Member: inaudible

Hi, DA.

Okay, so I took your advice and read Harry Zohn's translation of The Storyteller. I am a bit skeptical of a couple of passages and I thought you might help me with your interpretation.

One of Benjamin's distinctions between the storyteller and the novelist that I think I understood was reducible to the difference between the malleability of the oral transmission over time and the flawless reproduction of written transmission over time. That makes sense. But it seems to me he is contradicting himself when he says "What differentiates the novel from other forms of prose literature is that it neither comes from oral tradition nor goes into it," (Section V) but then calls the Homeric epic, which is part of the oral tradition, “the novel in its earliest form” (Section XIII). Moreover, how do Leskov’s stories continue to be stories after publication?

Otherwise, many of the distinctions he makes between the novel and storytelling seem to me to apply to both. For example, in Section VII Benjamin claims the story about the Egyptian king Psammenitus reveals "the nature of true storytelling". Benjamin goes on in an unnecessarily metaphysical way to commend ambiguity, but wouldnt you agree that novels can be ambiguous as well? And against Section IV’s “defining the nature of every real story” I would claim novels can also provide counsel and be useful to human’s social affairs (The Jungle, Silent Spring, or Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

My amatuerish assessment is that Benjamin and his writings are part of a pessimistic age, where tens of millions died in wars, political purges and ethnic genocide; from those horrific events he drew the reasonable conclusion that his culture was becoming extinct, that the "communicability of experience is decreasing" and “storytelling is coming to an end“. Luckily, European civilization has drawn back from the abyss---storytelling still exists, people talk as much as ever---and Benjamin's concerns correspondingly seem less urgent.

I have Illuminations, and these three essays interest me:The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, The Image of Proust and Theses on the Philosophy of History. Have you read them?

posted by semckibbin at 3:53 pm (EST) on Jul 11, 2009

Good question, but I'll bet the musicians in your world would really think it neat.

How about something from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition?

posted by geneg at 12:07 pm (EST) on Jun 4, 2009

How about ordering your books as musical chords? The height of the book represents the note on the staff?

posted by geneg at 11:31 am (EST) on Jun 4, 2009

Hi, thanks for the interest! Oh, book-jealousy's a virtue, as we all know... I'm a very virtuous person myself.

posted by LolaWalser at 11:48 am (EST) on May 21, 2009

hey there, I noticed that you have a number of NYRB Classics in your collection, and thought you might be interested in joining the group on Librarything: http://www.librarything.com/groups/newyo.... Cheers!

posted by nyrbclassics at 9:34 am (EST) on Apr 18, 2009

Who else in Lexington has a copy of 38 Basic Joseki?

posted by esoteric at 10:10 am (EST) on Feb 24, 2009