Scan barcode
tvil's review
5.0
This book will likely not be appreciated by anyone unfamiliar with why the lucky stiff – or _why for short – as it is a farewell letter of sorts, but just in case someone who doesn’t know him wants to know more, I’ll give a short recap. It’s not a spoiler, but I’ll hide it behind a spoiler tag so people who know the story can skip it easily (or people who don't can read this great summary of _why's online life instead.
Other maintainers picked up the mantle of his projects (which was not always easy, as he had refused to write tests) and made mirrors with his writings, and the Ruby community moved on, a little poorer. We had lost one of our own, and we didn’t know why.
But then, in 2013, _why’s old website resurfaced, out of the blue. It published _why’s final piece of literature, an untitled and unordered set of pages. One of the maintainers put the pages in order and titled the work CLOSURE, as it seemed to attempt to convey the farewell _why never gave before his disappearance. This is that farewell letter.
I loved _why’s work, and I was incredibly sad when he disappeared. After a while, though, he drifted out of my life. Once in a while I’d wear the _why t-shirt I made in my late teens (“Addiction is like Pokémon! Let’s collect every cigarette ever!”), and I’d give a listen to the album In the Faxed Atmosphere by his band The Child Who Was a Keyhole. Mostly, however, I didn’t think of him much anymore. I also didn’t do much Ruby anymore, after I got a job as a Python programmer (yes, I have forgotten the face of my father).
This is why the publication of CLOSURE evidently flew under my radar. I didn’t know about it until yesterday, when I read through a Ruby blog. I wanted to read it right away; my heart was pumping. It felt like I had discovered a new dead sea scroll. I managed to wait until today, because I wanted to get to work and print out a physical copy, considering how it was first published by _why himself.
Now that CLOSURE has been put into context, what is there really to say about the book itself? Anyone who was a follower of _why will love it, and anyone who wasn’t won’t understand it. If you’re one of the latter, but is intrigued, read his other works, watch the talk I linked to over, google “why the lucky stiff” and read some blog posts about his disappearance and mystique, and if you’re still interested, read CLOSURE.
It’s part memoir, part philosophy on the ephemeral existence of computer programs and humans, part a treatise on identity and anonymity in today’s age. The book’s format reminds me of [b:House of Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403889034s/24800.jpg|856555]. It consists of almost 100 pages that were published in a public printer queue, which had to be assembled manually; there are drawings, maps, handwritten pages, typewritten pages, stories, and much more.
Although _why states in his book, which came out in 2013, that he spent about a year writing it, one part of it refers to one of his last tweets before he deleted all his social media accounts in 2009. Clearly, it’s something he’s been thinking about for a while. He heavily implies that after reading all of [a:Franz Kafka|5223|Franz Kafka|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1412460277p2/5223.jpg]’s works, he was done as _why. (Interestingly enough, he didn’t read Kafka’s letters, only his fiction: “(Don’t care who he was outside of his own imagination.)”) None of _why’s computer programs would live as long as Kafka’s novels, even though Kafka himself wanted them all burned after his death. If Kafka’s works were written on a now-defunct computer, he wouldn’t even have to burn them, says the tweet and the book. Kafka made sure his works would live forever by ordering them to be burned, says _why. Kafka orchestrated his own legacy, as _why orchestrated his. (You can read more thoughts about this, and the rest of the book, in this eloquent blog post, “The CLOSURE Companion”, and also this blog post.)
Other parts of the book make it seem like _why just deleted himself one day, and now later looks for a way to make his self-imposed exile into art. Like the hand-written pages talking about how he believes people expect the book to be a manifesto about why he did it and how he now lives his life. He offers no such manifesto, but explains how free he felt after he’d done it. It reminds me of how acquaintances have spoken about deleting their Facebook account, which I suppose is basically what _why did, just on a larger scale. He makes it sound as low-scale as deleting your Facebook account.
We also get _why’s typewritten accounts on what he did right around the time he deleted his persona off the internet: He went to the dentist, and he also had lunch with a friend, and they talked about movies. It’s boring and mundane, which _why himself admits in scrawlings in the margins. He has also written that we basically shouldn’t take his opinions as gospel, for they are worthless. Perhaps a commentary on the mythical status he has in the Ruby community? (I’m reminded of this exchange from Life of Brian: Brian: “I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!” Girl: “Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.”)
_why constructs a meta-narrative about his own disappearance. He claims that before and after he expunged his _why identity, he researched “pseudonymity” and “info-suicide”; he reproduces an e-mail exchange with an expert on the former, and also recalls an episode of Oprah where she revealed the identities of a few persons who had done the latter, who as they are unmasked commit literal suicide – an interesting metaphor to how the online identity of _why commited suicide after an (anonymous!) person in the Ruby community revealed _why’s true identity in a blog post. Both accounts are completely fictitious, of course.
