HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Date: 5 Oct 92 20:28:50 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1992Sep30.122808.5256@epas.toronto.edu>, sfysh@epas.utoronto.ca (Stephanie Moskal Fysh) writes:
> In article <BvDL7I.EGH@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> streater@unixjr.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater) writes:
# #For someone in a university English Dept to say this boggles the mind.
# 
# After 4-5 years of Shakespeare in high school I'd have expected my
# 19-20 year old first year Honours English students to comprehend it
# too.  Many of them didn't.
# 
# And Shakespeare isn't God of the English Dept.  Sorry to disappoint.
# 
# Stephanie Fysh
# Dept of English
# Univ. of Toronto

Must be a regional idol.  The Sonoma State University English Dept.
has one, and only one class devoted to a single author that ALL
English majors MUST take, and that's Shakespeare.  (I must admit
that I'm surprised it hasn't been replaced with reading Mao Zedong
in translation, or Malcolm X).


-- 
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: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Richardson Thing
Date: 4 Oct 92 20:15:09 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens


lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat) writes:

>find it so unbelievable that I threw my last copy across the room 3
>times.  The dents in the wall were nearly as large as those made by 
>the CRC.

     Your address is physics.  Do you mean the CRC Handbook?  Why are you
tossing it around?  Did it fail you somehow?

      Just nosy,
                                                   -- jf
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: nadel@attatash.aero.org (Miriam Nadel)
Subject: Re: Attractiveness (was: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia)
Organization: /usr/lib/news/organization
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 18:16:14 GMT

In article <5OCT92.02580269@vax.clarku.edu> hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu writes:
>Don't worry about it.  No epithets invented by any of you r.a.b.bits
>will come close to what I was called by the Red Sox fans on rec.sport.baseball
>when I told them to quit whining about the 1986 World Series and admit
>that the Mets deserved to win.
>
But, Heather, what you have to understand is that books are merely frivolous
pleasures while baseball is important stuff.  As I demonstrated in my
research on The Grand Unified Theory of Politics, Economics and the American
League East, there is no better determinant of the way the world is going
than the fortunes of the Red Sox.  To say that the Mets, who are normally on
the side of good but can be swayed periodically, deserved to win is to say
that the Red Sox deserved to lose, and, thus, that evil deserved to triumph
over the world.  It is, admittedly, not quite as serious as matter as those
blows to the national psyche which have been dealt us by the Root of All
Evil in the World (a.k.a. the Yankees) or by the West Coast Subsidiary of
the Root of All Evil in the World (a.k.a. the Oakland A's) but it is still
a mighty nasty issue.  

I do have serious worries about the forthcoming elections given the poor
showings of both Boston and Kansas City this year.  I fear that if Oakland
proves triumphant, the Supreme Court will move to allow increased censorship 
and I'll never be able to get my work on "How to Add More Stress to Your
Life" published unless I delete the Velcro sections.


Miriam Nadel

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kate@cactus.org (Katherine M. Catmull)
Subject: Re: The Shakespeare Thing
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 18:47:19 GMT


I agree with (the vaudeville team of) Maddox & Webster: Ms.
Fysh started a lively thread, which I enjoyed very much, and
I hope she sticks around.

One small personal note of concern though: Ms. Fysh says she has
read Clarissa four times. Please, please, stop at once, before
it's too late!

Kate


-- 
- - - - - - - -
kate@cactus.org
Be the voice of night and Florida in my ear.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare? also Am Lit
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 06:18:31 GMT

In article <2ACA3AA2.22691@ics.uci.edu> tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) writes:
>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 have never understood the predeliction of American junior and
high school teachers for the dreary precincts of early-to-mid 20th century
American writers such as Steinbeck, Dreiser, O'Hara, Wilder . . . ah, Christ,
I can't go on--

	At any rate, my son two years ago was in a senior honors literature
class taught by a rather nice older man who dragged out the same books
(he even made them read a Thornton Wilder novel I say incredulously), and
when I disingenuously asked him how he had constructed this reading list, 
he said that he just liked these books.

	I've since concluded that high school literature teachers haven't 
read anything else themselves and so keep these pseudo-great lit assignments 
going around like gerbils on treadmills.

	No wonder the little fuckers don't read--they think Lit is all a bunch
of tedious codswallop.  Give them Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Herrick . . .
and _Neuromancer_ and rock videos as well.  Give them something difficult and
sexy and disturbing and above all *worth their effort* and don't be a 
dipshit--i.e., above all do no harm as the medical folks are told in equally 
important matters.

	

	

	
-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		"The Reptoids eat humans like we eat chickens."
				Alex Alexander
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.market,misc.forsale,ba.forsale
From: zombolas@credence.com (Gene Zombolas)
Subject: FOR SALE:  Paperback Books
Organization: Credence Systems Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 22:31:49 GMT

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    or better (except those priced $1.00).  Everything has a 100% guaranteed
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    Postage is $1.50 for all orders.  All books will be shipped via the
    United States Postal Service (book rate domestic; surface foriegn).
    Sorry, no UPS.

    Books my be reserved by email at zombolas@credence.com or by phone
    in the evenings at 408-246-7654.  Reservations are held for 7 days
    pending payment.  PLEASE, IF YOU RESERVE AN ITEM, PAY FOR IT.  If
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	444 Saratoga Ave. #5G
	Santa Clara, CA  95050

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Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: packer@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Packer)
Subject: Re: Non-threads.
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: Dept. of Independence
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 11:55:00 GMT

In article <ESH.92Sep23170611@bigapple.tekbspa.com>, esh@bigapple.tekbspa.com (Edward S. Hirgelt) writes...
>Martin> Perhaps this is a FAQ, but is there a term for singleton articles?
> ...
>But has there ever been such a thing in r.a.b?


Actually, about a third to a half of all articles get no followups.
For example, of the 11 subject-lines here in r.a.b. that haven't
had any followups posted to them in the last six days and thus
can be described as possessing no further interest, four consist
of singleton postings. 

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: The Shakespeare Thing
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:51:21 GMT

Stephanie Moskal Fysh has been treated to a rabberly experience:
>I just want to say that I've been quite shocked at the responses I've
>received, including what can only be called hate mail, to my
>suggestion that Shakespeare be put back to the later years of high
>school.  I had no idea that my proposal would be considered to be so
>horrifying, and have been amazed at some of the misconstruals of my
>statement and assumption about myself that have appeared here.

Wow.  Cool.  Remarkable, isn't it, what strong emotions books bring forth?
Thanks for telling us that, Stephanie.  I, for one, am always thrilled
to hear when Shakespeare is the occasion for shocking behavior.  Where
we have feelings, there is yet hope.

				--wishing all who were injured in
				  fray a speedy healing process,

						Fiona
From: snow@netcom.com (Tim Szeliga)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: New Joyce Stories Not New, claims Jorn
Date: 6 Oct 92 12:44:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.1992Oct6.124427.26947
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)


oh, i hear the alarms going off all over the planet (i guess), about
danis rose's phenomenal coup in discovering "7 new JJ stories from a
book to be called Finn's Hotel".  well it just ain't so.
i've been retracing joyce's 1923 footwork with maniacal intensity all
this year, and i can state with utter certainty that rose's 7 new
stories will turn out to be the third-draft typescripts of the first
7 FW vignettes: Roderick O'Conor (1), Saint Kevin (2), Tristan &
Isolde (3), Berkeley & Patrick (4), HCE (5), Mamalujo (6), and the
20 typescript pages of Book I, chapters 2-4 (7)-- all available at
your local university library in the James Joyce Archive volumes.

The reason I can be sure is that I've correlated these works with their
sources in the early pocket notebooks and Scribbledehobble, and there's
just no room for 7 others. (Are we to imagine he maintained a separate
set of pocket books for Finn's Hotel, keeping their characters separate?
Given the serious eye problems JJ had that year, the 7 we know are
already plenty incredible, especially in light of the minute architectural
methodology he built them with.)

Rose announced a few years ago in the FW Circular that he thought "Finn's
Hotel" was JJ's "real" title for FW.  He's just building the hype for
cynical marketing reasons.

I'm delighted these versions are coming into print, especially since
Hayman's First Draft Version is so hard to acquire.  But don't let him
kid you... it's nothing *that* new.

Jorn Barger
new address: jorn@chinet.chi.il.us
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: gere@umunhum.stanford.edu (Susan Gere)
Subject: Re: A Room of One's Own with a View to Kill
Organization: Stanford University
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 01:19:49 GMT

Mike Morris writes a lot more stuff, and I am unavoidably detained
at work. However, on the theme of whether those long-ago people 
were really much like us, I offer the following from 3 centuries
prior to our Shakespeares [thanks to Dani Zweig for it]:
 
 "The poorest folk are our neighbours, if we look about us -- the
 prisoners in dungeons and the poor in their hovels, overburderned
 with children, and rack-rented by landlords.  For whatever they
 save by spinning they spend on rent, or on milk and oatmeal to
 make gruel and fill the bellies of their children who clamour for
 food.  And they themselves are often famished with hunger, and
 wretched with the miseries of winter -- cold, sleepless nights, when
 they get up to rock the cradle cramped in a corner, and rise before
 dawn to card and comb the wool, to wash and scrub and mend,
 and wind yarn and peel rushes for their rushlights. -- The miseries
 of these women who dwell in hovels are too pitiful to read, or
 describe in verse.
 
 "Yet there are many more who suffer like them -- men who go
 hungry and thirsty all day long, and strive their utmost to hide
 it -- ashamed to beg, or tell their neighbours of their need.  I've
 seen enough of the world to know how they suffer, these men who
 have many children, and no means but their trade to clothe and
 feed them.  For many hands are waiting to grasp the few pence
 they earn, and while the Friars feast on roast venison, they have
 bread and thin ale, with perhaps a scrap of cold meat or stale fish.
 And on Fridays and fast-days a farthing's worth of cockles or a
 few mussels would be a feast for such folk.  I tell you, it would be
 a real charity to help men so burdened, and comfort these cottagers
 along with the blind and the lame."
 
 
(From book ten, lines 71-97, in the C text. The language and spelling 
are modernized, of course. Piers Ploughman, as attendant at Rabfest'92.)
From: alexande@genghis.borland.com (Mark Alexander)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mervyn Peake's _Titus Alone_
Date: 5 Oct 92 19:50:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: genghis.1992Oct5.195006.14381
Organization: Borland International
Originator: alexande@genghis.borland.com


I have heard that Peake was suffering from Alzheimer's during
the writing of _Titus Alone_.  Perhaps that could account for
the problems.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: RE: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Organization: Clark University
Date: 29 SEP 92 13:28:15 GMT

>   As for finding evidence of the rank personal qualities attributed to
>Paglia in the above quoted text, I'd suggest looking at any page of her
>original Arion article, her MIT lecture transcript, or the interview
>with her which was published in last Sunday's San Francisco Examiner:
>if you don't find at least one of those qualities exemplified in the
>first sentence you look at, you'll probably find it in the second.

But Jon, if I do that, there's no way for me to know exactly what it is
that *you* think is evidence.

It was interesting to see that you had not read "Sexual Personae".

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Literature of Travel (Was Re: literature students)
Date: 30 Sep 92 14:30:18 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <9650@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley) writes:
>
>Myself, I carried the ozzie year-away a good bit farther, accounting for my
>title as Emory's Oldest Living Sophomore.  I must say, seeing 7 continents
>in the interim certainly has cast brighter light on this formal education
>business.  Highly recommended for anyone, not that r.a.b. is at all in need
>of such advice.
>

I spent a good part of the last decade living and traveling overseas, and
am now a confirmed wanderer.  As such, I've become very interested in the
whole genre in literature and am auditing a course on the literature of
travel.  The reading list includes:

	Death in Venice -- Thomas Mann
	The Immoralist -- Andre Gide
	Down and Out in Paris and London -- George Orwell
	A Moveable Feast -- Ernest Hemingway
	Heart of Darkness, Youth -- Joseph Conrad
	The Way to Rainy Mountain -- N. Scott Nomaday
	The Songlines -- Bruce Chatwin
	The Sheltering Sky -- Paul Bowles
	Mosquito Coast -- Paul Theroux

And various short works by D. H. Lawrence, Paul Fussel, Jan Morris, and
others.

I'm also working on a novel that deals with travel in various forms;
I'm primarily taking the course to get some new ideas.  Unfortunately, the
professor seems to be focusing on travel as a glorification of the
primitive and escape from industrialization, which is certainly one reason
people travel but not, in my opinion, the most compelling.

The final project will be a paper in which we compare our own experience
in a certain country with another writer's experience in that same
country.  I'd like to choose India.  Anyone have any suggestions for
possibly appropriate books that aren't written by Forester or Jabvahl?  (I
like them, but I've read them already.)

Also, any books you can recommend on the whole subject that aren't listed
above?  Why do people travel, anyway?  I include living overseas for
periods of time here.  And why does
the experience clarify and improve some individuals, and destroy others?
	



-- 
Lauren Crawford  //  crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: spb0457@venus.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Subject: Re: Golding's _The Spire_ query
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 23:15:00 GMT

miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes...
>Roger Squires writes:
>>you write:
>>>Some time ago I read William Golding's _The Spire_.  I want to re-read
>>>it but I've been told, or read somewhere, that to really grasp what
>>>he's doing you need a knowledge of cathedral architecture.
>> 	I know zero about this work, but *cathedral architecture?*
>> 	Do you mean the medieval Notre Dame type of cathedral with
>> 	lacy light filled vaulted ceiling interiors and exo-skeletal
>> 	flying buttress exteriors?  In any case, I do recall a PBS
>> 	series on the building of a medieval cathedral, and there
>> 	was a companion volume; perhaps this would suit you.  I
>> 	believe the title is simply _Cathedral_.
>> 	And I must ask -- can you give me a two or more line
>> 	description of the novel?  My interest is piqued.
>All I can remember is that it is a short novel, apparently a parable,
>in which all the action takes place while a cathedral is being built.
>There is a great deal of detail about the building.  It reminded me at
>the time of _A Canticle for Liebowitz_.
>I hope someone will volunteer an interpretation.

+------------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
Quick precis in words of one syllable:

_The Spire_ is by William Golding, so it's about the fundamental nature of
human evil.

This clergyman starts to erect (cough) a very large spire (symbolism obvious)
to the greater glory of bog, mungu, or whatever you wanna call the Ancient
Bearded Myth.  In order to get the construction completed, he, an erstwhile
pious man, is forced to do all sorts of unpleasant things including several
of the type that the towering metaphor would imply.

I don't see as one needs to be hip to all the intricacies of spire construction
to catch the drift, anymore than one needs to be a political scientist or
child psychologist to suss out _Lord of the Flies_.










Yours etc.,




SubGenius




From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 14:29:17 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof - New words!!
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books

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

> daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:
> 
> >In rec.arts.books, wojdylo@maths.uwa.oz.au (INFIDEL) writes:
> 
> >> No, that should be "who".  And not `"what."' either.  Mr. Tits-Pronto 
> >> even gets the definition of catachresis wrong here: had "who" been
> >> used in place of "whom", the case would have constituted an example of
> >> "grammatical error", not "catachresis". Lamentable imprecision on the part of 
> >> Mr. Tits-Pronto.
> >      ^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> >Ooooh, this is awfully clever.
> 
> >doug
> 
> Oh Dougie, that's so nice of you to say so. Now will you suck my dick?

Yaaawn.
From: maverick@mahogany.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Laurence Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_
Date: 28 Sep 1992 16:14:49 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: mahogany.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <27SEP199217512379@venus.tamu.edu> spb0457@venus.tamu.edu (SubGenius) writes:
>Perhaps you should spend a few quiet moments with any copies of the
>Everyman's Library printing you wander into--some addlepated typesetter
>has sent the entire black page to cower in the lower fraction of another
>page.  Alas, poor Yorick, indeed.
>
>On the other hand, the edition in question does give nearly an inch and
>a half to the gesture with the staff, instead of the more traditional
>centimetre or so.

Let me recommend, then, the Penguin edition (Graham Petrie, ed., 1967),
which does right by the black page, and gives the curlicue a full 7 cm.
Also, distinguishing itself from other Penguins, it doesn't deface the
text with endnotes -- they're there if you want them, but you look them
up by page number at the end.  Nice typeface, too, whose gentle archaism
suits the text well....

	Vance