Flatland

I must admit after struggling a month to finish the 252 pages of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and falling behind schedule to hit my self-appointed target of 50 books this year I chose Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot because of it's small size. I found the book in a 25 cent pile and read the jacket without knowing what it was and it seemed worth a read and it was surprisingly interesting. It tells the story of a two-dimensional being that has the opportunity to see a world with three-dimensions, one-dimension and no dimensions at all. Given my recent drive to create something concerning space and time travel, I thought and was affirmed that it might give me some ideas. Besides that, it was pretty good in spite of my lack of interest in geometry or mathematics in general.

The narrator is a square and is attempting to tell his readers in the three-dimensional world about his world and his trips to the others. He talks about his world and the light in it and because there is no sun the question arises then, where does the light come from. He explains that though it has been pondered and sometimes answered it doesn't quite turn out right. "What is the origin of light? and the solution of it has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crown our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers" (Abbot, 5). It's an interesting notion that to ponder the great mysteries of the universe could and in fact, should render the would be answers worthy of the asylum.

In the flatland of the two dimensional world the highly pointed triangles are either criminals or soldiers, but the deadliest of all the inhabitants are the woman who are merely lines. "If our highly pointed Triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle: being, so to speak all point" (Abbot, 10). That's just funny.

Future Modern Ancient Greeks - The square in enquiring of his teacher the sphere (of a third dimension) what of the fourth dimension world, finds himself wondering that if a square (2-D) has four end points and a cube (3-D) has eight points then the next shape up like a square must have sixteen end points. "And consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine Cube in the Land of Four Dimensions, must have 8 bounding Cubes: and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, 'strictly according to analogy'" (Abbot, 73). In the story when the protagonist of Future Modern Ancient Greeks goes to other dimensions he should travel in a space ship surrounded by 8 bounding cubes. Play with the word bounding and it'll be a nod to this book in mine.

"Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy" (Abbot, 75). Again, I seem to have latched on to something that describes my restlessness in something I've read. This time though I don't find anything profound in it. I find it sad to say. Self-contentment is vile and ignorant. To be happy, even impotently so, ought to be better than to be aspirational. Aspiring and not reaching that aspiration cannot, surely, be preferable to happiness of any kind.

Future Modern Ancient Greeks - I find the whole passage of the non-dimensional being fascinating. He has no conception outside of himself. Everything that exists exists in him. He is his own world. I think that could be used somewhere in Future Modern Ancient Greeks.