He admits in a passage that he does not enjoy reading [a:David Foster Wallace|4339|David Foster Wallace|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1381115424p2/4339.jpg], an author I think he resembles in his writing. The reason, he says, is that he feels DFW’s personality is reflected in all his characters, and that the only appeal of that would be to get into the mind of the author. But what else is this book but a way to get into _why’s mind after years of absence?
In another chapter he stages his own real-life disappearance, presumably right after having deleted all his online content, by jumping off a ferry and wading ashore on an island with a suitcase full of cash and necessary belongings. Here he meets a man, and presents himself as “why the lucky stiff”. The man insists on wanting to know _why’s real name, but _why refuses, stating “You don’t need it.” They argue a bit: The man says it doesn’t mean anything to hide his identity, but _why says it doesn’t mean anything to reveal it. The man tries to restrain _why and force him to reveal his true name. The metaphor is obvious in this chapter as in many others. In its form this is an oblique book, but its contents are often explicit.
In the last chapter, on an island _why encounters a tribe of French-speaking people dressed as Steve Jobs. This part of the book is the most absurd, and I’m not sure what it means yet. They have three fingers on each hand, though, and I noticed that therefore they use a senary (base 6) numeral system (the number seven was called “onze”). This is reflected in six-note music they played on piccolos, where songs started with the note C# (like the language) and combinations of notes create words and eventually statements and expressions, like mathematical logic or a programming language. The piccolo flutes are also used as tools, like programs. Songs played on the flute can teach other people how to make the flute. Metaprogramming. The Jobsian men also age very quickly, like software (or programmers themselves?) becomes outdated and is replaced in the cycle of code. And _why is assimilated into this tribe, he also ages rapidly, perhaps he is chewed up and spit out by the software industry, worn out, burned out. And then he dies.
Spoiler
_why was an anonymous and mythical figure in the Ruby community. He was a playful guy who wrote a lot of interesting libraries, made some stuff for teaching kids how to code (he wrote [b:Nobody Knows Shoes|2168170|Nobody Knows Shoes|Why The Lucky Stiff|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1194837844s/2168170.jpg|2173700] and gave a talk about his project Hackety Hack), and published a post-modern Ruby guide which was part surreal graphic novel ([b:Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby|463882|Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby|Why The Lucky Stiff|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174970667s/463882.jpg|450479]). (Perhaps more obscurely, it was _why who coined the term "tumblelog" for describing microblogs, the term that gave the website tumblr its name.) He was a well-loved and funny person, a creative genius who didn’t operate under his own name, although it was apparently a well-known secret in the community. Then, in 2009, he commited “info-suicide”: He deleted his website and Twitter account, and orphaned his software projects. Although it hasn’t been confirmed, it is likely that this happened at least in part because _why’s identity was revealed in a blog post.Other maintainers picked up the mantle of his projects (which was not always easy, as he had refused to write tests) and made mirrors with his writings, and the Ruby community moved on, a little poorer. We had lost one of our own, and we didn’t know why.
But then, in 2013, _why’s old website resurfaced, out of the blue. It published _why’s final piece of literature, an untitled and unordered set of pages. One of the maintainers put the pages in order and titled the work CLOSURE, as it seemed to attempt to convey the farewell _why never gave before his disappearance. This is that farewell letter.
I loved _why’s work, and I was incredibly sad when he disappeared. After a while, though, he drifted out of my life. Once in a while I’d wear the _why t-shirt I made in my late teens (“Addiction is like Pokémon! Let’s collect every cigarette ever!”), and I’d give a listen to the album In the Faxed Atmosphere by his band The Child Who Was a Keyhole. Mostly, however, I didn’t think of him much anymore. I also didn’t do much Ruby anymore, after I got a job as a Python programmer (yes, I have forgotten the face of my father).
This is why the publication of CLOSURE evidently flew under my radar. I didn’t know about it until yesterday, when I read through a Ruby blog. I wanted to read it right away; my heart was pumping. It felt like I had discovered a new dead sea scroll. I managed to wait until today, because I wanted to get to work and print out a physical copy, considering how it was first published by _why himself.
Now that CLOSURE has been put into context, what is there really to say about the book itself? Anyone who was a follower of _why will love it, and anyone who wasn’t won’t understand it. If you’re one of the latter, but is intrigued, read his other works, watch the talk I linked to over, google “why the lucky stiff” and read some blog posts about his disappearance and mystique, and if you’re still interested, read CLOSURE.
It’s part memoir, part philosophy on the ephemeral existence of computer programs and humans, part a treatise on identity and anonymity in today’s age. The book’s format reminds me of [b:House of Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403889034s/24800.jpg|856555]. It consists of almost 100 pages that were published in a public printer queue, which had to be assembled manually; there are drawings, maps, handwritten pages, typewritten pages, stories, and much more.
Although _why states in his book, which came out in 2013, that he spent about a year writing it, one part of it refers to one of his last tweets before he deleted all his social media accounts in 2009. Clearly, it’s something he’s been thinking about for a while. He heavily implies that after reading all of [a:Franz Kafka|5223|Franz Kafka|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1412460277p2/5223.jpg]’s works, he was done as _why. (Interestingly enough, he didn’t read Kafka’s letters, only his fiction: “(Don’t care who he was outside of his own imagination.)”) None of _why’s computer programs would live as long as Kafka’s novels, even though Kafka himself wanted them all burned after his death. If Kafka’s works were written on a now-defunct computer, he wouldn’t even have to burn them, says the tweet and the book. Kafka made sure his works would live forever by ordering them to be burned, says _why. Kafka orchestrated his own legacy, as _why orchestrated his. (You can read more thoughts about this, and the rest of the book, in this eloquent blog post, “The CLOSURE Companion”, and also this blog post.)
Other parts of the book make it seem like _why just deleted himself one day, and now later looks for a way to make his self-imposed exile into art. Like the hand-written pages talking about how he believes people expect the book to be a manifesto about why he did it and how he now lives his life. He offers no such manifesto, but explains how free he felt after he’d done it. It reminds me of how acquaintances have spoken about deleting their Facebook account, which I suppose is basically what _why did, just on a larger scale. He makes it sound as low-scale as deleting your Facebook account.
We also get _why’s typewritten accounts on what he did right around the time he deleted his persona off the internet: He went to the dentist, and he also had lunch with a friend, and they talked about movies. It’s boring and mundane, which _why himself admits in scrawlings in the margins. He has also written that we basically shouldn’t take his opinions as gospel, for they are worthless. Perhaps a commentary on the mythical status he has in the Ruby community? (I’m reminded of this exchange from Life of Brian: Brian: “I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!” Girl: “Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.”)
_why constructs a meta-narrative about his own disappearance. He claims that before and after he expunged his _why identity, he researched “pseudonymity” and “info-suicide”; he reproduces an e-mail exchange with an expert on the former, and also recalls an episode of Oprah where she revealed the identities of a few persons who had done the latter, who as they are unmasked commit literal suicide – an interesting metaphor to how the online identity of _why commited suicide after an (anonymous!) person in the Ruby community revealed _why’s true identity in a blog post. Both accounts are completely fictitious, of course.
He admits in a passage that he does not enjoy reading [a:David Foster Wallace|4339|David Foster Wallace|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1381115424p2/4339.jpg], an author I think he resembles in his writing. The reason, he says, is that he feels DFW’s personality is reflected in all his characters, and that the only appeal of that would be to get into the mind of the author. But what else is this book but a way to get into _why’s mind after years of absence?
In another chapter he stages his own real-life disappearance, presumably right after having deleted all his online content, by jumping off a ferry and wading ashore on an island with a suitcase full of cash and necessary belongings. Here he meets a man, and presents himself as “why the lucky stiff”. The man insists on wanting to know _why’s real name, but _why refuses, stating “You don’t need it.” They argue a bit: The man says it doesn’t mean anything to hide his identity, but _why says it doesn’t mean anything to reveal it. The man tries to restrain _why and force him to reveal his true name. The metaphor is obvious in this chapter as in many others. In its form this is an oblique book, but its contents are often explicit.
In the last chapter, on an island _why encounters a tribe of French-speaking people dressed as Steve Jobs. This part of the book is the most absurd, and I’m not sure what it means yet. They have three fingers on each hand, though, and I noticed that therefore they use a senary (base 6) numeral system (the number seven was called “onze”). This is reflected in six-note music they played on piccolos, where songs started with the note C# (like the language) and combinations of notes create words and eventually statements and expressions, like mathematical logic or a programming language. The piccolo flutes are also used as tools, like programs. Songs played on the flute can teach other people how to make the flute. Metaprogramming. The Jobsian men also age very quickly, like software (or programmers themselves?) becomes outdated and is replaced in the cycle of code. And _why is assimilated into this tribe, he also ages rapidly, perhaps he is chewed up and spit out by the software industry, worn out, burned out. And then he dies.
More...