Kafka by Tom Gauld - you've surpassed yourself 🪳

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The influence of Studio Ghibli in zoological nomenclature

At the Journal for Geek Studies, Karla J. Humara-Gil tell us all. 

What's more, they are so generous as to have the article downloadable in PDF.

Characterized by its complex stories, stunning visual art, and strong female protagonists, Studio Ghibli is one of the most renowned studios in the animation industry. The Tokyo-based Japanese studio was founded by directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki in 1985. Since then, it has been involved in different projects: short films, commercials, video games, and most notably, more than 20 feature films such as the classic Grave of the Fireflies (1988) or the Academy Award winner Spirited Away (2001) (Studio Ghibli, 2023).

It is undeniable that over the years, Ghibli has become a worldwide phenomenon. But its influence has not been limited to entertainment. We can also find traces of it in science, particularly in the one in charge of identifying, classifying, and naming species: taxonomy. In this contribution, I compile the animal species whose scientific names have been inspired by Studio Ghibli, as well as the stories behind the choice of those names.

A BRIEF INTRO TO NOMENCLATURE

Before we get started with the names, let’s go back to what rules them: nomenclature. Nomenclature is the part of taxonomy that deals with the naming of species (Winston, 1999). It is a system that allows every discovered species to have a unique name based on specific rules (Winston, 1999, 2018). These rules, assembled into “nomenclature codes”, vary depending on the type of organism to be named; for example, to name animals, we have the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, while for plants, there is the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICZN, 1999; Turland et al., 2018).

Although humans have assigned names to organisms for thousands of years, it was not until the 18^th century that the naming process began to standardize (Winston, 2018). The latter was possible thanks to the work of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. Back in his day, scientific names were often long as they also served as descriptions of the species. Linnaeus had the idea to assign each species a two-word name in addition to the longer descriptive one and used it throughout his works. It did not take long for other scientists to adopt these binomial names as the preferred ones for their practicality, so much so that their use prevails today (Winston, 1999, 2018; Heard, 2020).

We can identify a species’ scientific name as this two-word, most likely Latinized, label. The first word, always capitalized, is the genus name. It indicates the major group a species is most closely related to. The second word is the specific name, and it “qualifies” the first (Winston, 1999). This is the one that makes a name unique, as no other member in the genus can have the same name. As we will see below, specific names can refer to different things, explicitly or implicitly: features of the species, places, people, or even nothing at all (Winston, 1999; Heard, 2020). Here, we will get to know a particular type of scientific names, the ghiblicore ones.

GHIBLI-INSPIRED SCIENTIFIC NAMES

From the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), considered the first Studio Ghibli feature film, has inspired the names of two marine species: a parasite isopod and a sponge. The former’s name is Cabirnalia nausicaa Boyko & van der Meij, 2018. This species was named after the film protagonist, Princess Nausicaä, since the structure that helps it attach to its crab host (attachment process) resembled the protective mask Nausicaä wears to enter the Toxic Jungle (Boyko & van der Meij, 2018) (Fig. 1). With a look at Boyko & van der Meij’s study (2018: p. 16, fig. 8C), one can see the similarity.

Also named in honor of the princess, we have the sponge Scopalina nausicae Turner, 2021. Although the author of the species did not delve into the origin of the name when describing it, he did talk about it in a later interview (Turner, 2021; Tassof, 2021). Turner (2021) recalled that some creatures in the Ghibli film filter and enhance their environment (probably referring to the Ohmu) just as sponges like S. nausicae do in the sea, hence the name (Tassoff, 2021; Nausicaä Wiki, 2023).

Figure 1. The isopod Cabirnalia nausicaa with Nausicaä’s flight helmet and Shohki mask.

Fuzzy species

The fuzzy spirit Totoro, from My Neighbor Totoro (1988), is the Studio Ghibli character that has inspired most of the species’ names on this list. Knebelia totoroi Audo et al., 2014, a fossil lobster, and Paravimus totoro García & Villarreal, 2023, a harvestman, were named after Totoro due to the morphological similarities shared with him. For Audo et al. (2014), the margin of the body (carapace) of K. totoroi resembled the silhouette of Totoro. In the case of P. totoro, it was a pair of tubercles on its back, its paramedian armature, that reminded García & Villareal (2023) of Totoro’s ears.

Other two species share their name with Totoro as well, the tardigrade Pseudechiniscus (Pseudechiniscus) totoro Gąsiorek et al., 2021, and the ant-like stone beetle Stenichnus totoro Jaloszyński, 2004. These animals received their names as a way to commemorate Totoro, without giving further explanations (Jaloszyński, 2004; Gąsiorek et al., 2021). Still, one could argue that their fluffy bodies, like Totoro’s, played a role in this decision.

Finally, there is the velvet worm Eoperipatus totoro Oliveira et al., 2013 (Fig. 2). Unlike the rest of the Totoro-named species, the name of this species was inspired by another character in the film, the Catbus, “a many-legged animal” that, according to Oliveira et al. (2013), resembled the worm. It remains a mystery why this species was named “totoro” instead of “catbus” or “nekobasu”, its Japanese equivalent. On the bright side, these names are still available for other species with multiple legs.

Figure 2. The velvet worm Eoperipatus totoro wearing a Catbus hat.

Spirits of the forest

Princess Mononoke (1997) has given rise to both epic characters and memorable scientific names. For example, the Scandinavian wasp Odontocolon kodama Johansson, 2022 is the namesake of a characteristic group of spirits in the film, the Kodama (Johansson, 2022) (Fig. 3). These little white creatures live in the trees and are a sign of the health of the forest; if the forest is destroyed, so are they (Ghibli Wiki, 2023a). Johansson (2022) mentions this in the etymology of the species’ name, perhaps hinting that the same could happen to the “real-life kodama” if the forests where it lives are harmed.

Another species related to this film is Ornamentula miyazakii Minowa & Garraffoni, 2021. By reading the name in this context, one can immediately tell that this species of gastrotrich was named after Hayao Miyazaki. Nonetheless, there is a descriptive component apart from celebrating the talented director. According to Minowa & Garraffoni (2021), the gastrotrich looks like one of Miyazaki’s characters, the Deidarabotchi or Night-Walker, the nocturnal version of the Forest Spirit (Ghibli Wiki, 2023b).

But not only the spirits in Princess Mononoke have inspired scientific names. For the name of the leech Orobdella mononoke Nakano, 2012, what brought the idea was a place. This Japanese species received the name “mononoke” because it was discovered in Shiratani Unsuikyo, the location that inspired the forest portrayed in the film (Nakano, 2012).

Figure 3. Top: The wasp Odontocolon kodama.

Bottom: Kodama in the forest from Princess Mononoke (1997). 

Image sources: Barcode of Life Data Systems (H. Haraldseide; CC BY-NC-SA 3.0); 

Studio Ghibli (screen capture from the movie).

The No-Face cockroach

When a team of researchers found a new species without a face, they did not hesitate to give it a rather literal name: “kaonashi” (faceless in Japanese). Cretaperiplaneta kaonashi Qiu et al., 2020 is an amber-embedded fossil cockroach from Myanmar that lived in the mid-Cretaceous (approximately 113–105.5 million years ago) (Qiu et al., 2020). Since the only specimen found had its face damaged, the species was named after the iconic Kaonashi or No-Face, the silent spirit that follows Chihiro in the film Spirited Away (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. The No-Face cockroach Cretaperiplaneta kaonashi, embedded in amber.

An anemone with spark

The sea anemone Stylobates calcifer Yoshikawa & Izumi, 2022 is probably one of the most curious species with a Studio Ghibli-inspired name. It is so peculiar that it was listed as one of the ten most remarkable marine new species from 2022 (Dekeyzer, 2023). This Japanese animal can secrete a substance (carcinoecium) that allows it to adhere to the shell of the hermit crab Pagurodofleinia doederleini (Doflein, 1902), which becomes its moving home (Yoshikawa et al., 2022). Stylobates calcifer owes its name to the fire demon Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle, a novel by Diana Wynne Jones (1986), later adapted into a film and popularized by Studio Ghibli (2004) (Fig. 5). According to Yoshikawa et al. (2022), the relationship between the anemone and the crab reminds that of Calcifer with the wizard Howl, both resulting in a “moving castle”.

Figure 5. Top: Stylobates calcifer anemone and its crab host Pagurodofleinia doederlini. 

Bottom: The fire demon Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). 

Image sources: World Register of Marine Species (A. Yoshikawa; CC BY-SA 4.0); 

Studio Ghibli (screen capture from the movie).

Brittle starfishy in the sea

Last but not least, there is the fossil brittle star Stegophiura miyazakii Ishida et al., 2018. This species was found in Mashiki, Japan, on a strata dating from the Late Cretaceous (approximately 100.5–66 million years ago). Ishida et al. (2018) named the species after Hayao Miyazaki, using his last name as the specific name. The authors decided to do this to honor Miyazaki’s work in animation, particularly Ponyo (2008), a film where marine life plays a central role (Fig. 6). Moreover, the species’ discoverers did not overlook that the director’s favorite novelist lived in the same prefecture where the species was found.

Figure 6. Top: The fossil brittle star Stegophiura miyazakii.

Bottom: Marine landscape from Ponyo (2008). 

Image sources: Ishida et al. (2018; CC BY-SA 4.0, modified); 

Studio Ghibli (screen capture from the movie).

CONCLUSION

To date, Studio Ghibli has inspired the scientific names of 13 animals. These include both extant and fossil species from terrestrial and aquatic environments, all invertebrates. The number of Ghibli-themed scientific names has increased over the years, with one in the 2000s (Jaloszyński, 2004), five in the 2010s (Nakano, 2012; Oliveira et al., 2013; Audo et al., 2014; Boyko & van der Meij, 2018; Ishida et al., 2018), and seven so far this decade (Qiu et al., 2020; Gąsiorek et al., 2021; Minowa & Garraffoni, 2021; Turner, 2021; Johansson, 2022; Yoshikawa et al., 2022; García & Villareal, 2023). Since the popularity of Studio Ghibli continues to rise and there are still millions (literally!) of species to be named, Ghibli names will almost certainly keep emerging.

The one thing that stands out the most about these names, apart from themselves, is their origin story or etymology. Within Ghibli names, we can find indirectly descriptive ones (e.g., Cabirnalia nausicaa), commemorative ones (e.g., Pseudochiniscus totoro), those which tell us stories (e.g., Orobdella mononoke), or a combination of these (e.g., Ornamentula miyazakii). Each reflects a great creative work, as they required the authors’ ability to identify patterns between their new species and Studio Ghibli’s works and link them together, all while having a little fun. For all current and future taxonomists, this is your sign to be ingenious and give your species a name worth remembering. If it is related to Ghibli, even better!

Vampire Gastelbrau by the pointedly talented Hanna Ayoubi :[

Africa, by Mohssin Amghar

 

Dia Internacional da Música / International Music Day / Fête de la musique

 

International Music Day timeline

(find out more on National Today)

1949

UNESCO Creates the International Music Council

The Council is created to advise UNESCO on how music can further promote world peace and enable cultures to coexist harmoniously.

1973

The Genesis of a Day for Music

The Council passes a resolution in the 15th General Assembly in Lausanne, Switzerland, acknowledging the importance of a day dedicated to music.

November 30, 1974

Yehudi Menuhin Proclaims International Music Day

President of the International Music Council Lord Yehudi Menuhin writes a letter to all the members of the Council proclaiming that October 1 will be celebrated as International Music Day.

October 1, 1975

The First International Music Day

The first-ever International Music Day is celebrated.

Are any astronauts waving at you?

 

Dia Internacional da Tradução / International Translation Day / Journée Internationale de la Traduction

 

Hanlon's Razor

 

Hanlon's Razor is the adage: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Or sometimes, "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence."

It appears in a similar form by the inimitable Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as, "And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence," in The Sorrows of Young Werther. The same sentiments are also shared by William James, Churchill, and H.G. Wells. More recently, Douglas Hubbard gave a more modern version in his book The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system."

I've seen people get mad at others pushing in line when the pushers-in didn't realise other people were queuing. I've seen drivers shouting at another driver who's in blissful ignorance of the trouble they've caused. I've seen agents blamed for terrible customer service when the system is at fault, and customer service blame users when the product is at fault. I've seen people despairing at others leaving litter in the park or on the street when animals had dragged out the mess overnight. I've seen people vilified for not moving down on a train when they weren't aware of the squeeze at the other end. And, usually, I think people aren't smart or capable enough, or in fact wicked enough, to carry out the conspiracies that people credit them for. Very often it's the person assuming bad intentions and getting mad who suffers the most.

To be sure, there are different degrees of negligence. We can all make mistakes, but if you're doing your taxes, it's not okay to make a mistake because you didn't read the instructions. If you're standing on a busy train, you owe it to others to be aware that you may be blocking an aisle, and we should do our best to make sure our rubbish stays where we put it. But none of us are perfect and so often I think Hanlon's Razor has some truth to it.

Perhaps a better formulation of Hanlon's Razor would be, "Before attributing to malice, try attributing to incompetence."

Hanlon's Razor, which encourages us first to consider innocent mistakes rather than assuming ill will, was a submission to Murphy's Law, book two: more reasons why things go wrong, by Arthur Bloch (p52).

