HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 18:50:37 GMT

In article <MATT.92Aug14122411@physics2.berkeley.edu> 
matt@physics.berkeley.edu writes:
>
>To take one small example: whatever the "Canon" is (personally, I
>define it as those books that get taught in introductory literature
>courses in high school or college), I don't think there's any question
>that the Iliad is in it, and the Mahabharata is not.  

One morning when Madhu and I had gotten into yet another of our surreal
discussions about the English language, I chose (unwisely, as it turned 
out) to illustrate my point with an anecdote from the _Iliad_, ending 
"...and he was killed by Ajax." 

"Ajax!" said Madhu scornfully, giving me That Look -- the one that 
reveals his conviction that I am incurably frivolous.   "Ajax!  And 
why not Comet?" 

(Yes, I explained that Comet was one of Santa's horsies.  There's a 
*reason* for That Look, you know.) 

But as I was later chortling to myself, it occurred to me that I 
wouldn't be able to recognize a single name from the Mahabharata. 
And that while he has a fair background in 19th century English 
literature, apparently a part of the curriculum in Indian schools 
when he was a lad in Lucknow, the only classic Indian writer I 
can claim any familiarity with is Tagore. 

--Barbara, who just went out and bought _Their Eyes Were Watching God_, 
doing her bit to beat swords, or big guns, into plowshares 

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mikel@col.hp.com (Mike Lopke)
Subject: Re: Anybody Else Read History?
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 22:50:17 GMT
Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division

daggs@l42bb.jsc.nasa.gov (Clark) writes:

> wondering if there are any fans of History and Historical Fiction present.  I
>   


Three cheers for Historical Fiction!!!

I've read most of Mitchner's works.  Do you have any recommendations or
favorites?

Reguards,
Mike Lopke
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: MAMista
From: <NU031908@NDSUVM1.BITNET>
Date: Monday, 17 Aug 1992 16:05:57 CDT
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computer Network

3
qquti
qquit
From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: A little learning...
Keywords: snob, shit
Date: 17 Aug 92 23:56:27 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Aug17.195627.14830
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Aug17.132942.17401@morrow.stanford.edu>
francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:

>		"Snob and Shit"
>		Tommy wrot.
>		Manners maketh Maddox?
>		NOT!

		There's no need
		To have a fit:
		Tom's free -- to be
		And so -- to eat!

>						Fido

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 14 Aug 92 19:10:37 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Great, now I've got Mark Taranto to enjoy and despair over as well as Terrance!

In his very thoughtful response to my posting, Mark argues that since I wasn't
in a visible minority, my experience as a young American in Mexico isn't
comparable. Well, when I went on the street no one might know my father's
politics, but more than once the reaction by Mexican kids was, in rough
translation, "Let's punch the daylights out of this gringuito." Televising a
baseball game one day in Mexico City, my obvious Yankee father found himself
suddenly under a bombardment of beer bottles. And while I was lucky enough to
escape physical attack for political reasons, the father of one of my friends
wasn't so lucky: some young toughs drove right into his front yard, got out and
beat him up.

Of course one's race and sexual preference shouldn't matter. (In the matter of
sex, we should be sublimely apathetic to the preferences of everyone except
those we have carnal interest in; otherwise we simply appoint ourselves
constables in the Sex Police.) Of course they do matter; I felt
self-consciously American in Mexico because I stood out there, and in China I
felt quite similar--partly because the Chinese stared at us all the time, as
well as charging us quadruple for everything because we were *waiguoren.*

But if we make a big issue about our race and sex--if it matters that authors,
artists, and other prestigious people are of our race and sexual preference,
then we're co-opted in the racist-sexist game. And if we do that, then we put
off until forever the day when those differences don't matter. As some wise
person once observed, "Living well is the best revenge."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 20:51:30 GMT

In article <5522@transfer.stratus.com> jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com writes:
> I've read a number of authors on my own--Dostoyevsky and Faulkner
> both come to mind--that I really wish I'd read as part of a college
> course just so I could talk to another group of people about the
> great book(s) I'd just read.

I thought that was why rec.arts.books was invented.  Think of it as a
college course with 75,000 students.

Evelyn C. Leeper  |  +1 908 957 2070  |  att!mtgzy!ecl or  ecl@mtgzy.att.com
--
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
					 -- Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: author and theme of MacBird?
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 92 04:22:14 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <JMC.92Aug15204437@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>For an ongoing argument, I would like to know these.  MacBird
>was a 1960s or early 70s play.

	Barbara Garson; LBJ as Macbeth.

	She has a more recent book in which she claims that the computerized
office is the new sweatshop--I don't recall its title, nor have I read it, but
I heard her talk about it on NPR when it came out a few years ago.


-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		   "I swear I never heard the first shot"
                Wm. Gibson, "Agrippa:  a book of the dead"
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:14758 rec.humor:26208 alt.folklore.urban:21538 rec.arts.sf.misc:2596
From: speers@opus.mcds.com (Daniel E. Speers)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.religion.kibolo
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 92 13:28:30 EDT
Organization: Dan's Domain, Randolph, New Jersey

pynq@quads.uchicago.edu (George Jetson) writes:

> In article <1992Aug10.203035.27768@news.cs.brandeis.edu> st890270@pip.cc.bran
> >>There *IS* SCIENTIFIC PROOF that man did not exist on the planet Earth
> >>within 7 days of its creation.
> >Nah, it's all a conspiracy. God created the Dinosaur bones to give the 
> >planet a "lived in" feel
> Actually, this is covered in depth in _Panati's Extraordinary Endings of
> Practically Everything and Everybody_ (ISBN: 0-06-055181-X).
> A fabulously funny and informative book, BTW, that everyone in this
> group (that afu, by the way!) shoudl read.
> 
> When fossils were first developed, the religious Establishment went to
> great lengths to explain their existence w/o repudiating the version of
> creation given in Genesis.  A lot of it is absolutely hysterical.
> (In, in fact, both senses of the word)
> 
> Here is a sample.
> 
> Under the heading "Why Adam Had a Navel, When the First Man Had No Mother", 
> is the following:
> 
> >	Clergy of the day taught that Adam did indeed have a navel.
> >Gosse, a member of the highly conservative Plymouth Brethren, reasoned
> >that just as Adam's navel was the relic of a birth that never occurred,
> >so too were fossils relics of animals that never existed - except in
> >the mind of God, who created the earth replete with buried bones and
> >skeletally etched rocks.  And he went farther, claiming that *all* the
> >supposed signs of a vast antiquity - not merely fossils, but geological
> >strata, the scratches from one ancient glacier sliding past another -
> >were simply appearances.  God, for His own reasons, had created the
> >world with an illusion of a former existence.
> 
> Then later he says:
> 
> >	Bringing added scientific scorn upon himself, Gosse advanced the
> >idea that Adam was even created with urine already in his bladder and
> >digested waste matter in his colon.  *Everything* was created as if it
> >had a past.

  So, following this line of thought, The world was created two
minutes ago and all the past that we each have expirienced was put
into our minds.  Even the coffee I drank 10 minutes ago...
  What if the world hasn't yet been created...Hmm...What if it's
being created as we speak and we are all just the before thoughts
of our creator?
  Hmm..  If this is the case, I want my money back, Waiter!  New
life please!  This one requires more funding....
From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 14 Aug 92 14:07:29 GMT
Reply-To: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com

In article <1992Aug12.213039.2820@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike  
Godwin) writes:
> In article <5522@transfer.stratus.com>  
jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com writes:
> 
> >I've read a number of authors on my own--Dostoyevsky and Faulkner
> >both come to mind--that I really wish I'd read as part of a  
college
> >course just so I could talk to another group of people about the
> >great book(s) I'd just read.
> 
> But haven't we got a newsgroup for that?

To some extent, that's true. It's still not as good as face to
face conversation with someone who has just read (or at least
recently read) the same book that you just read.

--
Jim Mann            
Stratus Computer   jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Canonical Genre Fiction:  SF
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 22:57:04 GMT

In article <1992Aug19.213911.23543@hellgate.utah.edu> speterse%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty) writes:
)
)Just to prove that I can be as anal retentive as the next guy, I just
)typed in three would-be canonical lists of 100 best books.  There's one
)list of science fiction books, and two of fantasy books.  All three lists
)were inspired by Anthony Burgess's *99 Novels: the Best in English Since
)1939*, and were published with essays about each of the choices.
)
)For someone who is looking for an introduction to SF and fantasy, one
)could do worse than to use these lists as a guide.  I hope that someone 
)or other finds them useful.  


Hmmm - with 6 entries on the list, Phillip K Dick seems to be rather
overrepresented to me.  Also Ballard with 4 - I'm not even sure all those
by Ballard are 'really' SF, strictly, either.

There are a number of choices I didn't like.  Why 'The End of Eternity'
for Asimov, rather than his better known works (I Robot, Foundation,
or even Caves of Steel?).

