What is class brains, Joan Didion? And game coding homework done Author. Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps) Abstract. I can only see part of the essayist Joan Didion's response to Woody Allen from The New York Review of Books, but it is enough. She writes, "The characters in Manhattan and Annie Hall and Interiors are, with one exception, presented as adults, as sentient men and women in the most productive years of their lives, but their concerns and conversations are those of clever children, 'class brains,' acting out a yearbook fantasy of adult life." What is this concept of class brains? I am not familiar with it. I propose it comes from a girls college: "Don't marry this type: they are just class brains. Best in their high school, but it is not a school for the highest social class, and the social class above always know how to beat that type. They have seen so many and worked out the strategies. You will end up having a very frustrating life." It is perhaps convenient for foreign speakers to replace "social class" with "caste" in this explanation. Draft version: version 2 (30th June 2026; v1, 17th December 2025) How to say anything worthwhile that is not in the abstract? I shall try. What happens if you have an online magazine and you show a glimpse of any article and want to encourage readers to sign up or pay for more? And the glimpse is the beginning? You get writers who want large audiences and put their best material first. In The New York Review of Books, I can see part of the essayist Joan Didion's reaction to Woody Allen films, but not all of it. But the part I can see is very worth reading. But she wrote "long before" the Internet. She might have thought: "I put the flashy stuff first because I need to get attention fast or I won't have a chance." This strategy pre-dates the Internet by many years, centuries even. Or she might have thought: I shall write like someone who does not have the unfair advantages of insider social network and coded signals. Or she (or an advisor?) might have thought: "Technology is coming, when you can instantly make a document available to millions around the world, but there need to be signals of quality still, and what better system than publishing in a prestigious magazine and surely our profiteering magazines will react by only allowing readers a mere glimpse of an article opening." For someone not at significant disadvantage and not especially moral, the advisory system is crucial?! Anyway, what does DIdion say? She writes: "The characters in Manhattan and Annie Hall and Interiors are, with one exception, presented as adults, as sentient men and women in the most productive years of their lives, but their concerns and conversations are those of clever children, "class brains," acting out a yearbook fantasy of adult life." Class brains? What is that? I now quote from my abstract above. I propose it comes from a girls college: "Don't marry this type: they are merely class brains. Best in their high school, but it is not a school for the highest social class, and the social class above always know how to beat that type. They have seen so many and worked out the strategies. You will end up having a very frustrating life." But isn't the Diane Keaton character in Annie Hall meant to be not so bright? Woody Allen sends her for courses. "If you understood the nature of her high school, you would realize that she is the best in her class!" I cynically imagine that this woman thinks: "When I see a Woody Allen type, I soon find someone of a higher social class but less natural talent perhaps, an Ivy League film professor who is less talented as a film commentator say, because the tradition they are part of has solved more problems and this ambitious comedian will encounter these problems and solve them late at best! The solutions are in the professor's very upbringing." (There is a scene in which Allen, a comedian, appears better at film analysis than his staid rival.) If you watch a sport, you have concepts of different kinds of player. In football (soccer), this is a cute cunning player: he is small, looks weak even, but passes the ball so well - the team does not function without him. One of my worries as a researcher is that some approach research rather like sport (others approach it more like military campaign, a difference which may not be crucial in this context) and have a whole book of types. What are these types? I don't know. Joan Didion looks at these two characters and applies a type concept: class brains! "Woody Allen walking past Columbia: there goes class brains." Is she represented in the Woody Allen film as a skeptic about love! Appendix There is a 1 in 2 chance that what you type will appear on the screen with this code. You can change what you have to type (line 20), but remember to change the length too (line 370). "Okay you have your game, but I have my own games, 3d games, and you have to respect me," someone says. (By the way, I later called this game Hysterkey. Good simple game concept, I feel.) 10 PRINT "Type: hello, how are you. Press / to give up" 20 LET W = "hello, how are you" 30 LET N = 0 40 LET K = GETCHAR() 50 IF K = "" THEN GOTO 40 60 IF K = "/" THEN GOTO 400 70 LET X = RAND(2) 80 IF X >1 THEN GOTO 300 90 GOTO 40 300 PRINT K; 310 LET C = MID(W,N,1) 320 IF C = K THEN GOTO 360 330 PRINT 340 PRINT "You failed. Start again." 350 GOTO 10 360 LET N = N + 1 370 IF N < 18 THEN GOTO 40 380 PRINT "You win." 400 PRINT "Bye then." 410 END References Allen, Woody. (director) 1977. Annie Hall, United Artists. Didion, Joan. 1979. Letter from 'Manhattan'. The New York Review of Books. August 16th 1979. Available at: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/08/16/letter-from-manhattan Edward, Terence Rajivan. 2026. Hysterkey - random letters. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWHcXGLGU6U/ Strom, Nikko. QuiteBASIC. At: https://www.quitebasic.com// Suzanne Vega. 2000. Suzanne Vega - Luka. Available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZt7J0iaUD0 (What YouTube is suddenly suggesting to me - never heard this song before.)