HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel)
Subject: Re: Literature Students/Small World
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. - Rye Canyon
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 07:35:15 GMT

In article <9210072131.AA06164@cfdev1.shearson.com>, mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes...

 [several examples of verdicts we can pass on a book ala W.H. Auden]

 I said:

>> Actually, the [Auden] quote sounds too theoretical and doesn't strike me 
>>as an accurate description of how we relate to books and/or expression

 Mark said:

>I think it fits pretty well.

Nonetheless, we're still left with my original contention, that there are a
couple different ways that we experience pleasure through an art work - some
gut reaction, and some later reaction (I called "intellectual").  It strikes
me that most of Auden's verdicts fall into the category of not passing
immediate judgement on a work (even if the gut reaction was not favorable),
until some later time when, after some intellectual effort, we may or may not
find some aspect of the work (technical, formal, whatever) we can appreciate.
That secondary appreciation is the crux of my original posting.

Without addressing what is or is not a definition of "good" or "pleasureable"
(they being way to subjective), I'm more concerned with the idea that they are
seperate things (the more immediate extemporaneous gut reaction of pleasure,
and the chronologically secondary intellectual pleasure).  And if they are
seperate things, are they of equal value in terms of defining our appreciation
of something?  

I think that they are not of equal value to us - whether we're the author
or reader of a work - with preference given to the more immediate pleasure
over intellectual.  I think this is why more works are created and enjoyed
for their ease of access (more gut level pleasure).  Stephen King outsells
Joyce, Conrad, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Camus, etc. combined.  And for
those of us that enjoy the intellectual pleasure (and so make the effort), 
we place an extra value on "literary" works with intellectual content.

And that brings me to the other question of my earlier post.  Some of us
(maybe all of us at one time or another) make the intellectual portion
a necessary qualification before benediction is passed over a work (the
Snob Requirement, some might say).  Even though we all appreciate and
indulge in the "light read" (or is it "lite"?), those books keep that label, 
and never rise in our esteem to the title "Great".  So for those with the
Snob Requirement (and I include myself in this category), where does this
heightened need for the "intellectual" come from?  Why isn't the pleasure
in its more immediate "gut level" enough?  To the point that we may
condescend someone else who unabashedly says "I don't know what's good, but
I know what I like".

Ron
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: matthew@stats.mu.oz.au (Maciek Blasikiewicz)
Subject: Re: argument from buoyancy (was ...from gravity)
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 09:25:12 GMT

Francis Muir writes:

>The Snodfart (woops! thats Stanford) Sanskrit Society is putting on
>a CRICKET & SAMOSAS bash at the Oval this Sunday, I believe. Be there.
>I may be demonstrating my left-handers slow googly (or Chinaman as it
					     ^^^^^^
>is sometimes called).


I had thought that googly eggs were something one has for breakfast.


>							Fido


Endek.
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Monday, 12 Oct 1992 11:10:32 CDT
From: Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: food
 <9716@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> <1992Oct9.202427.15972@cas.org>

In article <1992Oct9.202427.15972@cas.org>, lgs57@cas.org () says:
>
>I would like to suggest Why We Eat What We Eat.  This book focuses on how
>eating habits across the world changed as a result of Columbus' voyage.  I
>found the sections on Mexican, Philipino, and French cooking especially
>interesting.  I use the trivia from this book to bore my friends at lunch all
>the time.

A fascinating book by Raymond Sokolov (also a critic at the Wall
St. Journal).  Sokolov also wrote a novel about an idealistic young
Harvard grad who goes into the Peace Corps in Central America in the
early 1960s, and gets more than he bargained for.

