Posts tagged Osamu Dazai
Cameron’s Book Round-Up, May and June 2023

Okay, as usual, I let this sit too long. In my defense, I had a new job, COVID, and international travel in there, so things got dicey. A lot of good books this time, though it covers more ground than I normally do, time-wise. All title links go to bookshop.

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Marked and Unmarked Defaults

Whenever considering a system of categorization, some categories are marked: they’re stated and described. Others can’t be. Some categories are unmarked because they are unknown: this disease hasn’t been witnessed before, we’re still trying to figure out what it is. Still others are unmarked because they’re what the others are a deviation from: consider, there are ten thousand thousand different maladies and diseases in the world; how many kinds of health are there? Consider, also, the Anna Kareinina principle, articulated by Tolstoy: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

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