HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kassover@rumsey.crd.ge.com (David Kassover)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: P.K. Dick in Hell (was Re: What happens to authors when they die)
Date: 27 Jul 92 18:34:45 GMT
Organization: GE Corporate R&D Center

In article <a3xxv2d@rpi.edu> kasprj@rpi.edu writes:
->In article <rauser.712208995@sfu.ca>, rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser) writes:
->
->|> What could be more insulting than a "novel" adapted from a screenplay
->|> which was based on an original short story?
-> 
-> How about a novelization based on a TV series based on a movie based on a
->radio show based on an original novel? 
-> 
-> Wonder how many people out there will recognize that one. Probably a fair 
->number.

"Flowers for Algernon"?


-- 
David Kassover             "Proper technique helps protect you against
uupsi!khazad!kassover	          sharp weapons and dull judges."
kassover@aule-tek.com                   F. Collins
kassover@ra.crd.ge.com
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:13471 sci.philosophy.meta:1384
From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: the address of the dead josef
Date: 30 Jul 92 18:45:38 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

In article <osborn.712215551@dragon> wojdylo@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (INFIDEL) writes:

>Due to a change in location, I am posting this reply to Mike Morris's post of
>Thursday July 23 from a colleague's account.  Since the computer here
>seems to be suffering from slow newsfeed,  

And I am responding (on July 30) to the Infidel's posting of the 27th.
I'm relieved to see that I'm not the only person whose news server
has gone on strike. I was beginning to feel quite paranoid.


-- 
"[Fiction's] function is not to detail the actual world, but to create
a parallel one. Image by image, phrase by phrase, through artifice and
evocation it must then make that world at once credible and meaningful."
-- Robert Stone               ...!cs.utexas.edu!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!jzimm
From: rachel@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us (Rachel M. Kadel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: isolation
Date: 25 Jul 92 19:17:30 GMT
Organization: Princeton High School, Princeton, New Jersey

>  mbvg9741@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (plain) writes:
> >
> >    I've been interested lately in the effects of prolonged
> >    isolation of an individual or a small group.  Could any
> >    body out there tell me of some fiction that deals with
> >    this or perhaps some pschological works?
> >    Thanks.
> >    -Vincent
> 
"Bulkhead" by Theodore Sturgeon, a short story I came across in _SF:  The 
Best of the Best_.
                            Rachel M. Kadel

There's an infinite number of monkeys at the door wanting to show us the 
script to Hamlet they've worked out...The school won't even LISTEN to me 
, much less let me speak for it...rachel@phsbbs.princeton.nj.us
From: jsw@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM (Jacek Walicki)
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 16:55:56 GMT
Subject: Konwicki's "Bohin Manor"
Organization: 40N31m31s_105W0m43s
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books


Not much is happening in Polish literature these days. The bookstores
are full of translations - of Ludlum, Mitchener and alike. It almost
seems that the only good Polish writer who still trudges forward is 
Tadeusz Konwicki. 
His "Bohin" has been just translated to English. Below you will find 
a review of it from The Economist.

jsw.


	---------
<The Economist, 18 July 1992>

Baltic parable

	LITHUANIA is a small country of three languages and
cultures-Lithuanian itself, Polish, and Russian, the language of the
eternal oppressor.The enmity between Lithuanians, both Lithuanian -
and Polish-speaking, and the Russians has a long history, and
Lithuania was the first of the Baltic states to declare its
independence from the Soviet Union. Tadeusz Konwicki puts all these
themes in their proper historical context in a novel ("Bohin Manor".
Faber&Faber; 240 pages;$14.99. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $19.95) set in
rural Lithuania a dozen or so years after the failed uprising of 1863.
The story has a superficial simplicity but, as in Chekhov, the
smallest and most inconsequential of details proves to be of great
significance.
	Its central character, Helena Konwicka, is the daughter of a
Lithuanian yeoman whose involvement in the failed uprising has caused
him to be deprived of his lands and manor house. Helena is a hopeless,
rudderless, unmarried young woman of 30 who feels oppressed by her
circumstances. She is betrothed to an ageing aristocrat whom she
despises for his girlish beauty and selfindulgence. When a wandering
Jew, with a shock of red hair, erupts into her rural isolation, she
recoils with horror. But she is also driven towards him, fascinated
by impulses that seem irrational.
	There is suspicion everywhere: the Russian-speaking chief of
police, for example, who dashes about sniffing out subversive
elements-among whom, of course, is that wandering Jew. Even the old
parish priest, once a seemingly harmless collector of Belorussian folk
songs, is under surveillance. And all this turbulent inactivity,
including the heart-searching by Helena, goes on in the strange
backwoods of 19th-century Lithuania, all marsh and endless forest,
with an atmosphere of foreboding and superstition.
	The book is in part a political parable. The reader's thoughts
are pitched in this direction by the voice of the narrator who is
telling the story of Helena. it is his own grandmother whom he is
writing about. He is reaching back to her, seeking clues to the
identity of a woman he never knew. And suddenly, by the use of that
small tactic, past becomes present in the reader's mind: those
tensions associated with the rise of national feelings; the voice of
that gruff Russian police chief; and the terrible sense of oppression
when no one feels free, nothing seems possible-and the heat of summer
conspires to weigh down like an iron upon the reader's forehead.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Jumping to conclusions in r.a.b (was Re: Revisited Classics &c.)
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 21:36:43 GMT

Susan Gere writes:

	As a new reader who was attacked by one of those mentioned in a 
	manner similar to that explicated some time back, I award M. 
	Taranto a standing ovation for his daring and incisive analysis:


	 C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  C C  
	  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l  l l 
	   a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a  a a 
	    p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p  p p !!

Giving Mark the claps may not be his idea of fun...

							Fido							

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: Asimov and the Decay of SF
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 03:07:54 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

In article <9207262103.AA29330@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
>
>tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes:

>> joannee@fscott.UUCP (Joanne Eglash) writes:

>>> I have a friend who claims that my love of literature is "a mere
>>> hobby" and that "reading any kind of fiction would be a waste of
>>> my time."  He's a scientist (specializes in an esoteric branch of
>>> biology that I can't even remember how to spell, let alone
>>> understand :-), and he refuses to read ANY novels.  He reads only
>>> books by scientists (and yes, I've seen him check their credentials
>>> on the book jacket -- a doctorate from Yale or Harvard is approved
>>> worthy of his reading time).

>>       Your friend is a snob and a provincial.  He is probably beyond anyone's
>> help, yours included.  If he thinks that only science is worth reading, and
>> only science done at Harvard and Yale at that, he is also deluded in very
>> fundamental way.

>>       I would advise you to sneak up behind him and hit him really hard
>> on the top of the head with a rubber mallet.  You might shake loose something
>> interesting, and from your report, you can't do him any real harm.

>Tom's suggests a zen-like approach to sudden enlightenment, reminds me
>that ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE might be a good choice.

	Oh, all right--

	_Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ will do just fine.

	Just be sure to hit him with the hardcover.


-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		   "I swear I never heard the first shot"
                Wm. Gibson, "Agrippa:  a book of the dead"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Subject: P.K. Dick in Hell (was Re: What happens to authors when they die)
Organization: University of Rochester
Date: 26 Jul 92 23:18:22


This thread reminds me of a quote from Phillip Dick, referring to how
much he hated the original _Blade_Runner_ script (though he liked the
version actually filmed).  He said, "If you want to put me in Hell
after I die, have my stories rewritten by Mickey Spillane."

Well, I don't know about Spillane, but being rewritten by Piers
Anthony and then having Arnie act in the movie version must come
pretty close...
--
_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi				Robotics Applications Development
					Boeing Aerospace Operations
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu		Kennedy Space Center
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Little Men
Date: 21 Jul 92 20:24:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.BrrA0s.8xJ
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

Little Men (by Louisa May Alcott) was the first "adult" (that is, non-primer) 
book I read, when I was about five or six. I believed Plumfield was real 
and wandered all around the neighborhood looking for it.

My question is: Has anyone read the book recently? How well does it
stand up?
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: R.A.B party
Keywords: Party games?
Date: 30 Jul 92 20:42:47 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

Care to modify this to make it applicable to unfortunates trying to
get through the Republican Convention?


-- 
===============================================================================
Lauren Crawford  //  crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind.  Or not to have a mind.  How true  
that is." -- J. Danforth Quayle at United Negro College Fund luncheon
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: cs lewis and jrr tolkien
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 23:25:36 GMT

In article <plp1.712436321@Ra.MsState.Edu> plp1@Ra.MsState.Edu (pat parker) writes:

>somewhere in the dark, cobweb-ridden corners of my mind, i seem to remember
>reading that cs lewis and jrr tolkien were associates or friends or something.
>
>is this true?  if so, can anyone cite specific examples of how the two men
>influenced each other's writings?  if not, can anyone forgive my halucinations?

Oh, dear.  This is one of those questions that positively invites all sorts of
snide answers.  I'll resist and outline the "facts":

CSL and JRRT were young Dons together at Oxford.  They fought together to make
philology a "full" part of the English curriculum (referred to at the time as 
the "lit vs lang" battle).

Somewhere in that period, JRRT was the immediate instrument of CSL's final
conversion to Christianity.  I suppose this could be called an influence on 
CSL's writing.

The two of them were members of an informal group that met weekly in CSL's
Oxford apartments, The "Inklings," as was a third major Christian fantasist,
Charles Williams.  In "Inklings" meetings, members would read aloud the stories
they had been working on.  Most of THE LORD OF THE RINGS was read (and 
criticised) in this way, for example.

Also:  at one point CSL and JRRT agreed, more or less, that because there was
not enough of "the kind of thing we like to read" being written, they would
each write a novel -- CSL's would deal with Space, JRRT's with Time.  CSL's
eventually became the trilogy OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET/PERELANDRA/THAT HIDEOUS
STRENGTH.  JRRT began a novel, THE LOST ROAD, which was never completed, but
which ultimately contributed a great deal to the concept of Numenor as found
in tLotR and several of the posthumous works (e.g., THE SILMARILLION).

Also, and I may be wrong about this, I believe that CLS had a great deal to do
with JRRT's decision to publish THE HOBBIT.

References:

THE INKLINGS and JRR TOLKIEN by Humphrey Carpenter
THE LETTERS OF JRR TOLKIEN
LETTERS OF CS LEWIS
SURPRISED BY JOY by CS Lewis
and several other biographies whose authors I'm forgetting.

		He's got a mask that's black and white
		  Mine's just black but that's all right
		In silence and cunning he plies his trade
		  I ply mine in silence and shade
		[. . .]
		In the heart of the city it's murder time
		  It ain't no crime to kill a mime
			-- "Killing a Mime" by Visual Purple

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Subject: Re: Fiction with scientists (WAS Re: Asimov and the Decay of SF
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 16:36:15 GMT

Joanne Eglash wrote:
>
>      Can anyone recommend fiction (both by authors in previous
>      decades and current writers) in which the subject of science
>      and scientists is handled intelligently?

The rec.arts.books FAQ contains a long list of (non-SF) fiction and
drama about scientists.

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)
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_
Date: 21 Jul 92 22:06:24 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <rauser.711422749@sfu.ca>, rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser) writes:
>     Anybody who hasn't read this book, I highly recommend it as a fascinating
> study of propaganda. Sinclair was a radical socialist and his novel about
> a Lithuanian immigrant is so moving and so downright depressing that you
> find yourself thinking socialism _must_ be the answer...until you realize
> how unrealistic the novel is, and how your emotions are being manipulated.
> It is _very_ interesting to see this effect on yourself...
> 
> Richard J. Rauser          Holli Would If She Could

There's a fine statement by Sinclair when it became apparent that the
greatest effect of _The Jungle_ would be government meat inspection
(which the largest meat packers desparately wanted, to the extent
of running full page ads lobbying for it), not socialism: "I aimed
for America's heart, and hit them in the stomach."

-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
"Well, maybe the Holocaust was right *for that culture*." -- a moral relativist
with whom I work.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fischer@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (W. T. Fischer)
Subject: Re: Great last sentences
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 20:12:45 GMT

The last line of Sue Grafton's _A is for Alibi_, before the epilog, is "I blew
him away."

W.T. Fischer
--
Internet: fischer@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people 
to do nothing.  

After E. Burke, 1795.
From: jmiller@mica.webo.dg.com (Janice Miller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mister Flibbertygib
Date: 28 Jul 92 17:42:01 GMT
Organization: NSDD, Data General Corp., Westboro, MA

Francis Muir writes:

    The tone and title sound awfully English, in which case the title 
    may properly be *Mr Flibbertigibbet*, a common enough word in English 
    English. The OED quotes use from the 16th Century (Latimer's 2nd Sermon 
    to Edward VI) to present times (by OED definition. Galsworthy's *To Let*). 

The OED doesn't cite Lerner and Loewe's classic of English literature,
"The Sound of Music"?

--
--
Janice Miller                           janice_miller@dg.com
Network Systems Development Division
Data General Corporation
Westboro MA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Ahasuerus
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 02:54:52 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

The Dowager Duchess of Denver's cat in Sayers'
_Busman's Honeymoon_ is named this, and I see that
Drury Lane in Ellery Queen's _Drury Lane's Last Case_
mentions Ahasuerus as well.

Who is Ahasuerus?  There is no entry in 
the Smaller Classical Dictionary, nor in the
back of the Webster's Unabridged, so 
I'm confident someone here will know.

Roger Squires
rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: The nature of enlightenment
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 16:51:15 GMT


Francis Muir writes:

        Mark Taranto writes:

                Clayton Cramer writes:

                        Unfortunately, I run into too many college students
                        like the gal who recently expressed amazement at
                        discovering the U.S. had a Civil War in the last
                        century.  (Yes, educated in California).

                This is unfortunate.  I'm as amazed by this as I am by the
                fact that there are still people who refer to women as
                "Gals."  It is unfortunate that education does not imply
                enlightenment.

        It is one, maybe the only one, of Cramer's charms that he is quaint.
        One example of his quaintness is that he does not feel compelled
        assiduously and slavishly to follow the Correct line in his choice
        of words and expressions. PC is not enlightenment, it is Gadarenism.

I quite agree with Francis about following the dictates of political
correctness.  However, I also see that in almost every movement, there
is something positive to be gleaned from it.  In the case of Fascism,
perhaps the only positive is that it is nice to have the trains run on
time.  Francis might find Clayton Cramer's use of "Gals" quaint,
but taken in the context of Clayton's other articles, I find it
similar to the use of "Boy" when referring to blacks.  I doubt that
Francis would find this quaint, and doubt that he would reject it even
though it does follow from the PC line of thinking.

So, let us be eclectic.  Rather than let PC crash into the sea, as Francis
suggests, let us take the good that is there, and discard the rest.

That IS enlightenment.

Mark

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Pairs of books
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 15:42:04 GMT

Someone -- I forget the context -- suggested a thread on book pairings.
An excellent and novel (haha) idea. Over last week-end I was opening up
several crates of books I have had in storage for some years (better
than Christmas..) and two of the first to appear were William Cobbett's
*Rural Rides* and George Orwell's *The Road to Wigan Pier*. Cobbett (in
George Woodcock's words) "see-saws between evocative and accurate 
descriptions of the beauties of the countryside, and indignant outbursts
at the mushroom growth of cities and the sufferings of the exploited poor."
Orwell, some 100 years later and mistrustful of the political cant of the
intelligentsia, sets out to discover for himself the conditions under which
urban, working-class England lived. He ends with this sentence,

	And then perhaps this misery of class-prejudice will fade
	away, and we of the sinking middle class -- the private
	schoolmaster, the half-starved freelance journalist, the
	colonel's spinster daughter with 75 Pounds a year, the
	jobless Cambridge graduate, the ship's officer without a
	ship, the clerks, the civil servants, the commercial
	travellers, and the thrice-bankrupt drapers in the country
	towns -- may sink without further struggles into the working
	class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will
	not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have
	nothing to lose but our aitches.

Contrast Cobbett's last words:

	For the present, however, farewell to the country, and now
	for the Wen and its villanous corruptions.

							Fido
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: art@wvus.org (Art Nicolaysen)
Subject: Re: Dickens vs. Twain
Organization: World Vision U.S.
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 04:06:37 GMT

In article <6742@charon.cwi.nl> frankt@cwi.nl (Frank Teusink) writes:
>>rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser) writes:
>
>>>   I've always seen a parallel between these two...both were late 19th
>>> century novelists, both saw themselves as social prophets of a sort,
>>> and both concerned themselves with their society's outcasts in their
>>> novels.
>>>   So who do you prefer?
>
>Dickens. Definitely.
>I've red "Great Expectations" and "David Copperfield", and liked them both.
>I'm likely to read other titles of him in the future (any recommendations?).
>I've tried to read "A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court", but got
>stuck at about one-third of the book. I'd probably like the movie if they'd

Shoot, you haven't ever read the Classic Comics  version???
For a third grader, it was very useful for getting the gist of the whole 
thing, plus there were pictures!!  Just so you don't think I wimped out, 
I *have* read the full book version, and found Twain's  caricatures of 
medieval peasants to be hilarious.

-----------------------------------------+----------------------------------
  "Always do right.  You will gratify    | Art Nicolaysen    art@wvus.org
   some people, and astonish the rest" 	 |
  		     Mark Twain		 | (somewhere in los angeles county)
-----------------------------------------+----------------------------------
    ____
   /@   \/~{    "Is that a fish?"   "No, Dagwood, that's
   \____/\{      bait for the .sig line eater!!"




--
From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Date: 24 Jul 92 06:20:39 GMT
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera

In article <1992Jul23.212023.1246@clarinet.com> brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton) writes:
>I think people put too fine a point on this.   Agnostics proudly stand up
>and say that there is no way one can know for sure, but the fact is
>that the vast bulk of them do not believe there is a god, and thus
>in my book they are athiests, (literally non-theist.)

There's a big difference between not believing there is a god and believing
that there is no god.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books