HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: REQUEST: book title
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 05:15:16 GMT

In article <1993Jan4.224843.28153@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com> westphal@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com (Dorothy Westphal) writes:
>Years ago I had a novel that dealt with time travel.
>It may have been hard to swallow the methods, but I found it
>engrossing reading. I cannot recall the name of book or author, 
>and hope someone can help me.

	Jack Finney: Time and Again. I recently found 12 short stories
by Finnet called About Time. They were good as well.

	Keith

--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: roger@crux.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig)
Subject: Re: Homophobia
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig)
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 03:25:55 GMT

In article <C0M7tt.F21@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca> msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:
>Roger asks:
>  Even if the discrimination kills?

>Kills? Nonsense.

Kills.  Sometimes it merely demolishes all personal liberty, all
human dignity -- but that's all right, isn't it?

>I said:
>  And this coercive
>  power (i.e. the governmental kind that always happens at the point of
>  a gun) 

>Roger says:
>  Funny, I only saw ballot boxes being used in Colorado.  

>I'm sorry, mate, but if an employer were to be sued for wrongful
>termination because of discrimination, then there is a certain
>coercive force that will be applied to that employer should
>he disregard or disobey that law. Even down to dedicating a
>statue in a public park, *every* piddling action of government
>is built on a coercive force far more serious than the economic
>coercion you are so fond of reifying.

Then how come most people don't object to that coercion? Could it 
be that they *agree* to it?  In which case it's NOT coercion?  

As for reifying economic coercion, I'm not reifying anything.  
You, on the other hand, are reifying a model of human behavior
that is, to put it mildly, simplistic.                        

This economic coercion is out there.  Just see how people change 
their lives because their employers insist -- see how their freedom
is limited drastically by their insistence on feeding themselves
and their children.  See how their freedom is limited in ways it need
not be.  

>  Yet the economic power of MANY managers not to hire you (see History, 
>  World, Most of It) can kill, and often has.  It also has the effect 
>  of nullifying by coercion most rights of those unfortunate enough
>  not to be managers.

>Well, I understand how the police and the military power of many
>governments has often killed many people, but that many managers,
>banding together not to hire people, have often killed I seem to have
>missed in my study of history. I suppose you could provide some
>examples of this, say, regarding blacks and Jews in the U.S. in the period
>since the Civil War up until effective non-discrimination legislation
>was first enacted? In round numbers, about how many were killed because
>of unemployment resulting from such discrimination?

Among children alone, thousands.

Roger
From: loosemore-sandra@cs.yale.edu (Sandra Loosemore)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Phoenix bookstores?
Date: 12 Jan 93 00:48:03 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: staff hacker @ Yale Haskell project
NNTP-Posting-Host: functor.systemsz.cs.yale.edu

(Continuing the travelling biblioholic thread....)

I don't see anything for Phoenix included in the list of bookstores in
various places.  Anybody have any recommendations?  

-Sandra
From: rhogan@phakt.usc.edu (Ron Hogan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: ah, sweet serendipity of life
Date: 7 Jan 1993 03:18:36 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: phakt.usc.edu

ah@dunaad.co.uk (Alan Hunter) writes:

>There's nowt like a Martin Amis when you need cheering up.

Isn't that the truth?  So far, with half of his fiction read,
my favorite is _London_Fields_.

Ron Hogan

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
From: urban@sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov (Michael P Urban)
Subject: Re: OZ books?
Reply-To: urban@sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov (Michael P Urban)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 16:17:48 GMT

In article <e2cK02E9309X01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> jjh00@diag.amdahl.com writes:
>In article <9975669@MVB.SAIC.COM>, Whitten@Fwva.Saic.Com (David Whitten) writes:
>>I'm wondering if there are people who are interested in the OZ books
>>written by Frank L. Baum....
>
>A half-dozen or more additional titles have been written by
>Baum's relatives and random folks caught up int the OZ world --
>but my impression is that these are pretty lousy.

Generally, the `canon' books are considered to be the 40 Oz books
published by Reilly & Lee (Baum's publisher) between 1902 and 1963.
Baum himself wrote 13 of them, plus six very short stories for the
youngest readers (`Little Wizard Stories of Oz') which have been
reprinted in a one-volume facsimile edition by Books of Wonder.  Books
of Wonder has also produced very nice facsimiles of the first
editions of the first four Baum books, including all the color plates
(missing from reprinted editions since about 1940).

The `Oz' name has long since fallen out of Trademark protection, and
so anyone can publish an `Oz Book'.  I believe the first six Oz books
are in the public domain.  This, I think, has some effect on which
characters and events you may use if you publish a book.  In general,
the `post-canon' books have been mediocre at best, and positively
weird (as in Philip Jose Farmer's `Barnstormer in Oz') at the most
extreme. 

Finally, Oz fans may want to look at Eric Shanower's four `graphic
novel' Oz stories that were published by First Comics.  Beautifully
drawn, these books are clearly a labor of love from someone who knows
the Oz and Baum canon very well.

	Mike Urban

	urban@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney)
Subject: Re: Paglia
Organization: Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA 90041 USA.
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 01:43:07 GMT

In article <C0IyE5.KAJ@news.iastate.edu> s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu writes:
> I can understand her frustration with the manner in which her
>career was sabotaged (in her view), but to blame the initial career problems
>she experienced on a conspiracy of arch-feminists strikes me as both
>irresponsible and immature.  Moreover, given the fact that she has *now*
>achieved a rare level of success and notoriety, her constant whining is
>undignified.  
>

	What sabotage?  We're talking about an obscure art academic
who taught at an equally obscure Pennsylvania college who was elevated
to national notoriety because of an editorial imbroglio at the classics
journal ARION.  Any excoriation and animosity Paglia's received has
generally followed in proportion to her own self-aggrandizing, punchme-
innaface "style" of professional discourse.  

>michael mcdonald

	Well met, Mr. mcdonald.  (I know you from the Derrida bitnet.)

Cordially,

Michael S. Rooney


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Paglia and M. S. Rooney
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 05:29:21 GMT

In article <C0o9xo.9un@news.iastate.edu> s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu writes:
>Michael, thanks for posting those quotes from whatever the heck the title
>of Paglia's newsest one is.  Those quotes pretty much confirm my sense that,
>with media acclaim, Paglia has pretty much lost whatever it was she had to
>offer in the first place by way of thoughtful insight.  I still want to read
>*SP*, however.

If reading these quotes were all you needed to judge Paglia, why not wait
for the Cliff's Notes of SEXUAL PERSONAE? Think of the time you'd save!


--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
(617) 864-0665  |                           
EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: sanjiva@ecrc.de (Sanjiva Prasad)
Subject: Re: Tom Brown and Harry Flashman
Reply-To: sanjiva@ecrc.de (Sanjiva Prasad)
Organization: European Computer-Industry Research Centre, Munich
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 13:25:58 GMT

In article <1iqo8vINNr2@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>Mike Godwin writes:
>
>	I confess to having read George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman 
>	books without having gotten through TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS. 
>	Fortunately, the latter is not necessary to enjoy the former.
>
>TB'sSD is not that difficult a read, and gives a fair picture of Arnold's
>Rugby. Obviously Mike cannot judge the value added that reading Tom
>Brown's Schooldays would bring to the Flashman series. 

Amen (in these times of "I'll scratch your back, you can scratch mine. Two
      o'clock from there, right under the shoulder blade").

I'd read TBSD When I Was Very Young, no actually when I was seven or eight.
Some years later, I went to see a movie called "Royal Flash", where the
protagonist was called Harry Flashman.  Doubled my enjoyment of the film
when I realised it was Flashman, the bully from Rugby.  The film involved
the mad king Ludwig of Bavaria, whose excesses I get to see on a regular
basis here, and featured a memorable tarantula dance (I don't think they're
real. Rrrrip.  I meant the spiders) by the one and only Lola Montez.
Incidentally, Lola Montez -- quite a remarkable woman, anyone seen a
biography on her? -- was actually Scottish or Irish.

>                                                        There is more to 
>Tom Brown than treacle, and more to Flashman than haha. They both record
>an extraordinary time that came and went within one hundred years.

Ah yes, the time Britain picked up the ball and changed the rules of the game.

Regards,
Sanjiva

--
Sanjiva Prasad,  Guest Magus				E-mail: sanjiva@ecrc.de
European Computer Industry Research Centre		Off: +49 89 92 69 91 58
Arabellastrasse 17					Fax: +49 89 92 69 91 70
8000 Muenchen 81, Germany				Res: +49 89 16 33 59
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: Paul Johnson (was Paglia)
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 07:20:08 GMT

In article <1993Jan8.181604.8821@Princeton.EDU> roger@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig) writes:
}In article <1993Jan8.074913.3098@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}>In article <1ih01dINNh29@phakt.usc.edu> rhogan@phakt.usc.edu (Ron Hogan) writes:
}
}>}I agree with you that the sample is woefully unrepresentative.
}
}>}As far as our divergence, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying 'some'
}>}where I said 'all'.  So you think he's being selective, and I think he's
}>}stacking the deck.
}
}>}I mean, look at his cases.  Rousseau, Shelley, Hemingway.  It's not like
}>}he even tried to make things hard for himself by finding somebody who led
}>}a nominally conventional life.
}
}>Ibsen was perhaps the most conventional of the lot, or maybe Brecht, and
}>they were pretty weird.  You've got our divergence about right, I think.
}
}"Our"?  Who's "we"?  

The fellow I was responding to, silly, Ron Hogan.

}So, if Johnson writes a book about intellectuals who were social misfits,
}and calls it "intellectuals" -- thereby at least insinuating that he 
}is making some comment about intellectuals as a class -- why are we wrong
}to call him on this bias?

This insinuation seems far-fetched to me.  If it's there, then there's nothing
wrong with "calling him" on it.

}>It's like the Albert Goldman school of
}>}intellectual history-- not so much sunlight being the best disinfectant
}>}as dragging historical figures through the mud.
}
}>They dragged themselves through the mud.  Johnson just exposed it.
}
}Horseshit.  Johnson told us nothing new about any of these people.

Perhaps I'm not an expert on the biographies of Johnson's subjects, but he
certainly told me news about them.  Is your criticism that his research
was general overview rather than narrow, specialized, original work?

He
}did, however, pluck out certain aspects of the lives of these people,
}ostensibly to prove some point about the value of their work and about
}a larger class of people.  

Ostensibly?  I read nothing in the book that would discredit the work of
Shelley, Ibsen, Hemingway, Russell...  This, too, is far-fetched.

}>}I'm willing to change 'all' to 'many of the
}>}shapers of modern thought', though.
}
}>What, not "some"?
}
}I'll bid "a few."  

Done!

}>"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
}>oneself and others." - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
}
}Right, and isn't diminished if one's an asshole.  

Maybe.  Newton's greatness is no less due to his dictatorial conduct, but
this isn't always the case.

Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
From: jim@rand.org (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Bookstores in London?
Date: 13 Jan 93 01:01:59 GMT
Organization: Banzai Institute

Another interesting place to look for used books in London is the Covent
Garden enclosed shopping area.  At one of the used book stalls I found a
very nice first edition of "Missee Lee" (Ransome) which I bought for a
song... probably because we'd just spent a great deal of money on an 1818
Ladies' Magazine with its hand-tinted plates intact.

Which reminds me: <don't> buy the darned individually-framed hand-tinted
plates from those early 19th-century bound magazine volumes: they break up
the books and throw away the text.  <Most> annoying!  Since the prints sell
for #10-20 each, that means they'd need #100 or so to make it cost-effective
<not> to break up the book (which we paid, of course), and normally they
can't get it.  Grr!  A guy in Bath from whom we bought a bunch of hardbound
Georgette Heyers said if you're to be a success in the used book trade you
need to think of your wares as simply commodities: a can of beans, a book,
whatever.  I think I might make a lousy used book dealer...
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	Sunday, 22 Afteryule S.R. 1993, 01:01
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Reading as an addiction (Was: 92 in rabreview)
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 22:31:35 GMT

yarnot@babbage.csus.edu (Jan Yarnot):
>I did just read a 1990 _New Yorker_ article about the fall of Jim and Tammy
>Bakker...

I know the feeling; I'm pretty far behind on my journals and magazines
too. :-)

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"
From: rhogan@aludra.usc.edu (Ron Hogan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Paglia (was: Cross-Writing)
Date: 6 Jan 1993 15:25:00 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu

John McCarthy writes:

>I learned a lot from _Sexual Personae_.  

I did as well.  It's a very intriguing pop summary of WestCiv.  I'd
also agree that she's very well-read, but not that "almost no-one has
read as much as she has."  Certainly few people *cite* as much as she
does, but I'm sure many people, especially academics, have read as much.

>In general, I prefer discussion of the ideas of a book to discussion
>of the personality or skill of the author.  At least discussion of
>the ideas should come first.

In *general*, I prefer this kind of discussion as well.  And for most
cases, it holds true.  Certainly one doesn't need to know the sordid
details of Foucault's life to discuss his theories: they may *amplify*
that discussion, but don't provide the essence of the debate.  That's
why I think Paul Johnson's _Intellectuals_ is such a reprhensible book:
because it's main thesis seems to be, "The people we claim are the great
shapers of modern thought were all depraved, immoral, and had lousy
personalities."

In certain cases, though, the writer's personality is totally infused
with the writing, and Camille Paglia's _Sexual_Personae_ is exactly
what I have in mind.  If a writer is going to survey WestCiv/WestLit
and dismiss Sterne with a casual, "I don't see why people think
Tristam Shandy is funny" (again, I'm paraphrasing; my copy of SP is
on the East Coast, and I'm on the West), that to me represents a blatant
positioning of her own opinion as the arbitrer of truth.

Which is what everybody else does; they just pretend to be more
objective about it.  But if you're going to use the "this is how
history is because this is how I say it is" argument, you have to
be able to back it up with more than repeated assertions.

And let's face it, Paglia herself contributes to the identification
of her personality with the book's content through every TV or
magazine appearance she does.  Compared to Paglia's form of responding
to her critics and to other contemporary writers, I've been a model
of restraint. and certainly less *ad hominem* than she is.

SP isn't a bad book.  But it's hardly the masterpiece that Camille
Paglia claims it is, either.

And the Vintage trade paperback *did* have a snazzy cover,
but that's to be expected.  Some of the sharpest minds in
book design are working in that department-- witness the
Black Lizard books and many of the Vintage Internationals,
especially the Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Vladimir
Nabakov-- and Jeanette Winterson's _Sexing_the_Cherry_.

If one were to buy books solely on the cover, Vintage
trade paperbacks might be the way to go.

Ron Hogan

but then there's the Grove Press trade pbs of Burroughs...

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jspence@cmptrc.lonestar.org (John Spence)
Subject: Re: Bookstore Anecdote
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:18:14 GMT
Organization: CompuTrac Inc., Richardson TX

In article <1993Jan10.182430.1347@athena.mit.edu> kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan) writes:
>Andrew S Hall on the declining standards of bookstore knowledge:
>
>>I think more bookstores should be like Borders and have employees
>>pass tests before being hired.
>>
>>Andrew Hall
>
>	Really? Is this true? And if it is, isn't it discriminatory?
>
     Not if it is part of the job description and it doesn't violate
     federal hiring guidelines. As long as the employer doesn't
     bias the test on race, age, etc., the employer can put any test
     they wish on employment. 