Cole Kendall
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: More Notes from the Decline
Date: 8 Oct 92 18:15:40 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <JMC.92Oct7114314@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
> I bought a "Split wood not atoms" sticker and reversed it so it
> read "Split atoms, not wood".  It was impossible to keep one on
> my car, since it evidently gave offense.
>  
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305

Of course it gave offense.  How do you spike an atom? :-)

-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Lesson learned from Gov. Wilson's signing of AB 2601: if you don't get 
your way, have a riot.  Next time, Gov. Wilson will cower appropriately.
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.
Date: 7 Oct 92 16:23:38 GMT
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

Francis Muir writes:
>
>Now here we have the makings of one of the better threads in years.
>Good books which are just too damn boring to read. I would certainly 
>include  ...  all of Milton, &c., &c.

You got *that* right.

Faulkner, as well.

	the bitchy little Mr. E-----
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu     \   One like a wombat prowled obtuse
GEnie: L.HAMMER2             \  and furry  -- Christina Rossetti
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Clarification
Date: 16 Oct 92 03:58:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: cfdev1.9210160358.AA04733


Francis Muir (under the guise of Philolog) writes:
 
        Bill Turkel writes:
 
                In a recent post I requested book recommendations for
                studies of or by Rationalists, especially re modern
                thinkers.  I meant 'contemporary' not 'modern', since,
                of course, philosophers from Descartes onward are 'modern'.
 
        You don't mean "contemporary" either. You mean "present-day". Plato &
        Aristotle were contemporaries.
 
And since we are correcting ourselves, I'll point out that when I said I
knew little about Des Cartes, I really meant Descartes -- thus proving my
point.  
 
As for Philolog's "present-day," I have noticed that universities are
changing the names of "Contemporary Philosophy" courses to "20th Century
Philosophy" courses.  Soon, there shall be a new name.
 
I also mentioned Russell's master's thesis on Leibniz.  It was published
as a book, and can probably be found in most University libraries.  Certainly,
it can be found in the Merideth O. Wilson Library at the University of
Minnesota.  I believe that there is a chapter in this book devoted to
exposing the errors in the proofs of God's existence which was put
forward by the Rationalists.  I know such a chapter by Russell exists,
but it is possible that it is somewhere else.  
 
Mark
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Limpopo?
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 13:36:05 GMT

John McCarthy poses the question:

	"All set about with fever trees".  What's a fever tree, Fido?

Good question, but you're asking the wrong person. Field-Marshal
Montgomery -- not one given to wordiness -- was asked, on his return
from a trip to Africa, what he thought of the place. "Africa? Africa
is very large." I knew N and W, you are asking about S and E. I waded
feverishly through the mangrove swamps of Nigeria's Western Region,
and maybe that was where the dreaded Anopheles transfused me with
someone else's Plasmodial blood. So, for me it is the mangrove tree.

							Fido
From: ramscar@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Ramscar)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Books in the time of love
Date: 8 Oct 92 16:20:04 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

At the lowest point of  an autumn of personal and professional crises
I had run away to Lincolnshire with an old friend, intent on hiding 
out the weekend in her mother's cold and crumbling georgian townhouse. 
We indulged in fairly typical diversions: reminiscences, drinking, 
mindless shagging, more drinking; the kind of general bad behaviour 
that small towns bring out in city dwellers (my legs are still scarred
from a wall which, abandoning centuries of labour, collapsed on top of me,
thwarting a pathetic early morning attempt to sneak in without awakening
the mother).

On the Sunday, unable to face explaining so much shattered masonry over
breakfast, we rose early and drove out through the marshes between 
the wolds and the sea, seeking the sunday papers, and a pub. The sun
shone on the trees that poked out through the low-lying mists, and I
remembered and recited

	The wooods decay, the woods decay and fall,
	The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
	Man comes and tills the fields and lies beneath,
	And after many a summer dies the swan.

Which is how North Lincolnshire is at that (this) time of year,
and so was apt, even erudite, and had things been left there,
with me glowing in my capturing of a moment, things would have
been fine, splendid even. 

