jsgray@watmath.UUCP (Jan Gray) (05/01/85)
>Look in the annotated bibliography under "Gebstadter." The entry goes >something like this: > > Gebstatder, Egbert B., "Copper, Silver, and Gold: an Indestructable > Metallic Alloy," Acidic Books: > > A formidable hodgepodge: turgid and confused, yet remarkably > similar to the present work.... > >Clever, yes, but too true. > >By the way, I have never actually met anyone else (face-to-face) who >has really read GEB cover-to-cover (and is willing to admit it). > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- >Stan Switzer | "A good book is hard to find, and a hard book >ihnp4!u1100s!sjs | is good to find." -- Mae West, sort-of. On p.3 of GEB, under "Bach", you will find: "Some called them ``turgid and confused'', while others claimed they were incomparable masterpieces." Hofstadter is indirectly indirectly mentioning that some have called his book is an "incomparable masterpiece"... I have read GEB cover-to-cover. Certain sections make extravagant claims without proof, but it is still an entertaining book. However... "To think -- and I have heard this suggested -- that we might soon be able to command a preprogrammed mass-produced mail-order twenty-dollar desk-model "music box" to bring forth from its sterile circuitry pieces which Chopin or Bach might have written had they lived longer is a grotesque and shameful misestimation of the depth of the human spirit. A ``program'' which could produce music as they did would have to wander around the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life and feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand the joy and loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the inaccessibility of a distant town, the heartbreak and regeneration after a human death. It would have to have known resignation and world-weariness, grief and despair, determination and victory, piety and awe. In it would have had to commingle such opposites as hope and fear, anguish and jubilation, serenity and suspense. Part and parcel of it would have to be a sense of grace, humour, rhythm, a sense of the unexpected -- and of course an exquisite awareness of the magic of fresh creation. Therein, and therein only, lie the sources of meaning in music." [p.677] Jan Gray (jsgray@watmath.UUCP) University of Waterloo (519) 885-1211 x3870