-- 
jspence@cmptrc.lonestar.org                                (214) 235-7161 x4100
John E. Spence                                                  CompuTrac, Inc.
"I don't speak for CompuTrac, and CompuTrac doesn't speak for me!"
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The WORST novel ever written?
Date: 12 Jan 93 13:43:01 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

duve@midway.uchicago.edu wrote:
> I haven't read it ["What is to be Done?"], but a (former) SO was once on
> a search for the worst literature in the world and found a number of bad
> Russian writers.  I believe that Chernychevsky was one of them.  Quite a
> bit of the 'approved' literature of Soviet Russia is, at best, flat and
> lacking in any emotion.

Are you under the impression that Chernyshevsky (d. 1889) was a Soviet author?

The book was reprinted by Virago a few years back, as part of a sequence of
reprints of books by 19th century male feminist writers.  I haven't read it
but might get round to it one day.  Chernyshevsky was one of the Nihilists,
so it's hardly suprising he can still make the new right orthodoxy see
purple.  (The original condemnation quoted here was from the ultra-right
CIA-funded propagandist Robert Conquest, from who you'd expect a kneejerk
condemnation of anything Lenin liked enough to steal from.)

-- 
--  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: spp@zabriskie.berkeley.edu (Steve Pope)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Homeschooling (spp's response to multiple posts)
Date: 8 Jan 1993 18:12:22 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley -- ERL
NNTP-Posting-Host: zion.berkeley.edu

Tony Matt writes:

>>> And having seen some 
>>> of the ravings from the "Pro-9" and "Pro-2" groups, I'd be curious 
>>> how people can support either of these measures and 
>>> not be homophobic.  [...]
>>
>>What she said.  I'm quite curious about this myself.
>
>What I'm curious about is how you can assert that you *know* what's in 
>the hearts and minds of millions of people based on their support of
>a political position.  And not only the majority or vast majority, but
>every single one of them.

I never asserted to know this.  In fact I said I am
somewhat mystified as to what caused support for CO2.

But if I had to speculate, I'd say it's a combination
of reasons that led to CO2 winning.

[ begin speculation ]

I think part of it is that people didn't check into it
and actually believed the rap that the existing situation gave
preferences to gays, and this measure would create a level
playing field.  Never underestimate the stupidity factor.

But there's *got* to be some homophobia at work here too.
If not, why single out gays, as opposed to revamping 
legislation dealing with hiring, termination etc in
general?  Certainly the authors of the measure, and the
Orange County conservatives who ran the campaign in favor,
and others of their ilk qualify as homophobic.

I speculate that another factor is, given the bad economy,
the prolonged recession, people are casting about to find
"the enemy within".

And of course another reason is, these Coloradans are 
latent.  Think about it: who are *they* to call *us*
perverts?  It's the Coloradans who are out there
buggering sheep, eating rocky mountain oysters, and 
preening about in their thigh-high cowboy boots and
sequined shirts.

[ end speculation ]

I agree with Tony Matt and Mike Morris that the Oregon 9
was much much worse, in a sense, than CO2.  I found its 
vague wording ominous: "homosexuality and S/M are
wrong and are to be discouraged."  The sort of thing
that a school administrator or police officer can
interpret however they please, and point to the
measure as a mandate for discrmination.

Steve
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: academic settings
Date: 11 Jan 1993 03:07:11 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Mike Godwin writes:

	I confess to having read George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman 
	books without having gotten through TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS. 
	Fortunately, the latter is not necessary to enjoy the former.

TB'sSD is not that difficult a read, and gives a fair picture of Arnold's
Rugby. Obviously Mike cannot judge the value added that reading Tom
Brown's Schooldays would bring to the Flashman series. There is more to 
Tom Brown than treacle, and more to Flashman than haha. They both record
an extraordinary time that came and went within one hundred years.

						RABworm
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books