Language on the Map

Links in this segment contain spoilers!

• Word I on the Map
• Word I on Wikipedia
• «Курс общей лингвистики» (Фердинанд де Соссюр, 1916) (excerpt on Google Books)
• Chinese analogue on Wikipedia

Colonic Titles

• “Article Title Type and Its Relation with the Number of Downloads and Citations” (PDF)
• “The Impact of Article Titles on Citation Hits: an Analysis of General and Specialist Medical Journals” (DOI)
• “Putting You Best Foot Forward: An Insider’s Insight into What Makes a Great Title” (PDF)

Lossless Translation

• “East of Eden” (John Steinbeck, 1952) (Google Books):

  They had flown out and circled the Spreckles Sugar Factory as ordered — circled it three times so that our father would be sure to see, and then the pilot thought of a joke. He meant no harm. He shouted something, and his face looked contorted. Olive could not hear over the noise of the engine. The pilot throttled down and shouted, “Stunt?” It was a kind of joke. Olive saw his goggled face and the slip stream caught his word and distorted it. What Olive heard was the word “stuck”.

  Well, she thought, here it is just as I knew it would be. Here was her death. Her mind flashed to see if she had forgotten anything — will made, letters burned, new underwear, plenty of food in the house for dinner.

• “The Art of Dying” (Peter Schjeldahl, 2019) (The New Yorker):

  That prose-poetic experiment ended when I entered Jungian therapy and presented my dreams for interpretation. They all made abundant sense, which was entertaining but not terribly helpful. My problem was not a lack of connection with the collective unconscious. I was a fucking poet. My problem was getting out of bed in the morning.

  I had a rage of ambition and an acrid dissatisfaction that, along with a love of the world, were bound to come out somehow. The self-centered motives have waned. It’s harder to pitch into writing with less to prove or avenge. To start a critical essay, I must prod myself until the old mesmerized flow resumes.

  When I finish something and it seems good, I’m dazed. It must have been fun to write. I wish I’d been there.

• “Bend Sinister” (Vladimir Nabokov, 1947) (Google Books):

  An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size.