But a nervous system fucked up with alcohol has its own momentum,
so I continued

	Me only cruel immortality
	Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
	Here at the quiet limit of the world,
	A white-hair'd shadow roaing like a dream
	The ever-silent spaces of the East,
	Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

And the things I'd run away from came back, and I plunged deep into
a hungover depression; the pretty fine weekend of hedonisom seemed
suddenly pretty seedy. Full of vague feelings of guilt, self-
doubt and  self-pity, and feeling I was wasting the time and 
lives of both of us, I returned 'home' that afternoon.

When sanity returned, after a fashion, in the chaos of the following 
week, I sent a copy of David Cecil's selection of Tennyson's verse
to my friend, a sort of inadequate explanation; she replied that
I was an asshole, and sent Plath.

"Lurker" (after Mike Godwin).
From: mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re:danger (was She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Date: 8 Oct 92 12:44:51 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Emory University, Dept of Math and CS

Lauren Crawford writes:
 
>    Actually, I remember reading somewhere that the homicide rate in
> Belfast, including all deaths from political violence, is lower than the
> homicide rate in most large American cities.

That very thought has been keeping my Aged Parent's heart beating for the
last 20 years, until I moved to Atlanta, where I live a mile away from
the Rodney King riots.  One more riot downtown should do her in completely.

Rage away,

meg


-- 

 Meg Worley 				Internet:  mworley@mathcs.emory.edu		
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken)
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.
Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 04:52:14 GMT

mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
> There are a lot of books that I am
>glad I read, and which I think are good -- but which are not enjoyable.
> Mark

The worst good books I've read were by Gunter Grass.  _The Tin Drum_
was an amazing surreal history of WWII in Poland, but it was also
disgusting and literally nauseating.  I was fascinated by it although
I hated it at the same time.

On the other hand, _Cat and Mouse_ was one of the books that had the
deepest influence on me when I was a teenager.  It had a deep
influence on me during a bad case of puppy love.  There's no other
book that can make the reader want to eat bird dirt.

There, an end to lurking!

-- 
Alison Chaiken 				alison@wsrcc.com
(510) 422-7129 [daytime] 		or chaiken@cmsgee.llnl.gov
(510) 422-7300 [FAX]
Live fast, die young, leave a long publication list.
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: food
Date: 8 Oct 92 15:23:25 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley) wrote:
> chuckg@meaddata.com (Chuck Greenwald) writes:
>> I found _Food_in_History_, by ?, to be a great discussion of how
>> food and eating have changed through history and been affected by
>> where and how we live.
> Reay Tannahill. Also author of _Sex_in_History_, similarly excellent.

She also wrote another book about food: "Flesh and Blood", a history of
cannibalism.

Subscibing to rec.food.historic might be an idea if you're interested in
the history of food and food cultures.

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
From: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: More Notes from the Decline
Date: 16 Oct 92 12:33:41 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens


 tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes:

> > But the snotty elitist tone makes me wonder how far removed
> > Mr. Brown and Maddox are from ordinary Americans.
>
>	Actually, I (I won't presume for speak for Mr. Brown, as we have not
> traded secret handshakes) am a member of the Elders of Hollywood, a group
> whose "Protocols" are buried under a star on Hollywood Boulevard, the name of
> which is known only to a few.  I am of course entirely removed from ordinary
> Americans. I live swaddled in velvet and eat only caviar and truffles; I
> am carried from place to place by careworn middle-class conservatives who 
> lost their jobs to Negroes and are forced to live in squalid apartments
> where pornographic films play ceaselessly on televisions that will not
> turn off; I consort only with homosexuals and the divorced, both of whom I
> meet at gatherings where we plot the elimination of All That Is American.  


     Heh heh heh.   A thoft anthwer turneth away waith.

                                                   -- jf
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken)
Subject: Re: 1992 Nobel Prize
Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 04:52:34 GMT

I have seen one of Walcott's plays called _Pantomime_.  In it a
Caribbean innkeeper suggests to his handyman that they jointly put on
a production of _Robinson Crusoe_ to entertain the guests.  At first
the (black) handyman says no, but gradually the innkeeper persuades
him, saying it will all be in fun.  Then the handyman suggests that he
play Crusoe and that the innkeeper play Friday.  Even better!
responds the innkeeper, and they begin to rehearse.    

