HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Cormac McCarthy's language (was Re: recent books)
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 13:03:04 GMT

Roger Squires writes:
>Someone has posted a blurb on _All the Pretty Horses_, with
>someone else's comment that the real hero of the novel is the
>language, and my variation on this would be that in [_Blood_
>_Meridian_] the real focus is the southwestern landscape...

Keith Morgan writes:
>	I think that McCarthy has a complementary concern with
>language and landscape. 

In _Suttree_, I was astonished by McCarthy's use of language as
not only a descriptive window, but as a surface, a texture that
carries meaning through its form as much as through its content--
as if language were a thick paint he applies to the canvas in
ridges and swirls with a palette knife.  His use of unexpected
and unusual words, for example: in the first dozen pages of
_Suttree_ my dictionary got quite a workout.  And they're inter-
esting, memorable words, too, not the sort of rococo flourishes
that some authors (fantasist Gene Wolfe comes to mind) employ.
"Murenger," meaning an officer whose duty it is to maintain the
city walls.  "Pinchbeck," an alloy resembling gold that also means
something tawdry or spurious.  And so many words meaning wrinkled:
rucked, rimpled, etc.  

Oddly enough, in retrospect, I was hesitant about _Suttree_, when I
paged through it randomly in a bookstore, because I was afraid it
contained too much dialogue, not enough description and flat-out
lyricism.  But McCarthy shows whole new ways in which dialogue
itself can be lyrical: the movement back and forth between long,
almost unbearably sensual (stinky!) pictures of that noisome river
river flowing through Knoxville, and terse exchanges between Suttree
and the drunkards he hangs out with, doesn't seem jerky at all.  The
river is flowing through the conversations as well, in comments like

	Lord I dont know.  They say death comes like a thief
	in the night, where is he?  I'll hug his neck.

As for the musical prose, damn! there's enough for the most insatiable
of prose-poetry fanatics:

	Somewhere in the gray wood by the river is the huntsman
	and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of
	the cities.  His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire
	not.  I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and
	their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world.
	Fly them.

I'm looking forward to reading the critical essays about this author.
He seems like a whole new mountain on the horizon.

						--immoderately,

							Fiona
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 10:31:09 CST
From: Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Making notations in your books?

In article <1992Dec18.102552.26286@ms.uky.edu>, fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
says:
>
>Both Benchley and Myles have funny bits about making notations in
>books.

The Flann O'Brien/Myles bit on annotation is wonderful.  Myles offers
a service to the nouveau riche, where he sells books to decorate one's
home.  The basic service includes a selection of ordinary, unmarked books,
that look like they arrived straight from the bookstore, and have never
been touched.  The intermediate service roughs up the books a little,
giving them the appearance of having been handled roughly.  The
deluxe service annotates the books with pithy remarks and classical
references, and leaves ticket stubs to notable performances as bookmarks.
I will stop before I get on to the escort service.  Ob Book ref: _The
Best of Myles_, by Flann O'Brien (a/k/a Myles na gCopaleen a/k/a Brian
Nolan).

Cole Kendall
From: cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Making a virtue of complacency
Date: 14 Dec 92 19:45:45 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1992Dec8.142853.28023@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>, gsmith@clio.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Gene W. Smith) writes:
> In article <BywItG.AC0@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca>
> msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:
# Certainly.  Let's all laugh at the silly people who are worried about
# trivial things like hate and hate propaganda.  After all, it's
# not *us* who's going to get the fallout from it.
# 
# Here's a little item for you, excerpted from on of today's postings:
# 
# #By the 1980s, the wheel had turned again and another target was found:
# #gay men and lesbians.  In 1988, the Southern Baptist Convention,
# #meeting in San Antonio, declared homosexuality "a manifestation of a
# #depraved nature" and "a perversion of divine standards."  To draw a
# #direct connection between gay-bashing and the church's statement was
# #considered rash.
# 
# #Bette Greene interviewed more than 400 young men incarcerated for
# #gay-bashing when preparing for her novel,
# #_The_Drowning_of_Stephan_Jones_." In an interview published in the
# #_Boston_Globe_ this spring, she said she found that gay-bashers
# #generally saw nothing wrong in what they did, and, more often than
# #not, said their religious leaders and traditions sanctioned their
# #behavior.

