Show Business
according to Fritz Leiber

(Leiber's "Changewar" is my
favorite mythology.)

From the Changewar story
"No Great Magic" (1960) Part V:

Even little things are
turning out to be great things
and becoming intensely interesting.
Have you ever thought about
the properties of numbers?
-- The Maiden

"I've had this idea-- it's just a sort of fancy,
remember-- that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, you
could hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing-room and a
sort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it...."

For the remainder of this section
of Leiber's story, see

Show Business.

Related material:
The previous entry,
The Eight, and
Now We See Wherein
Lies the Pleasure.

Narrative Theory

12:07:51 AM

An alternate version of
the previous entry's illustration:

Hexagram 51: Shock, Shock

The Last Enemy
(See April 30)

"I was also impressed... by the intensity
of Continental modes of literary-critical thought....

On the Continent, studies of Hölderlin and Rousseau, of Poe,
Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rilke, of Rabelais, Nietzsche, Kafka, and
Joyce, challenged not only received ideas on the unity of the work of art
but many aspects of western thought itself. Derrida, at the same
time, who for nearly a decade found a home in Yale's
Comparative Literature Department, expanded the concept of textuality to
the point where nothing could be demarcated as 'hors d'œuvre' and escape the literary-critical eye. It was uncanny to feel
hierarchic boundaries waver until the commentary entered the text—not
literally, of course, but in the sense that the over-objectified
work became a reflection on its own status, its stability as an object
of cognition. The well-wrought urn contained mortal ashes."

-- Geoffrey Hartman, A Life of Learning

In memory of
Jacques Derrida and James Chace,
both of whom died in Paris on
Friday, Oct. 8, 2004... continued...
(See previous three entries.)

Orson Welles

Mate in 2 V. Nabokov, 1919

"The last enemy
that shall be destroyed is death."
-- Saul of Tarsus, 1 Cor. 15:26

Knight move,
courtesy of V. Nabokov:

Nfe5 mate

Knight:

Sir John Falstaff
(See Chimes at Midnight.)

Introduction to Aesthetics

"Chess problems are the
hymn-tunes of mathematics."
-- G. H. Hardy,
A Mathematician's Apology

"We do not want many 'variations' in the proof of a mathematical
theorem: 'enumeration of cases,' indeed, is one of the duller forms of
mathematical argument.  A mathematical proof should resemble a simple
and clear-cut constellation, not a scattered cluster in the Milky Way.

A chess problem also has unexpectedness, and a certain economy; it
is essential that the moves should be surprising, and that every piece
on the board should play its part.  But the aesthetic effect is
cumulative.  It is essential also (unless the problem is too simple to
be really amusing) that the key-move should be followed by a good many
variations, each requiring its own individual answer.  'If P-B5 then
Kt-R6; if .... then .... ; if .... then ....' -- the effect would be
spoilt if there were not a good many different replies.  All this is
quite genuine mathematics, and has its merits; but it just that 'proof
by enumeration of cases' (and of cases which do not, at bottom, differ
at all profoundly*) which a real mathematician tends to despise.

* I believe that is now regarded as a merit in a problem that there should be many variations of the same type."

(Cambridge at the University Press.  First edition, 1940.)

Brian Harley in
Mate in Two Moves:

"It is quite true that variation play is, in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred, the soul of a problem, or (to put it more materially) the
main course of the solver's banquet, but the Key
is the cocktail that begins the proceedings, and if it fails in
piquancy the following dinner is not so satisfactory as it should be."

(London, Bell & Sons.  First edition, 1931.)

Starflight

In memory of
Jacques Derrida and James Chace,
both of whom died in Paris on
Friday, Oct. 8, 2004, and of
Orson Welles, who died
on this date in 1985

Orson Welles

Mate in 2  V. Nabokov, 1919

"The black king has three white flight squares, without mates being provided
for these flights, which suggests giving him a fourth. 1. Bg2 therefore
presents itself, especially when you notice that it prepares mates for
all the flights, and for the king remaining on its original square.

1. Bg2

Kxc6 2. Nfe5 mate

Ke6   2. Nd4  mate

Kc4   2. Nd2  mate  

Ke4   2. Nd4  mate  

fxg3  2. Ng5  mate

The five variations together are the theme,  'starflight.'  (With orthogonal
squares it is called plus- or cross-flight.)"

--
Open Chess Diary, 1999,
   by Tim Krabbé, Amsterdam

For an appropriate bishop, see

Riddle.

Derrida Dead

"Jacques Derrida,
the Algerian-born, French intellectual who became one of the most
celebrated and unfathomable philosophers of the late 20th century, died
Friday at a Paris hospital, the French president's office announced. He
was 74."

-- Jonathan Kandell, New York Times

"There is no teacher but the enemy."

-- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game,
   Tor paperback reprint, 1994, p. 262

Belief

KERRY: "I'm going to be a president who believes in science."

KERRY: "I'm a Catholic - raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has
been a huge part of my life, helped lead me through a war, leads me
today."

BUSH: "Trying to decipher that."