This is a subtle and entertaining play about racism.  It makes several
very pointed observations without being offensive.  I'd recommend it
to anyone who thinks that they are _not_ a racist.

I believe that Walcott's poetry was often published in _The New
Yorker_ back in the late '70's (the last time I subscribed).

-- 
Alison Chaiken 				alison@wsrcc.com
(510) 422-7129 [daytime] 		or chaiken@cmsgee.llnl.gov
(510) 422-7300 [FAX]
Live fast, die young, leave a long publication list.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: davidf@golem.uucp (David J. Fiander)
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 02:24:59 GMT

>> Good books which are just too damn boring to read. I would  
>certainly 
>> include Charles Prolix Dickens, a lot of the Shagger Pagger, all of
>> Milton, &c., &c.
>
>I like Dickens and don't find him boring.

Well, I tried to read Great Expectations about a year or so
ago.  After the first 30 plot twists I realised that Mr.
Dickens was paid by the word for magazine serials.  If he was
writing now, he would have a good editor to hold him back.

I would guess that the only reason that _A Christmas Carol_
turned out so well (and I'm only going by the movie on this
one) is that he had to make it short enought to fit into the
Christmas edition of the mag. (or maybe the two editions
bracketing Christmas if it was a weekly).

- David
From: bh419@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ted B Samsel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Fictitious Fiction
Date: 16 Oct 1992 15:25:13 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


For a good jolt of FF, try the FORBIDDEN WRITINGS OF LEE WALLACH
It's a spoof of small presses. Quite funny, a hoot.
-- 
Ted....
From: wojdylo@maths.uwa.oz.au (John Wojdylo)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Date: 8 Oct 1992 08:04:00 GMT
Organization: The University of Westrn Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: madvax.maths.uwa.oz.au

starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:


>I'm interested in criticism of the "social-constructionist" methodology that
>Paglia has brought to my attention.  If this isn't the correct forum for
>this, what is?

The shit house. You can wank yourself there without disturbing the
peace.
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: U.S. Textbooks And The Decline Of Academic Standards
Date: 8 Oct 92 18:38:42 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA


I had mentioned a while back what happened when U.S. history
textbooks offered to the State of Texas were examined for
accuracy.  While pulling a software manual off the shelf in 
my office, a small torrent of papers came fluttering downward,
and among the items so restored to the Holocene era, I found
the original Wall Street Journal article.

February 12, 1992, p. B1.

Some of the examples are even worse than the ones I told you
about.  From Prentice-Hall's _American Journey_: "1789 Judiciary
Act establishes Supreme Court."  The Supreme Court was established
by the Constitution.  "Harry Truman [became] president after
Franklin Roosevelt's death in 1944."  FDR died in 1945.

From Houghton Mifflin's _History of the United States_:
A constitutional amendment "needs to be... ratified by two-
thirds of the state legislatures."  Of course, it's three-fourths.

Glencoe Macmillan/McGraw-Hill's _American Odyssey_ asks students
to think about why Churchill delayed in sending troops to
Stalingrad?  Churchill didn't, of course.

The assassination so Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.,
are listed as events of the Nixon presidency.  Both were during
the Johnson Administration, of course.

It goes on and on.  Mostly minor facts, like saying, "American
troops encountered powerful resistance..." at the Bay of Pigs
(no American troops involved, of course -- all Cuban expatriates),
but it doesn't give you much confidence in accurate analysis,
when someone writing a history text can't even get the basic
facts right.  Footnotes are not a luxury; footnotes are a part
of the process by which we make sure our memory and our desire
for history to be a certain way, isn't playing tricks on us.