What do you expect them to say?  "I did something that everyone
told me was wrong."

# MZ said that my comparison of homosexuals and Jews was old hat.  Of
# course it is--it was old hat when Hitler put them in concentration
# camps together.  It was old hat when the Inquisition burned both

Of course, the difference is that Hitler didn't surround himself with
Jews in the higher echelons of the Nazi Party -- unlike homosexuals.

# Gay bashing starts with the idea that homosexuals are inferior and
# morally degenerate.  This idea is morally evil, and it leads to
# morally evil consequences.  It isn't funny and it isn't a game.
# 
#      Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/IWR/Ruprecht-Karls University 

As a society, we ALL accept that violent aggression against others
is wrong, including gay bashing.  We accept as a society that gay
bashers are morally degenerate.  Does that mean that concentration
camps for gay bashers are in the future?



-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
C++ is to C, as lung cancer is to lung.
From: rhogan@aludra.usc.edu (Ronald Hogan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: excellent reading!
Date: 11 Dec 92 19:42:32 GMT
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

Heather writes:
responding to Joan Shields:

>>Heather, dear, perhaps you ought to take your own advise.
>>Take one of your libriums, call your trainer, and lie down awhile, ok?  I
>>know you've had a hard day.
>>  
>>Yours in wet kisses and sincere wishes,
>>Joan

impugning of Joan's sense of humor and sincerity deleted)

>I would invite you to plant one of your wet kisses sincerely on
>my ass, but for the worry that you would take the invitation
>as literal rather than figurative.

>PS.  The word you wanted was "advice".

Oh, correcting spelling mistakes, that's so cool.

At least we begin to get an idea of how Heather knows enough about
snot to accuse Tom of having it...

Ron
rhogan@usc.edu
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: recent books
Date: 14 Dec 92 16:13:47 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
> 
> In any case, all very curious, and one's 'sublimation alert'
> alarms start clanging off the wall early in the work [La Vita Nuova].  

As well they should.  Isn't it obvious?

	the slightly puzzled Mr. E-----
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu   \   Hidden harmony is better than manifest.
GEnie: L.HAMMER2           \      -- Heraclitus, #47
From: sek@cbnews.cb.att.com (stephanie.e.kearns)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Comments on "A Prayer for Owen Meany"?
Keywords: John Irving
Date: 17 Dec 92 13:43:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnews.1992Dec17.134334.26150
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T

I just finished reading the above book, and I really enjoyed it.
I was wondering if anyone else out there has read it, and what their
opinion of it was.  Although I thought it dragged in a very few pages,
for the most part I really enjoyed it.

Stephanie Kearns
From: jcollier@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU (John Donald Collier)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The word "homophobic"
Date: 18 Dec 1992 17:52:56 +1100
Organization: University of Melbourne
NNTP-Posting-Host: ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au

zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

}If you seriously believe that Dennett is to be preferred to Spinoza on
}*any* reasonable account, you are far beyond any help I can offer.  On
}the other hand, on the slim chance that you might be jesting, a good
}antidote to the ludicrous theses of _Elbow Room_ is to be found in Van
}Inwagen's essay, "The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism",
}in _Philosophical Studies (1975), and reprinted in Gary Watson's
}Oxford Readings in Philosophy collection, _Free Will_.

And a good antidote to _that_ bullshit (VI doesn't even understand
why David Lewis uses counterparts rather than trans-world identity), 
can be found in the writings of John Bishop, od Auckland.

-- 
John Collier 			Email: jcollier@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au
HPS -- U. of Melbourne		  	Fax:   +61 3 344 7959
Parkville, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3052
From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Whoops.
Date: 15 Dec 92 22:17:59 GMT
Organization: UT Art History
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1



From mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto):

>I think I just posted my .alias file, accidentally.
>
>I apologize.
>
>Mark

Actually, I found this to be most interesting reading. Was anyone else
similarly impressed? It's a nice change from all the Good Will To All Men
(& Women) I've been seeing since I came back from a 2-week News vacation.