And 'Oath of Fealty' rather than Ringworld???????  Or even 'Lucifer's
Hammer' or 'Mote in God's Eye'?

Flame, flame, flame, flame, spam, spam, spam flame and spam :-)
From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Asimov and the decay of SF
Date: 12 Aug 92 18:25:21 GMT
Reply-To: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
Distribution: na

In article <12AUG199207550032@portal.lasc.lockheed.com>  
le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025)) writes:
> I know that many people at this party like Dispossessed for it's  
slant, but
> that wasn't enough for me, so I didn't find it a good read.  It's  
reminds
> me of the way Oscars are given to movies.  If the audience loves a  
character
> in the movie story, or if the plot flatters their choice of belief,  
they 
> think that means the movie was well done.
> 

So which are you claiming it is here?  You said above that 
you didn't think Le Guin did a good job with the characters
(with which I strongly disagree. It is one of the best treatments
of character in SF), you must feel that people like it because of
its slant.  Does this mean that you think those of us who
like Le Guin like her because here "plots flatter [our] choice
of beliefs"?  Sorry, but that doesn't hold water. My political
slant would probably be called "slightly to the right of center" in
most areas but I love much of Le Guin's work. 

--
Jim Mann            
Stratus Computer   jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Re: REQUEST: "KILL your TV" bumperstickers
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 23:38:55 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <sph0301.49.714169289@utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu> sph0301@utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu (Kate Wilson) writes:
>>>> Ah, but I went through school with April N. (no middle name, just an
>>>> initial) Paris.

	I once worked with April Sauer (get it?  April Shower.  Ha!)

Roger Squires
rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dmpowell@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Darin M. Powell)
Subject: Re: Liberals, Little Girls, and Boolean Logic
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 12:17:53 EDT

In article <4484@news.duke.edu> bigham@acpub.duke.edu (Scott Bigham) writes:

>Cramer versus the Z-man!  This oughta be interesting!  Bets, anyone?
>

	I _always_ bet on Zeleny.

	Darin Powell
	Syracuse University


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon & Women
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 15:30:25 GMT

                                Thursday, the 20th of August, 1992

Alayne McGregor asks:
   Doesn't George Sand (Aurore Dupin, 1804-76) qualify?

Indeed, I feel particularly chagrined about this one, because
within the last week Martha and I were discussing this topic
and she brought up George Sand as a French possibility. Mark
Taranto also mentioned George Sand at me and we wondered about
Colette. Turns out I was placing Colette late 19thC, which is too
early (her books were published from the 20s to the 40s), but I
was excluding her because I thought of her more as a short-story
writer than a novelist.

On the other hand, I said that it was off the top of my head.
Also, I'd think that the male authors I listed are all more
``canonical''---more read, studied, and recommended---than George Sand.

So, unless the top of my head has it really ditortedly wrong---and
I consider this a possibility that I'm willing to listen to evidence
for---, I stand by my claim that women are underrepresented in pre-20thC
canonical literature, with the noted exception of the 19thC English
novel (probably also European letters and journals, come to think of it).

Also that the most likely explanation for this is a relative discouragement
by society that women be authors.

             Mike Morris
         (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 15:00:26 GMT


Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) says some interesting things
about how things ought to be:

> I've been reading Terrance's comments with a mixture of fascination,
> enjoyment and despair. Like him, I grew up in a minority within a
> minority--the American Communist families who moved to Mexico in the
> early 50s to evade blacklisting . . .

> . . . the normal experience of a young white male to reading Shakespeare
> is not to feel pride as a white male . . . .
> . . .
> I also worry about any attitude that says your race and sex are the most
> important aspects of your personality . . . .

Like Crawford, I have also been enjoying the comments of Terrance.

I'd love to be able to believe the things that Crawford says.  I'd love
the world to be that way.  But there is something false in what comes
through.  Crawford can claim to be a minority within a minority, but
when he walks into a room, strangers will not look at him and thing
"his father and grandfather were Communists."  There is a tabula rasa
waiting for information.

When Terrance walks into a room, people know he is black.  If he is as
open in public as he is on the net, they will soon discover that he is
also homosexual.  And while niether of these things should matter, there
are some who will be blinded to his eloquence, because of it.

        It is easy for a white man to tell a black man that color
        is unimportant.

        It is easy for a straight man to tell a gay man that sexual
        preference is unimportant.

        It is easy for a rich man to tell a poor man that money
        in unimportant.

Crawford is right that race and sex should not be the most important aspects
of one's personality.  Perhaps when minority groups are no longer judged
by those aspects, they will become less important.

Mark


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.religion.kibology
From: forda@gtephx.UUCP (Andrew Ford @ AGCS, Phoenix, Arizona)
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Organization: gte
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 19:38:57 GMT

In article <1992Aug9.160805.5793@cunews.carleton.ca>, wcstom@alfred.carleton.ca (Tom Hamill) writes:
> In article pochanay@cae.wisc.edu (Adisak Pochanayon) writes:
> >
> >    PS  I hate it when people included entire articles in a long boring
> >thread and are self-righteous.  However, since the Christian Mythologists
> >seem to be so annoying, I've decided to stoop to their level just to show
> >how annoying you can be when you're self-righteous, obstinate, and waste
> >band-width with boring cascades.
> >
> The poster you are referring to is Richard Steven Walz and you really
> shouldn't label him to be any more than what he is: a pompously
> arrogant, self-serving jerk.  He has been posting in the same fashion
> at an average of 5 followups a day on alt.sex for more than six months
> and seems incapable of using an editor.  Since so many people have
> placed him in their KILL file on that group, he seems to be spreading
> across the .net, like a cancer, searching in vain for an audience.  My
> KILL file on this group now contains the following entry:

I have noted one particularly effective way to stop this type of person:
*everyone* sends and e-mail reply to his account kindly, politely, and
gently explaining the error crossposting to the entire net.

RESULT: Perpetrator gets to explain to his sysop why his disk allocation
has been exceeded by a factor of 10.

RESULT of 2nd offense: Perp. looses access priviliges.

My suggestion: every time you see someone post something with tremendous
crossposting, e-mail the longest response you can find in the newsgroup
along with a brief explanation of why it's not polite and a copy of
all the relevent articles from news.announce.newusers.  

If we all do this, this type of mondo-xposted flame war will quickly
disappear.



-- 
"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with
no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy.  However, 4 out of 5 US murders are 
committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy?"   -  Andrew Ford
gtephx!forda@enuucp.eas.asu.edu  OR  !uunet!samsung!romed!enuucp!gtephx!forda
From: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Life's too short. Was: 1930s Science Fiction
Date: 12 Aug 92 13:46:07 GMT
Reply-To: jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com

In article <WARKENT.92Aug12133912@ltisun9.epfl.ch>  
warkent@ltisun9.epfl.ch (Ken Warkentyne) writes:
> In article <0-3myxd.tmaddox@netcom.com> tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom  
Maddox) wrote:
> > A Big Mac should not put one off Chez Panisse
> 
> And if Chez Panisse has a set of Golden Arches out front and
> hamburgers on the menu?

What does that mean??  

I've been following this conversation
(in which one person said he read one SF book, didn't like,
and therefore didn't read SF) and thought Tom's reply was right
on the mark.  If you'd like a more book related anology:
If you never read mainstream literature, and then went out, 
deciding to try one, tried Danielle Steele or Harold Robbins,
would you then conclude that all mainstream literature is
shallow crap?  (Actually, I've seen some SF fans over in
rec.arts.sf.written who fall into this kind of thing.)

--
Jim Mann            
Stratus Computer   jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 17 Aug 92 17:31:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: athena.1992Aug17.173108.8217
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <Bt1pns.Kv8@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris) writes:
>
>
>If we're talking a canon of readership, I agree with your earlier
>post---go ahead and read what you want. If we're talking preparing
>high-school students for the high office of electoral citizenship,
>then I claim Plato and Aristotle and Thucydides and Polybius
>and Locke and Voltaire and Montesquieu feed into Jefferson and
>Adams in a way that Christine de Pisan does not. And Jefferson and
>Adams and Lincoln and Marx and ``Letter from a Birmingham Jail''
>feed into what these students need to know to make responsible
>choices in a way that the Popol Vuh does not.

	Ah. At last, Martin's Letter from Birmingham Jail.  I supose
when one turns at last to the American canon one will find the colors
and the voices somewhat more varied.
	


-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:14970 soc.history:7585
From: Christopher.Carne@brunel.ac.uk (Christopher J Carne)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,soc.history
Subject: Re: History for Valley gals
Date: 18 Aug 92 13:37:53 GMT
Organization: Brunel University, West London, UK


Can anyone remember who said 'The United States has gone from Barbarism
to Decadance without the usual intervening period of Civilisation'
Probably one of my blinkered (or perceptive) fellow countrymen.

CHR$
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books