About Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

Sophie's World is the first (and maybe the only?) book being read and discussed by the Lupine Literary Luncheon League this year. Many LLLL participants have expressed interest in talking about philosophy and philosophies, and this seems like a manageable way to do so. Meeting at B Lunch every Wednesday.

The following is a plot summary from Wikipedia.

Sophie Amundsen (Sofie Amundsen in the Norwegian version) is a fourteen year old girl living in Norway in 1990. She lives with her cat Sherekan and her mother. Her father is a captain of an oil tanker, and is away for most of the year. He does not appear in the book.
Sophie's life is rattled as the book begins, when she receives two anonymous messages in her mailbox (Who are you? Where does the world come from?), as well as a post card addressed to 'Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen'. Shortly afterwards she receives a packet of papers, part of a correspondence course in philosophy.
With these mysterious communications, Sophie becomes the student of a fifty-year-old philosopher, Alberto Knox. He starts out as totally anonymous, but as the story unfolds he reveals more and more about himself. The papers and the packet both turn out to be from him, although the post card is not; it is addressed from someone called Albert Knag, who is in a United Nations peacekeeping unit stationed in Lebanon.
Alberto teaches her about the history of philosophy. She gets a substantive and understandable review from the Pre-Socratic Greeks through Jean-Paul Sartre. Along with the philosophy lessons, Sophie and Alberto try and outwit the mysterious Albert Knag, who appears to have God-like powers, which Alberto finds quite troubling.

Argument Exposed

Published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, September 8, 2007

A.E. Housman: To an Athlete Dying Young

THE time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.



To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.



Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields where glory does not stay,

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.



Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:



Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.


So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.



And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.

Ezra Pound: In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

William Carlos Williams: So much depends

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The Simple Art of Murder , An Essay by Raymond Chandler

In this essay, Raymond Chandler (himself a popular writer of "hard-boiled detective" fiction) writes about the genre. Mr. B. has copies in his classroom.

This excerpt is the final paragraphs of the essay:

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch or a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would ne adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

Learning Opportunity Announcement

Language Arts Lab Learning Opportunity

I’m sorry, but I only discovered this event on Monday, Sept. 3, and I didn’t have time to get the information out except hastily and by word of mouth. I am going to attend, and I would be pleased to take some interested students with me.

The events are at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, and it is free. If some students want to go, we will leave immediately after school in my car. We will arrive at the Modern in time for a look around at the Ron Mueck Exhibit and the permanent collection. When the museum closes at 5:00, we will go somewhere nearby to eat and then return for the 6:00 program described below. When the event is over (8:40 or so) I will return the students who ride with me to Timberview to get into their own cars or to be picked up by parents.

NOTE: This is NOT a school-sponsored event. It is NOT required (or even expected) of Language Arts Lab students. It is something I am going to do and want to give students access to. There will be other similar events during the year, and some of them will happen on the same short notice. Parents with questions should e-mail me or call me at home 817.423.0694.

Jim Benton, Language Arts Lab Teacher

American Cinema: Film Noir and the Detective Film

With gratitude to the College of Communications at Texas Christian University, we are pleased to offer Modern patrons an opportunity to enjoy a four-part lecture and film series taught by Dr. David E. Whillock, Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Communications at TCU. This series is an abbreviation of a full course offered to adults through the TCU Master of Fine Arts program.
These lectures and screenings explore the cultural, narrative, and critical impact of literary and cinematic forms of film noir and the detective film in the United States. The course introduces the film lover to the technical and aesthetic processes used in developing the style and form found in the American cinema since 1941. Dr. Whillock's lectures will be followed by film screenings. A question-and-answer session will follow. There is no charge. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. The text used for the series is Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Cinema by Foster Hirsch.

Wednesday, September 5, 6–8:40 pm Literary Influences: The Hard Boiled Detective Novel; Screening: Murder My Sweet (1944, directed by Edward Dmytryk)

Wednesday, September 26, 6–8:40 pm Visual Styles of Film Noir: IconographyScreening: Out of the Past (1947, directed by Jacques Tourneur)

Wednesday, October 10, 6–8:40 pm Literature and Film: Problems of AdaptationScreening: The Big Sleep (1946, directed by Howard Hawks)

Wednesday, November 7, 6–8:40 pm Women in Film Noir: The Virgin and the Femme Fatale; Screening: Body Heat (1981, directed by Lawrence Kasdan)