Numbers

~ Clarissa

I’m blanking on 33 1/3. Does it mean anything beyond the obvious?

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Published by Clarissa

11 thoughts on “Numbers”

  1. “I’m blanking on 33 1/3”

    It refers to a 12 inch vinyl record, which typically played at 33 1/3 rpm (revolutions per minute).

    Single (7 inch) records played at 45 rpm and were often called ’45’s in everyday speech.

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  3. I also have nothing for 13 / 54. The best I can come up with is the number of playing cards of any one suit, over the total number of cards in the deck augmented with two Jokers.

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  4. Once again, the Nobel in Literature goes to someone I haven’t heard of. Once again, I see a crowd of people who are excited about this, and I know they aren’t faking to seem like they’re “in the know” because they were saying “I hope he finally gets it” in the days leading up. There’s a whole parallel literary ecosystem of people who are very familiar with these authors who are in contention for literary prizes.

    Obligatory disclaimer: it’s always possible this guy is more significant than I realize. I am dreadfully ignorant of contemporary literature. And even if he is in fact not well known in America, the Nobel is international, and he could be quite big in Europe (and the Nobel judges are all European.)

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    1. I have dedicated my life to contemporary literature, and I’ve never heard of this guy either. Every year, the prize seems to go to that one person I’ve never heard of.

      I’m in Europe often. When there, I trawl through bookstores like I’m on a mission. Never saw his books in translation. Never heard anybody mention him.

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      1. I know in recent years, Annie Ernaux was someone I’ve heard of. But that’s about it. The Nobel committee seems dreadfully afraid of choosing anyone with broad relevance because the choice might be seen as “political.” In addition they seem to be plugged into a particularly tiresome corner of the contemporary literary world. It’s always something “postmodern” that sounds dull.

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      2. Again, people like “Jon Fosse” have a whole following and I’ve seen it online. It does not seem to have penetrated either academia or the general public considering you’re a well read academic and don’t know these guys from Adam. All I can say about this crowd is they have very different taste than I do and the things they like don’t interest me.

        A lot of these authors seem to write autofiction, which isn’t inherently bad but is hard to pull off and gets old fast. When we started saying “you can’t write about other races, other genders, etc.”, the logical endpoint of that thinking is that you can’t write authentically about anyone but yourself. But most authors are rather boring people. This may also be why there’s so much literary fiction about boring strivers in NYC and so little about working class people. Nobody can step outside of themselves.

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      3. I thought I was not aware of this guy either. But then there was the listing of his books, and I knew the title Satantango — not from the book directly but because I had heard of the film derived from it and directed by Bela Tarr. And in turn I haven’t seen the film, but it shows up on curiosity lists, in particular the list of longest films — it’s over seven hours.

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