The cat reads

I've been in a bit of a reading funk. Can't seem to settle on anything, or get stuck into one thing. Part of the problem is that I have several projects on the go (as well as a load of teaching, editing and materials writing to get through). In spite of this I feel I am just browsing, scratching the surface of things. I need to get my teeth into a larger project, like my Dostoevsky project a few years ago. Reading two or three books at the same time has never suited me. I need to focus on one. I've also noticed that my memory is not as sharp as it was. Stumbling around looking for scraps of information that previously I was able to pinpoint immediately. How much of Moby-Dick can I actually remember?

My trip to Japan was interesting: certainly shed more light on my understanding of Mishima. I would hate to live there, though. The endless rules, the cringing fake politeness, the appalling tasteless, un-nutritious and over-priced food ("That's not a meal, it's a fucking garnish!") . Still, Mother had a good time and we saw some awesome temples and a couple of interesting exhibitions. I got this beautiful woodblock print of a cat.

Back in Taipei, the weather continues to be dreadful: endless days of rain, cold, and overcast skies. We shiver in our steel and concrete boxes waiting for spring. Couldn't I have picked a country with no winter to live in?

I am currently reading Melville's biography by Andrew Delbanco. Well written, it gives a good picture of the American scene into which Melville was born and worked. Prominent characters in the political and cultural scene come to life, although Melville himself remains somewhat ungraspable. The biggest fault is that Delbanco seems to take Freud seriously, and likes to indulge in the stupidity of giving Freudian readings of Melville. I can only snigger and role my eyes.

I finished Moby-Dick and am contemplating how to write about it. Part of the problem is that my vision of the book has outstripped my ability to really get to grips with it. I am reaching towards an examination of the epistemology of the book, if one can say that, about the quest for the whale as a quest for knowledge, but I fear it might indeed take three volumes, as Bas joked once, and more reading around.

I'm convinced the novel is in the top 5 of the greatest achievements in the language. (Bleak House, Middlemarch, Ulysses and Porius being the other 4). Melville's writing burns and crackles, and the excerpts embedded in Delbanco's book blaze with colossal inner energy. I've been dipping in and out of the whale just to sample the power of the prose. I am invariably left shaking my head and sighing in admiration.

I am also supposed to be reading this book by George Lakoff, about psycholinguistics, but it is not grabbing me at all: a lot of academic hairsplitting. For bedtime reading, I am enjoying greatly Rick Harsch's Arjun and the Good Snake (thanks for keeping me awake last night until 1.30, Rick).

Well, we'll see where it all goes. Here is my beloved Auden on my beloved Melville:

Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary
mildness,
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbour of her hand,
And went across each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island.

Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge
His terror had to blow itself quite out
To let him see it; but it was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape HOrn of sensible success
Which cries: 'This rock is Eden. Shipwreck here.'
But deafened him with thunder and confused with
lightning:
--The maniac hero hunting like a jewel
The rare ambiguous monster that had maimed his sex,
The unexplained survivor breaking off the nightmare--
All that was intricate and false; the truth was simple.

Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day.
Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults;
he has a name like Billy and is almost perfect
But wears a stammer like decoration:
And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.

For now he was awake and knew
No one is ever spared except in dreams;
But there was something else the nightmare had distorted--
Even the punishment was human and a form of love:
The howling storm had been his father's presence
And all the time he had been carried on his father's breast.

Who now had set him gently down and left him.
He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened:
And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood
'All, all is vanity,' but it was not the same;
For now the words descended like the calm of mountains--
--Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish--
But now he cried in exultation and surrender
'The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.'

And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.

Hard to figure out what to do with ourselves when Melville's done with us; I'll get about another 5 or 6 blog posts out that I'm thinking about, but it's definitely finishing now. I'm going to have to track down some of Charles Olson's Melville poems to go to your Auden. Moby-Dick can't quite be grasped; though by breaking it down to chapters this time, I feel I've gotten more focus, spent less time "at sea".

Rick is getting me as well after the whale; then I am looking forward to the Tang! Still no idea what I'll read for that month, but it will be Tang.

Oh, how wonderful.

Murr, I never can contribute much to your threads, but I lap it all up in silence.

How wonderful indeed. We are very fortunate to have such a one as TCM among us. And of course we can only take the littlest of bites out of the giant sea creature. Our eyes are more often than not bigger than our stomachs.

thanks guys. I feel bucked up already.

Here is Melville in Pierre:

From all idols I tear all veils. Henceforth I will see the hidden things.

I think this is essentially what the project of Moby Dick is. Melville sees the that the hidden thing is knowledge itself. In MD, knowledge manifests itself as a weaving of a veil (the loom) from the warp of experience and the weft of booklearning, both of which modes impose their own way on how we see the world. Ahab is a guy in obsessive pursuit of knowledge, but when he finds it, it comes up and bites him in the arse, figuratively so to speak. Isn't that a parable?

(incidentally, Delbanco cites Moby Dick as Moby-Dick. my Everyman edition has no hyphen in the title. what do others have on their editions?)

I haven't read Pierre, so any thoughts on that book from those who have are welcome to contribute. Amusing? There is plenty of herring.

By the by, I think even if you hadn't told me I would have known the poem in #1 was Auden. It's full of his kind of cadence. The opening is almost too similar to the one in memory of Yeats.

My Moby-Dick (the Penguin English Library edition) has a hyphen. Good to catch up with you on your new thread and we are all girding our loins for your review of Moby-Dick. No pressure mind.

I am still reading the whale and am finding it more difficult to read than Porius. I admire its "greatness" but almost from afar. I am having difficulty in connecting with it (unlike Porius).

Cat,

"I'm convinced the novel is in the top 5 of the greatest achievements in the language. (Bleak House, Middlemarch, Ulysses and Porius being the other 4). "

Do put Bleak House into proper perspective for me then, before I doze back off and let it fall from my lap....

As for MB - and your search for its epistemology - do you know of the map from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark? It is the map to your search (then again so is the whiteness of MB itself):



He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?” 
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank: 
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!”

from,
a dog

p.s. As for Lakoff and psycholinguistics in general - I fear it is mostly all hair-splitting (but I don't let linguistics off the hook there either!)....

Murr, if you find yourself a bit flummoxed with Moby Dick (no hyphen in mine) then I will relax. I am glad to read it, finally, and can say that I like it, finally, but I am sure I don't "get it".

The original Moby-Dick had the hyphen, though it is more often than not lost these days. There are many hyphen issues in Melville and his titles.

Choco, you are right about the resonance between the Yeats poem and the Melville poem. They were written very close together.

Bas and Lisa, thanks for your encouragement. I'm encouraged.

Peter, I love love love that map, and the Snark. totally apt for Moby, thank you!
Regarding Bleak House, there has to be a dickens in the top 5, and I am hard pressed to choose between BH, Dombey and Son and Our Mutual Friend. but BH is the quintessential Dickens novel, for me. I've written more about it here if you can be bothered to read an old Lectern post. With Dickens what excites me the most apart from all the characters, stories and situations is the language. Dickens also blazes away like Shakespeare. All these books in my top 5 have this quality, I think.

Is your fatigue only with the book itself, or with Dickens in general?

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/02/bleak-house-charles-dickens.html

Lakoff is proving fruitful with the search for the whale, but it's all so.... wordy.

Love the map. I suspect we can find Queequeg's home on there.

Murr, Pierre is strange indeed. I read it as in part a send up of the Austins and Brontes of the world, but a send up that also mulls on a lot of questions of what is American and what is British; it is deeply focused on writerly intro-spection and on tweaking the broader world. The thing is, once you starting tearing off every veil, you have an urge to tear off all your own, and end up quite naked and cold after the veil dance is done. There is something different and less joyful about his writing in Pierre, as well. There are ways in which it may be a prose way-station to Clarel.

Much as Ahab pursues a certain sort of knowledge, I'm not sure he finds it even as it bits him in the ass. It kind of bites him in the ass before he can even begin to grasp it.

Peter--as a "mariner", I must get that book just to have that chart!

I am with Murr on Bleak House, but I cannot compare it to Dombey and OMF since I still have those unread. Murr's blog post struck me in talking about the suspense created by Esther's narrative. Yes! I found a suspense in Bleak House that is not in the other Dickens that I have read.

11,13> I will redouble my efforts with vigor. I find some of the language interesting so far, but the most of it faded bauble. Point in fact, I have not finished any Dickens work.. The Pickwick Papers and a few others have been abandoned at various places between their covers. So I cannot really answer what it is, although I can say that Dickens is someone I wish to see myself enjoying - as irrational and senseless that may be.

(and I edited the previous post to read that the MB's whiteness is also a map similar to Carroll's and probably would function just as well for you)

and I will read your post.. to the extent that it doesnt spoil/ruin me - I dont like to be told how to read;)

Hey Murr,

I thought we were going to read The Preparation of the Novel by Barthes. If you're looking for something in which to sink your teeth, I bought the 3 vol. University of Chicago edition of Durrenmatt's Collected Works. He is awesome. I am suffering because the entire oeuvre (thus far) of my hero Zola is not as good as Germinal or Nana. Hugo's The Toilers of the Sea has, however, redeemed Hugo for me.

About Japan, I think perhaps one may have to live there for a while to appreciate it, to locate those elements that do not reveal themselves on a trip. Knoxville, TN is like that. On its best days, it would never compare to Portland or other such places, but it is not the Gehenna I originally thought when I moved to TN twenty-five years ago. K-ville is just down the street from Maryville so I still think of it as my own. But I digress. I have friends who have lived in Japan for a number of years. They love it.

I read Pierre about 5 years ago. Excellent. Melville's twisted love story. The end gets strange though and may have been a tangent meant for his publishers. The begining is so bright and dark. It's like a gothic Berkshires love story, with dense Moby-Dick prose.

I asked TC some months ago if he would supply a top twenty 20th century list for Bully's tavern...This top five in English is a good start. Like Peter Kein I should say that I never finished a Dickens book (high school doesn't count); when I decided I had to read something I chose Bleak House and couldn't push myself very far into it. I guess I'll try Middlemarch before returning to Bleak House.

Oddly, I always say Moby Dick is the best US novel ever written, yet tend to actually mean English language novel, then recall Joyce and Beckett, then forget time, then recall Robert Musil and Cortazar, Onetti and Cendrars, then pick up a history book...

Of Murr's five only Ulysses and Porius are 20th century, of course. If you could not get into Bleak House, I wonder how you will find Middlemarch.

19, I adore Middlemarch..... and Eliot would likely protest the comparison to CD.

She would, I am sure, but (as one who loves both) think she would protest too much.

Dickens and Eliot are almost total opposites, right? Apart from the social/political commentary. Eliot studies the minds and motives - Dicken studies the events and reactions. Or so I think. Dickens focuses on the external, Eliot on the internal?

Middlemarch is the BEST novel in the history of the world.

22, right on.....

Begin at 'we have one great novelist....' and forward where she comes this close () to accusing him of

'encouraging the miserable fallacy that high morality and refined sentiment can grow out of harsh social relations, ignorance and want'.

http://books.google.com/books?id=rbE6AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=...

If the above link doesn't work, try this one: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28289/28289-h/28289-h.htm#page141

yeah, Dickens and Eliot, the ying and yang of 19th century Eng lit, polar opposites, but both essential and both equally brilliant in their own way.

Urania, I hope to get to the Barthes this year. I'm not going to dash off and read all of Melville at once, but I am going to savour him slowly. I have Redburn, Bartleby Scrivener and Benito Cereno, so I'll make those my must reads for this first half year.

Thanks for everyone's contributions on Pierre. Delbanco makes it sound very odd indeed, suggesting that it is best read as a work of high camp, in a fin-de-siecle, Chapel-of-the-Abyss kind of way.

The endless rules, the cringing fake politeness, the appalling tasteless, un-nutritious and over-priced food

Oh no! Oh no. My mighty heart is breaking. Japan is the best place in the world, and if all my loved ones were crushed by jet fuselage and I had nothing more to tie me here, that is where I would go. The rules I can't argue with, though I wouldn't suggest they're any worse than in other uptight places (and they won't lecture you, unlike the Germans); the politeness is real and part of a genuine kindness and consideration; and the food, even if you aren't thrilled by it (and personally I love it--slabs of fish, exquisite vegetables, fluffy, bready noodles and rice; and the smell of miso soup is like a warm sweater for the soul--is certainly nutritious in objective terms, no? I feel that urania must be right, and it must not be the best place to be a tourist and not know anyone, perhaps? Otherwise, I am flummoxed, cat. It was so beautiful and everyone was so kind and there was so much culture.

Who shall tell the stars as teaspoons? Who, indeed?

The foreign man stopped
to ask the way to fuji
I said, 'Thank you, friend'

Al Suzyu

'Middlemarch is the BEST novel in the history of the world.'

I guess I better read Middlemarch.

I guess you'd better. :)

and someone step on Urania's neck before she suggests doing it as another group read.

Cat,

do add Billy Budd

And someone step on Murrushka tail the next time he starts tormenting his proctologist, who is so scared he lives under Murrushka's couch amid the dust bunnies.

Murr, I can never keep up with your threads. Hoping along on this one to see if what I can glean before it runs off. Good luck with the funk, and the fulfillment of a future reading project. But, as for me, may I never read one book at a time again.

FRAGMENTS OF A LOST GNOSTIC POEM OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY

by: Herman Melville

FOUND a family, build a state,
The pledged event is still the same:
Matter in end will never abate
His ancient brutal claim.

Indolence is heaven's ally here,
And energy the child of hell:
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear
But brims the poisoned well.

Hey,

You stole that poem. It belong on the Foucault threads wherever the real one is, which we may never know.

I read Middlemarch when I was a young teen, and didn't get it. I need to read it as an adult. Adam Bede, Romola and The Mill on the Floss were some of my favorite books ever, and I've re-read AB so many times I have it practically memorized.

Wow, what a lot of books you guys find time to just toss off. I am studiously ignoring the dickens thread because last year Porius' paens to him were all about Dickens novels I have not read yet (Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Martin Chuzzlewit) and I have all of them on a mental list of books that MUST GET READ VERY SOON. That means that re-reading David C. is not going to happen, what with Moby Dick bogged down in whiteness and Gormenghast taking up every spare minute.

Billy Budd is added. Welcome Dan. I doubt I will ever read one book at a time again either, especially with Urania press ganging us into multiple group reads. I wish I was doing gormenghast. such a good book, from my memory of reading it nearly 30 years ago.

Martini, old duck, Ïm sorry to pour water on your love for japan, but you must bear in mind I'm coming at this from a slightly different perspective than you. I've been knocking around Asia for nigh on 15 years, and the days when I got excited about the novelty of a bowl of rice are looooooong gone. Japanese noodles are little more than uncooked dough served in hot water. slabs of raw fish? delicious, I agree, but there were no slabs of anything in evidence in Japan, only slivers, slivers about the size of the stuff you scrape out from under your finger nails, or the size and consistency of pencil sharpenings. Vegetables? Fruit? the only vegetable I saw in Japan was a sweet potato, sorry, a sliver of sweet potato covered in tempura (which I like, but it's hardly nutritous or healthy) and as for fruit? canned peaches in syrup? I kid you not, and this was a five star hotel! and as for miso, you are right, a sweater for the soul indeed, but a sweater that has been left damp in the washing machine for three days. Which reminds me.

Q: "What do japanese people say when they answer the phone?"
A: "Washing machine."

The people were indeed friendly and polite, to be sure, and there is lots to admire and like about Japan. But the food is definitely not one of them.

My cousin says the sushi in Tokyo is beyond belief. As in, good. And cheap.

You stayed in a five star hotel? There's your problem. When you go back, hit Kabuki-cho.

And while I'll not play the Asia-hand game with a feline like yourself, for I am certain to lose, I did spend a couple of years there--not to mention growing up on the West Coast--and a bowl of rice is hardly a "novelty."
Tokyo is full of low dives featuring steamy, fatty, exquisite dumplings, ramen in pork soup that puts the Chinese egg noodles it's descended from to shame, slabs, yes slabs, of fish that I feel quite sanguine to also describe as "beyond belief," and every nice thing that can be done with bean curd, and hearty curries that put that watery yellow Chinese stuff to, there's that word again, shame, and chinks of skewered meat I don't imagine Genghis Khan turning his nose up at (although I imagine he was a mutton man, and Japan gets more exited about its fatty pork and beef and chicken--and whatever your feelings about organ meats, they are surely hearty and plebeian enough for all comers, and the Js love 'em--and it's February; did you try oden? All kinds of roots and eggs and good things in this warm winter broth. And did you eat okonomiyaki, which is like a pancake full of cabbage and meat and ginger and oh so good and again, doughy and filling.

I could go on! I mean, if it's a competition, obviously nobody has better food than the Chinese--but surely it's not that kind of competition. I think the issue is that you stayed in a nice place and came up against Japanese ideas of elegant dining (which certainly involves a degree of presentation first taste second) rather than Japanese ideas of stick-to-your-ribs eating, which are, no joke, phenomenal.

I've had a few glasses of wine, so if that doesn't come across as convincing, blame me, not Japanese food, which is the best.

You sir, are a gourmand and a scholar!

well, maybe you were luckier than me in the places you found to eat in. We only had breakfast in the hotel, all other meals were on the hoof. I remain unmoved. I remember reading the menus in Mishima's After the Banquet, and thinking oh how repulsive.

I do like Japanese beer though, which is much better than that watery baby piss that Americans, Brits and Australians call beer.

but enough. we digress. From what exactly, I'm not sure. but it must be from something.

and I will wait around here until the Cat tells us what he really thinks...

we digress. From what exactly, I'm not sure. but it must be from something

Maybe some book somebody or other was reading? Or maybe someone was thinking about reading a book some time?

I've had a nervous breakdown, as they used to call them, in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and India. In Tokyo it took less than a day, but circumstances other than those Japanese may have been involved. But I couldn't get out of the ditch once I was in, the place was too bizarre, I was in the movie Brazil, all those little silver balls! should never have gone in there...and the femme fatale...she did nothing for me but bring me a beer, a beer without a message...I left there on the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima bombed...1995...They confiscated my scissors at the airport...why didn't I cut my cock off and wander about?
I'll play the old Asia hand--hand and feet, bound.

After Melville's death in 1891 his widow moved house and set up her husband's books in her new library. She underlined in one of them (Isaac Disraeli's The Literary Character) the following words:

My ideas of my husband are so much associated with his books that to part with them would be as it were breaking some of the last ties which still connect me with so beloved an object. That being in the midst of books he has been accustomed to read, and which contain his marks and his notes will still give him a sort of existence with me.

I am reminded of Pushkin's death, and the way he died in his library, saying farewell to his books. In many ways the trajectories of their lives were quite similar - early glory followed by steep decline, although of course Melville's life was much longer, and he endured more.

Rick, they confiscate my mothers scissors at the airport as well. My question to her and you was: why do you carry scissors on your person or in your luggage?

At the risk of sounding presumptous, you might enjoy a little bedtime reading of Untangling My Chopsticks. It may not be 'literature' for you, but I really rather enjoyed it and give it a good recommendation as light pleasurable reading.

47: I sometimes carry a small sewing kit when I travel. Not to mention fingernail scissors.

Melville and Spousal Abuse: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2927436

Sorry I can't access the whole article.

Well, TC, this was back when I had MOVED to Japan and still left after two days. One must have ones' scissors. I used them to cut my nails back then so I had no nail clippers.

50, Ur.. Do you want it?

>52 PeterKein: Yes. I will have to drive to UT-K-ville otherwise.

HAI GUYS

alex is wqeird

I know alex is dumb

He is a really weird old fart

With a laughing disorder. TROLOLOLOL

whats up bra

dododdodododododoodd dooo do dooo do

WIGGLEWIGGLEWIGGLEWIGGLEWIGGLE YEAH

is this a french book

yo wassssssss up

fgjbldkjfgn;bklsnr;gklnb it most certantly is

well that was a visitation

done

Thanks Peter. I think Murrushka has just been visited by the general readers.

ignore them. Teenagers. Yuck.

Isn't there a rule against teenagers?

No. The rule is against people younger than that. If you have evidence that they are younger than that you can turn them in, by e-mail, and they will be removed roughly immediately.

Robert

let's just ignore them They'll soon start sniffing glue and burning cars.

By gosh, there's a novel in that!

Robert, sometimes the younger ones can be saved. My 11 y.o. grandson is taking saxophone lessons, loves it, and his mother says she can stand to be in the house when he practices. He likes to read, too. Oh, you meant on LT. I was trying to figure out how to turn in a person by e-mail.

Rick, get thee to the writing device!

Since completing the Mellville biography, I have been reading shorter stuff, while focussing on Rick's snake book. I am also very busy in RL, with a heavy teaching load. This is delaying my review of Moby Dick, which is rather worrying, because all the ideas I had while reading it are beginning to evaporate...

'Benito Cerreno' is a short novella by Melville in which a naive American Captain stumbles across a strange ship at a watering hole. On paying the ship a visit, it turns out that most of the crew are dead from the fever, there is no water on board and very little food. The cargo consists of negro slaves bound for the Caribbean. The Captain of the strange ship, a Spaniard, is very sick, and is looked after at all times by his mulatto slave.

It of course turns out that the negro cargo have mutinied, slaughtered the crew and white passengers, and are the watching the visitor intently. The mulatto slave is the leader of the insurrection, and his 'care' of the Captain is to ensure that he does not send any signals to the visiting American Captain of the real situation.

The novella incorporates gothic elements: the ship is ghostly, erie, like the one in the Ancient Mariner, the American Captain is plagued by doubts and hesitations, but is unable to put his finger on what causes them, or on what unnerves him about the ship. He is blinded by his way of seeing the world, which way of seeing precludes the idea that negroes are capable of insurrection. Melville explores the same themes of knowledge and seeing that he does in Moby dick, but here in a much smaller canvass, with a much tighter construction and focussed style. The prose is extremely detailed, things are closely observed, but not really 'seen', with an almost totally seamless switching between an omniscient narrator and free indirect discourse focalised through the American Captain. A masterpiece, and another piece of Melville way ahead of its time. One has to wait until Henry James, really, to see this kind of technique, this kind of blurring between an omniscient narrator and a character.

Bartleby, another shorter piece by Melville, had me laughing out loud. great supporting cast, and a lovely convoluted, equivocating narrator.

I then read a short story by Henry James, to compare him to Melville. I love ol Henry. The Lesson of the Master, a short story in which witty and cultured people in elegant surroundings discourse on art, literature, love and life, and in which things are described with great psychological subtlety in exquisite prose, but which ultimately exposes the moral nullity under the surface. Or does it? As always James's achievement is to create and sustain an interpretative ambiguity which is total, for reader and character.

THen, moving on to Edgar Allen Poe, whom, I am ashamed to say, I have never read before. The Murders in the Rue Morgue: hopelessly overrated, badly written and ineptly constructed (it was an ape. WTF???!!!) Poe tries to do what Hoffmann does, but cannot pull it off. The Pit and the Pendulum is only marginally more successful, due more to the sheer horror of the situation than the skill of the writer in describing it. Forget Poe. Read Hoffmann.

Still no further progress with Lakoff.

Poe's best stories are the cask of amontillado, the telltale heart and the black cat. Unfortunately you did not start with those...

>74 anna_in_pdx: the cask of amontillado is so outré. You'll love it, Murr.

and what about Arthur Gordon Pymm ?

WILLIAM WILSON

There you go TC stomping over other people's sacred cows.

I love the opening of the Fall of the House of Usher

C'mon own up who has had the audacity to flag TC?

I got flagged? what the fuck for?

How can you tell he was flagged?

i'm trying to flag this, but I can't figure out how to do it

little blue flag next to my masterpiece of a review of Murder in the Rue Morgue.

Perhaps, as bas says, it's in retaliation for stomping on someone's sacred cow. But then, they should choose their sacred cows more carefully, is all I can say.

In High Dudgeon.

Okay, now I get it--sorry TC, i flagged you experimentally, but I wasn't the original flogger

Ah, i see it--you have to go to the review--and it's a tiny little flag. It may be time you got the hell out of High Dudgeon: they don't like yer type thar!

so where's my flag of post 81?

Murrflaggers: my corrective review is now posted above Murr's!

Stomping on sacred cows is a bad idea. It just gets them angry. You have to push them over a cliff, usually right before the banquet.

duly noted

Who or what is a ratiocinator?

a detective

one who, through the use of reason, reduces her/his enemies to ashes...

cognate of incinerator,

ety. cinis , cinerem ashes (of a fire)

close?

i like it

Murr,

If you were flagged, take it as a compliment. I love Benito Cereno. It is brilliant.

So, how far from slavery are we shipmates?

A_musing,

World-wide, slavery is making a horrifying comeback. I have a family member who heads up an anti-child trafficking program in Russia. Trafficking in women and children is rampant. Read Naomi Klein's No Logo - a bit dated now but still relevant. According to one estimate, 200 million people are in bondage today.

anyone with facebook, a blackberry and/or an ipad is a slave. They just don't know it.

Everyone's a slave to something, if it comes to that.

On the coast of Slovenia it's as easy for the slaves as it gets--few or no beatings so the cops turn a blind eye. They live a bunch to an apartment, but no so many so the cops turn a blind eye. They work in licensed joints so the cops turn a blind eye. Most are from Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova, some from the Caribbean. In Austria it's hidden. In the Czech Republic you cross the border and they're everywhere a street meets another street, it seems, even out in the country. It used to be like that in Poland but I had the feeling it was Polish women in times of unemployment near 20%. Italy is rife with racism, so naturally there's widespread 'use' of African woman.

so terrible. Has anyone seen Rachel Weiss's new movie about this? The Whistleblower?

further to my highly offensive review of The Murders on the Rue Morgue, I offer up these paltry meditations.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2012/02/fragment-2202.html

I'm late to the party but I'll throw in 2 cents to agree that, Murr, you should go read The Cask of Amontillado. It's a wonderful, shivery delight. And after, you can go around saying Amontillado. Once you start it's hard to stop. Amontillado. Amontillado.

My two favorite words are Amontillado and Pamplemousse, apropos of nothing.

CG--have you read any Monsieur Pamplemousse? Very low to middle-brow (sorry Murr) but vastly entertaining and one gets to say and read Pamplemousse over and over again.

Is it pample-moose, or pample-moosaye?

pomp - le - moose
Means grapefruit.

well strike me pink. ta mate. cheerio.

There you go with that foreign language again.

I guess it all balances out in the end - I know how to pronounce Tuggeranong and Puckapunyal and Ngunnawal.

(not that they're that hard. And I actually don't know how to pronounce Carrarragarmungee)

Hardly paltry meditations. Interesting thoughts as always.

The extrinsic coincidence, on the other hand, is more analogous to a world view which emphasises the arbitrary and unguided, the absurd, and the sheer preposterous patternlessness of reality

This approaches my view of the world.

Pamplemousse is my favourite jus de fruit

it is pompelmoes in Dutch

who would go dutch on a fucking grapefruit?

The Dutch if anyone.

Sure, but for the Dutch going Dutch on a grapefruit means hands tied behind back and eating it peel and all, winner must have blood on face.

Lisa, I have checked out M. Pamplemousse and I must have him! Food, mystery, randomly-sprinkled French, pamplemousse no end!

Strangely enough, I have craved pamplemousse during this pregnancy and usually eat one a day, with my fruit knife.

MANGOs
oh god I love them.

cg, I do hope that once this baby arrives, you will not desert us.

who/what is mr Pamplemousse?

A series of books: "French food critic and amateur sleuth Monsieur Pamplemousse, along with his dog Pommes Frites, investigates the causes and consequences of a most bizarre dinner." - from a blurb.

By Michael Bond, creator of Paddington Bear.

I've never had a baby in the Salon before, so I cannot predict what will happen, but it is my sincerest desire not to desert you.

You guys are my friends. *smiles sheepishly*

And, yes, mangoes are nice. Would respond well to a fruit knife.

6 hours of teaching with a terrible hangover...(I must learn that I am no longer in my 30s).

reading Redburn. ah, Melville.

Redburn shades a great deal of light on what HM was later to do with MD.

more on this later.

The narrative voice is sooooo interesting. Told in the first person singular, as a memoire (I did this, I did that), but the chapter titles are in the third person: (He does this, He does that). One senses a slight, arch, exasperation on the part of the older Redburn, author of the titles, towards his younger self, inhabitant of the narrative. It's very subtle, but very amusing:

Chapter XXX

Redburn grows intolerably flat and stupid over some outlandish old guide books.

Chapter XXI
With his prosy old guide book, he takes a prosy stroll through the town.

and look at this fabulous sentence:

And here had this vessel come out of the infinite blue ocean, with all these human beings on board, and the smoke tranquilly mounting up into the sea-air from the cook's funnel as if it were a chimney in a city; and everything so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel.

*Murr swoons. Nothing will revive him.*

OK, cat, I haven't read Redburn yet. It's one of the last two volumes from the complete Newberry-Northweatern set that I don't have. Am I going to have to dive in?

man overboard! Man the topsails! Luff! Luff, I tell you, dammit, LUFF!

Murr, you are doing it to my list again!

M. Pamplemousse might not be your type of martini. It is funny and entertaining, however.

M Pamplemousse sounds just the ticket actually.

Redburn continues to amaze and delight:

from Chapter 47 Homeward Bound

...the confusion increased, as we now glided out of the dock.
Hats and handkerchiefs were waved; hurrahs were exchanged; and tears
were shed; and the last thing I saw, as we shot into the stream, was a
policeman collaring a boy, and walking him off to the guard-house.

A steam-tug, the Goliath, now took us by the arm, and gallanted us down
the river past the fort.

The scene was most striking.

Owing to a strong breeze, which had been blowing up the river for four
days past, holding wind-bound in the various docks a multitude of ships
for all parts of the world; there was now under weigh, a vast fleet of
merchantmen, all steering broad out to sea. The white sails glistened in
the clear morning air like a great Eastern encampment of sultans; and
from many a forecastle, came the deep mellow old song Ho-o-he-yo,
cheerily men! as the crews called their anchors.

The wind was fair; the weather mild; the sea most smooth;...

Bliss.

>116 citygirl: Glad to hear it CG, all of it.

I found an old paperback of Melville's short stories which includes many of the ones I want to read, but Redburn is not in it! How long is it? Maybe I will just have to get it from Gutenberg.

oh it's long. It's a full length novel. bout 360 pages in my Modern Library edition. I love the cover.

I've ordered it.

Michael Diemer painting ?

Redburn has arrived. I'm still waiting on the painting. But I'll be getting into Redburn by the weekend, after Rick's book is done, which I'm breezing through quite happily.

I received my Modern Library edition of Redburn as well. Don't know when I will read it, though.

Murr, finished The Kill I think next I am going to track down Son Excellence Eugène Rougon. As I mentioned in U's thread, besides using them to illustrate the corruption and depravity he perceived in the Second Empire, I really think Zola hated the main characters in the Kill. I am looking forward to seeing the treatment of Minister Rougon who was a minor character in the Kill.

Received Towers of Trebizond today, and just had to jump in. So far, so good. At least now I know who Aunt Dot was.

I am away. I am not here. I have been kidnapped by Baron Von Kindle. I may be gone some time.

Soon he'll be raising goats.

Sorry that came over wrong. Sorry to Lisa and Sam.

Sam, can't wait to hear your thoughts on Redburn. I'm really into the swing of Melville. Working on my review of MD. (should have volume 1 up soon, Baz, ok?). reading Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is making a lot of things very clear about Melville's whole search for the truth. Today I reread the cetology chapter in MD. I continue to be awed by Melville's genius. I still haven't managed to get through the Melville piece on Choco's thread (the infamous 112).

Lisa, I'm so excited about Aunt Dot!!!! One of my favourite characters in all lit! She reminds me so much of my mother and my Aunt Dolly. a portrait of a certain kind of eccentric Englishwoman d'un certain age.

I'll have to look at my notes on The Kill. I'm not sure really what it means, to say: "Z didn't 'like' his characters". I see them more as embodiments of certain natural types he is trying to illustrate. I was interested in both of the main characters. Im never too sure really how successful Zola was at his own professed game of utter realism - naturalism. He seems to me such a symbolic writer.

In other news, I have succumbed to the 21st century and acquired a kindle. However, before you all throw up your arms in horror and amazement, I was sold on the idea when I realised I can get the complete works of all my adored 19th century writers (anything before 1923, basically) FOR FREE (or near enough!) This means I won't have to scour the internet and local bookshops for obscure novels by Balzac, Zola, Turgenev, and all my faves. I can store them online, or on my kindle and read EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

* Murr faints with excitement at the prospect*
* He revives *

I have been reading Locke and Melville on it, it's quite an amiable experience. I'm so 'with it'. At last. AWESOME!

Murr, I am sure that if you are happy with your Kindle we are all happy for you!

With all of your current reading commitments, I hardly expect you to go find your notes on The Kill. Not really understanding all of the discussion of realism-naturalism, I will try to clarify my thoughts. I agree that Renée and Maxime (and Saccard and Sidonie) are embodiments of types of the era. Symbolic? I don't know. Symbolic of what? He seemed to create characters to illustrate his perception of all of the bad things of the time. Perhaps a better way of expressing my thought is that he hated what the characters were.

Anyway, don't mind me. Go back to Melville, et. al.

I will let you know how I get on with Aunt Dot, not having a mother or aunt who were/are eccentric Englishwomen. :-)

You can also download things like victorian translations of ottomon poetry and Ivo Andric's thesis on Bosnian literature. People get the kindle for the wrong reason. It's the ability to wierden our reading that makes it most valuable.

I've got to think about Locke and Melville - Melville's library doesn't seem to have Locke in it (it's here on LT!), but it is clear he read a lot of Locke, and it was kind of in the water in the America of his youth. I think in one of my blog posts I referred to him as a virtual founding father. A lot of times Melville gets his learning second-hand - he loved Bayle's dictionary, which is an early kind of encyclopedia, and a lot of his discussions get traced to Bayle when scholars really go digging. So it might be worth seeing if you can get Bayle on the Kindle and reading through the Locke-related entries.

Can't help asking, Sam: Did you mean widen or weirden? :-D

Of course he meant "weirden"! It's a great word!

Yup, weirden. An autonim.

But I misspelled it.

Interesting discussion..

There is a great article on Melville and Bayle ('Pierre Bayle and Moby Dick' by Millicent Bell (1951). While it focuses on Bayle and MB, there is also short general discussion of how Melville's use of secondary sources was brilliant in its perspicuity.

Welcome to the 21st century TC. There is even some J C Powys for free.

That article was also very seminal - it has been cited often over the years and a lot more research has been done on the topic of Melville's encyclopedic sources. But my impression is that there is no limit to the number of potential PhD topics residing there, since you can pretty much take any topic in Melville, start looking it up in contemporary references he at some point cites to, and find a ton of interesting stuff. The Northwestern-Newberry edition is chock full of it.

Melville's Sources is an interesting read if that is the type of thing you enjoy. Frankly, I only have the patience for PLMA articles on the subject.

There's a lot of old stuff that deserves to sink to the bottom of the ocean and never see the light of day or a gleam in a reader's eye again. Even without an e-reader, I've been a fan of Project Gutenberg and archive.org since they came into existence, and the single general lesson from my avid monitoring of old texts is that the literary past is filled mainly with sexist shit, racist shit and scientifically wrong shit. Then there's the politics.

If we hadn't fucked up the planet, it would be enough to make one almost sentimental about the present, and future prospects. But, as it is, what future prospects?

sexist shit, racist shit and scientifically wrong shit. Then there's the politics.

Lola, as you know, I never read theology.
:)

I would be the first to stomp on Murr's reading machine, but I doubt the literary past is any worse than the literary present. Obscenity takes many forms, but racist versus, say, anti-human (as in bad, dull, stupid overall, politically generated thrillers for instance...In fact, the argument can be made that much of a best-seller list consists of sexist, racist, and scientifically wrong or wrong-headed shit in the guise of imperial nonsense...)

Murr, no?! Thou dost surprize! Thine need then must be great: I recommend The discourse on the free will--the edition with the Erasmus/Luther exchange, when the spirits are low and the mood perverse.

Theology proves human imagination has no bounds--the lunatic, the poet, the doctor of the church are of something something all compact.

The mood's perverse?

Try this!

http://www.reasonrally.org/

Murr, finished Towers of Trebizond. Thanks for that. Does not quite play out as one would expect with that opening line, but a fine book.

I like this from the last chapter:

I know you read Clement of Alexandria: do remember where he says 'We may not be taken up and transported to our journey's end, but must travel thither on foot, traversing the whole distance of the narrow way.' One mustn't lose sight of the hard core, which is do this, do that, love your friends and like your neighbors, be just, be extravagantly generous, be honest, be tolerant, have courage, have compassion, use your wits and your imagination, understand the world you live in and be on terms with it, don't dramatize and dream and escape.

Of course Aunt Dot was talking about returning to the Church, but one can take it out of context and still have that passage mean something.

Now, of course, I am going to look up Clement of Alexandria.

A new argument, Lisa.

Great quote, Lisa!

Very interesting essay here on E.A Poe, that had me howling agreement: a truly overrated writer, inept, cluncky, daft.

(I can only surmise that Baudelaire's English was not good enough to truly appreciate Poe's dreadfullness to account for the high regard the Frenchman had for the American.)

Poe: a pale imitation of the great Hoffmann.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2012/02/the-great-bad-writer-edgar-allan-poe-r...

Oooh, them's fighting words!

*looks around eagerly for signs of Poe-champions* Anyone, huh, anyone? Anyone wanna TALK to the cat?

I read Poe too long ago for minute recollection of style, but as regards Baudelaire's enchantment, I think the main thing was Poe's moods, atmosphere, flavours, emotional palette and so on, not the beautiful (or not) things he could do to/with the English language.

Oddly enough, I just started last night on a book of Baudelaire's criticism, beginning with you-know-who--will tell you what transpires.

oh yes, good. Curious here.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20761/20761-h/20761-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20790/20790-h/20790-h.htm

152: Me. I love Poe. I love the poetry, how it flows. and I love the gothic horror short stories. Guess it is a very personal matter of taste.

I wouldn't count myself as a big fan of Poe, but there are days and times when it's rather fun. Much as sometimes I really enjoy some hushpuppies and fried fish. Greasy American stuff that gives you indigestion, but even the burps can taste good. Here's the overwrought purplish that you can see giving Baudelaire his literary orgasms:

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly-
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!- it writhes!- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

For someone raised on subtle reduction sauces, that's a whole lot of spicy greasy stuff to wake the system.

I will be interested in what Baudelaire says. I suspect he loved Poe in part as a noble savage from an untamed land. Probably read Poe's poetry in a similar way to how Melville took in South Pacific hula. Exotic. Primal.

omg that's really bad, almost as bad as Saint Oscar's poetry!

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

LOL! I love it!

it's so bad, it's almost good!

(sorry anna)

I suspect he loved Poe in part as a noble savage from an untamed land.

Not at all, Baudelaire sees Poe as an anomalous phenomenon in American culture and blames the tragedy of Poe's life on his not fitting into the dollar-worshiping money-grubbing vulgarian society. I must say, it's hard to tell these comments are some 150 years old...

I had to break off for stuff, but so far nothing specific on style, Murr; we're still on the fascination of the similarity between Poe's life and his "bizarre and terrifying" stories (epithets that can apply to both life and work, I agree!), it's close to the poète maudit paradigm and I can see why Poe would grab Baudelaire's imagination, there seems to be a kinship of temperaments between the two. Interestingly, he talks of Poe being influenced by French Romanticism.

Anyway, from what I've read so far I don't think it's possible to separate Baudelaire's critical evaluation of Poe's writing from his response to Poe the man and his personal tragedy.

yeah, the poete maudit paradigm makes sense, but it still doesn't say much about B's literary judgement that he preferred P to Hoffmann.

Pichois & Ziegler say this:

B admired P as a writer who had forged a method for himself and refused to be a slave to inspiration

Apparently, B felt that P articulated visions and ideas that B had already had himself but never developed.

Lola, what criticism of B are you reading exactly? Is it in French or English?

From a different path of interest, I have been reading 'here-and-theres' on Baudelaire. This might be of some incidental interest.

I came across an article, New Light on Baudelaire and Poe by W. T. Bandy, that argues that a significant basis for Baudelaire's 'Edgar Allan Poe sa vie et ses ouvrages' was an unsigned review (but attributed to John M. Daniel) of the Redfield edition of Poe's Work in The Southern Literary Messenger ("approximately twenty-five of the forty pages of Baudelaire's article ..were translated almost word for word..."), and an obit published by John R. Thompson.

oh interesting! have you got a link?

totally off topic, but I couldn't resist sharing this fabulous hatchet job of a review, on that creepy little sneak AN Wilson's latest 'effort', about Hitler.

I thought those readers on LT (of whom there are sadly, and suprisingly many) who think Hitler was a socialist, might benefit from a read of it. The review, not the book.

http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2012/03/hitler-wilson-german-british

163, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2929211

and check your messages

Hitler was a socialist

Right, and Fox News is fair and balanced, obviously, they say so. My god, "advertising", "branding", all that crap actually WORKS...

I'm reading (when I say reading--a dozen pages in bed so far, too beat to really think--must quit that AWFUL habit) the essays in Critique littéraire et musicale, there's three, "Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages", "Edgar Poe, sa vie et ses oeuvres" and "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe".

If you google for Baudelaire and titles and "gratuit" you'll find texts online, I'd link but it's taking forever and I gotta go... Arrgh, it was downloading from here, at least:

www.ebooksgratuits.com

164 sad & worrying in equal degrees.

It would appear that 'Nazis as socialists' has a long pedigree, but it was largely underground in places like the John Birch Society until recently.

Interesting to look at the books that come up as links on Amazon if you go to the Liberal Fascism book's page. Anti muslim, anti Europe, anti environmentalism....

Anti reason?

it was largely underground

it should stay underground, like worms, grubs, and those creepy things you find when you turn over a rock. no place for such filth in the daylight.

Lola, I'll try those links tomorrow and see if I can put them on my new Kindle.
Thanks for the link PK, you are a brick. I'll try to find some time to read it over the weekend.

dammit, I hate working! takes me away from the real business of life, which is reading and bantering.

-164

Richard J Evans, the reviewer, is a great writer and a remarkable historian. Incidentally, I have Wilson's biography of Tolstoy on the TBR shelf, maybe I'll get another...

that biography of Tolstoy is dreadful, dan. Wilson has absolutely no inkling of an understanding of T the writer or T the man.

I've seen Evans's work on the Third Reich in the bookshop here, but I can't bring myself to read a whole trilogy on the Nazis.

Yeah, don't read the Evans trilogy. It's the most systematically cruel, depressing, inhuman nightmare imaginable. I made it halfway through the second book and couldn't take it any more. Not Evans mind you, just the small atrocious details you never hear about on top of all the other larger, atrocious details you are already familiar with. It's appalling that people would dress up in the uniform as a joke, or that they show up in the movies as frequently as they do as token bad guys. Or, to even call other people Nazis....

But Nazis have a strange allure for people, which in itself is a bit distressing. In the history section of the library I work in, as with others I'm sure, it is the largest area with the greatest number of circs. The civil war (American) is up there, but WWII and the Nazis are much more popular.

That's a shame about the Tolstoy biography...

Evans wrote an interesting book on the Cholera epidemic in Hamburg.

Ah, what a week! My eye won't stop watering and the sinuses are acting up.

Why don,t you use The word Germans ?

I think it depends where you sit on the issue.

But here, people are more interested in Nazism and Hitler, than German history or the German people.

It party deculpabilize a nation. I have always felt akward about that

True.

But the problem is also that time passes, generations change, and well, eighty years later you end up with a largely different group of Germans than in 1933. I'm not fond of the Biblical visiting of parental sins on their children, not at all.

Which is not to say that people don't need to be ultra-aware of everything surrounding the messes they inherit, of course...

176: The Germans I have met (admittedly not a lot of people, so this is total anecdata) seem hyper-aware of stuff like what is hate speech and why should such speech be especially discouraged and that sort of thing. I think it is probably a good thing. I think they also understand issues about privilege fairly well and are not so liable to be defensive as lots of other groups of white people. But maybe I have been lucky in the Germans I've met.

The Poles are particularly sensitive in regard to what Mac is referring to. The 'Germans' need not be used in any but the historical sense where too often 'Nazi' is used. We know that the reference is not to our friend Gunther of Heidelberg, born 1963. In talking of war we don't mention parties generally: The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; the French lost at Dien Bien Phu...The Germans sent the entire live male population of Žaga, Slovenia, to Dachau...The Republicans attacked Afghanistan and Iraq; the Democrats are droning all over the world...

LOL Rick.

Happy you understand my remark.

Who should escape the whip?

156> Ah, distinctly I remember . . . the look I got from my eighth-grade English teacher when that was the poem I picked to read aloud in class.

If it was not for Poe, neither of my sons would like poetry at all.

Do the "flapping the invisible woe from out their condor wings" bit again, Meredy, please!

Murr, I mean to ask--what exactly did Baudelaire say about Hoffmann and Poe, is there a quote somewhere or what? He mentions Hoffmann in almost the first paragraph of the first essay, but only to compare their sad destinies. But as I said, I'm at the beginning.

Is it impossible to like Hoffmann and Poe side by side? To me they are sufficiently different, but my memories of Poe are old... Maybe because I read Hoffmann as a child, as old-fashioned fairy tales, and Poe as a teen, the latter seems much more modern. Poe's stories filled me with real dread. "The black cat" terrified me so much I was hearing sounds in the walls for days. Hoffmann never had a similar effect. It doesn't reflect on their style or literary ability, but I think it says something about Poe's greater immediacy... he may have written purple poetry, but I can't think of any Poe's story as rococo-ishly curlicued and gilded as "Mademoiselle de Scudéry", for instance.

>181 Meredy: , 182 Anna and Meredy (Welcome to my thread, meredy, it's nice to see you here!) that is the strongest argument for admiring Poe. I should make it clear that my knowledge of poe is restricted to a few tales, and I am completely ignorant of his poetry, so do please post away.

Lola, there's this which I found somewhere:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2011/03/baudelaire-on-poe.html

and the most extensive stuff is in the introductions to B's translations of Histoires Extraordinaire and Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaire. I also found a study of Baudelaire, Hoffmann and Poe, but it's in some Scandinavian language that I don't know. Someone should produce a scholarly edition in English of all B's criticism and prose.

I don't know if it's possible to like H and P side by side. when I read the black cat, I wanted to slap the protagonist for walling up the cat, and then slap him again for slapping the wall. It didn't scare me at all, whereas Hoffmann's tales still scare the bejeeziz outta me, especially the sandman.

Hoffmann (as you know) had a great range, and his stories don't only cover the queer and the uncanny. I'm a little bit sick of hearing the old canard that Poe invented detective fiction, with Dupin. He didn't. Hoffmann did with Mademoiselle de Scuderi. So there.

hmhuhmhmhmhmhmnnnh.

But Poe just reads more... modern, you know? Maybe I'm blinded by Hoffmann's peruques and crinolines and princesses too much.

yeah, I accept that. But I don't regard modern as necessarily better. I still cant get over that stupid orang outan.

It's not surprising that a cat would disparage an ape, but for me, an ass by many accounts, once the red ape is revealed to be the killer I am in love with the story, aesthetic considerations be damned.

Yeah, I don't know why you're so down on the orangutan, cat. It wuvs you.



Anyway, you're probably right about Hoffmann and Poe, I've been trying to squeeze some ideas out of my fossilised memories (obviously modern isn't simply "better" ever), but the more I try to cast them in terms of psychology and say that Poe went "deeper", the less convinced I am!

Soooo--nothing, I suppose.

Speaking of the detective story, is it my imagination or does almost NOBODY give Gaboriau due credit for the invention of the Holmesian persona? I swear a proto-Holmes is present in L'affaire Lerouge in all the main characteristics. Probably another one of those Anglo-Franco subterranean hostilities and sabotages...

At long last, after months in the writing, my review of Moby Dick is ready.

http://www.librarything.com/work/15540/reviews
http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2012/03/moby-dick-herman-melville.html

I tried to address Melville's epistomological project in this review, which is why it has taken so long. It's also 6000+ words, so I will not be despondent if readers don't make it through to the end.

However, I will be giving Baz a quiz and a comprehension test when he has read it. ;)

Wonderful and well worth waiting for (we must learn to wait if we're to read this fellow, of course, for all comes in its time, nothing quickly). Great quote to end on, just perfect in so many ways!

ooh-urgh

Thought provoking as ever TC as you tackle the meaning behind the expository chapters. I think I have got the gist of it from a first reading (your review not Moby-Dick). However it is very late here(early hours of the morning) and I have just staggered in from the village Chasse dinner, where I have eaten enormous quantities of red meat and drunk enormous quantities of red wine.

>188 LolaWalser:

Reminds me of....

Dog ridin' monkey!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ndIKWkGABI

#193

It's a mad, mad world!

#189

GREAT review, Murr, agree very much.

P.S. I meant to comment on your blog, but it's asking some weird ID I don't have--is that how it's supposed to be? Just checking.

Murr, I've only had time to just peruse your review, but from what I've read, it's given me a whole new insight on Moby Dick--perhaps just what I need to finally tackle and tame that beast! I'm looking forward to this afternoon, when I can finish your wonderful piece. Thanks so much for writing that.

Thanks for the appreciative comments, everyone.

Bas, you sound like one of Melville's cannibals!

I have finished Typee and am now reading Omoo. More to come. I'm all at sea.

I started commenting on your blog, Murr, but it still needs one of the IDs I don't have--will solve that, in the meantime... Having finished it, I don't understand how anyone could have mistaken it for an overblown adventure story; you know, with "superfluous" bits that can be trimmed without loss.

There's so much to think of, but the following will be my introit: Stubbs yelling to Ahab, trying to make him turn back one last time: "Moby Dick seeks thee not!"

Ahab has absolutely no clue about what is actually happening, does he. He's pursuing the whale and (what you wrote about him reading malice into the animal) he doesn't have the faintest idea that the whale doesn't know of him at all, doesn't single him out, doesn't hate him, doesn't pursue him, doesn't seek him. Ahab has named the whale, but the whale has no name for Ahab.

Ahab is completely lost in the abyss of his Self (a narcissist, says Harold Beaver whose commentary I just started on yesterday).

There's that episode when he jerks out of it for a space and for once sees himself and his life clearly for the wretched shipwreck that they are--forty years of blind pursuit, attempt at marriage that instead "widows" his young wife, nothing to show for his existence.

Nothing to justify his existence.

Ahab is a gigantic walking abortion of a human being, an existence lost to obsessive dream. The sleep of reason produces monsters.

Meetings with other ships--so many warnings, and possible turns, chances for something else, aren't they?

Warning Murr: Typee haunts. In many ways it is a simple tale, but so very well told and it sits with you for a long time. I keep coming back to it. I did an audiobook of it a few years ago, and it was a great format.

Lola, sounds like you and I share similar views of Ahab. Yet, so many think of him as a hero, if sometimes a tragic hero.

Ahab - a madman on the loose, he could run for president of the USA.

A-musing, I do think Ahab is absolutely tragic! But he's not heroic (well, apart from the purely technical sense in which he's the hero of the tale), not at all.

He utterly misses even to be present at the great battle of life. He chases after a fantasy. He doesn't even know WHAT he is fighting. He displaced everything onto the whale, the whale that is literally a blank--nothing.

MOBY DICK DOESN'T EXIST

:)))

Tragic non-hero, maybe even tragic anti-hero. That works.

And, Bas, I think Lola has fully made the case. Moby may not exist, but Ahab is alive and well and running in primaries in the states as we speak.

Gahd bless Meruhca!

I agree with everything you say Lola, and beautifully put too. But I still think Ahab is heroic.

Well... it's probably not very important (not to me at least), but if it is to you, would you explain in what do you see his heroism?

I can't imagine a heroism without a clear-eyed awareness, a full consciousness of what is happening and what we're doing. To me Ahab is too pitiably lost in a delusion to be truly heroic. And he's lost in inhumanity. He has become a monster. This is irreconcilable, I think, with the usual notions of heroism.

I've been thinking about Lola's post on Ahab in #198 for a few days, but had nothing useful to contribute. Still don't, for the sake of diversion...

From Murr's essay, we gather that Moby Dick is a Truth, and Ahab, who has known truth, and lost a limb and his dignity, is determined to get it back, to kill it, capture it, and eviscerate it. (It's noteworthy that two other characters seem to have truly known, or at least brushed this truth: Pip and, at the end, Ishmael.)

Moby Dick is also God, and the atheist-ish Melville seems happy to mix variations of God with variations of truth, offering the possibility that one can be substituted for the other. So, if we look at this way, then Ahab is trying to kill God...this raises him, at least in my esteem. Heroic?

While we are at it, is Don Quixote heroic?

I think much of this will get to our notion of the hero. Ahab is grand and large, certainly. Would any of us, with 20/20 hindsight, volunteer to follow him on the Pequod in his noble quest?

As I said, to my understanding the notion of heroism isn't essential, in regard to Ahab. He's a larger than life character, an archetype etc. But again, I am not wedded to either version (hero/not hero).

About MD being God--dchaikin, that's exactly what I've been thinking about, the killing of god thing (isn't there some anthropological-psychological idea that by killing gods we become gods or some such?), but to me, Ahab comes across more like a jilted lover than some god-wannabe.

Ahab once LOVED the whale! And the whale bit him! Lucifer turns Satan.

Or, Ahab just plain don't understand the whale at all, and he has such damned difficult, humourless character, that instead of getting over himself and his leg, he maddens into obsession.

Contrast and compare Ahab to the captain who lost his arm. The jolly fellow totally in love with his surgeon. ;) You know who I mean. Well, why didn't HE go crazy and throw over his entire life just to chase revenge?

The point is, the meeting between Ahab and the whale is singularly fatal, just like any unrepeatable, singular love story (and I don't mind if love here is understood more along the line of divine love, than the fanfic kind--speaking of fanfic--HAS anyone googled Ahab/MD 'ships yet?)

But more on whale as God--yes, totally--consider the replies from the chorus--some have seen him, some shudder and cross themselves at the mention, some have only heard of him, some DON'T EVEN BELIEVE HE EXISTS! That's very plain.

I completely believe that the Whale is a god-figure here, but I also think that there are times when a Whale is just a Whale. Of course, there may also be times when God is just a Whale, too.

By the way, I also think the Whale is heroic.

Oh, the whale is totally heroic!

Not that it cares.

Don Quixote's imagination is heroic.

the whale, whose brain enlightens the world...

Mardi 1

I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans, I have had to do with whales with these visible hands.

Fuck, I love Melville.

yaaaaaaayyyy!

So, how about this (credit modalursine): the Whale is Nature. How does that fit. Ahab the conquering man-master of galaxy.

The Whale is Everything.

but what and where is the skin of the whale?

The Whale is Everything.

In the beginning... was the Whale?!

Is the Whale expanding?

Are we inside the Whale?

What happens when the White Whale meets the Black Whale?

Who IS the Black Whale?

Are there any proofs of the Whaleness of the universe?

Is the Whale an anarchist, or is the Whale Order?

#218

It's a space suit.

Is there a whale?

#220

Ah, THAT question was answered in Herman Melville, by Moby Dick.

220-221. Deep.

Or - and if there is a whale, is there a Moby Dick?

Only A_musing knows!

I've fallen way behind in my reading and posting, largely due to illness - a spring bout of gastroenteritus, which I always get at this time of year- which left me enervated and ennuied, and also due to the amount of work which seems to be springing up this year.

A couple of months ago I read two novellas by Maupassant which continue to haunt me.

Afloat (Sur l'eau)
A marvellous work, an account of a voyage GDM made on his yacht along the coast of the South of France with his two hired sailors. His most personal work, in which the author comes closest to the reader, perhaps because it's plotless, and the narrator gives himself time to dream, to rant, and reflect. It contains matchless descriptions of the sea and the South of France, and amazing confessional stuff, in which Mauppassant comes across as a precursor to all the modern confessional writing of French lit: the Celines, the Cendrars. It contains Maupassant's famous rant against militarism and war, his reaction to the sack of Paris by the Germans in the 1870-71 Franco Prussian war. Here's a snippet:

Men of war are the scourge of humanity. We fight against nature, against ignorance, against all sorts of obstacles to mitigate the evils of our miserable existence. There are men, philanthropists, learned men, who spend their whole lives toiling to discover how to help, support, relieve their brother mortals... then along comes a war, and in six months, the generals have destroyed the work of twenty years of patient effort...

An incredible work, one to turn to again and again.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2012/04/de-maupassant-on-his-spleen.html

Alien Hearts (Notre Coeur)
a typical 19th century love story, and it's always lovely to read about the salons of Paris, whether it's GDM, Zola or Proust who's doing the writing. what makes this one so special is the portrait of a totally independent woman, who takes life as a man does, and uses (?) men as men use woman - in the 19th century sense of the word. This is contrasted by a narrative voice of extreme conventionality, so there is an interesting tension between the character and the narrative voice describing the character. In this novel, the victim of love is a man, not a woman, which makes a nice change.

Hats off to NYRB for translating these and making them available to English readers. Although I have to wonder again about their choice of translators? The translation of 'Alien Hearts' is particularly annoying, especially the title, which should be: 'Our Heart'. The translator explains his decision to impose his own title on the work, elbowing aside GDM's own title, on the grounds that the next work GDM wrote - the unfinished 'Alien Souls' - has 'thematic links' with 'Notre Coeur', and he wanted to make these links clear. WTF???? This seems to me the grossest kind of imposition of hindsight and interpretation, as if some damned American academic knew better than GDM what he was up to? Cultural imperialism of the worst kind, I think.

anyway, GDM continues to enthral and astound me, and I can't wait for the new movie version of Bel Ami to hit the screens here.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/belami/

Can't agree more with your disgust over the arrogant fiddling w/title.

Murr,

Have had Afloat on my list for a long time--will have to push it up. Who was the translator of that and was it as bad as the translation of Alien Hearts? A bad translation can ruin a book for me. Par exemple, I started reading Zola's His Excellency translated by some British fellow who had everyone saying "I say. . ." Had to quit. I found the translation by Vizetelly and it is so much better!

I read Maupassant's short story Useless Beauty eighteen months ago, my first Maupassant, you've reminded me how much I wanted to read more. Am speechless about such a renaming.

Loved your reviews of the Maupassant. Hope you are you are feeling better and keeping the cat litter clean.

see Cendrars' Bourlinguer for hideous translation decisions. i think the prose is well translated, but the novel is translated as Planus, and the longest section is changed from Genoa to Naples.

WTF?????

Lisa, I say, old chap, the translator or Alien hearts is Richard Howard, and of Afloat is Douglas Parmee. Parmee does a good job.

My Melville studies continue apace. Here is my review of Redburn

http://www.librarything.com/work/130367/82163675

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2012/04/redburn-herman-melville.html

Read and thumbed ! More of these esteemed TCM !

Things change but not all that much I suspect. A sailor friend who had been on a dredging ship on the Mersey in 1990 reported to me that the night-life ashore was of the worst, vulgar and degrading he had ever seen. " I couldn't believe we were still in Europe" he said.

But the Belgian crew was well prepared for the tough conditions. They used to get together in the refectory of the ship before going ashore. The captain ( worried that everyone of the small crew would get back the next day, fit for work) gave a sermon on venereal diseases and the multiple dangers of Liverpolian nightlife.

He then dropped a box of condoms on the table. "It was like a family pack or something, with 100 - 150 pieces in it". The crew went at the box like dogs, ripping it apart and stuffing handful of condoms in their pockets and then boarding the small boat, who was going to bring them ashore, in the most merry of states.

Maybe Redburn are the symptoms you feel if you do not use condoms ?

As an author I would like the right to fuck up my own title: something that translates back like 'Our Midjune Snakes and Drinking Adventure'

Maybe Redburn are the symptoms you feel if you do not use condoms ?

Hahaha! Mack, you are funny! Ouch!

Ric, for the Chinese edition of your book, I will make sure this is the translated title. :)

i know the character for center--i want that in there somewhere, and the 29 stroke character for, i think, stork

Center of the Storks: that elicits a complex weft of tales immediately

or, Stork Center: an abortion prevention farce

Rick, sounds like a whole new book.

I say, TCM, jolly good and all that. I will go ahead and buy the Parmee translation.

TCM, I am looking forward to your Pierre review. Ah, now, there's some decoding there to do, in all those ambiguities. I've gotten side tracked on my own Redburn reading, just busy with work and Tang. Must get back to it.

Sounds like you didn't like Mardi?

oh Mardi, what a piece of work is Mardi.

I'm not gonna get to Pierre this year, I'm focussing on the sea novels only. About to start White Jacket, and then Billy Budd. Meanwhile, I'm reading Slaughterhouse 5 for a break. Brilliant.

Enjoyed your excellent review of Redburn. You gotta say that Melville chooses some great names.

Never been a big fan of american literature on the whole, but Slaughterhouse 5 is excellent - poignant and funny by turn.

I came across this letter from Vonnegut to a book burner (edit a person who burned some books I should say) recently: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html

241 Txs for this link. Is there any information on how the school reacted ?

They sent no reply.

They probably can't write.

In chapter 19 Volume 2 of Mardi, our travellers enter a catacomb housing a library. Here are some of the titles:

Then there were plenty of rare old ballads:--
"King Kroko, and the Fisher Girl."
"The Fight at the Ford of Spears."
"The Song of the Skulls."

And brave old chronicles, that made Mohi's mouth water:--
"The Rise and Setting of the Dynasty of Foofoo."
"The Heroic History of the Noble Prince Dragoni; showing
how he killed ten Pinioned Prisoners with his Own Hand."
"The whole Pedigree of the King of Kandidee, with that of his
famous horse, Znorto."

And Tarantula books:--
"Sour Milk for the Young, by a Dairyman."
"The Devil adrift, by a Corsair."
"Grunts and Groans, by a Mad Boar."
"Stings, by a Scorpion."

And poetical productions:--
"Suffusions of a Lily in a Shower."
"Sonnet on the last Breath of an Ephemera."
"The Gad-fly, and Other Poems."

And metaphysical treatises:--
"Necessitarian not Predestinarian."
"Philosophical Necessity and Predestination One Thing and The
Same."
"Whatever is not, is."
"Whatever is, is not."

And scarce old memoirs:--
"The One Hundred Books of the Biography of the Great and
Good King Grandissimo."
"The Life of old Philo, the Philanthropist, in one Chapter."

And popular literature:--
"A most Sweet, Pleasant, and Unctuous Account of the Manner
in which Five-and-Forty Robbers were torn asunder by
Swiftly-Going Canoes."

And books by chiefs and nobles:--
"The Art of Making a Noise in Mardi."
"On the Proper Manner of Saluting a Bosom Friend."
"Letters from a Father to a Son, inculcating the Virtue of Vice."
"Pastorals by a Younger Son."
"A Catalogue of Chieftains who have been Authors, by a Chieftain,
who disdains to be deemed an Author."
"A Canto on a Cough caught by my Consort."
"The Philosophy of Honesty, by a late Lord, who died in disgrace."

And theological works:--
"Pepper for the Perverse."
"Pudding for the Pious."
"Pleas for Pardon."
"Pickles for the Persecuted."

And long and tedious romances with short and easy titles:--
"The Buck."
"The Belle."
"The King and the Cook, or the Cook and the King."

And books of voyages:--
"A Sojourn among the Anthropophagi, by One whose Hand was
eaten off at Tiffin among the Savages."
"Franko: its King, Court, and Tadpoles."
"Three Hours in Vivenza, containing a Full and Impartial Account
of that Whole Country: by a Subject of King Bello."

And works of nautical poets:--
"Sky-Sail-Pole Lyrics."

And divers brief books, with panic-striking titles:--
"Are you safe?"
"A Voice from Below."
"Hope for none."
"Fire for all."

And pamphlets by retired warriors:--
"On the Best Gravy for Wild Boar's Meat."
"Three Receipts for Bottling New Arrack."
"To Brown Bread Fruit without Burning."
"Advice to the Dyspeptic."
"On Starch for Tappa."

Oh Murr, that is fantastic.

Melville having lots of fun?

Oh, MURRRRRR...!

"Hope for none."
"Fire for all."\

Delicious. Delicious. Delicious.

it's a giggle, isn't it. My favourite is the theological work: "Pickles for the Persecuted"

Yes, the pickles for the persecuted one made me laugh too!

The ones in the last category remind me of so many of those articles on CNN. "Should you worry about having a stroke?" "Five reasons why you should exercise more... or else!" etc. People apparently always do love to be scared of things.

I think they are all bankable. Ready-made for genre. Pepper, pickles, pudding--Chicken Soup by any other name. ;)

and what about "On the best gravy for Wild Boar Meat" this one would prove to be a best seller here in France. If only Melville would change the word gravy for sauce.

Much like Dicken's fake titles. A Joycean playfulness. Melville was like Hamlet in that he was hopelessly caught between two worlds.

I'm quite fond of "Sour Milk for the Young, by a Dairyman" and "Suffusions of a Lily in a Shower." I wonder what a Tarantula book is.

Ah, lists again! I think I've only read one or two of those, but am sure I've also seen movies of a couple.

Those are wonderful titles - when you look at 19th century magazine article titles, pamphlet subjects etc etc. you see where he is coming from. There was an amazing amount of balderdash, sentimental and just plain silly. I'm sure we will seem no different to our descendants, should we have any a hundred or two years from now.

I'm ok...are you?

Back on 244:

"...that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them."

At the risk of sounding super-simplistic, that's my kind of Patriot.

Continuing with my Melville studies, I recently read two history books to fill in some background.

In The Heart of the Sea is an account of the sinking of the whaleship Essex, which was rammed by a sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific in November 1820. This was the most famous maritime disaster in America in the 19th century, and formed the basis for the sinking of the Pequod in Moby Dick. The survivors drifted for months in open boats before being rescued. They suffered starvation and dehydration and terrors unimaginable. They also resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.

The narrative by one of the survivors, Owen Chase, is still available, but there are advantages to reading this modern day account by Pulitzer prize winning author Nathaniel Philbrick.

First, he sets the disaster in the context of the whaling industry of the early 19th century, especially the Nantucket industry, showing how the Nantucketers in the disaster formed a closely knit group which may have increased their chances of survival. He also examines the discrepancy between the different accounts of the survivors to find out what really happened.

Second, he examines in gory and gruesome detail the effects of starvation on the body and psychology in an effort to understand why the survivors resorted to cannibalism. He quotes extensively from a study into the effects of starvation carried out by the University of Minnesota in WW2.

Thirdly he gives an account of how the story of the disaster was mediated in the subsequent culture, and how Melville might have heard about it. Melville owned a copy of Chase's narrative and notated it. Philbrick quotes from his notes, giving us a glimpse into Melville's workshop.

I am still haunted by the fate of 18 year old Owen Coffin, who was executed and eaten by his shipmates. It was his childhood friend Ramsdell who first floated the idea of drawing lots, and it was Owen Coffin who was the first to second this idea. They eventually talked the others in the boat into agreeing. Owen Coffin drew the first lot, to be killed and eaten, and his friend Ramsdell drew the second lot, to do the killing and butchering. Coffin asked for a moment of silence, then reassuring the others that the lots had been fairly drawn, laid his head on the gunwale, whereupon Ramsdell shot him in the temple with a pistol.

Trying Leviathan is the account of a court case that took place in New York in 1818. The case devolved on the question of whether whale oil should be exempt from the tax levied on fish oils on the grounds that a whale is not a fish. Burnett looks at the views of four groups of people: ordinary New Yorkers who watched and tried the case; naturalists and scientists involved in the controversies of taxonomic classification; whalers and seamen who had practical experience of whales; and whale oil merchants, tanners, candle makers and manufacturers who used whale and fish products.

Burnett does a super job of teasing out all these conflicting interests, at the same time giving a broad and detailed picture of the state of scientific knowledge in the new Republic, the conflicting commercial and business interests in the city, the political machinations between the City and the State governments.

Although there is no direct evidence that Melville knew about the case, there is no question that he must have been aware of it: it was a notorious case that resonated through the first half of the century, and Moby Dick contains many of the same questions raised by the trial. THe book is an excellent introduction into the state of scientific knowledge, and the history of science in the period leading up to the publication of MD. Sam, if you are reading this, I strongly recommend this book to you as an excellent bit of legal history as well.

Philbrick's book is indeed gruesome. The image that kept haunting me was when a surviving officer went to see the widow and mother of Owen Coffin to tell her what had happened to her son and how. The officer if I remember well was one of the ones who survived by eating Owen.

The story of the Essex is also the inspiration for Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym

There is high dark comedy, too, when a bunch land on an island and find bones of previous stranded.

#263

Good god! As "Awful Messages to Deliver in Person" go, that must be the tops! "Madam, I had to eat your baby..."

How long were they at sea? It's not the hunger, it's the thirst that makes starvation unbearable when you don't have water. With water, forty-sixty days without food ought to be, not bearable, but survivable.

Philbrick's book is excellent and provides much background detail especially about the Quaker community on Nantucket. He also manages to tell an exciting story as well, so much so that at times you have to stop yourself from enjoying it too much because those events really happened.

Lola, they took to the boats on Nov 20. one boat was rescued on February 18, the other on 23 feb. With only one week on the barren and waterless Henderson island, they spent about 90 days at sea on iron rations.

It is interesting that Melville chose to write the book that he did. Many authors would have picked up on the story of the survival and death of the men in the whaleboats.

Indeed, Poe picked the cannibalistic topic for his novel Arthur Gordon Pym

Would you want to survive at that cost? I'm trying to imagine what could be going through the head of that person who delivered the message, then and for the rest of his life.

Call me a defeatist, a giver-upper, but I'd rather throw myself to the sharks.

269 Which rather underlines the difference between Poe and Melville, right? I mean, not for Melville the grizzly sensationalist element, but he was attracted to the symbolic element of the whale attacking the ship. Incidentally, it's a still matter of debate as to whether the whale intended to ram the ship, or was simply crazed, which is one of the interpretative puzzles in MD that we talked about earlier.

Melville got infinitely more out of the story, that's for sure.

Interesting comparison. It seems Melville, who had experience whaling, wrote about what he knew here. (like DFW and junior tennis). I think his experiences allowed him to push much farther.

I would have chosen those stranded on the island of the bones of the previoulsy stranded.

If I remember the story correctly, the whale rammed the ship, went off a ways, turned toward the ship, menace quietly, and then rammed it again.

yeah that's what happened, but it's all a question of interpretation of the whale's intent.

A few posts back we were talking about AN Wilson's silly book on Hitler. Here
is a follow up, apparently, there was a spat in the letters column of the New Statesman. You can see here what a nasty little weasely shit Wilson is.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9189569/The-Hitler-biography-t...

I've had my fill of nasty little shits for the day, maybe even week!

I think the whale had every right to ram that ship.

Four years later, Wilson wrote his own Betjeman biography and included a passionate love letter supposedly written by the poet’s mistress.

It turned out to be a hoax concocted by Hillier, and the first letter of each sentence spelled out “AN Wilson is a s---”.

Is this true?! Is this really REALLY true?! If so, it's one of the funniest things EVER!

Here it is,

take the first letter of each sentence starting from : ALL DAY

«Darling Honor,
I loved yesterday. All day, I've thought of nothing else. No other love I've had means so much. Was it just an aberration on your part, or will you meet me at Mrs Holmes's again - say on Saturday? I won't be able to sleep until I have your answer.
Love has given me a miss for so long, and now this miracle has happened. Sex is a part of it, of course, but I have a Romaunt of the Rose feeling about it too. On Saturday we could have lunch at Fortt's, then go back to Mrs H's. Never mind if you can't make it then. I am free on Sunday too or Sunday week. Signal me tomorrow as to whether and when you can come.
Anthony Powell has written to me, and mentions you admiringly. Some of his comments about the Army are v funny. He's somebody I'd like to know better when the war is over. I find his letters funnier than his books. Tinkerty-tonk, my darling. I pray I'll hear from you tomorrow. If I don't I'll visit your office in a fake beard.
All love, JB»

Mac you are so clever! how did you find it? That is fucking hilarious, and AN wilson has the gall to keep writing and pontificating.

Oh, Mac! MERCI!

The Anglos, they pull the best hoaxes in the whole wide world.

Love the last sentence : " I'll visit your office in a fake beard."

lol, yes, that alone should have had alarm bells ringing in Wilson's head.

I've put together some thoughts on Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which I am studying this year. So far I've been focusing on Book Three. Book Four is up next.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2012/04/fragment-2804.html

My words seem to have acquired uncertianty. Somehow I'm impressed anda surprised at how deeply your following Locke. All from Melville?

TCM is a deep cat.

indeed an in-deep cat

A burrowing cat, a molecat.

Not that this is directly related to TC's Locke blog, I'll leave that for the more interested watchers to opinionize on. I am not to sure there is any writer living who is more at clarity than Gore Vidal. And he is almost never the dupe of the written word, or any other words, for that matter.

Excellent stuff TC. No feather bed for sluggards, certainly.

thanks everyone. I first came across Locke's ideas years ago, and never read him. I turned to him to try to understand Melville, yes, Dan. I'm interested really in how language determines thought and vice versa, and culture, and the categories different cultures and languages make about the world. Locke is proving tremendously productive in helping to clarify my thoughts in this area. Now that I have a kindle, I can read all these things for free without carrying around huge tomes.

Locke first appears in Melville's work in White Jacket, which I have just finished.

por, I agree about old Gore:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/07/gore-vodal-on-relationship-between.html

Catching up; Enjoyed your essay on John Locke's The essay concerning human understanding. My immediate thought was; and that is only the written word. How hard it is to understand people when you are actually conversing with them, when in the first instance you have to listen to the words they use.

I'm going away for two weeks to vietnam: Saigon, and the beach at Mui Ne.

my reading list:

on Kindle:
Billy Budd
Queen's Play Dorothy Dunnett
The Symbolist Movement in Literature Symons
Book 4 An Essay concerning Human Understanding Locke
Cleopatra Rider Haggard
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft Gissing

(I love my kindle)

paperback:
The Singapore Grip JG Farrell

can't say I"ll get through everything, but we'll see what happens. catch up when I get back. hugs to everyone.

TC, just the fact that you read Rider Haggard, underscores that you are a universal gentleman.

LOL :)

Have a good one TC.

The cat reads hafhaggardly

Have fun, Murrushka... don't read ALL the time.

Safe journeys to you tomcat!

Yes, take care Murr, and try to tick an Oriental Honey Buzzard. I don't think the Gray Faced variety is found there...

Buzzards. 'Funny how those colonial Amurr-a kans garbled all that bird taxonomy. Buzzards became vultures - not those regal hawks, the robust buteos. Our Robins aren't anywhere near the European variety; ours are are more like European blackbirds. And the Icterids? We Yanks call those blackbirds. We screwed up warblers as well. We call the divers, loons. And we certainly should have retained the original name of those little boreal guys, the chicadees - those are definitely - tits!

Saigon! Have a great trip. I'm trying to line up my ducks for a trip to Vietnam next year myself--let us know if you manage to see anything especially worth seeing, in between all those books on your list!

the cat is back.

Saigon is wonderful (hello amaranthic! Hau jo bu jien le!), the new Bangkok. I will definitely return: there is still so much to explore. And the beach at Mui Ne is the best beach I have seen - I am a connoisseur of beaches. hot golden sand, pure blue water, flat in the morning, with huge waves in the afternoon. just sitting on the beach and watching the changing colours through the day was a balm for the soul.

My reading:
Cleopatra by Rider Haggard. I first read this book when I was about 9, I think. I used to have an old battered copy that has since vanished, so it was great to find it online and read it on my kindle again. The only book one can find available now by RH is She, but Cleopatra is much better. The soothsayer Harmachis comes from the ancient line of pharoes, and he plots to usurp the Ptolomaic dynasty and return the throne of the pharoes to Egypt. high class trash, but some very creepy moments.

The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. Thanks to Porius for alerting me to this wonderful book. I've long been a fan of Gissing - I especially recommend New Grub Street and The Nether World for fans of Victorian novels.

Henry Ryecroft is a portrait of Gissing himself: a 60 year old writer who has been plagued by money problems and lack of real recognition during a long career devoted to literature. Towards the end of his life he comes into an inheritance allowing him, finally, to free himself from the demands of poverty. He rents a small house in Devon with a housekeeper and devotes his final years to walks in the Devonshire countryside and writing his memoirs.

This hardly sounds like a gripping read, and it's not. However, as a meditation on ageing, the intellectual life, the importance of books, the beauty of the natural world, the position of the intellectual in society, the effects on character of poverty (an overriding concern in all of Gissing's work), the book is unparalleled in its gentle wisdom and beauty. Who among us cannot respond to this:

Ah! the books that one will never read again! they gave delight, perchance something more; they left a perfume in the memory, but life has passed them by for ever. I have but to muse, and one after another they rise before me....

I read much less than I used to do; I think much more. Yet, what is the use of thought which can no longer serve to direct life? Better perhaps, to read and read incessantly, losing one's futile self in the activity of other minds....

To the end I shall be reading and - and forgetting. Ah! That's the worst of it! Had I at command all the knowledge I have at any time possessed, I might call myself a learned man... I cannot preserve more than a few fragments of what I read, yet read I shall, persistently, rejoicingly....

wonderful stuff. A book to read again and again.

The Singapore Grip My first Farrell, and I will be reading more of him. A superb evocation of life in Singapore just up to the Japanese occupation. A page turner with enough literary high jinks to make it more interesting than just a good beach read.

The Jacket (Star Rover) a weird effort by Jack London, in which an inmate of death row learns to project himself out of his body to experience his past lives. Overwritten in parts, and ultimately pointless, but fascinating in a macabre kind of way: Imagine Joan Grant crossed with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.

for those of you interested in my Melville reading, I've posted a review of Mardi here. It's good to be back, I've missed everyone.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2012/05/mardi-and-voyage-thither-herman.html

Welcome back tomcat!

And indeed we have missed you, Murr. If you feel like posting anything about Otto Dix over in the music thread, please do! (but if you have nothing to say, don't force it) :)

Ah, Gissing. Another author I must read one day (and then forget)...

Ten thousand welcomes, and I'm glad you had such a good time.

Welcome back TC.

That essay on Mardi was just an awesome way to start a week. Welcome back, dear cat. Just started reading The Master and Margarita and wondering what you might know about this curious black cat who neglects his/her four legged elegance, walking on two legs, with some money on itself somewheres.

Welcome back TC. Has Mardi put you off reading everything that Melville wrote (or coughed up).

Fabulous essay in the Lectern and I get the impression you are still enjoying reading the unreadable. Not for laggards then, but your essay is a great place to start for anybody else thinking of making the attempt.

welcome back tomcat, I am itching to try some Farrell and now that Gissing too...am just contemplating a possible holiday in that neck of the woods.

I don't dare read you on Melville as you may enthuse me and I cannot fit him in right now.

On the other hand, after Forster last year this summer my group is reading Tolstoy - Anna Karenina, Resurrection, Hadji Murat. I know you will approve.

thank you for the warm welcome everyone. it's great to be back.

dan, we did a salon read of MAM a few years back. The discussion threads should be around here somewhere.



Bas, I have now completed all of Melville's sea stories. I'm going to leave Pierre and The Confidence Man for another year. I am not going to read Clarel, you will be pleased to hear. Melville's poetry is too bad. It occurred to me while reading Mardi that a good fully notated edition, with all references explained etc might make the book more readable. There are many many fine things in it, but it's kind of like Finnegan's Wake, in that it's really a labour of love to read.

Tony, I approve. I have not read Anna Karenina for years. Time for a reread?

I'm currently rereading Wuthering Heights, as I'm teaching it this summer to my 15 year old private student - her choice, I might add. What a book.

Hmmm. Melville's poetry may need a defense here. I think it is more ugly than bad, and in places the ugliness is sublime.

Oooh, give an example!

Well, how about "Tribes and Sects" in Clarel -- who doesn't love the line "Stable in time's incessant change/ Now first he marks, now awed he heeds/ the intersympathy of creeds", snuggled in there in that craggy tetrameter with the odd sing-song dickensonian rhyme.

The sort of bravura of the whole miserable slog, combined with the philosophizing in meter, is just sort of Kafka meets Mohammed. And then he ends the stanza with "alien or hostile tho' they seem -- exalted thought or groveling dream" and its like, take that Poe, I can be purplisher than you are and make more sense in an odd way, too.

In Clarel, I think Melville anticipates Godard's Weekend, full of gore and traffic wrecks and doomed plans.

Melville to Godard - what a leap! sam

Then there's Goddard, that other over-achiever:

http://www.johngoddard.info/life_list.htm

well, I grant you there might be the odd line here and there which is arresting, but as a whole, I'm not impressed. Of course, I feel somewhat embarrassed saying this in the presence of the only two people in the whole world who have actually read Clarel, probably. I have no intentions of doing so, based on what I have read of his verse. All of the poetry in Mardi, without exception, is utter doggerel, probably intentionally so, I imagine, and there is nothing worth reading in Battle Pieces. It all sounds so laboured and academic. There is not the singing that you get in his prose.

I don't think either of us reviewed Clarel as the read of a lifetime, though I'm glad I did it. It has some odd fans - Robert Penn Warren and Harold Bloom (Bloom canonizes MD, Billy Budd, the Piazza Tales, Clarel and the Poetry), but please take odd every way you can there.

This summer seems to be much busier than last year. I am very stuck in my reading, seems like I am making no progress at all. My studies of Locke continue - here are my latest notes on Book 4
http://thelectern.blogspot.tw/2012/06/fragment-162012.html for anyone who is interested.

I am working on a piece about the relationship between Locke's empiricism and his views on God. Part of the problem is that it's hard to get stuck into something for any length of time, and while I'm writing it, I can't read anything else serious.

In between, I'm reading Chaucer in a marvellous translation by David Wright. I studied Chaucer at school, like every Brit of my generation, but never read the whole thing. The Knight's Tale is hardly the most exciting and bored me rigid at 17. However, this time I'm enjoying the high jinks immensely.

I'm also dipping in and out of the poetry of Odysseus Elytis, who is one of my all time faves.

(I'm also reading the second instalment in the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, but it's not very highbrow so we keep that quiet....)

Oh sudden chance, Oh unstable Fortune
Full of deceit, like the deceiving scorpion,
Whose head fascinates what it means to sting;
Whose tail is death, and death by poisoning.
O brittle joy! Sweet and cunning venom!
How subtly you can paint, O monstrous Fortune,
Your gifts with all the hues of permanence,
Deluding one and all with that pretence!

The Merchant's Tale trans David Wright

I think I've failed to perceive the identity and diversity of Lockean knowledge...I'm lost on step one!

I read Chaucer last year The Riverside Chaucer and thoroughly enjoyed it. At school I remember liking the prologue to the Canterbury tales, but I hated the Clerk's tale. A little different this time round.

I presume the David Wright translation is just The Canterbury Tales. My absolute favourite Chaucer is Troilus and Criseyde and The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls are also great fun.

I either missed it or forgot (shame on me either way!), but what brought on the Locke study? Melville?

well, yes, partly, but he's always been someone I wanted to read since I encountered his views on language years ago. (also, I realised I could download the Essay free on my kindle ...). I"m also interested in the relationship between language and mind, so Locke is essential reading there - although interestingly enough, in the other long serious book I am studying on the same topic - Lakoff's Women, fire and dangerous things Locke doesn't get a mention at all. go figure.

Dan, I feel the same way sometimes. small steps, man, small steps.

Bas, its just the canterbury tales. The prologue is great, such marvellous character studies.

Love Elytis, too. I've been dipping in to him of late as well, brought on by thinking about Greece. I've been periodically tweeting little love poems to Greece, greatly confounding some of my tweeple, who are mostly lawyers and scientists and very serious tweeple overall.

One month and I am back to Greece

I never should have left

Where ever I travel, Greece wounds me.

Seferis.

dear friends, does anyone know anything about this site? I have been asked to write for them, but I know nothing about them. I"m hoping someone here a bit more savvy than me might be able to enlighten me.

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/about/

Sam Sacks, chief ed. of Open etc. on Frank Kermode
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/seer-blest/

You should not worry. I can't find anything on cruelty against cats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letters_Monthly

lol thank you gentlemen

cat,

to be asked to write for someone? can it really go wrong? (i mean discounting the more bizarre scenarios)

yeah, I know. I just wanted to know what you guys thought of the website, whether anyone knew it. I"ll let you know how things develop.

I have finished my piece on Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It's basically only about book 4, as my studies do not yet extend to books one and two. But I submit for your pleasure and edification nonetheless.

http://www.librarything.com/work/13183/83663469

And in other exciting news today, I finally got my Permanent Alien Residence Card in Taiwan. I am officially an alien in Taiwan, after 14 years. A big day for me, celebrations are in order. Champagne, herring (gelato for Urania) wodka and blinis.

Great essay TC

If Locke's reasoning told him that God did not exist, then the question that springs to mind is why did he believe in God. So many possible answers to that question.

Congratulations on becoming an alien. Do you have alien rights?

恭喜恭喜!

Interesting, Murr. Poor Locke seems to be getting himself in a tangle, trying to reconcile human reason with faith, which two things can't be united. 1 Corinthians 3:19: for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.

And happy Alien Day to you! How very warm and welcoming. What were you before you were an alien?

Talk about deep philosophical questions: what is a foreigner before becoming an alien? what is divinity before becoming reason?

Congratulations to the scholarly cat.

Congrats on the invitation to write and permanent alienation! In the US, I was only ever non-resident alien for ten years. Still had to pay taxes and social security. Still fucking want the bombs dropped with my money back.

TC,

A resident alien! That's exactly what i am, and when I went to renew it I breezed through. In this world I believe alien is the thing to be, but residency is important for the social shit. Congratulations.

337--I don't know why you would spend 10 years in the US without having to, but congratulations on getting out. If it makes you feel any better some of your tax dollars may have gone to cover what i evaded.

337: You want the bombs, or the money? :)

I'll take the bombs if I can't get the money.

Never too early to start wrapping Xmas presents.

Congratulations on your permanent alienation. I got mine in Japan several years ago (oddly, I obtained it more easily and smoothly than two other visas I'd had under different statuses).

When I became a permanent resident I had mixed feelings about no longer being designated a "spouse or child of Japanese national." I liked the ambiguity and flexibility the "or" gave me.

thanks everyone. I've been an alien (for as long as I can remember lol
) in Taiwan for 14 years, but it's the permanent bit that counts. It means that my presence here is no longer dependent on having a job: If I get fired, I won't have to leave the country, I won't have to get my work permit renewed every two years, and I can work legally for more than one employer. That bit is important for a free- lancer. I already get health coverage from my employer and I pay normal taxes anyway, so really it's the freedom from being tied to one work permit that is the key benefit here. and looking ahead, it makes retirement here a much easier option.

Bas, good question. According to Nietzsche, religion and belief in god are powerful atavistic desires which are hard to let go. I agree with him.

Great essay on Locke. I don't find it hard to imagine Locke believing in God and professing that effort at reasoning; but I do find it hard to believe that he wasn't aware of the contradictions in his own reasoning. Curious.

It is very quiet here. Hope everything is OK with you TC

ditto

Very quiet indeed.

Indeed.

yeah very quiet, it is scary

Shhhhh.

Deep in the mountain wilderness
Where nobody ever comes
Only once in a great while
Something like the sound of a far off voice,
The low rays of the sun
Slip through the dark forest,
And gleam again on the shadowy moss.

-- Wang Wei, tr. Kenneth Rexroth

Reticence brings its own rewards.

Here kitty kitty kitty kitty......

Lol

The poor cat is probably just recovering from Locke by secretly indulging in a string of feline romance novels...

> 355

The Complete Works of Lilian Jackson Braun and Rita Mae Brown....

You are all very sweet and kind, thank you for your concern and good wishes, and especially for the Wang Wei/Rexroth in 351: totally incredible.

I've been extremely busy with work and study and writing. I am having a piece published by Open Letters Monthly on August 1st on my beloved Joseph Brodsky. I've been studying like mad. It's when you're forced to write that you realise how little in fact you know. Anyway, my estimation of Brodsky has gone up and up, and he's plunged me back into my Russians.

Here's a quick list of the books I've covered since Locke:

The Life of the Buddha Bikkhu Nanamoli
If you only read one book about Buddhism in your life, make sure it's this one. A kind of bible for me.

http://thelectern.blogspot.tw/2012/07/fragment-30072012_30.html

The Conquest of the Useless Werner Herzog
About the making of Fitzcarraldo. Herzog reveals that he is as much an artist of the written word as he is of the moving image.

Stalin Edvard Radzinsky
Full of juicy gossip about the tyrant, especially on his relationship to the arts and literature of the period.

I'm currently reading a new biography of General Zhukov, which will be published this autumn, and working on a review of it for OLM. Expect lots of Russian reading from here on.

and there is a typhoon in the offing. Yikes!

A typhoon in the offal! That's awfing.

Great to hear from you TCMurr.

Stay safe!

Welcome back. Congrats on the Brodsky piece.

Hah! a Brodsky piece--who hasn't done a Brodsky piece?

I want also a piece of Brodsky ! Where can I get it ?

Hi, Murr! Ages ago I meant to ask you if you read Brodsky's essay on Dostoevsky vs. Tolstoy (from Less than one). I was A-mening every sentence.

thanks everyone. I"ll put a pimpit up when the Brodsky is out.

364 : yep, read it numerous times. Brodsky's essays are astoundingly good. read the one on Cavafy? Tsvetaeva? both superb.

Glad you are alive and well and working hard.

thanks bas

Well, here it is for those who are interested: my first published review. Woohooo!

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/

Great stuff, but which one is it? Are you Greg Waldmann on Lyndon Johnson? Justin Hickey on Batman? Alison Bechdel on her "BFF in the NYT"?

well I don't think he is Frank Gado writing about Edgar Allen Poe.

367 woooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooo

368, 369, LOL

no dears, Quentin Brand on Joseph Brodsky. They didn't want to use my real name, as they didn't think readers would believe I am really a cat, so I had to come up with this pseudonym. like it?

One drawback. How do we thumb ?

no idea. I think you're supposed to tweet, whatever that is.

tweet tweet

Twit Twit Romney; Quentin Brand's most avid reader.

Well it is a great article as expected. TC even tempts me to read poetry !

You have been working hard TC. Fabulous essay. Quentin Brand sounds like a name you have made up. Adding a t on the end of Brand would have given it a more cosmopolitan flavour.

In Flemish we could say " Kat in brand " ( cat on fire )

A mix of Quentin Crisp the bon viveur and rule breaker and the fictional Bill Brand, left of centre Labour MP & rule breaker...Hmmm there seems to be a rule breaking theme coming through, can this be right Murr?

Excellent work Quentin Brand.

Loved it Mr Pussy C... , sorry, Quentin. Congratulations, a great start. Now I am off to look out some Brodsky.

Great post!
It reminded me of Mayakovski's 'Conversation with a tax collector about poetry'

http://wwwmiscellaneousmusings.blogspot.nl/2011/04/poetic-perspective-on-economi...

Not that M and B have much in common, but the ambivalent (or worse) feeling of the government towards poets is clear.

>377 baswood:- 379
Funny you should say that, Brand is actually a Dutch name, my father is Dutch, and on my mother's side, I am of course descended from the Duchess of Bromley.

Pim, thanks for the Mayakovsky!

I'm now reading Orlando Figes's book on The Russian Revolution, a great tome of a book, and Solomon Volkov's The Magical Chorus. This latter is especially good: all my old favourites in one place.



Peter the Great meditating on the idea of building a city by the Baltic sea.
Alexander Benois

Just read your brilliant review, Murr. I think you have another living--by 'brainwork'--to add to your reportoire.

thanks rick. if only 'brainwork' paid better than the intellectual prostitution which is teaching. :)

by the way, i don't know if anyone else has been following the trial of Pussy Riot, but it bears striking similarities with the trial of Brodsky that I outlined in my piece.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/06/pussy-riot-trial-inquisition-khodork...

Autocracy is alive and well in Russia, as it always has been.

Czar Nicholas I of Russia was feeling a little pea-vish in the Winter of 1849. A young scribler by the name of Fyodor Dostoyevski & a handful of his associates had been arrested for seditious activities - nothing serious, mind you, just a few young punks yammering on about the emancipation of serfs, etc. But old Nick had a hunch that they were up to no good, and was determined to teach them a lesson.
So one morning in December, on orders from head-quarters, soldiers burst into D's cell in St. Pete prison and told them they were to be shot immediately if not sooner. D. was a little shaken but was determined to keep a stiff upper lip. The thugs, I mean soldiers, brought the prisoners to Semyonovsky Sq., where, in front of a crowd of 3000, a stuttering general read the bad news aloud. A priest gave the troublemakers a cross to kiss; they were blindfolded and their hands were tied. The soldiers trained their weapons upon the grumblers. The grumblers braced themselves. All was silence.
Suddenly. A soldier thundered up on horseback bearing good news. It was all a joke. They weren't going to die; they were going to Siberia. The czar wanted them to feel the full weight of his Imperial humor. A real scream, he was.
http://literalab.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/b_pokrovsky_kazn_1949.jpg

Hi Mr Tomcat. You don't know me but I'm a fan of all the banter... (it's better than crack after a hard day's work although that's just a guess). I was deported from Russia after I tried to interview Khodorkovsky in 2003. Becoming persona-non-grata in Putin's Russia is one of my proudest moments... Also interviewed the poison dwarf himself (as well as Medvedev) around the same time... I bathed for weeks in rubbing alcohol to get their stink of me. I'm so weird. That's why I usually keep stumm. Sorry. Carry on.
:)

go on, isabelle

yeah, Isabelle, what he said. welcome to the banter. Im so dismayed by the sentence PR have received. Im wearing a pink balaclava as I write. Don those balaclavas, guys! I guess the best way to support them is to buy their latest single. Do you think there's any chance that their sentence might be truncated/suspended?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gallery/2012/aug/17/pussy-riot-supporters-protes...

So where are you living now?

Yes Isabelle, breathe life into this tired venture. The stench of rootintootinpootin is still in your nostrils, is it?

Ooh so exciting. I almost feel part of the gang with all this attention! I only log on once a day as I am writing a book (fiction) and promised my agent it would be ready by April next year (fat chance). It's my first book ever (I've written a screenplay and work part-time as an Oil & Gas/renewable energy journalist) and am already dreading 'The Salon Litteraire's' comments like crazy (should any of you ever read it of course)... I break out in a cold sweat just imagining it. I have been thinking about the book's storyline since I was 8 and it reached 'be all and end all' status circa Dec 1996... I have already broken off 5 engagements because I get convinced that I'll get tricked into giving up the obsession (I'm proper crazy). This is why I don't get involved here... I don't get out much and when I do people NEVER talk about literature. So I need you all ... BUT, if I joined the banter, I might get so carried away that I'll lose my concentration (and I can't have that). The fact that I am forced to work 3 days a week in order to pay the bills (+ pay for quarterly drinking trips to Havana to try and preserve what's left of my sanity) is bad enough... Still, it has been an absolute thrill being on your radar for a split second. And let me take this opportunity to thank you all. On several occasions you've all had me in tears, and this in the best possible way.

Regarding Pussy Riot. The Guardian wrote that their trial gives Russia 'the image of a medieval dictatorship'. What the F? Is there anyone in the Western Hemisphere who thinks that Russia is anything else?
I now get sent mostly to Africa, which of course can also get a bit hairy, but is nevertheless so much better... apart from a trip to Gulu that I'd rather not talk about.
After my deportation from Russia (I was driven to Dodomodevo in a bullet proof Merc with black tinted windows), I landed in Prague where I stayed for 6 weeks. I wish I were still there. I can't imagine every person in Prague reading 50 shades of absolute crap on the tramvajes. But at least in London (my home) we seem to have a bookshop on every corner of every street.

I've just re-read this and have no idea why I'm using so many brackets. Yet, I'm too lazy to edit.

I will leave you with this. After meeting rootintootinpootin I was sure that he regains his strength with a simple sip of gasoline.

you live in London? so you swopped one medieval dictatorship for another? The way the British Government is handling the Assange debacle is a disgrace as well. Where is Lenin when we need him, that's what I want to know.

Good luck with your book, You are in good company here, with several published authors and authors-to-be. We know what you're going though.

No reaction to the Behemoth reference? I have it on good authority that Mr. P actually owns a Browning!
Just saying...
... And I am actually very proud to be British (although the whole Assange debacle is such an embarrassment). I was living and working in the US until the day G.W was re-elected, never to return. I may have to fit in a quick visit before Mitt gets in. I really hope he doesn't. I think Obama deserves another chance. Taking over from the worst President of all time must be the hardest job in the world.

TomCat -

Over in Let's Talk Religion we are starting a group read of the Dhammapada. Perhaps because of my coming off the high of a Buddhist Studies intensive, it has been suggested that I am the "topic expert." However I feel you have a far greater knowledge of the Pali Canon than I do. Would you care to be the expert in the thread?

www.librarything.com/topic/141125

LBT, thanks for the invitation, but no thanks.
:)

let us never forget the droned civilians of pakistan as we recoil in appropriate horror at romney

nor the inmates of guantanamo (speaking of brackets and medieval)

point taken (truly)

another e.g....of sorts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/03/british-soldier-us-apache-helicopter

ooooooof so busy here.

Allow me to pimp my review of Stalin's General on Open Letters Monthly.

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/in-praise-of-the-practitioner/

I'm deep into Russia, just coming to the end of Orlando Figes's brilliant book about The Russian Revolution. Figes has come in for a lot of Figes bashing recently, but I have to say I think this is a superb work: it combines a grand sweep of vision with a detailed blow by blow account of the vicissitudes of the Revolution, with unforgettable images and character portrayals of the main players. It's a bit repetitive at times, but in a book this big that's to be expected. Also, Russian history is repetitive: the Reds came and burnt the village, then the Whites came and burnt the village, then the Greens came and burnt the village, then the Blacks came and .... you get the picture. Figes is also the master of the historical aphorism, an 18th century phenomenon that is great to see being used in the 20th century. This one made me giggle last night: the topic is how the workers spurned the revolutionary art of Malevich and the Futurists in order to listen to Glinka and Tchaikovsky. Figes comments:

When it comes to matters of artistic taste, there is nothing the semi-educated worker wants more than to mimic the bourgeoisie.

Awesome achievement.

I have also read recently The Case of Comrade Tulayev, and Zamyatin's We, both excellent. I am working on pieces on those at the moment, probably for the Lectern. 'We' especially has blown my mind. How come I never read this before?

Also been dipping in and out of a book Sam alerted me to ages and ages ago: The Stray Dog Cabaret, an anthology of verse from the Silver Age. Some of the translations are breathtaking, others just meh. Paul Schmidt takes (unjustifiable?) liberties. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but a great little volume nonetheless, with a jolly introduction and useful bios of the poets.

Excellent review Murr.

Glad to see you made it to We...Zamyatin is a special case, seems so far ahead of his time. No wonder Stalin couldn't deal with him...

thum-bed

Figes, it appears, is an unbalanced egoist, but a book of his I read recently about the Crimean war was serviceable, standard, not bad; and I really don't think we want too many of our writers to be Wallace Stevens...

Great to see you are reading Stray Dog Cabaret. I hope we'll get a review! I last read "We" a long time ago, and remember quite enjoying it. May have to look at that one again.

thumbed, I wrote, and then found the review was not thumbable--so I facebooked it...Now I intend to read it.

The review of the Zhukov book is exceedingly brilliant. The best reviews read like articles, requiring little or no fore-knowledge, fascinating in themselves. Murr has done it, and at the highest level. the New York Review of Books awaits him.

The cat up to first-rate high-jinks again. He leaves us in the dust. EXCELLENT work my friend.

I have been absent for ages. Catching up on a 305 posts. Murrushka, I am absinthe green with envy about your reading year and your reviews. I have had a horrible, terrible, very bad, not so good reading year ... and I have not had an intelligent thought since late 2011.

About Hoffman as the inventor of the detective story ... as Edward Said notes, attributing origins to particular authors/ideas/forms is a tricky and often ethnocentric endeavor. One might consider, the original Chinese Judge Dee novel (not the subsequent sequels by von Gulik). This from Wikipedia:

Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Chinese: 狄公案; pinyin: dí gōng àn, lit. "Cases of Judge Dee", also known as Di Gong An or Dee Goong An) is an 18th century Chinese detective novel by an anonymous author.1 It is loosely based on the stories of Di Renjie (or Ti Jen-chieh ), a magistrate and statesman of the Tang court, who lived roughly 630–700.

You know more about Chinese literature than I do, but if this information is accurate, then perhaps "origins" go much further back than Hoffman.

P.S. Congratulations on finally attaining permanent alien status. Again, I am envious. I have been considering exiting the US but have discovered that attaining permanent alien status or citizenship in the countries to which I would like to immigrate is next to impossible. Those countries do not want Americans. If I were a citizen of an EU country, I would have no trouble getting a permanent residence card. Not that I blame countries for not wanting Americans. I wouldn't want them either.

Just read your Brodsky essay. First congrats both publications, and second congrats on a fantastic essay on Brodsky. I'm so happy to have read an analysis on the why of the mixed success of Brodsky's English poetry...but there's also so more interesting stuff there. And I'm wondering, did all the Brodsky essays you read affect your own essay writing.

Off to read about Roberts book...

I'll skip the Roberts, but remember your history lessons. Vicious stuff, but brilliantly done.

Interesting that you got such a long response from the author, tcM. I very much enjoyed the review and sent to my SO who is into military history, and specifically Soviet history.

Prof. Roberts still doesn't "get it" if his response is anything to go by.

Gosh, thanks everyone for the encouragement and the feedback. I'm a bit embarrassed...but it means a lot to me to get such responses from my old friends and partners in crime.

Ur, I think we can safely say that Hoffmann is the precursor to the European detective novel. I haven't read any of the Judge Dee stories (yet) but I have seen this movie several times. For fans of Big epic chinese historical movies, it's a must.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l5e7rEg11w

Dan, interesting comment about Brodsky's essays. They may have had an influence, but I can't be sure. The man's insight and powers of expression are beyond anything I can hope to achieve. For lovers of poetry especially, Brodsky's essays are a must.

Anna, thanks for passing it on, I will be interested to hear what your SO has to say about it. Baz, that's exactly what I thought when I saw his response. I was in the middle of a long reply to him, when I realised I was just simply repeating what I had already said in the review. I found myself arguing about numbers of dead, and then realised how obscene it was. Anyway, he is the historian I'm just the reviewer. lol.

I'm reminded of Pushkin's strategy, which was to write long rebuttals to the authors of books he had reviewed who had complained about his review; and then lock them away in a drawer.

Rereading Othello with my high school girl private student. I don't know what her teacher was thinking about assigning this one. It's hard. Why not Romeo and Juliet? much easier and relevant for kids her age.

411 there is no need to develop. You said what had to be said, you let him react and basta, there is no need to further develop THE thing. Don't get lured into a long i say this - i say that discussion.

Chris passed it on to all his "wargaming" buddies one of whom is very interested in reading the book in spite of being a bit swayed by your review to think that the writer was too soft on Stalin.

Well, I too passed it on, so there.

As for the rebuttal, it was pretty standard, sometimes convincing to the less informed, but on closer examination over dependant on his previous works. If he wasn't so polite, a good response would be 'I have rebutted your rebuttals in a previous review.'

Now that our pet kitty is clawing with the big predators, I think we have to take a sterner view of his work. I would guess we all tend to say Right on cat, and Oh, fuck off argumentative pricks. So, in this light I re-read Cat and Roberts and have a lengthy commentary to offer:

I want to like Roberts because I'm a writer and I have yet to read a critical review of anything I have written that was of any merit. I've had many friends and acquaintances provide helpful criticism before publication, but every single negative critique was simplistic and off base. So what about Murr? Roberts' kindly adversarial defense is probably a professional necessity, but it fails to convince. Here are some points:

'Brand claims that I concentrate on the rhetorical qualities of this July 1942 decree by Stalin in order to downplay and skirt around its murderous aspects.'
That is an example of the kind of factual comment that Brand criticises. Yes, Brand, after a lengthy discussion of the point uses as a transition a comment that the problems with Roberts' treatment of the order represents a strategy of the book, and therefore the words 'in order' are accurate enough. But when condensed into this sentence it reduces Brands argument to something very different from its essence.

'As Brand notes Order 227 was not officially published in the Soviet Union until 1988, although its contents were well-known. In 2002 I published a full English translation in my book Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle that Changed History.'
The strategy here is repeated: I am quite the expert (and indeed he is), so who you gonna believe. It's a child of ad hominem, or maybe a cousin.

'There is an important point to note about the ‘blocking detachments’: most of the soldiers they detained were returned to their units, only a small number were arrested and an even smaller number executed. For example, according to Roger Reese less than 1% (1, 189) of those detained at the height of the battle for Stalingrad in summer 1942 were executed. Reese also makes the point that the penal battalions saved lives by providing an alternative to immediate execution (Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought, University Press of Kansas 2012 p.165).'
As Murr says, the obscenity of numbers. This takes the tort. Think of the lives that were saved!

'The Great Terror. Brand notes that I devote “only” three pages to the Great Terror. I could have written a lot more, of course, and have done so in numerous other publications'
I love the "only" as if three pages is quite the feast--and then of course, back to what he's done elsewhere. (Obviously the main problem with this is that few readers of this book will be inclined to read all of these books in order to better appreciate what is in this one.)

'In fact, terror as a pervasive feature of the Soviet system came to end when Stalin died in 1953.'
Laugh or cry?

'The Pity of War. Brand thinks that I sometimes lose sight of war in practice and, in this respect, commends the work of Beevor, Keegan and other popular historians. I have spent a large part of my adult life studying the Second World War, through contemporary documents and first-hand testimony as well as works of history. In writing Zhukov’s biography I saw my task as conveying his experience of the reality of war. The way I did this was to cite – often at length – Zhukov’s own testimony about his experience of the war. That seemed to me preferable to my imagining his experience, especially since I have no direct experience of war myself.'
I could write at length about this one. Though he is doing what popular (sly pejorative here) historians do in this book, he elevates and separates himself from them by returning to the well of his vast researches, then I believe blatantly lies about his task, to convey Zhukov's experience of the war. I hope his task was more than that. And very cleverly: 'That seemed to me preferable to my imagining his experience...' Where the hell did that come from? I don't think Murr was praising the fictional aspects of Beevor and Keegan. Further, there is a nauseating tendency in popular histories and documentaries of writing imaginative first person or nearly first person accounts: To Genghis, it must have seemed as if the world had turned once more, leaving him right-side-up despite his pervasive feeling that the apricot he had just swalloed was rotten...

'I did not enter into a detailed discussion of Suvorov’s treatment of Zhukov because, firstly, his books about Zhukov are only available in Russian and,'
The expert can, of course, (indeed, who else would?) deliver us information from books written in their languages of research.

Now that, Tomcat, is an objective response, and I will stand no proclamations of embarrassment on your part.

You have a way with words Rick

gee, you read my mind, Rick. The points you raised are almost exactly those that I was in the midst of writing as a rebuttal, when I decided against it.

"Reese also makes the point that the penal battalions saved lives by providing an alternative to immediate execution"

This in particular made me barf into my beer. So the execution was not 'immediate' but was effectively delayed - the death toll in the PBs was very high, and everyone knew that at the time. What is one to do with this kind of revisionist approach?

Anyway, I'm thrilled that my review has elicited such careful reading from so many of you.

On another note, I just had to share this delightful line from a Brodsky poem, which speaks directly to me:

Who needs the 20th century when we already have the 19th?

on that note, can I ask, since this is the 21st, can i just go to the Lubjanka, interrogate myself, borrow a gun, and end the threat of myself myself?

In that open letters magazine is also à good essay on ezra pound. Always been à favourite of mine.

That syrian folktale review has been up so many times, that i start wond'ering if it is à secret code.

time for a new thread, I think.