You might have noticed that the links I've shared over the last few weeks have been a mix of older and newer ones. And that's going to continue for a while. I'm slowly but steadily working through my backlog of articles; it'll be a while before I'm done. Anyway, just because an article is older doesn't mean it's not worth reading.

With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:

Every Novel Is Boring—Until It Isn’t — Thoughts about how we've come to believe there's a certain way in which we're supposed to perceive novels, and that perhaps we shouldn't expect to be drawn into the narrative when we're reading the first sentence or on the first few pages.

From the article:

Rather than a shift in perspective, the volta in a novel is a shift to visceral enjoyment. Even as someone who loves novels, I rely on my expectation of a volta to keep me going. I push through unpromising beginnings, even middles, trusting that eventually, something will click, and then reading will become not just easy but compulsive.

Fear and Fragility: The Glass Delusion and Its History — An examination of a peculiar ailment that afflicted some people in early modern Europe: the belief that they, or part of them, were made from glass.

From the article:

The glass delusion largely disappeared from medical literature by the mid-nineteenth century. It was never common as a form of suffering — but glass, for a certain period of history, became culturally loaded enough to carry the weight of what could not otherwise be said. The medical anthropologist Mark Nichter, building on Arthur Kleinman’s work, proposed that distress finds culturally available idioms: ways of expressing suffering in a language the surrounding world will recognize. The glass delusion was one such idiom — and a particularly useful one. A body made of glass cannot be sent to war, cannot be married off, cannot be held to the ordinary demands of a courtly life. The delusion did real work. When glass stopped being strange enough to carry that weight, the idiom lost its power.

The prophet in your pocket — Carissa Véliz argues that because the gadgets that we carry with us are designed by humans, they're also an extension of the purposes (benign and nefarious) of their creators.

From the article:

One of the most deceptive narratives technology companies have been successfully peddling is that technology is neutral and it’s our use of the technology that determines whether it’s good or bad. How very convenient, to put all moral responsibility on the shoulders of people; I’m sure that is an entirely coincidental implication and not at all self-serving (eye roll).

How to Begin — Jane O'Sullivan examines the various ways in which fiction writers start their works, and how those starts are designed to snatch a reader's attention and keep a grip on it.

From the article:

For some time now, emerging writers have been encouraged to lay the bait straight away, preferably with a character set in motion with clear needs and goals, or failing that, through some other immediate conflict or intriguing question.