For more fun ideas in sketches see my book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

 

 

Also find on the sketchplanations site: Fundamental Attribution Error (someone shared Hanlon's Razor with me on posting this), Attribution bias, Chesterton's fence, Russell's teapot, Bloom's taxonomy, Maslow's hierarchy, Muphry's Law, The Peter Principle, The Generalised Peter Principle

Breviário Mediterrânico - lido

E um mapa maravilhoso de Thomas Mauguin - K'arthotèque

 

Baobab

 

It’s sometimes called the “Tree of Life” for its supportive qualities and long lifespan stretching thousands of years—and it’s also known as the “Upside-Down Tree” for its root-like branches. But no matter the name, the baobab tree has long captivated the human imagination with its surreal shape and enduring presence.

Eight living species of the baobab genus Adansonia exist worldwide: one in mainland Africa, six in Madagascar and one in northwestern Australia. Yet, the origins of these botanical behemoths have eluded scientists for years.

Many researchers thought the trees began on the African mainland, then spread to the other locations, the New York Times’ Rachel Nuwer reports. However, a study published last week in the journal Nature used the genomes of each baobab species to unravel the tree’s ancient origins, instead tracing its lineage to Madagascar 21 million years ago.

Over the course of millions of years, the team reports, diverse baobab species emerged across Madagascar, driven by ecological competition and environmental conditions—including altitude, sea level and volcanic activity. Eventually, two baobab species traveled from Madagascar to continental Africa and northwestern Australia where they, too, evolved into unique species.

 

These baobab seeds were likely transported across continents by the Indian Ocean gyre, a system of rotating currents in the Indian Ocean that circulate clockwise.

“The plants almost certainly got to Africa and Australia floating on or with vegetation rafts,” study co-author Tao Wan, a botanist at the Wuhan Botanical Garden in China, tells Reuters’ Will Dunham. Vegetation rafts, or naturally floating mats of plant material and dirt, may have helped other species move across continents, such as early primates that got from Africa to South America.

“We were delighted to be involved in this project uncovering patterns of baobab speciation in Madagascar followed by the astonishing long-distance dispersal of two species, one to Africa and another to Australia,” study co-author Andrew Leitch, a plant geneticist at Queen Mary University of London, says in a statement.

As diverse baobab species evolved, they developed a mutually beneficial relationship with several animals that acted as pollinators, such as bats, hawk moths, lemurs and bush babies, which may have influenced the different tree species’ flower structures.

Additionally, researchers determined that lower sea levels allowed baobab trees to better thrive across Madagascar.

“During times of relatively low sea level, vast areas of Madagascar were probably suitable for baobab population expansion and dispersal, whereas periods of high sea level led to smaller suitable areas, population fragmentation, species isolation and reduced gene flow,” the study explains.

Scientists say these findings could shed light on modern threats to baobabs. Now, with global sea-level rise accelerating, the baobab tree’s ability to expand and survive could severely decrease.

“The lowered chance of expansion coupled with the distinct ecological niches baobabs occupy is a recipe for a threatened population,” per a Chinese Academy of Sciences statement about the study. “Then, adding in habitat loss of the trees themselves along with their pollinators like fruit bats and hawkmoths, and conservation of baobabs becomes a pressing issue.”

During a previous study that examined African baobab trees between 2005 and 2017, researchers reported that nine of the 13 oldest and five of the six largest baobab trees on the continent died during that time. The team called it an “event of an unprecedented magnitude” and suggested that southern Africa’s changing climate may be to blame, but more research is needed for confirmation, Nature News’ Sarah Wild wrote at the time.

 

Additionally, two baobab species in Madagascar currently show low genetic diversity, potentially hindering their ability to adapt to climate change. A third species on the island is at risk of extinction due to interbreeding with a more widespread relative, reports the New York Times.

These three species are categorized as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, and the other baobab species on Madagascar are listed as least concern. However, given their declining populations, more conservation measures may be required, per the study. The authors propose a re-evaluation of the trees’ conservation statuses and recommend that some get an upgrade to higher threat levels.

Data on baobabs from the new study “will inform their conservation to safeguard their future,” study co-author Ilia Leitch, a plant genomics researcher at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in England, tells BBC News’ Helen Briggs.

“This work has uncovered new insights into the patterns of speciation in baobabs and shows how climate change has influenced baobab distribution and speciation patterns over millions of years,” she adds in the statement.

Aaron Boorstein for The Smithsonian magazine.

 

Magalhães / Magellan, in the competent Wrong Hands of John Atkinson :) 🗺️

 

Oh, joy :[

 Mark Parisi at Off the Mark 

 

22 anos de livros

Há 22 dois anos de permeio entre a minha primeira tradução de Robin Cook e a mais recente.
A primeira, 𝑪𝒉𝒐𝒒𝒖𝒆, para as Publicações Europa-América, que ainda se vende (!) (caríssima, uma relíquia 📜) e, publicada em abril pela Bertrand, 𝑻𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒐 𝒅𝒂 𝑵𝒐𝒊𝒕𝒆.

Dracula (abridged) by the Wonderful Wrong Hands of John Atkinson

 

Dia de Portugal, de Camões e das Comunidades Portuguesas

 

Ancient Civilizations

There are 6,800 years between the age of the Sumarian civilization of 5,500 BC and the Aztec civilization of 1,300 AD.

 

Shōgun, the TV show

 

Interpreting Shōgun Was More Than Just Translation

From Vulture:

Shōgun is a show about fate. About cross-cultural differences, statecraft, chaos, about war never changing, and about getting my ship the Erasmus back. But most importantly, it’s a show about communication. Court etiquette of the Sengoku era, as well as the gender politics of the time, mean a lot of things cannot be said explicitly. Even if you speak the same language as someone, you can never fully know them, and yet you all have to work together toward a common goal.

The making of Shōgun mirrored these themes in many ways. As a cross-cultural production — shot in Canada, produced by Hollywood, filled with Japanese actors — interpretation was key. Enter Eriko Miyagawa. The producer worked closely with lead actor/producer Hiroyuki Sanada to ensure the show was accurate to period Edo yet still relatable to modern Tokyo. From consulting on translating English scripts for Japanese actors, to translating the show’s press kit, to serving as interpreter for multiple interviews with Vulture, she wore many hats and was gracious enough to answer all our questions about how Shōgun was interpreted from English book to Sengoku Japan and back.

Can you start by telling me some of the things that you did as a producer on Shōgun and how that differed from previous experiences in which you were just consulting?
I think the main difference is the sheer volume. I’ve done all sorts of things. I started as an on-set interpreter. My first job was Kill Bill. Since then, I’ve been servicing mostly American shows with Japanese elements. But when the volume is so big and comprehensive, like Shōgun, it becomes producing. On this show, Hiro and myself were brought on as producers from the get-go. We had access to the entire process; we were able to give input on all the different aspects of the show. That was quite different.

A lot of times on other shows there will be an American producer overseeing the show. I’ll consult in this department or we need this bit translated, and they sort of put it together. What was really great about Shōgun is that Hiro and I were able to see the entire process. Nothing fell between the cracks.

Tell me about the process of translating scripts into the various languages the show uses.
It needed to go through steps of polishing so that what ends up in the show feels authentic to native Japanese audiences. Obviously, James Clavell’s novel was based on rigorous research and passion for Japanese culture. So they had that to work from as a base, but the scripts went through layers of consultations to get it right. Then the American writers, they write the script. Then it goes to a team of Japanese translators in Tokyo. Hiro and I are checking in at different stages. Then it goes to Japanese dialogue polishers, who are experienced with Japanese period shows, to make sure it’s period-appropriate and feels natural for a human being to be speaking. Because you know, it happens a lot in dubbing, when dialogue is pretty much directly translated from another language and it just sounds like something that’s been translated. So we wanted to make sure it felt natural.

What’s great about a TV series is that the actors have the time to be able to really immerse in the world. They have their own opinions and input, so we just kept polishing until the moment we roll. When a script is translated, it’s not just one thing it could be. There are so many different options. There are so many ways to interpret one thing. There is a lot of conversation for every single line. It’s just exhausting.

As you were saying, some of the work that the Japanese translators were doing was specifically to keep it rooted in this period accuracy. It’s a work of translation not just into Japanese but into Sengoku-period Japan.  

Ultimately, if they really speak how they spoke in that time, we wouldn’t understand it. So it’s a fine balance, which takes from a tradition of Japanese jidaigeki. Every jidaigeki made their own choices, depending on if they wanted to be a little bit more modern versus if they wanted to feel more classic. I think, generally, we went for the classic. But we were very careful because we really wanted a young Japanese audience who may not typically watch jidaigeki to be able to understand and enjoy it without any stress.

jidaigeki - The Japanese term for media set before the Meiji Restoration of 1868.  

What’s your professional opinion of Mariko-sama as an interpreter? Was she good, or did she put too much of her own feelings into her translation?
[Laughs.] I think she’s a great diplomat. So she’s the best diplomatic interpreter. Toward the end, she sort of infused her opinions a little strongly, but I think she’s just a great interpreter.

When working on a translation, how much do you think about the audience as opposed to just trying to accurately represent what the actor is saying?
First of all, we try to be as close as possible, to be respectful to the script, and close to the intention of the writers as much as possible. They’re great writers and the text is so loaded with beautiful nuances and a great sense of humor. But there are things that are quite difficult to translate, sometimes. They’re not a natural part of our language or our culture. So it becomes a conversation, how to preserve that in the most realistic way. Also, and I think Anna spoke about this on one of her TV appearances, but Japanese text is longer. So a lot of balls were in the air.

Can you tell me more about Japanese text being longer?
Especially when you have to be polite — when you’re using the honorific, like when Mariko is talking to Toranaga — it starts to get a little longer. To say thank you, you have to be super polite, and at the end say these honorifics. It just becomes longer. Justin also wanted to be respectful, and he was kind of enjoying that process. I think Justin saw how he could incorporate that in the subtitles.

Your bio calls you “bilingual and bicultural,” which I love. Sometimes, like in the case of honorifics, the language barrier isn’t the site of miscommunication, sometimes the cultural barrier can be greater.
Totally, and they’re so intertwined. I like to be seen as bicultural. I’m familiar with different filmmaking processes. I’ve never worked on a project without interpreters present on set. That’s sort of my specialty: to work on projects with different cultures and different languages and sort of bridging that and moving things forward.

In previous interviews for which you’ve interpreted, the actors talked about how different they found the Shōgun set compared to Japanese productions. Is there anything you think that an American audience would be surprised to know about working in Japan versus working in the West?
Yeah, there’s a lot. But I think one of the important things, what Eita said, is that actors are more included in the process [on Shōgun]. I mean, every project is different. But I know that all the Japanese actors who’ve only worked on Japanese shows really appreciated how they’re much more a part of the process than they typically are in Japanese shows.

In Japan, there’s no union. So I think working conditions can be a lot tougher. That’s probably one of the big things. And I think there’s a lot longer of a development process, as well as prep time, in Hollywood shows. They allow more time for actors to prepare for the role, training. There’s just more time because there’s more money.

I want to get into some specific choices the show made with language  that I’m hoping you have insight into. The choice of “pillow” as the euphemism for sex, how did that come about?
I think it’s from the book. I think I’ve heard it in Japanese jidaigeki.

I think I have too. But it was so insistent on the show. I was like, Wow, we’re just going with “pillow,” okay.
It’s a good euphemism.

And we talked about this with Eita a little bit, but one of his little poetic flourishes was translated to something like “trying to fuck a sunset.” And I was given to understand there isn’t really a swear word for sex in Japanese, nothing that has the stigma of “fuck.”
Yeah.

So what was being said there, that felt like “fuck” was what needed for the subtitles?
He just says … not even “make love to.” The Japanese euphemism for sex is “to hold tight.” Literally, it means “to hug.” So it’s not really as hard as the English.

It’s interesting that there isn’t necessarily a word for that activity that has the same boundary-pushing power in Japanese.
Definitely, that was super hard for translators. Who swears the most in our show, other than Blackthorne?

Maybe Yabushige? At least that’s what it looks like in translation.
Yeah, he does.

And what word is being used when people discuss fate on the show? What concept is that?
Most of the time the word shukumei is used. That basically means fate. There’s another word called unmei, which is more like destiny. There’s a couple of lines that use unmei because it’s a little bit lighter. In terms of nuance, shukumei is a bit more loaded. Shukumei is a very important concept for this show. I think we use it very selectively, in the right places.

I was reading the show’s official glossary, which is so cool that you have, and it says that shukumei is tied into Buddhism. So it’s interesting that even the converts on the show still hold onto that concept.
It’s also a part of Shintoism. Buddhism and Shinto are very present. They’re quite seamlessly intertwined with politics. Temples had a lot of power, certain relationships with lords. I think it is a Buddhist concept, but it might have a life of its own at this point.

Can you think of a specific time where the translation process was especially nuanced? That made you go, Wow, this really took some time, but we figured it out eventually.

Many. But, you know, you kind of forget the hard things. I think one kind of interesting, and a little bit controversial, example could be Ochiba’s line at the end of episode four. She is with Ishido and she, in a very Ochiba, passive-aggressive way, is like “Get things moving.” And at the end, the subtitle says “The council will answer to me.” Something like that. I think originally we had pretty much the direct translation of that line in Japanese, but it felt like she became a Disney villain or something. A Japanese woman of that stature wouldn’t say that, and also it felt a bit out of Ochiba’s character. I mean, that’s what she is really saying, that’s her intention. But she wouldn’t say that. So in Japanese she’s saying, “Let’s hear what they have to say.”

Japanese audiences, who are so familiar with these types in jidaigeki, are going to immediately understand that what she means is, “The council will answer to me.” But I think the subtitle needed to get more to the point. That was one of the more difficult choices that we needed to make. There are many of those on a smaller scale, many lines that needed to be deliberated and adjusted. But I thought that was a pretty interesting example of how different it can be.

Have you seen the memes where the whole joke is that Mariko is interpreting really asymmetrically? Like Blackthorne says a whole essay, and she translates a single sentence?
Yeah, it’s very Lost in Translation. Remember the scene where the commercial director’s telling Bill Murray many things, and then the interpreter goes, “more intensity”?

I do, yeah. You worked on Lost in Translation, right?
Yeah, but as a PA in prep.

I’ll say that, when you’ve been interpreting for me, I’ve been grateful for your concision. I know I yammer.
You’re thinking while you’re talking. Also I think sometimes interpreters are diplomats. I’m often involved with hiring and placing interpreters who work on set. Not only do they need to be skilled interpreters, but I think more importantly they need to be a good diplomat and be able to mediate as needed, to move things forward. For better or worse, it’s part of the job.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Always) The Great Wave Off Kanagawa

The Boucheron Wave Diamond Tiara, constructed by the firm ca. 1910.

The tiara was intended to echo the famous 1831 "Great Wave Off Kanagawa", a woodblock print by Japanese artist Hokusai.

 

Remember Reader's Digest condensed books? Well, now there're apps for it 🙄😡👊

So says The New Yorker, where you can listen to it too, UNabridged:

There are many reasons not to read a book. One, because you don’t want to. Two, because you started reading, crawled to page 17, and gave up. Three, because the idea of reading never crosses your mind. (If so, lucky you. That way contentment lies.) Four, because it’s Friday, which means that “W.W.E. SmackDown” is on Fox, which in turn means that Marilynne Robinson’s beatific new exegetical study of the Book of Genesis must, for now, be gently laid aside. Five, because reading a book is, you know, so lame. Only losers do it. And, six, because you simply don’t have the time.

 But what if the need to read won’t go away? In a spasm of initiative and a sudden flush of guilt, you buy a Kindle and download “The House of the Seven Gables,” fully intending to complete, on the subway, what you left unfinished in college. Three weeks in, though, and you still haven’t got as far as Gable No. 1. You toy with joining a local book club, on the principle that having to read something, to keep pace with your fellow-clubbers, will be a fruitful challenge; what holds you back is a fear that the conversation will swiftly turn to campus protests. Before you know it, people will be throwing glasses of Chardonnay and slapping one another on the base of the skull with copies of “Getting to Yes.”

 The most potent enemy of reading, it goes without saying, is the small, flat box that you carry in your pocket. In terms of addictive properties, it might as well be stuffed with meth. There’s no point in grinding through a whole book—a chewy bunch of words arranged into a narrative or, heaven preserve us, an argument—when you can pick up your iPhone, touch the Times app, skip the news and commentary, head straight to Wordle, and give yourself an instant hit of euphoria and pride by taking just three guesses to reach a triumphant guano. Imagine, however, that your foe were to become your literate friend. Imagine getting hooked on a book, or on something recognizably book-esque, without averting your eyes from the screen. This is where Blinkist comes in.

Blinkist is an app. If I had to summarize what it does, I would say that it summarizes like crazy. It takes an existing book and crunches it down to a series of what are called Blinks. On average, these amount to around two thousand words. Some of the books that get Blinked are gleamingly new, such as “Leading with Light,” by Jennifer Mulholland and Jeff Shuck, which was published in March; other books are so old that they were written by people whose idea of a short-haul flight involved feathers and wax. In the realm of nonfiction alone, more than six and a half thousand works have been subjected to the Blinkist treatment. Across all platforms, there have been thirty-one million downloads on the app. Right now, there will be somebody musing over Blinks of “Biohack Your Brain,” “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,” or “The Power of Going All-In,” which is, I am sorry to report, yet another study of successful leadership. Given the title, I was hoping that it might be about breakfast buffets, or the best way to behave yourself at an orgy.

When joining Blinkist, you are asked to nominate the categories that attract you most: “Mindfulness & Happiness,” for instance, or “Motivation & Inspiration,” or “Productivity.” Each section is marked by a defining logo: “History” by a vase with handles, “Psychology” by a head with the top of its cranium removed, and “Society & Culture,” somewhat nervously, by a tepee. Greedy for the Blinkist experience, I ticked every box, and was at once rewarded with tips for books “based on your past preferences.” By now, my past had lasted seven minutes—algorithmically speaking, a lifetime. And what was the upshot? Four items, all of them designed, I was told, to help me “Overcome Layoff Survivor Syndrome.” Thanks.

Once you are Blinked in, your days will follow a new pattern. Instead of being woken by an alarm, or by a bored spaniel licking your face, you will find yourself greeted by a Daily Blink. This will arrive, with a ping, on your phone, alerting you to a book that, suitably pruned, is ready to be served up for your personal edification. Thus, “Tired of losing arguments? Get the upper hand with today’s pick, Win Every Argument, and learn how to effectively communicate.” Or, “Discover the fundamental principles of economics with The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money!” In other words, there is a proper time to acquaint yourself with the work of John Maynard Keynes, and that time is now. If that scares you, get a load of this, my favorite Daily Blink to date: “Dive deep into the philosophical masterpiece, Being and Time, as Martin Heidegger explores the nature of existence.” And you thought your almond granola would be heavy going.

In practice, there are two options for absorbing a Blink. Either you read it onscreen or you listen to it being recited. Seventy per cent of Blink fans prefer the latter mode, and you can see why; it allows them to combine their mental exercise with other activities. At the gym, say, they can ingest the gist of “Salt Sugar Fat,” by Michael Moss, until their AirPods pop out under the strain of the squats. Alternatively, on the drive to the office, they can treat themselves to a quick scoot through Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens,” while trying to stop the Homo neanderthalensis in the red Bronco from cutting into their lane.

We all remember our first Blink. Mine was a way of catching up. Having failed to peruse Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now” when it was published, in 2018, perhaps because I was too busy studying the helicopter chase in “Mission: Impossible—Fallout,” I decided, late in the day, to give it a whirl. But in what form? The Penguin paperback, comprising around four hundred and fifty pages of text, plus another hundred pages of notes, references, and an index? The full whack, on Audible, nicely narrated by Arthur Morey and lasting nineteen hours and forty-nine minutes? Or the same thing, reduced to a sequence of nine Blinks—ready to consume, on audio, in twenty-four minutes flat? No contest.

The version of Pinker’s argument through which I was hustled by the Blinks could charitably be described as broad brush. Broad enough, indeed, to paint entire swaths of cultural experience with one swipe: “If you’re familiar with European history, you’ve probably heard of the period known as the Enlightenment.” The brushstrokes are assertive enough to cover huge conceptual shifts: “Humanism also led to what’s known as cosmopolitanism, which can be seen in today’s modern values.” Cue the happy ending: “If we look at any number of graphs and hard factual data about the state of the world over the past hundred or more years, we can see that we’re still in the process of adding energy and greatly improving.”

But that’s the trick. We can’t look. On the page, Pinker’s thesis is amply supported by a host of graphs. None of them are reproduced by Blinkist, the purpose of which is to save us the bother of poring over finicky things like graphics and charts, and to steer us away from the confounding weeds of minutiae. As with Pinker, so with William James. His noble work of 1902, “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” is crammed with what he calls “the palpitating documents” that have arisen, in the course of centuries, from individual crises and ecstasies of the spirit. Many such palpitations are quoted verbatim. (“I seemed to feel my earlier life, so smiling and so full, go out like a fire.”) Very few of them, however, survive in the calmer confines of the Blink, which concludes its abstract of James with a finger-wagging directive: “We should adopt a more critical study of religion.”

It’s easy to decry this stripping down of complex reasoning, as if the app were bent solely on decluttering books of everything that lends them vitality. Yet you have to admit: if you’d never read Pinker or James, Blinkist would furnish you with a basic grasp of their intent—sufficient, perhaps, to do more than merely drop their names. If the topics that Pinker addresses happened to crop up in conversation (“Everything is so crappy nowadays, worse than it’s ever been”), you could just about hold your own, at least over a cup of coffee. (“Well, there’s this guy, Pink-somebody, who says that infant mortality is way down.”) Is that what books are coming to, a handy social lubricant? Should you care if literature gets Blinked away, like an eyelash? To find out more, you need to go to Germany.

Blinkist is based in Berlin. The headquarters are halfway along Sonnenallee, an unlovely strip in the southeast quarter of the city. When I visit, the C.E.O. of the company, Holger Seim, tells me, “It was an up-and-coming area, but it never really came.” Pass beneath a gloomy railway bridge, glance in awe at the poster for “Die Show der Megastars” at a nearby hotel, trot up to the second floor of a modern office block, and enter. Once inside, you can immediately tell that you’ve arrived at a booming tech firm, because there’s a swing in the middle of the room. Other giveaways: the slogan “We Exist to Spark Understanding” writ large on a wall; a workplace photograph from 2020, with Tim Cook, of Apple, sitting cross-legged at the front of the crowd; and a number of small dogs that skitter and skid along the floor, going nowhere in a hurry and getting there fast.

Seim is trim, keen, approachable, and, most important of all, armed with banana bread. “Somebody brought it in today,” he says, offering a slice. The lack of detectable flaws in his spoken English should be no surprise. “English is not just specific to Blinkist but to the whole tech scene in Berlin,” he tells me. Some forty nationalities, he reckons, are represented in his busy hive of a hundred and sixty fellow-workers. It’s like a miniature U.N. without the suits.

Seim first thought of becoming an entrepreneur when he was in high school, in the way that other people want to be rock stars or astronauts. The difference is that he brought his plan to fruition. At the University of Marburg, an hour north of Frankfurt, he studied business administration and hatched the concept of Blinkist with three friends, Niklas Jansen, Tobias Balling, and Sebastian Klein. After graduating, they all found gainful employment—Seim worked at Deutsche Telekom—and bided their time. When they felt the moment was right, they quit their jobs and moved to Berlin. “This is it. If we don’t do this now, we never will” is how Seim recalls the mood. “Rents were still very cheap here. It was already an international magnet for talent.” Blinkist went live in 2013. Luck was on their side in the form of the iPhone, which was being updated—or, if you prefer, was cajoling the human brain ever deeper into a hostage situation—pretty much on an annual basis. “A lot of our ideas gravitated around knowledge management: how we can teach people something quickly,” Seim says. “We thought, What can we do with that new device? We naturally came to the idea: Wouldn’t it be good to have something that helps you learn on a smartphone, and spend those downtimes more meaningfully than playing Angry Birds?”

This takes us to the very nub of Blinkist. Apart from the vexed ontological question of whether blowing up little green pigs with crates of cartoon TNT does or does not have any meaning, in a universe already rich in absurdity, two features are worth noting. One, the mild shade of pedagogy in Seim’s gentle insistence on teaching and being taught. (German educators of an older and sterner school might well frown with approval.) Two, the way in which, far from denying that phones have assumed possession of our lives, Seim leans into that stubborn fact. Why struggle? Why not collaborate with our captors and see what comes of it? “The social-media apps—they made us addicted to checking our screens all the time,” Seim tells me. “That is happening. That is a trend, whether we like it or not.” Since I’m fated to doomscroll anyway, I might as well channel that itchy-thumbed habit into browsing a Blink of Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control.” Or “Chernobyl,” by Serhii Plokhy. Or something on Fukushima. Get me some real doom.

Whenever you explain, to the uninitiated, what Blinkist is, they tend to ask, “Who does the summarizing? And is it a who, or is it more of a what?” The answer is that it’s a bit of both. “Real people do it. We have a pool of subject-matter experts. They work for us as freelancers. Some of them are Ph.D. candidates, coaches, consultants,” Seim says. “They read the books for us, they take notes, they organize those notes. In the past, we had writers who would take those notes and write the texts.” Then came the narrators—an endangered species, it turns out. “These days, a lot of that is enhanced by A.I. When it comes to recording, the front-list titles we record still with people.” And the less popular Blinks, on the backlist? “We let A.I. narrate it,” Seim says. “We have voices that we trained. We cloned voices, basically.” Could the whole process be handled by A.I., with no flesh and blood, and no scrutinizing eyes? “Technically, we’re almost there,” Seim replies. “Legally, it’s not allowed,” he adds. “As soon as we just take a book, feed it into A.I., let A.I. produce a summary, and then sell that summary, it would no longer be fair use.”

Teasing out the various strands in this tangle of copyright law, artificial intelligence, and real, honest-to-God wordage is a tender task. Yet it can, I am pleased to report, yield delicious results. Some nameless soul must have agreed to whittle down Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” into Blinkable form—a heroic undertaking, given that it’s hardly baggy with superfluities in the first place—because there it is, thinned to six slices, plus an introduction and a final summary. All yours in sixteen and a half minutes. I listened to it, savoring the faintly metallic tone of the narration, and was rewarded, at the climax, with this:

True meaning reverberates in the unspoken chasm between what we can show and what we can tell about it. O.K., that’s it for this Blink. But before we let you go, we wanted to let you know that this Blink was narrated by an A.I.-generated voice model. That’s me.

Imagine Wittgenstein, never less than agonized at the best of times, hearing those words. His head would explode like a grenade.

It should be stressed that Blinkist is not the only abbreviator on the block. There is also Sumizeit, a lesser animal, whose audio condensations last some ten to fifteen minutes. Nor, as any historian of the print trade will confirm, is Blinkist without precedent in its underlying desire. To cut a long story short, abridging has always been in vogue. Eighteenth-century parents, wishing to school their offspring in piety without the use of the whip, could turn to John Newbery’s edition of the Bible, “adorned with Cuts for the Use of Children,” published in 1764, or, only a year later, to a larger and fancier product—“An Abridgement of Scripture History designed for the Amusement and improvement of Children: wherein the most Striking actions in the Old Testament are made plain to the youngest Capacities: adorned with head Peices expressive of the Subject of Each Narrative.” (Is that not Blinkism avant la lettre?) If the goal was to shield the young from unsuitable material—for God’s sake, don’t let them read the stuff about honeycombs and lips in the Song of Solomon!—the title pages did not say so. Instead, their common emphasis was on adornment, the implication being that in whittling down a text you were not selling it short but buffing it up and adding to its appeal.

You could argue that the paring of prose for children is a specific discipline, and there is, indeed, a long tradition of classics being made palatable for youthful tastes. At bedtime in the early nineteen-hundreds, you could read out “Gulliver’s Travels, Retold for Little Folk,” by Agnes Grozier Herbertson, in the comforting certainty that any Swiftian unseemliness had been erased. (The subtitle, for a tale that is partly about little folk, is wonderfully tin-eared.) Rather more inspiring is the notion that the art of synopsis itself is, or was, considered a subject fit for the classroom. Samuel Thurber’s “Précis Writing for American Schools: Methods of Abridging, Summarising, Condensing, with Copious Exercises” (1936) abounds with startling examples of what was once demanded. We are invited to inspect summaries of a Wordsworth sonnet, “The World Is Too Much with Us,” which were, according to Thurber, “written in ten minutes by pupils of the senior year in high-school.” He has harsh words for those students taking the fall paper of the College Entrance Examination Board in 1919, who had to précis Keats’s “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” and stumbled in the attempt. “Their knowledge of mythology was meagre,” Thurber says with a sniff. Dumbass kids.

It is that generation, reared on the verbal need to squeeze, which grew up to become the target audience for the most comprehensive campaign of textual compression ever mounted. The Reader’s Digest condensed-books club came into being in 1950, and within a year it had garnered more than half a million members. Four years later, that number had risen to two and a half million. In his 1958 study of the Reader’s Digest, bearing the presumptuous—and, in the event, erroneous—title “Of Lasting Interest,” James Playsted Wood describes the mechanics of condensation. “The editors read about 2800 books a year in the United States and 1000 in England,” Wood writes. Once a lucky book is plucked from the throng, an editor makes the initial rough cut. Then:

Three more editors go over this first condensation, making further cuts, perhaps restoring some already made, making sure that the contents, the spirit, and the style of the author are retained in the shortened version. Nothing essential is changed.

In the light of that hard labor, it is a cruel irony that the condensed books should, over time, have dwindled into a byword for the redundant middlebrow. Unloved and unclaimed, they lurk on the shelves of thrift stores, the gleam all but faded from their embossed spines. (Some were clad in leatherette. Luxury!) Should you wish to take the pulse of postwar hankerings, however, you could do worse than run your finger down those spines and chart the contents. In the summer of 1952, for instance, subscribers could enjoy, in a single convenient volume, “The Hidden Flower,” by Pearl S. Buck; “The Dam Busters,” by Paul Brickhill; “The City Boy,” by Herman Wouk; and “My Cousin Rachel,” by Daphne du Maurier. Wouk it was who, after a work of his went under the knife, congratulated the Digest, claiming to be “astonished at the way the main plot was preserved, in about one-fifth the compass of the novel.” To judge by the elephantine bulk of the average Wouk, this skillful lesson in economy is not one that he took to heart.

Wood’s survey quotes Ralph Henderson, a long-standing Digest employee, in charge of the condensing squad, who was laudably clear in his intentions: to do “an honest job of representing good current books.” He added, “It is insincere editing to give the customers something you don’t like yourself.” Such plainspoken confidence, especially in the contested field of reading, smacks of a vanished age, yet a direct line can be drawn, I would say, from Henderson to Holger Seim. Literary eras show their true selves when they decide what is worthy of encapsulation, and also in the prejudices that prevail, by no means consciously, when the blade is applied to the meat of a given text.

A case in point: when Blinkist entered the fray, in 2013, its list of abbreviated books ran to a hundred titles. Two more would be added every week. “Initially, we built a product for ourselves,” Seim tells me. “So we said, like, ‘Where do we start? What’s our early-adopter audience?’ Well, we thought, it’s probably not the readers of politics and history books. It’s more a young, tech-savvy audience, young professionals like us. What do they read? They read all the self-help books. ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.’ ‘Getting Things Done.’ ‘Atomic Habits.’ All that.”

It’s true that James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” wasn’t published until 2018, but Seim’s proposition stands, and Blinkist is still overwhelmingly weighted toward that peculiar twenty-first-century zone where the sensitive upkeep of the self merges, without friction, into running a company and stroking the bulge in your bank account. What the app provides, to that extent, is a synoptic gospel. As I write, my Daily Blink has just landed, nudging me toward “How to Make a Few Billion Dollars,” by Brad Jacobs, which is described on my screen as “an insightful road map to assembling a team that’s equipped to catapult a company to staggering heights of success.” From Pearl S. Buck to dollar billionaires. It’s quite a trip.

The ideal Blinkist devotee, in other words, is the kind of person who would invent Blinkist. In an age defined by its grim-jawed polarization, is there not a risk in abetting so narrow a view of the world, and so militant a scheme to milk it? “On the one hand, we do not want to be missionary. We do not have a political agenda,” Seim says. “We try to be neutral. Switzerland. On the other hand, we believe the concept of short-form content—Blinks—lends itself very well to moving out of a bubble.” There was an attempt to try randomization (that is, recommending a book unaligned with the Blinks that a reader had previously selected), but, as Seim admits, it proved unpopular: “If leaving people in their echo chambers drives more engagement, more renewals, more business value, then it’s hard to say we do the other things. We need to pay the salaries and make a living.”

Yet that is not the whole story. Far behind the walls of the front list, there are other stories, bedded deep in Blinkist, awaiting their turn. Say you’re a mid-level executive stuck in an airport lounge, staring wanly at your muffin. What if you don’t feel like catapulting your company to staggering heights? How about a gutsy thriller? You open Blinkist, swat aside the imprecations of Brad Jacobs, and search under “Crime.” Up comes a book you’ve dimly heard of but never read. Scrolling down, you hit the following sentence: “Raskolnikov bashes her again and again as blood gushes from her skull.” That’s the stuff. Headphones on. Half an hour later, as your flight is called, you sit there motionless, hearing only this:

The novel ends with Raskolnikov heading to a Siberian prison and experiencing a moment of divine grace—the beginning of his redemption. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like, leave us a rating or a comment. We always appreciate your feedback. See you in the next Blink.

Canon to right of us, canon to left of us: what belongs in the ranks of lasting literature, whether it deserves to last, and why we ought to pay heed, let alone homage, to such weary classifications are all part of a debate that will never (and should never) draw to a close. It may also be beside the point. Furnished with compelling ethical objections to “Huckleberry Finn,” we can in good conscience skip it altogether and avoid the toil and trouble of wrestling with its merits, or its alleged want of them, for ourselves. What with all the competing cultural forces raining down upon us, we need no second invitation not to read. So one has to ask: If Twain’s book, or Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” can be scrunched down to a near-minimum, for speed-reading and easy listening, is that a travesty or a useful prop? Do little bits of literature retain the power to provoke us, and even spur us on to grander things, or are they, in fact, worse than no literature at all?

Seldom has this mystery been so cogently dramatized as it was on British TV in 1972. A voice-over, urgently suave, welcomed us to the finals of the All-England Summarize Proust Competition, explaining that “each contestant has to give a brief summary of Proust’s ‘À la Recherche du Temps Perdu,’ once in a swimsuit and once in evening dress.” Needless to say, we were in the land of Monty Python. The m.c., resplendent in a ruffled shirt, asked one finalist, Harry Baggott, “What made you first want to try and start summarizing Proust?”—or, as he stoutly pronounced it, “Prowst.” When his turn came, Harry, racing through the allotted fifteen seconds, gamely waffled on about “extratemporal values” but failed to make it past the opening page of “Swann’s Way.” As ever, Python had sought out a ridiculous problem and nailed it. The key to summarizing was to forget bland appraisals and cling to the concrete detail. Involuntary memory? Piece of cake.

Anyone who turns to “Crime and Punishment” rendered in Blinks will soon encounter a similar struggle between the overarching and the tactile. We learn about the murder weapon, of course, and about the stone under which Raskolnikov buries his loot. But a sentence from the novel such as “His face looked as if it had been smeared all over with grease, like an iron lock”—Dostoyevsky at his most memorably Dickensian—has no chance of creeping into the Blinks, whereas, thanks to the summarizer, we are granted a bizarre excursus into the philosophy of nihilism and a comparison of Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche (who is never referred to in the book, and was only twenty-two when it was published). What shortening seems to encourage is the temptation to edit as one cuts and, weirder still, to smuggle in additions to the original where one’s avowed duty is to subtract.

Jump from St. Petersburg to Regency England, and you will see Blinkist caving completely to this urge. Among the pleasures that I have derived from the app, few are more satisfying than the realization that Jane Austen, of all people, can be distilled into a babbling stream of consciousness:

Darcy’s feelings for Lizzie have turned unequivocally romantic One afternoon, Darcy bursts in on her and bluntly proposes You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you, he says Lizzie is shocked and rejects him harshly, telling him, I have never desired your good opinion and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly

What is prompted by this unusual passage, if not the delightful sensation that “Pride and Prejudice” is in the midst of being rewritten by Lydia Bennet? The near-total lack of punctuation would cause Henderson, the edit king of Reader’s Digest, to have a fit of the vapors, and, should it emerge that artificial intelligence is responsible for the lapse, we would be right to fret. If this is how A.I. handles proofreading, just think how it would screw up the release of a nuclear warhead.

What is most informative about the babble is the revelation that Mr. Darcy is now “unequivocally romantic.” Only once does the word “romantic” appear in the novel, when Charlotte Lucas, announcing her engagement to the insufferable Mr. Collins, confesses, “I am not romantic, you know. I never was.” Austen’s attitude to the Romantic movement was, to say the least, fraught with skepticism. (“Common sense, common care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood’s romantic delicacy,” we are told in “Sense and Sensibility.”) But as modern readers—and, evidently, as modern summarizers—we can’t help wanting to warm Austen up, as it were, and to loosen her classical and Christian stays. “A Timeless Tale Where Love Conquers Societal Norms” is the tagline that tops the Blinks of “Pride and Prejudice,” and, over and over, in wandering through Blinkist, we keep bumping into this vision of literature as a blueprint for breaking out. The belief that the plight of fictional characters can and should be improved is, dare one say, almost Pinkerish in its optimism:

In the end, the novel charts the poignant journey of a young man struggling to find his place in a world constrained by rigid societal norms and offers a beautifully stirring affirmation of the power of self-expression.

That is how “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” in its Blinked-down guise, signs off. None of that nonsense, familiar to lovers of Joyce, about wanting to “forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Just another dose of norm-busting (should the word “societal” not be banned on the ground of sheer ugliness?) and, beneath it, a faint suggestion that Stephen Dedalus, the young man of the title, needed help with his self-help. If only he’d read “The Power of Going All-In,” he could have saved himself a heap of pain.

Here’s the strangest thing of all. To reach peak Blinkist, you must pass beyond Jane Austen and James Joyce and head not upward but downward, into the fiery pit. There it is, in the Blink-friendly précis of “Paradise Lost” (yes, it genuinely exists) that we find the fallen angels: “They’ve just lost their first big battle against God and plummeted to hell. But despite their defeat, Satan wants to continue the struggle against God.” Brave fellow. And there’s more: “He assembles his demons to talk strategy.” Talk about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People! Boy, have they overcome Layoff Survivor Syndrome. Such, to my dazzled eyes, is the crowning glory of Blinkist. Its high-tech alchemy, transmuting literature into business, turns the inhabitants of literature, even the ones with tattered wings, into businessmen. Listen, rapt, as the devils crunch the numbers and kick around ideas for going forward:

Moloch suggests open warfare against heaven. Belial advocates for doing nothing. Mammon argues for making hell a little nicer so they can all live a happy life of sin.

I’m with Mammon, all day long. Life is short, and so, if you look at your phone, is literature. Blink and you’ll miss it. ♦

By Anthony Lane

May 20, 2024