mark Twain’s birth name was Samuel Clemens and thinking, “That’s not a real name! I refuse to call anyone by their non-real name! What a travesty! What does Sammy have to be ashamed of?”

Nothing, it turns out. Clemens is a name of tradition and Samuel is a character in a book. One of those names was chosen by his parents and the other by his ancestors. Neither of these names are his own, they’re merely names he has accepted through constant conditioning. That was the name he was forced to live with his entire life. Now, if you’re lucky, your parents will have chosen a name you enjoy and are proud to bear. If you’re not, tough luck.

Even if you choose a name you like later on, people will always ask “what’s your real name?” By that, they simply mean your base name. The name that you’ve held the longest. As if that had any bearing on who you are. What’s Lewis Carroll’s birth name? If he’s famous for his work, what does it matter?
Suppose I’d been born Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili and I wrote a lovely book that I call “Чайка, Комедия в двух действиях” If I don’t like seeing five H’s and three V’s and a long title on the cover, can I not choose something slightly less sinister and go with “The Seagull” by Boris Akunin?

Suppose Joe and Jane Doe give birth to a wildly imaginative child who happens to be a genius at everything. The only problem is they name him something awful like “Seth” or “Ex_cal” or “Eggo” or “T-Rob” or “Breakerslion…” Does the child not have a right to choose his own, slightly imaginative name for when he starts his creative career? (*cough* “Pixel!” *cough*)
What name would fit his work more? A name of his own creation or T-Rob Doe?
The point is simply that sometimes a ‘real’ name is less real and less correct than a ‘pen’ name.

As can be seen from these examples:

Pen names

• Anne Rice (Howard Allen O’Brien)
• Daniel Defoe (Daniel Foe)
• Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel)
• George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
• Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
• Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
• Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
• O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
• Pixel Q. Styx (The Pope)
• Toni Morrison (Chloe Anthony Wofford)
• Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
• Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Konigsberg)

Last Year: Poopophobia, Ind e-Pen 2, #II, spastic, topic-jumping, information junkie
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The most important thing

Once, as a child, my pseudo-intellectual uncle gave me the worst piece of advice I’d ever heard:

Every time you open a book, find the author and see who he is, for that is the most important thing to tell you how you should read the book.

Essentially, he was saying authorship changes text.

I disagree. Extremely. To me, this advice is equivalent to saying that a book’s cover is the most important thing in determining whether you should read it or not.

Sadly, it might effect your choice or way of reading it, but you should only rely on this if you are short on time.

When you find a new blog, you shouldn’t click the ‘about me’ link simply to see whether you agree with the person’s views or not. Doing so is tantamount to limiting your exposure to new ideas. And we all know how terrible that is.

If the author is stupid, ignorant, arrogant, or a bad writer, you will find out soon enough.

Likewise, if something catches your eye from the text, it is a better judgement than a first name and a last name.
Perhaps knowing who wrote something is important for appreciation of their work or creative process, perhaps it is important to know who to avoid or seek out, or perhaps it is important to you for peace of mind. Whatever the case, the author should only be important after the work, not before.

Never before.

In just the same way that Picasso painted some crap, so have the Beatles put out some awful songs, Shakespeare some terrible works, and Styx some only half-awesome blog posts.

“It’s a Rembrandt” should be trivia or an afterthought not a reason for liking a painting. Any artist knows that.

Last Year: Poopophobia, Ind e-Pen 2, #II, spastic, topic-jumping, information junkie
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… Why?

I was reading this comment on this post when I realized something. First the comment, so that you can get my mindframe:

Terri Says:

Instead of ranting about how all that the Christain believes is false, why don’t you research it for yourself. The sciences and archeology have done a lot of work on this and you might find it interesting. By the way, How do you think the world began? Why?

And Sean’s response that got me thinking…

…As to why the universe was created, only humans ask that question. Nature doesn’t give a rat’s ass about “why.” Nature just is. That’s why the religious are left scrambling for answers when 150,000 people are killed in a tsunami. And they never come up with anything remotely satisfactory. There is no why, just what and how… Natural disaster, plain and simple…

To phrase it another way: Any ‘why’ implies rationality.

Think about it. If I punch you, you ask me why, and I say “purple glorbed star is sigma stratosphere,” you would assume I was crazy and likely not ask me why again. The same is true for all metaphysical questions.

The problem comes when we attempt to apply this question to something that doesn’t immediately lend itself to rational interpretations. A drunken captain slaloms through the ocean, hits an iceberg, and the ship sinks, killing a hundred sailors and a slow sea lion. Why?

Because. Just because.

If you answered “because some guy didn’t do his job,” then you just committed a logical fallacy. You didn’t answer ‘why,’ but ‘how’ and passed it off as a solution. If you answered “because God deemed it correct,” you implied the ultimate rationality… and a rational cause for that. Which, of course, creates greater problems than I’d care to address.

Why implies rationality. If that is all you learn from me, it will suffice. Just remember that next time you or anyone else asks a ‘why’ question. It’ll save you time and frustration.
…

…

… though if you are interested, I might as well explain the rest of them to you as well.

• Any who implies rational actors.
• Any what implies substance or coherence.
• Any how implies cause and effect.
• Any when implies ordering of time.
• Any where implies ordering of space.
• Any whodunnit implies the butler.

Last Year: Poopophobia, Ind e-Pen 2, #II, spastic, topic-jumping, information junkie
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