Entry 78 — Of Manywhere-at-Once, Volume Two
For three months or so I have been critiquing a book by an imbecile who doesn’t know who wrote the works of Shakespeare, only that Shakespeare did not. Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography. Each day (but one) I’ve attacked a section of it at HLAS, where the authorship debate can be carried on without restrictions. I started the critique for many reasons, the main one being that the book is too full of crap to ignore. Nor did I ignore it when it was first published. I read it through, making copious annoyed and sarcastic annotations in it. I wrote up an overview of its main thesis for use in my own authorship book. And I fully intended to write a thorough critique of it–which I never got around to. Until now.
2009 was a terrible year for me, especially the second half of it. I did almost no writing during that second half. So my second reason for my critique was simply to force myself into a writing routine. I have to admit I also wanted something to express anger about, being pretty unhappy at the time with just about everything in my life. In other words, take out my misery on poor Diana Price. Not a worthy victim but published hardbound by a more respectable company than I ever was, and asked to lecture on her book at universities, as I never have been asked to lecture on my Shakespeare book. Oh, what I’d really call my main purpose is to present a full-scale portrait of a propagandist–that is, reveal what the main propagandistic devices are and how they work. A handbook on propaganda for the uninitiated, or–more exactly–the incompletely initiated–which would include me, out to learn in the process.
My venture has so far been successful. My critique is now almost 40,000 words long, and I’m almost halfway through Price’s books, which I’m covering page by page. For some reason today I thought of a similar project I could start here: constructing day by day another book I have notes for and long ago seriously hoped to write but didn’t, my Of Manywhere-at-Once, Volume Two. (I’ve had a third volume in mind to do, as well.)
So: tomorrow I’ll begin it. I figure I’ve pretty much taken care of this entry already–and want to add something to it that has nothing to do with my manywhere book, but want to record in case I forget about it. It has to do with my knowlecualr psychology, specifically with my theory of temperaments. Until an hour or so ago, I posited four temperaments (or personality-types): the rigidnik, the milyoop, the ord, and the freewender for, respectively, high-charactration/low accommodance persons, high-accommodance/low charactration persons, medium charactration/medium accommodance (ordinary) persons, and high charactration/high accommodance persons. My types were based on two of my three mechanisms of intelligence, charactration and accommodance. I suddenly saw earlier today that a fifth temperament based on the third mechanisms of intelligence, accelerance, might be in order. A person high in accelerance bu not high in either of the other two mechanisms. An eruptor? Not sure how good a name that is, but it will do for now.
Tags: theoretical psychology