Although I suppose we could criticize poor M. Taranto for the contents of
his file ...

Would anyone care to begin the deconstruction process?
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Book? SNOT! Was: Re: excellent reading!
Date: 14 Dec 1992 16:04:12 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

John L. Scott writes:

	Mark Taranto wrote:

		Heather would probably claim that it is OK to be 
		snotty in response to snottiness.  But I would 
		neither agree with this logic, nor agree that Tom 
		was snotty first.

	One should never forget who fired the first snot.

In this case, literally, the snot heard round the world.

						Fido
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Books on urban riots
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 23:44:25 GMT

	I am looking for a history of urban riots worldwide, the more
comprehensive in space and time the better.

	Thanks,

 
-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
	"That's a bird bone, chair, Bob.  I don't know if I should sit there."
				Tom Waits
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Airport Bookstores (was Re: Books for Christmas
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:35:40 GMT


William Sburgfort Smith (wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov) writes:

> Mitchell Field in Milwaukee WI has a used bookstore, the first I'd
> seen in an airport.  Great for browsing while waiting for the snow
> to melt off the runways.  (Sometime in May, I think.)
 
I was stuck in that airport for an hour or so, and was astounded to
find that it is, indeed, a very nice bookstore.
 
One can also get good cheese in the airport.
 
Mark
 
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: gwr@hedonist-1.lanl.gov (Graham W. Redgrave)
Subject: Re: It fills us. We arrange it. It decays.
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 22:53:54 GMT

Fiona Webster writes:
[... destruction of context...]  I'm not being cantankerous: I have a
|> long-standing fascination with people's urges to relate things
|> to the "real world" of historical events, facts, solid objects,
|> that sort of thing.  For me that imaginative space between Wilde
|> and Conrad is more than sufficient.  It would never occur to
|> me to seek its mapping in the "actual" events of their two lives.
|> 
|> I've pondered over this question a lot as a teacher of psychotherapy.
|> I can never understand what moves my students when they ask insis-
|> tently, "But did such-and-such *really* happen?"  I can see where
|> it makes a *little* bit of difference, in terms of understanding
|> a person's psyche, whether Event X in the remote past *really*
|> happened or not, but so much more important is the web of connections--
|> often as capricious in origin as this Wilde-Conrad connection--
|> between their memories and their current lives, their fantasies
|> and their fears.  When I say, ultimately, "Who cares?" to my
|> students, they get most exasperated with me.  My students also
|> tend to want lots of lab tests and brain scans to back up their
|> clinical observations, too--more of this urge for the undeniably
|> concrete.  (In what sense is any event said to *really* happen,
|> anyway?)
|> 

Apologies for the long inclusion (it all seems so relevant!) ...

Why not make those med students read the _Brothers Karamazov_, and
then ask them to write a paper on Ivan and reality as depicted in
his interview with the devil?  What is real in Ivan's world?  His
struggle to define the world and his inability to accept an un-
created, amoral universe shattered his mind (the organ of worldly 
construction) and drove him mad.  Smerdyakov, the Psychotherapist
Gone Bad, knew that Ivan would go mad when confronted with the
conflict between what he desparately wanted the world to be like 
and what he had argued the world to be ...

Then there's always _War and Peace_ for a questioning of events
and actions/actors ...

Yours in imitation of Cliff's Notes and a fierce affection
for Russian lit,
 

-- 
Graham Redgrave    |    --  I don't speak for the government, 
gwr@life.lanl.gov  |        but I wish the government would speak for me ...  --
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: sbrock@teal.csn.org (Steve Brock)
Subject: Re: Call For Discussion: rec.arts.books.reviewed
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 01:48:09 GMT

And all reviewers who get alt.books.reviews are invited to post their
reviews there!  -- Steve
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:22349 rec.boats:8538
From: ercn72@festival.ed.ac.uk (R.J.Hare)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.boats
Subject: Re: Sea Shanty:  See `shanty'
Date: 14 Dec 92 10:23:01 GMT

This is a wind-up isn't it? Whether it is or not, I can't resist replying,
just in case someone really thinks that Kipling wrote 'The Good Ship Venus'.
Everyone knows that 'The Good Ship Venus' is not a sea-shanty - it is a
traditional rugby(*) song.

Kipling, of course wrote the much better known 'Eskimo Nell' first published
in 'Plain Tales from the Locker Room'.

(*) Rugby - a game which American football tries (and fails) to imitate
( :-) ).

Roger Hare.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,news.groups
From: nadeau@bnr.ca (Rheal Nadeau)
Subject: Re: Call For Discussion: rec.arts.books.reviewed
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 04:46:50 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.175807.22270@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> callahan@biffvm.cs.jhu.edu (Paul Callahan) writes:
>
>As long as we're discussing a split of any sort, the split I'd like to 
>see is rec.arts.books, and rec.arts.books.chat (though I'd vote "yes" to
>rec.arts.books.reviewed).  I don't mean this as a snide remark; I'm quite 
>serious.  I have nothing against the lengthy non-book discussions, but it 
>would make my reading more enjoyable if they were sent elsewhere.  I don't 
>just mean flame wars.  I found the cozy little "spinster" discussion rather 
>irritating too, after it continued for more than a week.  

I wouldn't mind a division that improved the signal-to-noise ratio,
since I've given up on rec.arts.books because of the high noise level.

But I don't think this proposal would work.  The "chat" does emerge from
book discussions, and will not automatically migrate to the appropriate
group when we (or you, or me) feel it doesn't deal with books enough
anymore.

Check out the low use of all the ".d" groups on Usenet - hardly any
usage at all, while irrelevant discussions last for months in the groups
they were meant to keep clean of such chatter!  (And very few flame wars
actually move to alt.flame . . .)

       The Rhealist - nadeau@bnr.ca - Speaking only for myself
From: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Harry Crewes novel celebrating the big beauty
Date: 16 Dec 1992 22:44:30 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc12.ins.cwru.edu

>
>Rabbers: any other novels by Harry Crewes that you would recommend?
>I like the way he handles violence: hip and serious at the same time.
>I take it he's a crime writer?  
>
>							--Fiona
>
Is this the same guy (Harry Crews I thought he spelled it) who
wrote _Karate is a Thing of the Spirit_, which despite title
is good Southern gothic on the way to Cormac McCarthy and
with more grit than gallimaufry?  

	Gary Stonum
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: bmiller@lunatix.uucp (Barry Miller)
Subject: Re: Ngaio Marsh info requested
Organization: Lexington Public Access Unix. -KY- (606) 255-9121
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 02:06:05 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Jack Campin (jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk) wrote:
: bmiller@lunatix.uucp (Barry Miller) wrote:
: > [Ngaio Marsh's] first name is pronounce nye (as in "hi") o.
: 
: That's how most pakehas (white New Zealanders) pronounce it.  The correct
: Maori pronunciation has the initial consonant the same as the "ng" in
: "sing", and the vowels of the following diphthong somewhat more clearly
: separated than in the usual English "eye" sound: "nga-i-o".
: 
Thanks.  If I ever meet a Maori I can avoid embarassment.

: If this leads to utter incomprehension on the part of bookshop and library
: staff when you try to get her books, you should be grateful.  There are
: dozens of good writers from NZ to read before you start scraping the bottom
: of the barrel with hacks like Marsh.

I'm not the Marsh fan; the lady who started this thread is.
However, I still see no need to demean her obvious enjoyment of
an authoress she has discovered with terms like "hack."

--Barry
h
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken)
Subject: Re: Ngaio Marsh info requested
Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 06:01:53 GMT

From memory:
Why is the red patch on the floor of the forest so beautiful when you
believe it is a tropical flower, and so ugly when you discover it's a
candy wrapper?
--Ngaio Marsh
-- 
Alison Chaiken 				alison@wsrcc.com
(510) 422-7129 [daytime] 		or chaiken@cmsgee.llnl.gov
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: elekokws@nusunix1.nus.sg (Kok Wai Sung)
Subject: help to locate a book
Organization: National University of Singapore
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 02:40:38 GMT
From: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: New Yorkers: d'ja go hear "Agrippa"?
Date: 14 Dec 92 15:36:28 GMT
Reply-To: gtaylor@vme.heurikon.com (Gregory Taylor)
Organization: Heurikon Corporation, Madison, WI

So, did any of the usual rec.arts.books suspects in New York actually
decide to go to the Penn Gillette "reading" of Bill Gibson's most
recent self-destructing opus "Agrippa" at the Kitchen or {somewhere 
else I don't recall} and thus perhaps had a chance to actually hear the
work itself? And did any of you find it worthy of your interest [I
am asking this question here to avoid the spate of postings fromthe
young men of America who've not read anything else *but* Gibson and
thus might have less of interest - to me, anyway - to say about Gibson's
attempt to head off into the semi-autobiographical territory [my Dad]
that "Agrippa" seems to be about] as someone whose reading list may not
be exclusively limited to speculative fiction. Does it indeed shred
Proust? 

You could also weigh in on your views of the book as an artifact of 
late Capitalism, too, if you wish. While I'm more accustomed to "using"
the books I own, I suppose I'll have to think of it as one of those
bottles of expensive wine one buys at auction and never opens to actually
*drink.* De gustibus....

--
The law moves quickly in the rain/and chokes the world with memorials./The
courts accept the lowest superstition/into evidence. And we embrace quickly in
the rain,/conceiving a hale infant with hands to wrinkle/the bedsheets toward
it, wave by trough by wave./Gregory Taylor/Heurikon /Madison, WI/608-828-3385
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: grant@clarinet.com (Grant Robinson)
Subject: Interesting dust jacket blurb...
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 02:38:07 GMT

Having just finished an enjoyable book by Rick Bass, and having recently 
spent some rewarding time in Montana, I picked up his "Montana - Notes 
from Winter."

Excerpted from the dust jacket:

"In this celebration of winter in a remote valley of thirty inhabitants,
the last valley in Montana without electricity, Rick Bass describes...

... Impressions abound: ... the Dirty Shame Saloon, where the people
gamble, drink beer, gossip, and watch football on TV."

Must be pretty diehard fans if they're not going to let a little thing 
like no electricity keep them from watching football on TV!

Sure, there are a number of possibilities: a gas generator, the pub's 
in another valley, etc., but to read it, it just doesn't flow, they 
set you up with this romantic notion of a land that time forgot, then 
throw in a TV for good luck.

Sigh.  I trust the book will be better than the jacket.
-- 
Grant Robinson -- ClariNet Communications Corp, Sunnyvale, CA
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: All I want for xmas
Date: 16 Dec 1992 04:10:40 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Meg Worley writes:

	I want an American quotation book to round out
	my Oxford.  Rage away,

Try John Bartlett's *FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS*. 

						Fido
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:22632 news.groups:24554 alt.config:8000
From: cathyf@is.rice.edu (Catherine Anne Foulston)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,news.groups,alt.config
Subject: Re: 'alt' group proposed - alt.quotations
Date: 17 Dec 92 16:22:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: rice.BzEw4w.MqL
Followup-To: alt.config
Organization: Rice University

So can we make a rule that you have to check Bartlett's Quotations
and/or the Oxford Modern Quotations before asking "who said.." ?
I think most libraries have these.  I would say we need no group at
all for this reason, but I know there's lots of stuff that won't have
made it into such references yet.

	Cathy

-- 
Cathy Foulston + Rice University + Network & Systems Support + cathyf@rice.edu
Why you should recycle bytes:  "Believe it or not, most deleted bytes currently
find their way straight into the Internet refuse stream, often to turn up in
postings to Usenet, or worse, OSI standards documents!"  -- Peter Deutsch