Week Seven

NOTES ON READING:

Other than dipping into many books for research, my main focus has been Borges and Hofstadter this week. With regard to Borges, I have been reading transcripts of interviews with him, which I have found fascinating. From there I dip into poems and pieces of fiction that he mentions of his own work and of others. In one of the Morgan Lectures (interviews) he gave at Dickinson University, I found this question and answer that are particularly relevant to my work:

Question: Do you think that there is a kind of kinship between poets and mathematicians?

Borges: My mathematics is very slight. But I have read and reread Bertrand Russell. And I think there should be a kinship. And I suppose there is. There is a kinship between all things, especially between poets and mathematicians, and poets and philosophers, who are a measure of poets, I should say.

NOTES ON WRITING

Since sending on my introduction to you I have honed it further and have something I feel very good about. As I have been reading, I have begun to feel compelled to include an afterword too, one that really reinforces the introduction, so I have begun work on that. I have it entirely fleshed out if not entirely written, but it needs a lot of polishing. I am continuing to write quite globally on the chapters but am hoping to have chapter 2 on pattern in a form I feel I can send to you soon. That chapter feels rather belabored and plodding to me, and I've really struggled with making it lighter and smoother. I hope you will be able to help me with that.