I completely loved Cooperson's talk! It was so well structured/was clearly thought out in the level of precision Cooperson seems to apply to everything he does. Hearing him talk about the book, he was so self-effacing that he almost made the book seem like a feasible project anyone with the right connections could have undertaken -- but revisiting the amount of work and ingenious that had to go in to writing convincingly in 50 different styles, imitating some of the most revered authors in the world, that's so clearly also not the case -- he really made it sound like 2 years could be a sufficient amount of time for most people to learn so much as he did, and his ability to argue as convincingly as he did is a feat in and of itself. To me, hearing about the mechanics of how the book came together really only exaggerated the impressiveness of it. It was also just really striking to hear him talk about the utter sacrifice he had to make in publishing it -- it seems like that's a factor for any published piece of writing, but with the level of time, effort, and thought he had to put into this absolute behemoth of a piece, you just know how much of a pain it had to be to him to call it quits and actually publish -- that also seemed encouraging -- to see, that is, someone successfully continuing on after cutting themself off from a project of that grandeur. It also seemed like a partial-answer he had for when you know it's time to publish something being when you're most completely entrenched in it, and basically fed up with yourself -- essentially, when you know you've exhausted yourself (as he said, he doesn't think he can translate any more arabic, or translate arabic straight on).
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