Gallic flummery that could not be written today

Wherein we chew over Rolando Barthes' mythologies.

There are many essays in this book. I'm not yet sure which I will read and in which order.

oatmill. present and accounted for. How many of the articles are published in the new translation?

I haven't ordered my book yet.

53 essays in part one and the long single essay that is part II (Myth Today). 25 more than in the English abridged version many of us first held.

I am using the Lavers translation because I haven't ordered the new translation. Why not start with Le mythe aujourd’hui?

I will chime in where I can, but its not something I know much about.. and I am not sure I will have much time to rectify that ignorance.

Haven't found it, gave up, ordered it........ it was that or a trip to the storage unit.

Now someone should write an essay on the semiotic significance of the storage unit. Limbo on earth.

I'm in. I have the book, the new translation, but haven't opened it up yet.

Well, ok, then, I think I'll eat the main meal first - le mythe aujourd'hui it is.

Hi All,

I think I'll keep an eye on this thread and maybe read some of the essays with you. I read this book many years ago and bought it again last year. But I don't think my edition has 53 essays, it's too small even if they are short. I'll have a look tonight when I get home.

Mon livre est arrive -- (don't do accents....too lazy).

Mine has 28 shorties and the Lecture. The 'old' Lavers...... tant pis, that was the cheapest offering.

Geez, ok, the last shall be first. Anybody out there actually reading???

I'm reading the new edition in order, but only actively reading here and there. I'm about 50 pages in. Having trouble. First, I'm still trying to get my head around what is meant by semiotics, in general and in this case. Then I found the first couple essays torture, starting with the one on wrestling. Then, either they were easier to read or I adjusted my expectations. Now the essays seem dense, but so short. Little snap-commentaries. Do they simply accumulate?

My basic semiotic assumption is something like this: everything and anything singled out for attention in any medium has more than its immediate significance/meaning (shorthand, everything means something else, also anything can mean everything) In some cases, in very artful hands, whatever Doesn't get singled out may also have significance...... Take a word/image like..... Blood. You could sit and write literally thousands of items that the word and the color and images and sensory detail related to blood bring to mind - many of them having to do with seemingly unrelated things - but once you become aware of 'blood' then it resonates hugely and you realize what a powerful 'signifier' it is. Some words aren't quite so rich, of course..... Of course, I could be utterly wrong, in which case I am counting on one of youse to rescue me.

I've been picking at the last essay without fully engaging. I think there is some denseness caused both by this being translated and by him looking to use words in a technical manner with very overladden meanings; semiotics isn't just the study of signs, it is the way since Saussure that a particular approach to thinking about signs. And "signs" itself becomes laden, a thing that both "is" itself something and "refers" elsewhere, often multiple places (e.g., to a sound, to a meaning). It's not just, as sibyx summarizes, the referential nature of a sign that matters, but the whole way RolBa's predecessors have worrying the damn process of referring.

In other words, semiotics doesn't just signify its definition (the study of signs) but a whole lot of other stuff (like having read Saussure and Levi-Strauss and a bunch of people who circled in and out of the Sorbonne at different times).

Fail, I guess. I was reaching to express a study that reaches far beyond 'just' 'the study of signs'. But one does have to start there and in some ways, like linguistics, at its essence there is a process of cataloguing, collating, collecting - although not a process wit any kind of satisfactorily tidy resolution of results or even claims..... It can't as you change it as you name it. The pleasure is in the pursuit.

To my delight I found the wrestling essay was engaging. I think it is the concept of Spectacle, that really hit me. DFW is obsessed with it in Infinite Jest which I am reading at the mo'.

Been listening to the Keith Richards autobio, a wild and wonderful ride..... he literally calls their concerts as they get their shit back together in the late 80's 'not concerts but Spectacles'

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

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), the "father" of modern linguistics, proposed a dualistic notion of signs, relating the signifier as the form of the word or phrase uttered, to the signified as the mental concept. It is important to note that, according to Saussure, the sign is completely arbitrary, i.e. there was no necessary connection between the sign and its meaning. This sets him apart from previous philosophers such as Plato or the Scholastics, who thought that there must be some connection between a signifier and the object it signifies.

...

Saussure posited that no word is inherently meaningful. Rather a word is only a "signifier," i.e. the representation of something, and it must be combined in the brain with the "signified," or the thing itself, in order to form a meaning-imbued "sign." Saussure believed that dismantling signs was a real science, for in doing so we come to an empirical understanding of how humans synthesize physical stimuli into words and other abstract concepts.

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

Barthes's many monthly contributions that were collected in his Mythologies (1957) frequently interrogated specific cultural materials in order to expose how bourgeois society asserted its values through them. For example, the portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit is a bourgeois ideal that is contradicted by certain realities (i.e., that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He found semiotics, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were "second-order signs," or "connotations." A picture of a full, dark bottle is a signifier that relates to a specific signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage. However, the bourgeoisie relate it to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing experience. Motivations for such manipulations vary, from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo. These insights brought Barthes in line with similar Marxist theory.

#14 Sibyx - I did fine the ideas about wrestling fascinating, despite not enjoying the essay. Was there a WWF equivalent in the 1950's?

(It is important to note, though, that although the arbitrary sign is central to Saussure's thinking, it is a major concept in linguistic philosophy before him--as perhaps highlighted by the fact that he is being contrasted here with Plato and the Scholastics, with nothing in between. As an explicit and defined concept, it goes back at least to Locke and signification by a "perfect arbitrary imposition." Implicitly, it's in Aristotle, it's in the Tower of Babel, &c.)

Dan - Short answer! Don't know! Wiki must have a history of wrestling in America?? Had a mo' there though thinking hunh, The World Wildlife Fund.....?

Reading this I had that Aha! feeling of 'this is what wrestling is about' - the notion that wrestling is this drama that goes moment by moment as stylized as Kabuki in a way, providing physical and emotional release in this 'lawless' but (usually) setting (though not always, which is the risk and the fun, I guess.)

In Infinite Jest DFW (among a jillion other things) takes on the game of tennis from just about every possible angle...... a huge piece of it is about how you build your game, how how you play shows who you are, playing a game where you are in control, playing a game where you know your strengths and work within them, or know your strengths and work outside of them (much harder), the necessity to develop a persona as a tennis player (think of bad boy McEnroe), the SHOW that all these kids are training to be a part of, and which being part of means being part of a Spectacle that goes way beyond tennis, and is yet utterly dependent on you being very very good at tennis..... DFW was exploring tennis fully literally from the basement on up..... very cool! It's so huge I can't even begin.

Martin - you've filled my ellipsis! Ah, I probably should have just posted the whole section... or just the link...

Sibyx - IJ was so fascinating, but overwhelming. I only took in a tiny part of it. Would like to hear more on IJ and semiotics. Just the movie itself - are it's effects based on the viewers interpreted response? Is it an insanely powerful sign, and does that mean someone out of culture wouldn't be affected by it?

>19 dchaikin: ha ha excellent. Glad they're on the ball over at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics.

I've confused myself. I was trying to take a stab at Dan's question of what Semiotics signifies so he could read the text, and my answer was really sort of "all kinds of stuff, let's not sweat it too much", but now I'm trying to figure out how IJ, Saussure, and wikipedia work into it.

The further I get into IJ (p.750 and more or less caught up on footnotes) the more awed I am. But no doubt in my mind DFW was playing hardball (sorry!) with language and ideas and making something meaningless take on meaning and shifting things that mean one thing to new and other (and possibly) vaster meaningless meaning...... like..... the Concavity/Convexity - people disagreeing about what to call a Fucking Dump!!!!!! (And I live in it, btw). Or -- the name O.N.A.N. for the Mex-Can-Us Union...... I mean, really! It's so funny and so awful because it points up that we DO THIS STUFF already all the time and don't even notice. Accepting the stupid language, being blind to the significances and how insidious they are leads to accepting the actuality - so he fools around with the intersections of that, where the line is crossed..... the book is consumed with boundaries like the line between anhedonia and psychotic depression..... between being cured of drugs and still an addict (never, maybe?).... the borders between the countries, the polluted and the clean and so on and on and on.... and that's just one little thing that I have no doubt comes out of DFW's acquaintanceship with the deep thinkers in this field...... and truly, I know nothing about what DFW studied or that much about him as a person - yet - I am sure he will be a lifetime study for me now.... oh yes..... trails off jibbering.....

Confusion is good! Here's what you need: VODKA

>22 sibylline: Just wanted to say I really like how much you like Infinite Jest:)

Ditto what Martini said! And thanks for the vodka article. Believe it or not, I've been enjoying a very dry martini (picturing a bottle of vermouth while I pour the vodka) each night while reading Infinite Jest!

Keith Richards talks brilliantly about how one gets addicted to heroin...... I feel that DFW may be a bit like that....... at first you think, ok, this feels good, I can take it or leave it, then bit by bit, you are sucked in.....

..... what if Infinite Jest IS the REAL Entertainment!!! No, that is too scary a thought, I am backing away from that fast.

I could certainly use a dry martini..... but it's only barely lunchtime. Very good approach!

>25 sibylline: I said the SAME thing, and then some cranny guy scolded me. It just seems obvious. Wait till the movie.

>13 A_musing:

In the original French the final essay is also pretty dense.
The lack of examples at first and the reference to earlier essays later made me think that reading the bool in the original sequence would have been a better idea.
But I accepted the idea of myths being used by the powers that be to retain continuity in their power. Much of the 'demythologising' that I read about when I was young must have been inspired by Barthes.
I'll continue with the initial essays now, they seem to be more fun.

You're kidding me! Was this on some previous IJ thread......? Cringe cringe -- I was just thinking of posting a couple of these thoughts over on the thread I have over there, on the theory that the point of that thread is to post IJ thoughts..... but maybe I won't..... Mr Martini, safety in numbers.

11: I was devastated to hear that you didn't like the essay about wrestling. I loved it when I read it as a teenager (or maybe young adult), and still when I re-read it recently. I think there is something in how non-fiction is written in France and in the US, the reader's expectations are very different I think, though I couldn't explain exactly how, but the approaches are different. Also, I suppose Barthes has been integrated in mainstream French culture, and many of the things I read in his book I had already been exposed to, indirectly.

What strikes me about wrestling is how true his observations still are. Well, to be honest the last time I watched wrestling was about 15 years ago, but I'll assume it hasn't changed all that much since then. But come to think of it, I was watching American wrestling then, I don't think there is any equivalent in France now, though there was when he wrote this.

I also remember two essays vividly, the one about household detergents, and the one about Harcourt studio's photographs. I suppose there must have been equivalents in other countries. I grew up before the advent (in France anyway) of malls and multiplexes. In my town there were two mainstream cinemas, and one "art et essai" (specializing in more highbrow movies) that opened a bit later. The big cinemas looked like old fashioned theaters with a red curtain that went up at the beginning of the show, and there were ladies selling ice cream and candy at the entracte, between the commercials and the movie. And there were Harcourt photos of actors on the walls. Barthes describes them much better than I ever could, so I'll stop here.

Yuck, I feel very old all of a sudden.

Don't mind me, FlorenceArt, expectation may explain the vast majority of it for me. The words felt heavy, definitely out of my comfort zone.

now I'm contemplating a world without malls. This is a very nice image, even if I would have to give up Mallrats.

Is there one about a Starbucks? I remember one about a Starbuck, but I suspect memory is fallible in this case.

Amusing loves cryptic titles. I thought this was about some French Georgette Heyer.

Why couldn't Mythologies be written today? I thought that was all the pomo philosophers, semioticians et al. did these days.

But then I'm an unlettered rustic. Teach me.

31> Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle, and I doubt many people in France heard about it until the 80s or even 90s. Mythologies was published in 1957, according to both LT and Wikipedia. So I think not :-)

I think it was some essay in our semiotics readings in the depths of history. Barthes would have nailed it.

15, 17 &c. And I think that, while the arbitrary nature of the sign is central to Saussure (and not unique or new to his thinking, as MM points out) - it is the implication of this when asking the question "how do words mean" that makes 'saussure' mean what it means today; which is also, on a simple level, why Mythologies could not be written today.



and A couple of chapters from 'Elements of Semiology'

The thread title comes from the different prefaces of the new volume - "Gallic flummery" is a description applied by the translator, tongue in cheek; "which could not be written today" was Barthes own assessment in his introduction to an earlier volume. Perhaps it could be written today, but it was just that particular yesterday when it could not be.

I have tasted of the last essay, but am going to go back for more after going through part I. It looks like more fun and necessary background.

It couldn't be written today BECAUSE it was written in 1957, and everyone already read it!

I was wondering if you meant because the packaging designs have changed, we have the internet, and the Japanese travel to other countries more than vv; something of the sort.

The forest of signs, the forest of signs!

I'd like to see a book of essays on the naming of the plethora of new gadgetry, everything from 'remote' to 'reboot' - some are accidental, some are very calculated, some are kind of wonderful, some are vile.......what those words have brought, taken away, made over ---- including names for software, hardware, crapware, makeyoucrazyware, gotchaware -- in my humble opinion CONSTANT vigilance is required to keep head above the suffocating muck. I recently encountered 'firmware' and I'm still in shock. Sounds like a female undergarment to me.

39> I don't know if this also happened in other countries, but in the last 10-15 years, we have seen an epidemic of name changes of French corporations, because of mergers or because of scandals or a general bad name of the corporation that they thought could be fixed by changing the name. As a result, we are stuck with a bunch of meaningless names thought up by communications consultants. They all sound more or less the same and they no longer have any link to the company's history (which in several cases was in fact the goal of the change). For some reason (or rather for obvious reasons, I guess these names were invented by the same consultants based on the same market studies), they all seem to end in -is. And they all have the same blue logo.

We've had a lot of that too -- although my favorite was the change, decades ago, from Esso to Exxon -- Esso means 'poop' or something like that in Turkish!

One reason I love Pynchon, DFW is they are perfect geniuses at naming things. One of the stories in Oblivion (DFW) is about a focus-group at one of these horrible corporations. Shattering. The amount of $ and effort spent on this crap is terrifying and strange.

...one of our major servitudes: the oppressive divorce of knowledge and mythology. Science proceeds straight and fast in its course, but collective representations do not follow suit, they are centuries behind, kept stagnant in their errors by the press and by the values of Order

From Bichon Among the Blacks

-The Romans in Films Ah yes, I well remember the curly locks glued to foreheads, also the sweat pouring off the glistening bodies.... Lordy me, but these frenchman love lambasting our bad taste! Actually, apparently, we inhabit some horrible middle ground, not quite the full-blown leprechaun, but certainly not high-brow. I do feel, however, that films have moved on to other conceits and trickses. The most recent roman thing I watched was 'Boadicea' and it is true that there were some farcical curls on bad-boy Nero, but I believe it was one of those recursive ironic signifiers signifying that you know better...
The Writer on Holiday was very funny and utterly true, there I was only yesterday lapping up Keith Richards talking about his sacred Shepherd's pie and favorite recipes. MOST of the book is NOT about those things, but about music, but. Nonetheless.
Blue Blood Cruise snore
Criticism of critics also kind of a snore. But people do do this - esp conservatives use this tactic. "I can criticize it all I want but I won't read that filth by smart people."

Can't wait to read about soap detergent. I mean, CAN'T WAIT.

Reading Romans, it occurred to me that he was making fun of the same stuff then that we make fun of today when talking about films in that era. (Wonder how Barthes blog would look like today.)

You guys I just came back from Paris and I was one of the voters for Barthes. I don't know though whether I can cope with him since I just bought Eichmann in Jerusalem and still have half of Gormenghast and 2/3 of Moby Dick unread. I will say that reading his essay on the death of the author when I was a lit major back in the 80s changed my life. Really.

Paris France I hope anna. I am scheduled to go in May.., anything happening?

I know I should be reading the Barthes now but..........

I've only read two lately about soap and detergent and Chaplin in the last few, since I was foaming at the mouth to read it. He takes a swift look at essential cleaners, purifying fluids (chlorine, soap powders, and detergents..... ) The essence of it - that people find it hard to resist whatever is perceived as the most luxurious option -- between a liquid and a powder people will choose the detergent which provides foam.

Dare I say this is a man who has never wielded a mop or loaded a washing machine? A person who knows literally nothing about what is involved in actually cleaning clothes or a floor or stains or ? Granted, his issue isn't efficacy, but advertising and how the newly emerging companies present these products to the public, based on how they feel the public perceives these items emotionally. Old-style cleansing involved 'beating', today's modern cleansing requires 'deep' action (gently lifting and vanquishing) and 'foaming' which mainly symbolizes a process full of sensuality and luxurious efficacy.....

Here's the big irony: Foaming soap on the hands is the most effective. (More coverage, faster, basically.)

It's a dated piece, as are many of these essays. Marshall McCluhan et al, have covered this ground thoroughly and we've all, but the very young or very naive, become great ironists and quite suspicious of most advertising. Advertising itself has shifted ground - product placement, hiring influential people to praise products in a more personal way etc. But I give him credit for gnawing away at the problem early on and laying groundwork, a framework for examining the undersides of the rocks.

Once again, DFW is deep deep into these issues, way ahead of most of us.

Nothing need be said of the Chaplin piece, a gem.

sibxy - I'm thinking that we still see this same kind of advertising today*. The adds aren't about giving accurate information, but about giving the product a story - which is what Barthes is going on about.

*the prominence of these adds are less today than when i was a kid in the 80's, but I still come across them all the time.

yes, that is absolutely true -- although I also think we are much more sophisticated. The story now has to take into account our cleverness, even as far as flattering us with recognition of our cleverness...... also..... many of the ads make fun of the 'language' - say - ads with cars careening around lonely roads in beautiful landscapes. Ads that play on our fears also have to be insanely clever - no more 'ring around the collar' that won't bite.

The foaming thing was also covered in this book I just read, I think it was an ER book, The Power of Habit. It was in a chapter on advertising. There was also the story on scents and how things that were unscented did not sell. I do find the way we respond to advertising interesting but more in the way of how can we arm ourselves against ads. I will have to get this book. Off to put on hold at the library, hopefully they have it.

#40, we suffer from that in Finland as well. Very interesting—until I saw your message I had taken it for a local issue born of a cultural cringe kind of effect (an aversion to names with local flavor, amply illustrated in eg. celebrities' children's names in these parts), but I guess it's not if it shows even in France.

Funny -- you can't pay me even to buy scented kitty litter! I'd rather smell .... well, you know.....!!!!

#50 http://m.npr.org/news/front/147296743?page=2

Wow, seems I have read the new self-help book of the year. I liked it more for the background info than as a self-help thing.

>49 sibylline: as far as flattering out cleverness, though, I wonder if (not to flatter your cleverness or anything, but) if well-informed, self-aware, symbolically savvy people like yourself are thinner on the ground than one perhaps finds it easy to keep in mind? I'm a grad student in English, and I would have made similar remarks until quite recently, but I did some research in a speech-science lab (it's a weird English degree) and spending time with sciency people I've been shocked with how blatant the flattery is. "That was an amazing lecture, professor" (bats eyelids). Whereas if you ever did this to your standard English prof, s/he'd be like What are you doing?!" and totally offended that you thought that kind of blatant pandering would be successful, and the way to butter up an English professor is to take a cool, "recognition of cleverness" pose and say something like "You know, that's actually an interesting point, Bill." But the science guys seem to eat that lickspittle stuff up.

I wonder what Barthes's take was on academic suckuppery.

I've been around scientists all my life--often play at being one of them myself--and I can't say I've noticed they are more susceptible to flattery than any other category of dumb humans. Rather the contrary, ime.

Mayhap you need a larger cohort to observe, Martin.

Oh, my findings are completely ungeneralizable, and no offence meant to our scientist brothers and sisters, Lola--I just meant more, perhaps being the sorts of people who post about how advertisers take account of our sense of our own cleverness and play to it, we tend to assume that the universe at large contains more of that kind of person than it does. I could have probably made the point without bringing scientists into it.

Does advertising work mainly through or as flattery? To me at least it seems mostly oppressive, terrorising. You aren't healthy, fashionable, attractive, smart etc. enough unless you use this product, do this that etc.

I keep brooding about what the crap aimed at girls is going to do to my niece. Is doing as I type. But what can one do?

MM, can you really say such a thing without meaning to offfend? Admit it, you were tweaking the board science nerds, weren't you?

Still, I thought you did it in a very clever way.

If any English profs are reading this--I'd be interested in taking lessons in cleverly offending people. I'm making up a list of assholes to revisit with that shiny new superpower. Money no object. Urgent.

I went to law school thinking that would be on the curriculum. Alas, most of them were just too equivocating to properly offend people.

You seem to be doing fine.

Lola, you don't have to curry favor with me, I'm not a scientist!

Not offend. Tweak, perhaps. Tease? But still, well observed. Not to flatter or anything, but a perceptive and witty individual such as yourself should really consider buying my book on cleverly offending people.

Not offend, A_ tweak, perhaps. Tease. Still, very perceptive, and a savvy and cultured individual such as yourself should definitely buy a copy of my pyramid scheme, How to Cleverly Offend People.

(and Lola, I have a niece too, and it breaks my heart whenever she wants to put on the big kids' channel).

55, The approaches to flattery arise from differences in suffering from the Impostor Syndrome (aka Fraud in the First Degree) which, can be related to epistemological views and methodological hijinks. Blatant pandering may not be as commonly done in English (not so sure) ... but not because of the lack of susceptibility on the part of the professor but due to the student's ever present suspicion that in two weeks the professor's latest darling po-mo critique may undermine itself and leave the ringing praise of yesterday an echoing indictment of the student's naivete and gullibility.

(note: I edited out all the "may be" and "perhaps" and substituted words like "is"... I'm running for president).

:P

Yoicks, one little word 'cleverness'. So easy on the internet to send the hounds baying after a rabbit not a hare - I'm not talking uni smarts, folks, I'm talking visual and symbolic sophistication or.... smarts...... that has nothing to do with any sort of grad school, god forbid. Ads are entirely visual, the verbal piece is just gloss. I did most of my teaching in Community College, Basic Writing, because that is what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be of use to, and I've also done a good bit of teaching 'illiterate' native speaking people how to read. (There is nothing more gratifying, by the way, more thrilling or humbling.) All of these folks have developed a degree of sophistication when it comes to symbolic language delivered visually - especially the illterate and as I got better at communicating with them I used more symbolic gestures to make connections, less talk, more show. Let's just say, they know the Lexus ads aren't for them. Which is not to say they can't be beguiled and fooled,(so can we) but my point is, they know they are being beguiled and fooled (as do we). The interplay between viewers and the ads has gotten very very complicated, multi-leveled, ironic, referential, you name it.

In some classes I did units, actually, on advertisement - students would pick an ad and take it apart. Some of the essays were brilliant and hilarious and they loved doing it as they all watched a lot of tv and shared this 'language' with each other. I'm not sure I taught them anything about advertisement they didn't already know, I brought it into the fore of their consciousness maybe and gave it language and a form, I don't know.

The Count would not be pleased P.

Count Von Count?

Count Korzybski, of course.

To be or not to be.....

"Operation Margarine" - show the underbelly, then do an about face, we can't get by without our underbelly flawed as it is., etc etc,..... Is this still popular?
-Dominici - the specific case is lost in the mists of time, but not the point - that one does seem to reference your beloved Count, Porius?
-Abbe Pierre - here's the dude himself: avec la barbe:
The ears are what worry me.

This one was another headspinner. Pushing it, I thought.

IS is the operative, or non-operative word, as (whew, not IS) the case may be.

in the present tense then... Is it or Is it not?

A scale of MAYBES' might be the ticket.

Trivial observation - Barthes' description of wrestling reminded me of Madonna's video "Vogue." Obviously, I am not fit to post on the thread of such august minds as the ones here.

Ok I finally have the book. I am sort of worried that the datedness will destroy my love for this guy that stems from a single seminar in college. Has everyone else already thrown it across the room?

No, I'm waiting around for some fresh comments.... while it is dated in certain ways, it isn't entirely, so I'll probably finish it.

I am finding the writing absolutely charming, and it is such a flashback to college. I am only on the second essay, though.

Chris and I had recently had a long discussion about wrestling while discussing Andy Kaufman and his wrestling antics and what purpose they were supposed to serve. The article fits right in with that.

So....... has everyone just stopped reading these essays?...... I'm thinking I will read up to the long essay and then probably throw in the towel. But we'll see.

A-musing you may have had the best idea to start with that one first.

I couldn't get motivated to keep going. Some other time maybe.

I have been reading them slowly. I really liked the one on the critic/noncritic, it reminds me of today's press (at least here in the US) tendency to act like its role is to say "here is what one side says, while the other side says this," without reporting on what is actually factual and what is not.

So glad you are reading Anna - it will help me bestir myself.....