HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kate@cactus.org (Katherine M. Catmull)
Subject: Re: The Talk Of The Town
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Distribution: world,local
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 18:55:32 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.162329.26748@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>In article <1992Oct2.061458.43519@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>
>>Is it too much to hope that Pauline Kael will be replaced?  (Or has
>>she retired...?)
>
>Pauline Kael (whom I loved) has been gone for a long time. When she left
>the reviewer's column, she said one of her reasons for leaving was the
>prospect of having to review another Oliver Stone movie.
>

I had my ups and downs with Pauline Kael, but what I really hated
was her penchant for writing reviews in the second person. I
would find myself shouting at the magazine: "You find yourself
mesmerized by the sheer brass of it all." "No I DON'T! NO I 
DON'T! STOP SAYING THAT!"

I do not understand critics' terror of the word "I."

Kate



-- 
- - - - - - - -
kate@cactus.org
Be the voice of night and Florida in my ear.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: MJFORRES@SUVM.SYR.EDU (maurice)
Subject: Re: Peter Smith Publisher, Inc.
Organization: Syracuse University
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 19:56:23 EDT

In article <1992Oct05.170129.13789@brtph560.bnr.ca>
Paul Schroeder writes:
 
>Recently, I purchased a copy of Richard Hughes' novel _In Hazard_ from
>Peter Smith Publisher, Inc.
 
Funny. . . I just finished reading "In Hazard" this afternoon.  A
remarkable book.  I've not read anything else by Richard Hughes;
though, my father once tried to press "A High Wind in Jamaica" on
me -- I was too young to appreciate it then.  I'd be interested in
hearing comments on his work.
 
>It would be interesting to read of any other experiences in dealing
>with Peter Smith.
 
Somewhere down in the basement, I have a Booth Tarkington novel that
Peter Smith published.  But I bought it from a bookstore not directly
from the publisher.  Does Peter Smith publish any nonfiction?
 
maurice
                                                 Maurice Forrester
                                                 mjforres@suvm.syr.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: speterse%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty)
Subject: Darwin bio
Date: 29 Sep 92 22:57:28 MDT
Organization: The Erland Cult

I just finished the new Darwin biography by Adrian Desmond and
James Moore that I had asked about a few weeks ago.  On the whole,
I recommend it highly.  It does an excellent job of putting Darwin
in historical and social context.  The Darwin of the biography is
an acutely respectible English gentleman, growing up in a period
of great civil unrest, well aware of the political and social
implications of a plausible evolutionary theory, who spent most of
his life torn between his conservative background and temperment
and his radical intellectual life.  Both Darwin's intellect, and
the limitations imposed by his time come through admirably.

My only complaint is that they could have done a better job of
putting Darwin in a *scientific* context.  One of the things I
learned from the book was that there were a lot of evolutionary
theories floating around in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century, often differing rather subtly from each other.  It isn't 
always immediately clear just what it is that distinguishes Darwin's 
from all the others.


	The table became an embodiment of Darwin's life-long 
	dilemma.  It was less a lunch, more a last supper; 
	everybody he had loved, everything he had feared, 
	every paradox of his career had come together in a 
	penultimate act.  Here, his evangelical wife, his kindly 
	Tory vicar, his genetically weak children and his atheistic 
	disciples....In the middle sat the parish naturalist, the 
	failed ordinand, the Devil's Chaplain, damning and defying 
	all expectations.
							pp. 656-7

--
    "From your signature it is obvious that you are a homosexual"
soren f petersen           :        i AM NOT          :    --Doc
speterse@peruvian.utah.edu :  THE university OF utah  :
"How could I dance with another/When I saw him standing there"  --Tiffany
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.horror
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: New King Book - Dolores Claiborne
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 15:04:16 GMT

Eddie the 'ead quotes a friend named Shaun Stuart, on King's new novel:
>"Dolores Claiborne...foul temper, foul mouth, foul life. Folks on Littlt
>Tall Island have been waiting thirty years to find out just what happened
>on the eerie dark day her husband Joe died - the day of the total eclipse.

Curious.  Now that Stephen King has killed off his unity-of-place
concept, Castle Rock, he seems to be inventing a unity-of-time concept
as a substitute.  I'm talking, of course, about the total eclipse of
the sun that, according to the detailed map of Maine at the front of
_Gerald's_Game_, occurred on July 20, 1963.

What I'm wondering: what was Stephen King himself doing on that "eerie
dark day"?  Why is this eclipse suddenly so important to him, that he
includes it as a major plot element in two books in a row?  According
to my references, he would have been 16 years old, attending Lisbon
Falls high school, at the time of the eclipse.  A sexual milestone
perhaps?  It'll be interesting to see if anyone thinks to ask him
this question, during his interviews promoting the new novel.

						--Fiona Webster
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: and Peter begat....
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 12:08:44 GMT

Jan Yarnot sighs whistfully:

	Do you ever get into these books and realize how old the people 
	would be now? Peter Wimsey is contemporary to my grandfather, 
	and would be a doddering 102 now.  *sigh*

I find it more alarming when it transpires that well-known sports persons
who have been retired these many, many years are, in fact, younger than
oneself. Fortunately I have been able to replace Namath with Montana.

But back to Granny's point. Are there any sequels that are set in time
much later? Harriet, matriarch and now herself Dowager Duchess of Denver,
is still alive if somewhat frail, but she is particularly fond of her
grand-daughter, Holly, known as Trotters to her friends (she's a
Trotskyite). Holly is in her second year at Balliol-and-Shrewsbury (an
amalgamation that had taken place quite recently). Is there a mother-lode
of good stuff here?

						Fido
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: literature students
Date: 27 Sep 92 04:48:28 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Just when I thought it was safe to get back in the books discussion, Barclay
Blanchard gives me a poke in the eye for old times' sake...expressing
frustration about having to read dead white males and wanting instead to read
(for credit!) from contemporary non-DWM authors...and to hear what her
fellow-students really think, instead of what they've been "taught to think."

Aww, Barclay! If you want to get college credit for reading what you want you,
aren't you just buying into the whole bureaucratic structure? I well recall the
now-dead white male Lionel Trilling, smiling benignly out over a class of us
lit students and telling us we were contemptible for reading Joyce on his
orders..."In my day we read Joyce *against* our professors," he observed, and
it was almost the only thing I recall from his course 30 years later.

Screw credit. Screw the post-secondary system. Why would you want to suck a lot
of good radical writers into becoming counters in the whole stupid game? How
many credits is James Baldwin worth toward a tenure-track job? Or is he safely
dead enough to be embalmed in somebody's syllabus?

Most black and non-mainstream writers who are any good are writing with power
and rage about the brutalization of themselves and their societies. Reading
them for goddam credit, putting footnotes on their passion, is as calculated an
insult as I can imagine--like praising a rape victim because her screams hit
high C.

Sorry to sound so peevish, but it's been a long day...
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.poems
From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Date: 28 Sep 92 15:26:45 GMT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Sep27.211300.4146@leland.Stanford.EDU> 
jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey) writes:

>[...]
>	To be fair to Himmelfarb, though, I have to admit that I can empathize
>with her.  Her complaints about the various changes in history, it seems to
>me, all boil down to aesthetic concerns--  she likes the idea of having _a_
>history, one grand meta-narrative of great and important people and events,
>rather than a plurality of uncomplementary (and occasionally incompatible)
>histories.  It's a rather old-fashioned idea (in academic circles at any rate)
>but I can understand its appeal. 

Though I am blissfully unaware of anything written by the target of your
derision, I'll venture a few disdainful comments concerning your own
remarks.  If you are going to use technical terms like `meta-narrative', I
suggest that you take the time to learn their proper meaning (e.g. by
consulting Gerald Prince's _Dictionary of Narratology_) and figure out why
they may or may not be relevant to the meaning you are trying to convey.
Furthermore, the realist position in history has to do with having a unique
historic reality, independently of the possibility of its translation into
a one grand *narrative* of *any* sort, and is actually shared by the vast
majority of professional historians, with the exception of Hayden White and
his followers.  Of course, this observation is not meant to contradict your
final claim, which after all concerns not a question of popularity, but one
of fashionability.  Not willing to follow your example by fancying myself
an _arbiter elegantiarum_, I can only suggest an anthology of selections
from _Quaderni Storici_, recently edited by Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero
to all those interested in actually finding out how the _dernier cri_ in
historiographical trends may coexist with "old-fashioned" realism about the
subject matter.

>	--  Jim C. <jchokey@leland.stanford.edu>

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
From: theep@squid.ecn.purdue.edu (Pratheep Balasingam)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Who reads Rushdie?
Date: 30 Sep 92 15:49:58 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network


I have crossed the hundred page mark in Satanic Verses, in my second
attempt to read this book. I had previously tried reading it in 
1989, during all the fuss that it had generated.
I have no ideological/religious problems with the book. But I think
Rushdie is a very ordinary writer. The first book of his that I read
was "Jaguar Smile", a book about the complicated politics of Nicaragua.
I was in general agreement with the points made in that book. However,
I felt that the book was very poorly researched. It is surprising that an
author who had won the Booker Prize would rush to publish such
a trivial book. I had given up on Rushdie, after that book. Then in 1989,
I started reading the Verses and couldn't get beyond page 50. This
past summer I read his "Shame". I found it amusing, mainly because I
could figure out most of his obscure allusions to the strange
world of South Asian politics (mainly, Bhutto and Zia). Having gotten
through Shame, I figured I'll try the Verses again. So I began reading
it on the weekend. I have gotten past page 100, and I want to finish it.
I am not very familiar with  "magical realism". However, I have read
Marquez, and have found his books to be good reading. Rushdie, on the 
other hand, doesn's come across as a "pro" in this style of writing. 
Any defenders?

An interesting incident. I had gotten my hardcover copy of Satanic Verses
for a dollar, at a library book sale in Palo Alto a year ago. When
I took the book to the counter to pay for it, the woman there looked
at the cover, then looked up at me, and said "Ah! you are going to
read, it after all." I am from South Asia, but I am not a muslim, and
besides I know many muslims who have read the book. Thought it was
amusing, that a volunteer at a library sale would have known a couple
of things about the diversity of humanity populating this planet.

Finally, I want to know what western fans get out of Rushdie. I know
only a few words of Hindhi, and often I miss the points of entire 
sentences because of Rushdie's excessive use of Hindhi/Urdu.
Also, even if you knew the language, a person from outside the subcontinent
would have a tough time figuring out the political and cultural allusions
in his books. So, who reads his books?

Pratheep
theep@squid.ecn.purdue.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine)
Subject: Re: Stormin' Norman (was: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 14:04:26 GMT

hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu writes:

>Well, now that you've seen that to your satisfaction, maybe you can
>address my point: do you think there's a double standard regarding the
>egotistical behavior of males and females?

>Heather
>HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu

>PS.  Don't you think it would be kind of fun to invite Norman, Camille,
>and Gore Vidal to the same party?  You could invite Mark Helprin too,
>since he's pro-Dead-White-Males like Camille is, and they could form
>a debating team.  Now there's a match made in heaven.  And just so Norman
>feels that he's had a good time, you can invite Joyce Carol Oates, and he
>can pick a fight with her. I bet you she'd clean his clock.

You forgot June Stephenson. (The author of a book which asserts that
all males should pay extra taxes because men commit most crimes.)

I would love to see her and Camille have a debate.

Lenore Levine

P.S. Another one of my irreverent friends would love to see Jesse
Jackson and Dan Quayle have a debate.
From: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore)
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Reply-To: tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore)
Organization: ICS Dept., UC Irvine
Date: 30 Sep 92 23:39:14 GMT

In <9209301808.AA27635@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
>
>Had I been challenged, had I been given something like Shakespeare maybe
>I would have started reading earlier.  I like to think that I've made
>up for this deficit -- but imagine that there are LOTS of people out
>there who rarely read anything for exactly the same reasons that I
>stopped.

On the other hand, I distinctly remember giggling my way through the
double entendres in MacBeth in 12th grade, while many other students
couldn't make heads or tails of the tale.  This was an English AP
class, BTW (sigh).  So sometimes even the ones who get it in school
STILL don't get it.

Conversely, I recall in the 7th grade doing my utmost to avoid _The
Red Pony_, which was assigned to us then.  (Hated Steinbeck then, hate
him now.)

I guess my point is that sometimes its just the student and not the
teacher.  I had experiences where I ducked the assignment and others
where I understood what was going on where many others didn't.  I've
been an omnivorous reader since the age of 5, and it was NOT due to
any teachers or other positive role models (my parents don't read much
and I'm the elder child).  My mother says I was BORN reading ;-)...

--Cindy
--
Cindy Tittle Moore

Internet: tittle@ics.uci.edu       | BITNET: cltittle@uci.bitnet
UUCP:     ...!ucbvax!ucivax!tittle | Usnail: PO Box 4188, Irvine CA, 92716
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:17083 rec.arts.sf.written:13150
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Notes on Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy
From: thomas@datamark.co.nz (Thomas Beagle)
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 04:09:15 GMT
Organization: Datamark International Ltd.

In article <s891961.717671649@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU> s891961@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Peter David Cupit) writes:
>mem@mv.mv.com (Mark E. Mallett) writes:
>
>>A generation or more of Japanese prior to 1930 were taught that a war
>>with the West was not only inevitable, it was part of their destiny.
>
>>As for social engineering-- my goodness, we can't even predict the
>>weather.
>
>  The weather is not the same kind of a system as a large group of people,
>  advertising wouldn't work if people were not predictable.

You can't predict the weather with any accuracy?

I can.

Summers tend to be hotter than winters where I live. So far that has
been 100% accurate.

Hari Seldon was always after the broad sweep of history rather than
the minutiae.
-- 
    Thomas Beagle | thomas@datamark.co.nz  or  thomas@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz
Datamark Intl Ltd | 
 Technical Writer | I don't need a disclaimer, I live in a sane society.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: librik@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David Librik)
Subject: Re: Hepcat Shakespeare
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Distribution: world, rec, usa
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 05:14:13 GMT

klein@frith.egr.msu.edu (Jeffrey Klein) writes:

>In article <1af44uINNbce@smaug.West.Sun.COM> jimh@pongo.Eng.Sun.COM (jim hori) writes:
>>In article <9209301640.AA23617@coventry.Corp.Sun.COM> Lisa.Levine@Corp.Sun.COM (Lisa Levine) writes:
>>>(However, the idea of doing these plays in any other
>>>contemporary dialect makes me cringe!)
>>
>>I always thought Lord Buckley's rewrite of Marc Antony's funeral
>>oration was hilarious: "Hipsters, flipsters. finger snappin' (snap)
>>(snap) daddys, knock me your lobes! I came to lay out Caesar, not
>>to hip you to him..."

>Oh my goodness.  Where can I find this masterpiece?

I recall something very like this in MAD in the late '50s.  It's reprinted
in THE IDES OF MAD.  (Unlike the current bit of fluff that bears the name,
the old MAD was very clever and made no compromises when it came to
language and literature; they assumed their teenage audience would catch
the references, or would go look it up.)

- David Librik
librik@cory.Berkeley.edu
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Fictitious Fiction
Date: 27 Sep 92 19:38:33 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

David Haan writes:
>S.Lem's "A Perfect Vacuum" contains reviews of several imaginary 
>books, including S.Lem's "A Perfect Vacuum".

Similarly, Lem's IMAGINARY MAGNITUDE is forwards for books not yet
written, including a long, abstruse outtake perportedly written by an
AI.

	Larry "I got lost" Hammer
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu          \   "Hidden harmony is better than
The insane don't need disclaimers \   manifest."  -- Heraclitus, #47
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: WEBER@JEDI.SSD.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM (Kevin Weber)
Subject: Wodehouse  Question
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: 78-30
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 92 23:51:25 GMT

Trying to find the chronological order of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves books. If
anybody out there could post or mail a chronological list it would be
greatly appreciated.


Kevin Weber
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: meredithd@gtephx.UUCP (Douglas Meredith)
Subject: Kafka's "Metamorphasis"
Organization: gte
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 15:56:09 GMT


I read Kafka's "Metamorphasis" last night.  This is the first of Kafka's
writing that I have read and I'm not sure what to make of it.  I found the
story very dark in mood.  The seeming lightness of the writing added to this
mood by contrasting with the strange events being related.  The reactions of
the main characters to the events seemed very peculiar and gave the whole 
story a weird twilight-zone feel.  I presume this is what I've heard referred 
to as "Kafka-esque"?

My first interpretation was that the story was an allegory for the alienation
a person might go through upon contracting some terminal, socially tabu disease.
However, on further reflection, this seemed a little trite.  Is there something
more going on here that I'm just too allegorically dense to see?  Are there
Cliffs Notes available for Kafka? (just kidding!)

-- 
| Doug Meredith                                                    |
| UUCP: {ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc}!gtephx!meredithd     |
| Inet: gtephx!meredithd@asuvax.eas.asu.edu                        |
| AG Communication Systems (Formerly GTE), Phoenix, AZ             |
From: jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk (JHenderson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Date: 29 Sep 92 13:17:09 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Sep28.160926.43425@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:

=>Linguists aren't known for their political acumen.  
=>
=>Consider Chomsky.

File under "non sequitur".


-- 
=======Jeremy Henderson========jeremy@castle.ed.ac.uk===============
From: c60b-2hz@web-2a.berkeley.edu (Nathaniel Meyers)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: SEARCHING FOR A BOOK TITLE
Date: 28 Sep 1992 23:25:43 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: web-2a.berkeley.edu

In article <92265.30875.6773590@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM> 6773590@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM writes:
>I am searching for a book I read as a child.  The only thing I remember is
>that a boy in the story fed his pet (possibly a dragon) something called
>"skunk cabbages".  Does anyone know what this book is? ?  I read it sometime
>between 1964 - 1969.

Could be "My Father's Dragon" (Author eludes me but I'll check it out next
time I leave this cubicle) which was followed by "Elmer and the Dragon"
and "The Dragons of Blueland".  I loved these as a child and the dates are
right.  Except Elmer never fed the dragon skunk cabbage.  The dragon said
that skunk cabbage was his favorite food but there was none around so he
had to settle for tangerine rinds which he thought were delicious although
the fruit was disgusting.
-nathaniel meyers
P.S. The dragon's name was Boris and the boy was Elmer Elevator.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: rec.arts.books Frequently Asked Questions
From: ken.mason@pcb.batpad.lgb.ca.us (Ken Mason) 
Date: 30 Sep 92 17:35:00 GMT
Reply-To: ken.mason@pcb.batpad.lgb.ca.us (Ken Mason) 
Distribution: world
Organization: The Batchelor Pad PCBoard ~ Long Beach, CA ~ +1 310 494 8084

TO: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (evelyn.c.leeper)


E.2) What is BOOKS IN PRINT?
E.
E.Just about every public library and every bookstore in the country has, for
E.public use, a multi-volume reference work called "Books in Print."  It is

        I realize that it's not a public site, but this resource is
        available on line.  It's file number 470 in Bowker's Online
        Databases on DIALOG.  Bowker can be reached at 800/323-3288 and
        DIALOG at 800/334-2564.

        This is my first time trying to leave email using a PCB gateway,
        so I hope it doesn't bounce.  Even if the above info isn't
        applicable to your FAQ, I'd appreciate a reply to let me know it
        got through.  Thanks.
                                                                                                                               
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:17008 misc.writing:3012