Rules are only important in cricket, poetry, and the editing of classical texts

[sovay]

I am glad that the Boston Globe liked Breaking the Code, but I do not understand their characterization of the play as "Turing's struggle to integrate thinking with feeling, and his ultimate failure to do so." Even speaking strictly of the theatrical character, not the historical person, Turing's problem isn't that he can't relate to people; it's that one of the primary ways he relates is—will be, until the Sexual Offences Act 1967—illegal. Look at the title. Compartmentalization isn't the issue, transgression is. It's the rest of the world that prefers neat little boxes in which mathematicians are not engineers and thinkers don't win marathons and there is no such thing as a queer war hero. Also, there is nothing static about the passionate exploration of ideas: number theory, cryptanalysis, artificial intelligence. Your heart doesn't skip a beat at Gödel's theorem, so be it, but that doesn't make the subject intrinsically unexciting. I wish the reviewer wouldn't reinforce the same binaries that hurt Turing so badly. It's not like he had any time for them when he was alive.

(My very short initial review of the play here. I liked it.)

The hazelnut cake went over very well; it is much diminished from its original dimensions. I am less pleased about this sudden sore throat. Understatement. I want a body that works. I know there are people who have them.

Comments

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a recent, infuriating review of Stoppard's Arcadia by a critic who bought the cold science meme. I can see how you might find Arcadia passionless if you're the kind of person who shuts down at the mention of numbers; but I'm disappointed that the New Yorker would employ one.

Perhaps I should think of it as a handicap, like a club foot. Then employing him would be a charity.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Ye god of integers! That Arcadia reviewer was astoundingly wrongheaded, to the point of pitying the actors he saw as stuck in it. As if Stoppard's magnificent play were some sort of plexiglass rat maze.

Nine

[sovay]

As if Stoppard's magnificent play were some sort of plexiglass rat maze.

"Because there are some things even rats won't do . . ."

[sovay]

This reminds me of a recent, infuriating review of Stoppard's Arcadia by a critic who bought the cold science meme.

I saw that! I have never seen a production of Arcadia, but I have read and loved it: I was very confused.

Then employing him would be a charity.

I'm just not sure you should make it up to the tone-deaf guy by putting him in charge of music criticism . . .