"It's very embarrassing and absolutely not the kind of thing
we want to be doing," says Barbara Flynn, editorial vice
president for social studies at Scott Foresman, whose "American
Voices" textbook had Truman using the [atomic] bomb in Korea and 
other inaccuracies.  "But everyone agrees on the [Texas] board 
level and the textbook-committee level that these are the best
textbooks they've ever seen."

The "best."  Now I understand the incredible ignorance I hear
from other college students.
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Lesson learned from Gov. Wilson's signing of AB 2601: if you don't get 
your way, have a riot.  Next time, Gov. Wilson will cower appropriately.
From: maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.
Date: 8 Oct 1992 00:16:31 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: fir.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Oct7.124735.21802@morrow.stanford.edu>, francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
|> 
|> Now here we have the makings of one of the better threads in years.
|> Good books which are just too damn boring to read.

I know, according to my own ideology, I shouldn't be able to
supply an example, but I will anyway.  My own current winner of
the My-God-What-Have-I-Done-At-The-Bookstore award is Hermann
Broch's _Death of Virgil_.  Do I contradict myself?  Very well,
then....

	Vance
From: joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields)
Subject: Re: Books in the time of Love
Organization: UNC-CH School of Medicine
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 19:34:38 GMT

This is sort of a postscript to my post regarding my experiences with this
subject.  I went through some of the letters I got from friend Michael and
dug out a few of the books we corresponded about:

Dostyevski - he read _Crime and Punishment_ while I read _Notes from the
Underground_ and _The Double_

Willa Cather - _My Antonia_, he suggested I read it, I loved it as much as
he did - I went on to read _Death Comes for the Archbishop_

Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot"

Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"

John Barth's _Chimera_ and _The Floating Opera_

A number of poems by Sylvia Plath, William Butler Yeats - the works of
Robert Frost.

There were others.  There was also music: Van Morrison's "Rave on, John
Donne" and "Summertime in England" ("which _Rolling Stone_ called a twenty
minute summary of twentieth century British literature") off his
_Inarticulate Speach of the Heart_ album (1983 Warner Brothers).

I sent him _The Little Prince_ for Christmas, it left him stunned and
amazed.

There were also letters about writing letters and postcards about writing
postcards.

Joan
"The rest is silence" HAMLET
From: wojdylo@maths.uwa.oz.au (INFIDEL)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof - New words!!
Date: 7 Oct 1992 05:45:21 GMT
Organization: The University of Westrn Australia
NNTP-Posting-Host: madvax.maths.uwa.oz.au

Dug Cunt-storm writes:


>In rec.arts.books, wojdylo@maths.uwa.oz.au (INFIDEL) writes:

>> 
>> >                                             -- jf
>> 
>> My dear James-filler, 
>> 
>> 
>> 	There once was a fucking liar called Quarnstorm
>> 	Who could not resist the occassional barnstorm
>> 	But Dougie's dick having been bit
>> 	Re-emerged as a dark shit
>> 	On VDU screens all over the U.S.
>> 
>> 
>> Ain't that sweet ?

>You, know, I think I like it.  It has a certain charm.  And since
>it is about me, I find it inherently fascinating.

I'm so glad you like it. Here's another one:


	Quarnstorm, a cunt of a liar is he
	Drinks menstrual blood 'n pee
	Fucks over them blacks with glee
	Votes for Quayle, singing "Yippee! Yippee!"




>Quite lovely.  I hope it finds its way into your collected works.
>I would be honored and humbled at the very same time.


	You certainly will be when Mike Morris ties you over a chair and
	butt fucks you with a stubby of SteinLager.


>doug

Infidel.
From: bh419@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ted B Samsel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: JURGEN -- James Branch Cabell
Date: 8 Oct 1992 17:35:35 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


Like Tom Robbins and Tom Wolfe, this guy's from Richmond, VA.
(But so is Shirley McLain and Warren Beatty)
-- 
Ted....
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:50:54 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

Certainly is a *revealing* thread, I must say...
 
-Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
 OPINIONS ARE MY OWN            {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor