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Chapter 11: The city of grief

Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 5:52 pm
by Chris OConnor
Chapter 11: The city of grief

Please use this thread for discussing Chapter 11: The city of grief. :bananen_smilies085:

Re: Chapter 11: The city of grief

Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 10:59 am
by ant
After reading a few pages in this chapter, I decided to skip it all and move to chapter 12.

Chapter 11 was, in my opinion, the best so far. particularly the story about the physicist duping his therapist into believing he was able to travel into the future.

This chapter is simply Sagan having some strange need to parade the many people who've written him letters claiming they've been abducted by aliens.

Considering Mr. Sagan has dedicated the entire first half of the book attempting to convince his readers that all claims of abduction and other out of the ordinary phenomena are nothing but delusional fabrications, I already get his point - this chapter was some type of space filler.

I'd really like to see Sagan discuss psuedoscience in this book. he touched on it very briefly in chapter 10.

Re: Chapter 11: The city of grief

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2015 11:49 am
by Taylor
I imagine pop culture figures receive all sorts of letters, In this chapter CS gives the reader a few that have been delivered up to him. This chapter is a response of sorts to the grief he must have felt not so much for himself or some thoughts of the letter writers, but to the out of context mischaracterization of his argument of preceding chapters from the book by Parade magazine.

I think its useful to consider that he was at least willing to put his side in the public domain for critics as well as supporters to scrutinize deeper.

Re: Chapter 11: The city of grief

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2015 4:21 pm
by LanDroid
Ant wrote:After reading a few pages in this chapter, I decided to skip it all and move to chapter 12.
Chapter 11 was, in my opinion, the best so far.
Which is it? Disagreeing with yourself again? Are you OK? :wink: