Besides Group Reads, What are Salonistas Reading in May?

I'd been hesitant in the past as a dictator to go to the ubiquitous "What are We Reading" thread that you see so often in other groups, but now that I'm a commoner, proud member of the participating proletariat, an ordinary average guy, I'd like to hear what all you other little peuple like me are reading besides our group reads. I'd especially like to hear from those who have reading threads outside le salon, as I rarely have time to venture outside, and definitely from lurkers and anybody who normally wouldn't post.

Briefly, I've just begun Troubles by J.G. Farrell.

Merely list, dish at length, or however you like.

Imma be finishing Taran Wanderer and The High King by Lloyd Alexander in the next coupla days; finding time to read through Condillac's Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge and a pile of about six other books on eighteenth-century thought on language that I want to let percolate while I'm away starting May 20 and hopefully gestate and give birth to a thesis, obviating any work on my part; hopefully also reading the rest of Awesome Anthologies and A History of Western Society, currently my bedtime and breakfast books respectively; and if all that gets done, getting on to 2666 and Go Down, Moses for Le Salon and LS du Faulkner, respectively. I also have The Open: Man and Animal to read for my theory group, and then some books to pick our for my weeks away. Suggestions are welcome, btw: I've been thinking of trying to pick out at least one book connected to every country I'll be in, except that I don't quite know where all those places will be yet, which makes that kind of impossible ... under all circumstances I will be bringing Pamuk's Snow (Turkey), Joseph Roth's Radetzky March (Austria), something by Graham Greene (England), and Rick Harsch's Driftless Zone, since I will be staying with the author in Slovenia! Other places we may end up include France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and all over the Balkans. Summer! Eurail!

Max in der Schwitzer

I have decided to educate myself on Literary Theory and literary Criticism. This stuff really interest me. ( People think I am crazy ). The first step was to find a comprehensive studybook to kick off. I found that in Patricia Waugh's Oxford guide to Lit Theory and Criticism. 600 pages chopped up in 37 chapters starting with Plato's Memesis up to eco criticism.

Thinking of it, I could put my notes of each chapter on a reading thread here in Le Salon and on my blog

I am presently finishing Oscar Wilde's bio by Ellmann, ( great ! ) and preparing myself for Forster's Passage to India. Especially Frank Kermode has very intelligent things to say about Forster and there are several reviews about Forster which made exciting reading.

I am also going back to Pushkin and ETA Hoffman, but these books will probably travel with me to Greece this summer.

MODELS FOR DETERMINATION OF BALLAST WATER DISCHARGES IN THE PORT OF GDYNIA

AIS ON FAST RESCUE BOATS –
AN EFFECTIVE AID FOR RESPONDING TO OIL SPILLS

THE EFFECT OF THE BORA ON TRAFFIC IN VIPAVSKA DOLINA

GUIDEBOOK TO KOPER

The Need for Continuity in Foreign Language Teaching/Learning: The Case of Grammar for Business Purposes in Tertiary Business English Contexts

Preliminary Measurements of the Geomagnetic Field Variations in Slovenia

Wow Ricky, you are EL CAPITANO here !

"THE EFFECT OF THE BORA ON TRAFFIC IN VIPAVSKA DOLINA" sounds absolute exciting !

>5 RickHarsch:
The Need for Continuity in Foreign Language Teaching/Learning: The Case of Grammar for Business Purposes in Tertiary Business English Contexts

Golly. Rick, in a nutshell, (50 words max) what's their argument?

>4 Macumbeira:
Mac, I would love it if you would start a theory thread. I've already anticipated you a little bit with my latest post on my reading thread.

new paper arrived today: Optimization of upwind sailing applying a bending rudder device

> 5: brilliant fascinating stuff: when learning a foreign language it's best to keep going rather than take a year off. Grammar matters because it is a part of language.

hahah! I thought it would be something banal like that. Poor bugger. I don't envy you.

I just finished a little, yellowed, tattered, 1955 Crofts Classics copy of The Communist Manifesto. It was part of my "let's read every book in The New Lifetime Reading Plan" fantasy.

a bending rudder ???? horror of horrors

> 7 saved your post to look it up later,
theory there will be, 37 chapters in 37 weeks ...

2> Smartini, shall I send to your parent's address The Driftless Zone? or have you already obtained a copy. Let me know. Happy to.

10> never got around to reading that. Confession: never read The Declaration of Independence in its entirety either.

I tend to sample stuff -- intros, forewords, afterwords, prefaces, practically every day, along with whatever book I'm reading.

One from last night was the Kenneth Rexroth introduction (circa 1960-ish) to The Green Child. Pretty high praise for a relatively unknown, forgotten masterpiece:

"Since Ulysses, if you accept Ulysses as a great novel, there have been very few really great novels in English ... Ford Madox Ford's Tietjens series, really one novel; some of Sherwood Anderson; the unfinished promise of William Carlos Williams' First Act; a few others. The Green Child is fully the equal of any of these, although it is of a rather more special kind. Graham Greene speaks of it as surcharged with a sense of glory -- gloire --that special lustre and effulgence which Aquinas marks out as the sign manifest of great works of art. Certainly The Green Child has it -- an unearthly, hypnotic radiance."

We'll see!

>12 absurdeist: Enrique, this is a little weird, but why don't I get my copy signed and then send it to you, and you can send your copy to me? (at my parents': 729 Wilson Street, Victoria BC, V9A 3H4). That way I can divest myself of it in Europe and still have a copy when I get back, and I don't have to carry two ....

I'm reading Farewell, My Only One by Antoine Audouard, translated by Euan Cameron. It is interesting. Heloise and Abelard have just had their first encounter. This is fiction, of course.

Mac, #4, I once had a graduate professor (Dr. Richard Perl, for those of you familiar with his work with some online educational outfit) tell me that Lessing's Laocoon creates nineteen different schools of art criticism. I recall it was a very interesting read.

Hi, everybody. Been too busy to post a lot lately, but this I can do:

I have two continuing reads: Au Chateau d'Argol, with which you are familiar. I read a little chunk every 3 or 4 days. The other is Bleak House.

Recently finished Pride and Prejudice and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (so deliciously creepy). Currently reading Wolf Hall, a lovely bit of Henry VIII from Thomas Cromwell's pov mostly; an early review, Playdate, which is underwhelming so far; Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and A Mind to Murder by PD James, my new favorite mystery author. Zen Flesh Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings.

I think that's it. And, oh! excitement! I will be receiving an Early Review of Light of My Life: Love, Time and Memory in Nabokov's Lolita. From "Product Description":

This critical work examines the enduring themes of Lolita and places the novel in its proper biographical, social, cultural and historical contexts. Of particular interest are questions of love in all of its manifestations, the central problem of time in the book, and memory as it is explored in fictional memoir or, in this case, the central protagonist's "confession."

I also just read The Reading List: Contemporary Fiction: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works of 110 Authors, but the 1998 version. Very useful.

ooooooh another list! yay!

I think 2666 will take up most of the month of May, but if I finish it, I have plans to read three more "big" books this summer:

Paradiso by José Lezama Lima
Yo el supremo (I, the Supreme) by Augusto Roa Bastos
Ulysses by James Joyce

I once owned a copy of Paradiso and lost it on public transportation after reading the first fifty pages. I recently bought it again, and I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy it immensely. I have a friend who shares my obsession with all things Paraguay (especially 19th century Paraguay), and he keeps telling me I absolutely must read Roa Bastos's novel, which delves into the mind of former dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia. And Ulysses? I can't not read it any longer.

I'm gonna pretty much stick to Bolaño this month, although I do have Marcel Schwob's Vies imaginaires at home and have been reading it from time to time. Also, I just finished Jean Genet's Journal du voleur and really enjoyed it.

As a lover of the grotesque, I've been dipping into Denis Johnson's Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond and slowly making my way through Jacque Barzun's cultural history From Dawn to Decadence.

Yeah, Matt! Congrats in advance, for your choice of James Joyce!

Just remember, you must ignore all Salonista criticisms of this great work. They know nothing.

They also tend to be remarkably ignorant of this young lady:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWGYTHK3E30

I find myself piddling around with lots of things.

Recently reread Jane Eyre. Dip into occasionaly into collections by Ruben Dario and Emerson, The Norton Book of Science Fiction, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Have several magazines and journals going usually - Southern Review, NY Magazine, Dwell, Oxford American, McSweeny's. Have a test coming up in the fall that I seriously need to start studying for so I've got an untouched book for that. Have a travel guide for Tetons/Yellowstone next to the couch right now as well - trying to take a trip out there this summer.

Reading thread's here.

I dunno whether to post here or not, cos there's my reading thread and all. But I'm feeling left out.

The so-called serious work I'm reading in May is The Life and Adventures of the Tomcat Murr.
I'm trying to finish Voice from the Attic by Robertson Davies - it's overdue at the library, and I'd already renewed it once.
Also still in the middle of Mariana by Monica Dickens.

Currently reading The Art of Memory by Frances Yates in addition to two Salon group reads. This is part of my ongoing pursuit of pagan threads that survived in the Christian West through the middle ages and into the Renaissance, and beyond, as it turns out. Some of you know I just finished The Esoteric origins of the American Renaissance, which I picked because of the chapter on Melville but that word "esoteric" in the title was tantalizing in view of my current proclivities. Who knew the extent of esoteric influences in American literary history? I certainly didn't. If you are interested you can see where I've been so far this year readingwise in my thread in Club Read 2011. The Yates is about all I can handle until I make my way through 2666. But my TBR . . . ugh, I don't want to think about it.

23: Check out Gary Lachman. He's got an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. He's not a flake. And, he endnotes the source material!

Lachman is an old rockandroller.

23 - I've been at that sort of things for 30 years or so and am none the wiser. It never ends. Very interesting, though.

>24 slickdpdx: - Never heard of Lachman. Have made a note.

>25 Porius: - Since I've started with a more or less clean slate and I've been going back to the ancient beginnings, I have to say I've learned quite a lot. It's fascinating enough to keep me going. I've got a stack of books sitting here to read along the lines of The Survival of the Pagan Gods by Jean Seznec and The Mirror of the Gods by Malcolm Bull. Hopefully, by June . . .

Just finished Arcadia after having seen the recent Broadway revival of that show. Also just finished the newly published Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives, which is leading me to The Aspern Papers and, possibly to Frankenstein, which I can't believe I've yet to read.

The group read of Confidence-Man is temporarily on hold and during the lull I'm reading a bit from The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance so wonderfully reviewed by Poquette and American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman.

I'm also rereading a slew of plays, having been spurred on by the old "Burt Drama 100" thread.

ETA Yikes. The touchstones are really a mess.

I decided to go after some of those wonderful National Geographic Exploration titles from a recent Salon thread. Currently reading A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Whoever knew northern Afghanistan could be so droll.

Finished Acts of worship:seven stories, presently reading the case of comrade Tulayev. Went to the bookshop to buy my brother a b'day present but couldn't resist also buying the makioka sisters, england made me and the malayan trilogy. Other library books on the pile: the guermantes way, in praise of shadows, au bonheur des dames

my first message here and I'm very impressed by this touchstone thingy!

Welcome henkmet! I've done virtually no reading of Japanese literature, one of my many literature gaps. Looks as though you could make some great suggestions.

A gap for me as well. I've heard Haruki Murakami is excellent. Have you read any of his?

Murakami was pretty much my entry into Japanese lit (The wind-up bird chronicle). I read a few more of him, then mostly went by what's available in the library. I was quite excited to discover last Sunday that Tuttle is printing many translated novels and available in my local (hmm, 80 km drive) Borders.

Murakami is relatively easy to read for westerners (in my opinion) because he is quite westernised. Most of the writers that are translated in English have some ties or other with Europe or the US, but their themes are still more 'Japanese' (whatever that may be). You can probably pick up anything with confidence as I think only the good stuff got translated.

Confidence? You say we must have Confidence? Bah humbug. Confidence is a dirty word in these parts, fella.

Oh, by the way, welcome to Le Salon.

Reading Forster and enjoying it

Reading the entire Krazy Kat & Ignatz mouse comics republished by Fantagraphics in the past decade. A transcendental experience.

Mishima is an alluring and strange figure; a description eludes me but i've nonetheless read seven or more of his novels

34. I'm sorry. Maybe there's a pill you can take for that.

Just finished a phenomenal book called The War of Art. Considering its relevance it may be the best book I've read in the last ten years. Clear, to the point, cuts through the bullshit of why one is not writing or not doing whatever it is that one is called to do. It was like a brain cleaning.

Also started Housekeeping and wondering why it took me so long to pick up this subtle gem.

why one is not writing or not doing whatever it is that one is called to do.

AND??? You can't just leave a cliffhanger like that!

Well, it's all about the force called Resistance, the thing that keeps us from doing the thing or things most important to us. He describes Resistance's methods, tools and motives. He states that everyday he fights a war against Resistance; he steels himself for it everyday. He makes it clear what Resistance is robbing us of. And he does it in a way that is pretty hard to argue with. After he gets thru unmasking and de-balling Resistance, he moves on to why it's so important to overcome it. The thing that Resistance blocks is the thing that is most vital to our creative selves: output, movement. He de-glamorizes the writing life and and delineates the professional from the amateur, the artistic self from the everyday personal self. And then he talks about ways to approach and interact with the Muse.

It hit me like a fist to my stomach, a much needed one.

CG, that sounds like just what I've been needing to read. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

No problem. I'm wary of saying a book is life-changing, cuz our lives are all different, but I can say that for myself. I can no longer do the rationalizations and other stuff without self-knowledge. And I'm more optimistic that if I enter the tunnel, there is light and it will be worthwhile to make the fight.

I liked it b/c it was short and not complex and the message wasn't hidden in a thousand other words.

37 - Hmm...might check that out. Especially considering that I'm stuck with the National Green Building Standard as my current reading. Bleh.

Not reading, but listening to Ian McKellen read excerpts from Wordworth's The Prelude on BBC Radio Four (from the 1805 version as far as I can tell):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010xy3s/Classic_Serial_The_Prelude_Episode...

Finished Part One and will listen to Part Two later this evening. Really well produced. Lovely sound design and music. I felt as though as I were a time traveller. Yes, I'm hopelessly old-fashioned in some respects. Anyway, it will be two hours well spent.

What a treasure! Thanks, Thea!

A treasure indeed.

Fabulous!

I'm excited about a book that I just got and started reading: Les Liaisons dangereuses. I'm excited b/c it has pictures! Illustrations, and stills from theatre and film adaptations. Also, b/c I've never read it in French and it's much better that way!

Citygirl,

What's the edition. I would like to have it.

Here it is. It is small.

ETA: In case that link doesn't take you where you need to go, it is a 1989 Pocket, from Paris, ISBN: 2-266-03071-x.

I am reading MICHELANGELO'S NOSE. And for amusement CAMOMILE LAWN by Mary Wesley. A most interesting life. She died in Devon in 2002 if memory serves.

I read Les Liaisons for the first time a couple of years ago. Surprisingly, I had never seen either of the derivative movies. It made my blood run cold to think that people could behave as they did. I suppose anything is possible. I've seen both movies since and they seem relatively tame compared with the book, which is very well written, IMHO. Would like to read it in French, too. Maybe some day . . .

The movies are what turned me on to the book. I can't help but side with Merteuil and Valmont. Such a shame the way it ends. Are there no happy endings for the magnificently wicked?

Because I am old, and a dog, and on the porch, I decided to read some light adventure fare. I polished off Three Men in a Raft which is about 3 kids (ie, men considerably under 30) who follow the Amazon from a Peruvian coastal mountain tributary all the way to the Atlantic. Requisite poor rafting skills, inadequate planning, inadequate funds. Requisite diseases (fungal, insect, GI), getting shot at by Shining Path rebels, getting stopped by incredulous Peruvian and Brazilian authorities. Great stuff.

Besides Wretched of the Earth I am reading a compilation of cat-related fairy tales. It's kind of interesting because it showcases different retellings of the same basic story, e.g., the five or six different versions of the Puss in Boots story.

I am also reading this horrible thing on my Nook, written obviously early 20th century, very flowery writing, The Afterglow (hope the touchstone works - it's by George Allan England). It's about this couple in some kind of post-apocalyptic world, who are looking for remnants of the pre-apocalyptic civilization. It's like a train wreck so I keep reading on. I just looked the guy up on Wiki and there's a very short article but apparently he was an early writer of science fiction who died in 1937. And the book I am reading is the third of a trilogy, which would explain how abruptly and weirdly it started.

Now about halfway through The Art of Memory by Frances Yates. Have begun Walter Benjamin's Illuminations, and am refreshing my memory of The Discarded Image because Barry is reading it now. I've read it twice in the past and find that something new resonates every time I pick it up.

Will be very curious to hear your thoughts, Poquette, on the Walter Benjamin. I've been this close several times to grabbing that book.

Besides Porius, of course, I've just begun Christopher's Ghosts by Charles McCarry.

I am about half way through The discarded image and after a slow start I am beginning to enjoy it. It is certainly one to re-read as I am not sure I am getting everything from it this time. I am also reading England made me by Graham Greene.

I just finished The Anatomy of Melancholy, which I started once last year, but other things got in the way. Having read Tristram Shandy for university purposes, I could see where Sterne got the idea for those absurd and bogus references. I actually enjoyed The Anatomy more, because it doesn't have Sterne's sometime forced humour, but it can still be funny.

I also finished re-reading Titus Groan, but on seeing that new editions of the Peake's books are coming out in June, I decided to wait before I read the rest of the so-called trilogy.

Congrats on completing The Anatomy of Melancholy first page to last. You just might be the first person in this group to have ever done so. Did you have a game plan of attack for that book?

And welcome, btw, to the Salon!

Yes, welcome dmsteyn! Sorry if I missed giving you a "hello" at the official welcome.

I tended to read it a section at a time. But I did cheat a little: the notes at the back of the New York Review of Books edition are nearly all in latin, which I, how shall you say, non comprehendo.

Thanks for the welcome EnriqueFreeque! And theaelizabet!

Hello dms, hope you don't have those soccer horns blowing, whew!

Vuvuzelas? I hate those things! It's a shame that those things seem to be the only thing people remember about South Africa... We've had two Nobel (Literature) laureates, although I only think one of them deserved it.

No I remember Frew McMillan, two hands off both sides. A doubles specialist. And his partner Bob Hewitt. And the speedy Johan Kriek. See we remember some S. Africans. Not as well as Winston Churchill does but I'm only 62. I'll bet you don't remember Delina 'Linky' Boshoff

You've got me there. As far as SA tennis players go, I remember Wayne Ferreira from my misspent youth in front of the television.

Meant to say welcome, dmsteyn. Looked at your profile, and you have a lot of common interests with members of this group.

Hi, nice to meet you dmsteyn! That Melancholy looks like quite a handful (mind-ful?).

Hi, citygirl! It isn't that bad - if you've compare it to Ulysses or GASP! Finnegans Wake. The only mind-ful things about it are the references to scholastic writers which you can probably only find in the Bodleian library (Burton - Robert, not Richard - used to study there).

Dewald,

I've this fantasy that I am going to read Rabelais, then Robert Burton, then Laurence Sterne.

After eons, I'd finished only the first of this proto-Joycean trilogy.

Some day.

As for now, I noted that virtually the only thing on TV last night was "Jersey Shore", so naturally, instead, I started reading Medea.

yeah, dewald, mind if I call you dewey? Like Dewey Decimal :), I read about fourteen pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and decided that i'm not...mature, masochistic, smart, Irish enough...quite ready for Joyce.

And Catholic, and male, and academic, and esoteric, and...

As for our newest friend from Pretoria, I like DMS. It's got a nice Compton gangsta sound to it.

Oh girl, I really don't mean to defend James Joyce, but may I inquire (pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?) -- or rather, may I ask -- when you attempted The Portrait? If you'd said that about Ulysses I hear you loud and clear, I'm with you, but as much as I loathe the experience of U., oh how I loved The Portrait. We read it here collectively (if not informally, not an official group read, back in Jan. & Feb. of '09 just prior to our attempted ascent of the supposed Mt. Everest of World Lit.,) and it was, surprisingly, for me, a real pleasure. Should you ever decide to give Joyce another chance, by Jove so will I!

Dewey and DMS are both fine. Some of my English friends have taken to calling me Default Stain, as it is, phonetically, similar to the Afrikaans/Dutch pronunciation of my name. :-/

I had to read both The Portrait and Ulysses for university, because my lecturer, Prof Wessels, is Joyce-obsessed.

He told is quite a few anecdotes about his time at Oxford, studying Joyce. For instance, he once met Richard Ellmann while he was giving a lecture in Oxford, and my Prof Wessels told Ellmann that Joyce actually mentions my professor's hometown of Bloemfontein at least twice in Ulysses (I think at the end during Molly's stream-of-consciousness monologue). Well, Ellmann was very impressed and said that the Bloem in Bloemfontein must have had special meaning for Joyce, relating it to Leopold Bloom!

Another anecdote he told us was one of the possible questions he had in his final paper on Modernism. Succintly, it asked: 'Is Finnegans Wake worth it?' Needless to say, no-one attempted to answer that one.

72 Is that you Henri ? Is that really you ?

Is reading believing, Big Mac Daddy-O?

http://www.librarything.com/work/3359/reviews/16396095

Thumbed, my pfucking eyes are spent, read it tomorrow.

I read a few books this weekend - two on the "Nook" and one good old fashioned paperback with pages and everything. The Seville Connection and The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza were both pretty fun. No touchstone for the Seville book, which was one of those mysteries by Arturo Perez-Reverte. I always like his stuff. The Burglar series by Block is one of my comfort food reversions, but I had somehow missed this particular one of the series. It was, as always, funny.

Then yesterday we went to Powell's and I wanted to buy everything in the damned store but settled for a Dumas I had not previously read, The Black Tulip. It took all of one evening to read - silly romantic story about political prison and tulip cultivation - but fun. I was reading a Penguin edition which had lots of snarky notes in it detailing how inaccurate Dumas was with history and making comments about his vague yet evocative descriptive style - mostly it seemed that the scholars who did the notes were jeering at us hoi polloi for enjoying Dumas.

75 I forgot, but I did read it some years ago and thumbed it.
How nice a man you were ... euh ... are

Anna, I know what you mean about the academics and the Dumas book. When I was in college I learned to dump the academics into two groups. The first group were those who were desperate for learning. They didn't care who was hot and who was not, they wanted to know if the subject at hand had something to teach them and if it did, good on em, if it didn't, they just moved on, no judgments, none of this bourgeoisie and their bourgeois tastes, none of the other ways of boosting themselves at someone elses expense. These people were leaders around campus. The ones everyone wanted to take classes from. Then there were the followers, I'm talking academics here not students. most of these people were hung up on one or another theory of something or another. They were generally small people, unsure of themselves, following, not putting themselves out there any more than necessary. Typically, the most forward thing they ever did in their lives was write a thesis. These were the people who would knowingly smile at the beknightedness of the hoi-polloi and trade jokes about their taste. These were people who generally had to be told what was in good taste, or what was acceptable and not acceptable. These people were mostly found, in my experience, in the Heiddegger club, or some such erudite group.

I think it's rude to joke about other people's tastes (although, some times I'm not above that sort of thing myself. I try to restrict it to those times when I'm pretty certain whatever the subject, it deserves a joke.) There are things like that, you know. I also think it's rude to write above the heads of your audience, so you can make snobbish, inside jokes without the poor rubes catching on. If you don't like something, have the courage to say so and why. Otherwise, shut up about it.

I learned an awful lot in college. Not all of it what we used to call book-larnin' neither. Every manner of person, except the mentally challenged, and I'm not so sure about that, are working in the groves of Academe, just as they are in all walks of life. Arrogant assholes, alcoholics that have forgotten more than many of us will ever know, Authoritarians, Totalitarians, (Authoritarians, and Totalitarians are the same people at heart, it's just that one wants to tell me what I can and can't do while supping on the dregs of power and wealth, while the other wants to tell me what I can and can't do while stealing power and wealth. They are basically the same people, they covet power and wealth) individualists, collectivists, and sometimes, once in a while, a genuinely nice person. But there were a few genuinely unlikable, unfriendly, know-it-alls, who would be king, if they could. The ones I disliked the most were the ignorant, arrogant, assholes. The George W. Bush's of academia. All they knew was what they had been told. They were good at regurgitating facts, but had no interest in using those facts in a concerted effort to forge something meaningful from them. Just plain old shits.

Okay, end of rant, almost. Building oneself up at the cost of respect for others demonstrates what to me, at any rate, is a serious character flaw and not suitable in a professional educator.

WTF! I like Cooper. Can't I like him because, you know, I swing that way? I've never made any bones about my preference for the Romantic. Must I not like him because Twain shredded him in an essay, or because he's firmly in the romantic mode, rather than the newer naturalism or realism, and therefore old-fashioned and irrelevant? I'm an adult. I can make up my own mind. Thank you very much.

I can't imagine some of the shits I've known in academia having the nerve to start a thread about trashy novels and admit to reading them. I don't think they have the courage.

>79 geneg: Gene, imma wallpaper the English department lounge at UBC with that rant. Hope you don't mind if I attribute it to Heidegger.

79 and 80: Great!

Also, the Dumas notes frequently had to admit that he was actually being accurate, in which cases it sounded, if I may say so, grudging. Heh heh.

Some of you may think I am "reading into" these notes but really I don't think so. Towards the end of the book I was starting to get a bit fed up with them. But I kept flipping to the back to read them. I am a sucker for endnotes.

Right on geneg - you tell it like it is, couldn't agree more.

Smartini, It can't be Heidegger, I hope it's written in plain language, not the erudite cant of the Heideggerian. In one of my favorite passages in Language and Symbolic Power, Bourdieu takes an example of the opacity of the style that Heidegger's followers use to signal to one another that, they are, indeed, initiates of the club and shreds it. Very pfunny and quite profound, especially in this day and age when you have one political party using language to separate thought from reality. This was one of the most important books I ever read. If you have not read it, with your interest in language, it is a must read for you.

One of my favorite language rants was Chomsky's takedown of B.F. Skinner. 83 reminded me of this because it sounded like a similar kind of thing. Basically, "the emperor has no clothes and five syllable words do not disguise this."

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19711230.htm

A typical excerpt:

"Or consider the claim that "we are likely to admire behavior more as we understand it less" (p. 53). In a strong sense of "explain," it follows that we admire virtually all behavior, since we can explain virtually none. In a looser sense, Skinner is claiming that if Eichmann is incomprehensible to us, but we understand why the Vietnamese fight on, then we are likely to admire Eichmann but not the Vietnamese resistance. Similarly, Skinner asserts, "Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment" (p. 60). Thus someone who refuses to bend to authority in the face of severe threat has lost his dignity."

This article was included as a chapter of The Chomsky Reader.

Gene the machine. You pretty much explained why I uppedandran from the program I was in. I hated the little pricks who wouldn't share their precious dancing imagery in Tennyson's poems and bullshit like that. Just didn't like em. Nasty pfucking little twits in bowties and hushpuppies. There were still enough Jesuits around but most of the good ones were fleeing Detroit for warmer climes, etc. Most of my fellow students, well the less said about them the better. Most of my friends were foreigners: Germany, Finland, England, India. I made friends with a fellow from what was then called Madras, he was heads and shoulders smarter and better read then the assholes in the program but was ignored because he mixed plaids and stripes and wore strange colors. He was brilliant but went completely unnoticed by just about everybody. I knew we were going to hell in a handbasket then. And now . . .

Well for once it seems that I will be staying on topic. I am currently reading The Golden Ass...

Wonderful review of Portrait, EF. You make it sound like it might be worthwhile for me to read it, but not for at least ten years :)

I always love a good gene-rant. In the past, like up til now, I've regretted not getting an English degree, but the other day I realized that I was grateful that I hadn't been taught to "read" literature; I kinda like my untutored perspective. Besides, hanging out in The Salon is so much cooler than many English classes. Altho I must admit that I have taken several literature classes (and enjoyed them), but not enough to wash my brain. Not that there's anything wrong with an English degree :-)

"Besides, hanging out in The Salon is so much cooler than many English classes"

Yes CG you are absolutely right

78> I take umbrage with that, for I was never a nice man!

87> Thank you girl.

I want to buy a boat, call it Finnegan's wake (indisputably naff, which is good) and never read Joyce on it.
I always read a couple books at the same time in order to keep things interesting. One of the current ones is a play called Hysteria by Terry Johnson and I am almost upset with myself for enjoying it so much. Maybe it's due to the tropical storm raging outside. Maybe.
Also thoroughly enjoying all your ramblings. Thanks!

Aw geez. I missed all this stuff from back in May, I guess. I dunno. Thanks for the Bourdieu rec, Gene, and it's going on my list for sure, but I just ... here I am, involved in different ways in three different departments and also editing papers from all over the spectrum for a living, and there's no question at all--AT ALL--that the English people are the most open-minded and open-hearted, giving and enthusiastic. They like to imagine things being alternative ways from the ways they think. Maybe it's changed now that there's no jobs in the humanities? Maybe now they're in there for love?