# My Idea of Fun  ## Metadata - Author: [[Will Self]] - Full Title: My Idea of Fun - Category: #books - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: In the story, Mr. Broadhurst is a colorful character who engages with a younger boy, highlighting themes of discovery and deception. The boy reflects on troubling experiences and interactions, especially with a figure known as The Fat Controller. Throughout the narrative, there is a sense of confusion and complexity in their relationships and encounters. ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Eidetic images are pictures in the head. They are internal images that have the full force of conventional vision, but which are realised solely in the mind of the eidetiker. For me, it is almost impossible to imagine how it could be otherwise than that when I conceive of, say, a philosopher, I can see that philosopher as surely as if he were lying on this table in front of me. He's on his side, the deep notch between his sagging belly and his hard hip for all the world like a pass through mountains to a happier valley. > Furthermore, if I look closely at this image of a philosopher that I have; I can see all his details, the stitching in his pullover, the ‘druff on his cuff, the very particular gleam of his spectacle frames. I can even rotate my philosopher, spin him with great rapidity through three hundred and sixty degrees in all three dimensions; and yet stay him stock still again, if I so choose, without disturbing so much as one hair of his beard. It matters not what I do with my philosopher; in my mind's eye he will retain his pictorial integrity, his notable variegation, his subtle interplay of parts and whole. > I know it's not like that for you. I know that when you imagine a philosopher, any philosopher, for instance the one you saw asleep in the park yesterday, his scalp-scurf merging seamlessly with a mossy wall, your mental image is sharp only when it is hazy and hazy as soon as you attempt to bring it into sharper focus. Isn't that so? The more you concentrate on your visual memory, the more you attempt to fix it securely, the more it slides away, like a quicksilver bead. > If this example seems contrived to you, why not try it with something a little less abstract than a philosopher, for example, the visage of the one you love most. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j3dcn7n5va02rz3vhsprsyfw)) # My Idea of Fun  ## Metadata - Author: [[Will Self]] - Full Title: My Idea of Fun - Category: #books - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: In the story, Mr. Broadhurst is a colorful character who engages with a younger boy, highlighting themes of discovery and deception. The boy reflects on troubling experiences and interactions, especially with a figure known as The Fat Controller. Throughout the narrative, there is a sense of confusion and complexity in their relationships and encounters. ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > This concept is eidetic memory and I am an eidetiker. Perhaps I was always meant to be one – whatever that means – or maybe it was part of the set-up, something to do with the way my destiny has been queered by you-know-who. But no matter, that is not the issue here. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtgfz002d5ay432a1axjqj01)) > Eidetic images are pictures in the head. They are internal images that have the full force of conventional vision, but which are realised solely in the mind of the eidetiker. For me, it is almost impossible to imagine how it could be otherwise than that when I conceive of, say, a philosopher, I can see that philosopher as surely as if he were lying on this table in front of me. He's on his side, the deep notch between his sagging belly and his hard hip for all the world like a pass through mountains to a happier valley. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtgfz3y1tc4kx86j9nw9nybp)) > Furthermore, if I look closely at this image of a philosopher that I have; I can see all his details, the stitching in his pullover, the ‘druff on his cuff, the very particular gleam of his spectacle frames. I can even rotate my philosopher, spin him with great rapidity through three hundred and sixty degrees in all three dimensions; and yet stay him stock still again, if I so choose, without disturbing so much as one hair of his beard. It matters not what I do with my philosopher; in my mind's eye he will retain his pictorial integrity, his notable variegation, his subtle interplay of parts and whole. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtgfz7an75cw0m7vxajtr11w)) > If this example seems contrived to you, why not try it with something a little less abstract than a philosopher, for example, the visage of the one you love most. Come now, there must be someone to whom you can ascribe such status? Why don't you summon them up, enjoy the charming singularity of their countenance. Now, what can you see? That their eyes are such-and-such colour, that they style their hair just so, that their skin has this very fine grain, quite like microscopic hide? I'll grant you all of that – but not all at once. What you've done with Little Love is to describe an outline for them and then fill it in, piecemeal, as required. As it is to the sympathy, so it is to the photography. You cannot tell me that, when you appreciated the hue of those sympatico eyes, you also managed to take in the raw triangle of the Loved One's tear ducts? And if you did, did you perchance notice if they had any rheum on them, any at all? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jtgfzc37ptn0ne8arky56g5t))