HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Stormin' Norman (was: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia)
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 13:33:47 GMT

In article <29SEP92.21430508@vax.clarku.edu> hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu writes:

>No, but it's great intellectual repartee, isn't it?

This, of course, is the measure of a writer.

>Oh, and then there's
>the story George Plimpton tells about how Stormin' would have skull-bashing
>contests with guys at parties...  My advice to you is: read his writing
>and enjoy it, but don't invite him to your house (or marry him, for that
>matter).

Barbara is doubtless grateful that, with this advice, you have saved her
from going over the brink.



--Mike



-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact 
mnemonic@eff.org| of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, 
(617) 864-0665  | both are transformed."
EFF, Cambridge  |                           --Carl Jung
From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Mervyn Peake's _Titus Alone_
Date: 4 Oct 92 22:57:39 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Somebody mentioned Mervyn Peake recently.  Does anybody else think that
the third part of the Titus Groan series was absolute rubbish?  I loved
_Titus Groan_ and _Gormenghast_, I thought they were as good or better
than Tolkien, but I couldn't stand the way Peake suddendly switched from
medieval fantasy to sci-fi for the third installment.  I also found
_Titus Alone_ to be poorly written.  I think he wrote it a lot later,
in the late '60s.  To be fair, there were some parts of _Titus Alone_
that I liked.  I liked the poor fellow in the dungeons who dragged
dozens of copies of his own book with him, and I sort of liked the new,
lankey, anvil-chinned sidekick Titus got.  But the whole thing began
to fall apart for me when the romantic interest with the mad scientist
father turned up.  At that point I closed the book.

My favourite line from Peake?

"Roll me into the Golden Void.", pronounced by the old scholar in the
wheelchair.

-- 
Marko Amnell
amnell@klaava.helsinki.fi
Graduate Student in Philosophy
From: igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Date: 1 Oct 92 08:28:49 GMT
Organization: Fulcrum Communications

In article <1992Sep30.114740.11110@ms.uky.edu> fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis) writes:
> Nick Haines writes:
> >
> >How do these people exist? By the time I was thirteen I'd read about a
> >thousand novels. They were my raison d'etre. I spent more time reading
> >than I did asleep. Maybe I was a little extreme, but not to have read
> >a single novel by that age is a complete tragedy.
> >
> In fact, one of Shakespeare's missing plays...a tragedy...bemoans the
> fact that by 13 he hadn't read a single novel. 

Why are we linking novels and plays?  Theatre was the dominant literary
mode of the 17th Century, along with extended poetry and, a little
later, the early essayists.  The Novel is a 19th Century mode.

ian
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: literature students
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 21:44:44 GMT

MICHAEL WISE writes lyrically:

	This travel thing is not such a bad idea.  Afoot and light-hearted, 
	I set out on the open road...[quoting willie worldsworst]

Oh I dunno. 12 years in a bloody tent in two dozen countries, and look what
a boring old fart I've become...

							Fido
>
>
>
>


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: Books in the time of school
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 13:03:14 GMT

Katherine Catmull poses a question:
>As for books: I have an old habit of asking people "What's the book
>that got you through high school?"--you know, the book that
>kept you going, made you strong; that you re-read when in need of bucking up,
>perhaps even returned to in college like a teddy bear once in a
>while, maybe even occasionally now . . .

No question in my mind which book that was for me:

	Loren Eiseley's _The_Immense_Journey_

Eiseley was the movie soundtrack of my late high school, early
undergrad years: he provided the stirring, dramatic music for
what might, otherwise, have been an unassuming tale of education
in the natural sciences.

						--Fiona
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jciliber@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Jon Ciliberto)
Subject: Re: Edward R. Hamilton
Organization: University of Hawaii
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 10:53:58 GMT

bhanafee@deimos.ads.com (Brian Hanafee) writes:

  OK, I'm convinced.  Would someone *please* post an address or phone
number for Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller.

i posted this a few days ago, but since i started this thread and have perhaps
inadvertanly driven some people to seek out this company....

	Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller
	Falls Village, CT 06031-5000

they don't seem interested in phones, as they don't take credit cards. just
write and ask for a catalogue.


--
Don't be a slyboots           |					  Jon Ciliberto
Cunning, shrewd, a rogue      |			jciliber@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.edu
Don't be a shyboots,          |________________________________________________
Nobody likes a slyboots.   - "Things Not to Be", Steve Martin
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: the Novel of Ideas-- is it a good Idea?
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 16:07:15 GMT

In article <1992Oct3.172834.19737@yang.earlham.edu> jessec@yang.earlham.edu writes:

>   I'd like to hear what people think about the Novel of Ideas.  When 
>writers like Milan Kundera and Thomas Pynchon weave philosophical and 
>scientific concepts into the backgrounds of their books, do they make the 
>characters merely mouthpieces or puppets?

Well, when Kundera and Pynchon do it, the results are somewhat different
than when lesser talents do it. I wouldn't call label their novels by the
dreary term "novels of ideas," though.

>Does this cheapen them, 
>somehow-- make the novel less humanistic?

I don't think so. To some extent, these novelists play the same role that
the Metaphysical Poets played--they are not afflicted by what Eliot
called "the dissociation of sensibility."


--Mike


 


-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"Liberty resides in the rights of that person
mnemonic@eff.org| whose views you find most odious."
(617) 864-0665  | 
EFF, Cambridge  |                           --John Stuart Mill
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Date: 6 Oct 92 15:46:19 GMT
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway


cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
 
> When the professor returned the first papers done, he made a point
> of reminding everyone, "We don't turn in papers all upper case."
> There were three papers turned in that way in a class of about
> 50 students.
 
Clayton consistently tells us stories about how other students look
like fools.  I wondered if this is because there were SO MANY foolish
students at Sonoma State, or if it is because Clayton needs to feel
better about himself by consistently putting others down.
 
Now we get the truth.  94% of the students aren't having any problems
doing things right.  Maybe Sonoma State isn't so bad, after all.
 
Clayton strikes me as the kind of person who, when asked if the
proverbial glass is half full or half empty will reply "Look at
all the flouride."
 
Mark
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Fido O'Toole?
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 21:59:44 GMT

 
francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
 
        one stone
        two houses
        three ruins
        four grave-diggers
        one garden
        some flowers
 
        one racoon
 
        a dozen oysters a lemon a loaf of bread
        a ray of sunlight
        one groundswell
        six musicians
        on3e door with doormat
        one Mister decorated with the Legion of Honour
 
        one more racoon
 
        one sculptor who sculpts napoleons
        one yellow flower called care
        two lovers on a big bed
        one receiver of contributions one chair three turkeys
        one cleric one boil
        one wasp
        one floating kidney
        one racing stable
        one unworthy son two Dominican brothers three grasshoppers
                one collapsible chair
        two whores one amorous uncle
        one mater dolorosa three sugar daddies two goats belonging
                to Mister Seguin
        one Louis the Fifteenth heel
         one Louis the Sixteenth armchair
        one henry the Second sideboard two Henry the Third sideboards
                three Henry the Fourth sideboards
        one odd drawer....
 
                                there is much more
 
 
Has Fido (AKA fideau) become an O'Toole?  Are these the contents of his
pockets?  What is in the other three pockets.

Is this a harbinger of the return of Josef O'Toole (AKA Joe Green --
the REAL heir to Nietzsche).

Mark
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Books in the time of Love
Date: 1 Oct 92 07:21:45 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

Mark Taranto writes:
> 
>Is there no one who will tell me about the time that Love fled and hid
>among the stars?

Okay, this finally knocked a few memories loose.  In fact two.
It was when I stopped wracking my brains for NOVELS that have
love-besotted connections that things opened up.

1)  Yeats' corpus.  I once initiated a relationship with a girl with 
yellow hair just before she moved to England from the states.  We had
often talked about Yeats, and she in fact spent the last week
before leaving finishing up that final paper for the honors seminar on
Yeats.  Shortly after she left, I read through Yeats' poems once again,
and was very easily taken with a comparison with Maude Gonne and
my inamorata, although the correspondence was very, very tenuous.

The relationship broke down relatively quickly.

Since then, I think once more that Yeats was a fool who knew how to
channel it into wonderful poetry.

2)  MEASURE FOR MEASURE.  After going steadily for over a year, an SO
and I finally went all the way, to put it crudely, when I visited one 
weekend.  We were both delerious.

I had long wanted her to read MEASURE FOR MEASURE, one of the plays 
that a) her Shakespeare class had missed and b) I think is underrated.
We read it aloud together that weekend.  We of course giggled at all
the double entendres.  I can remember sitting on the floor in the
corner of the student-quality apartment, naked together under a
blanket, the heavy Riverside Shakespeare propped on our knees.
Curiously, we never seemed to read more than a couple scenes at a time.

I have reread MfM since then, and found my interpretation so certain
scenes to be highly colored now.

	Larry "Privacy on the Net" Hammer
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu          \  "People ought to fight for their law as
The insane don't need disclaimers \  for a wall."  -- Heraclitus, #100
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jhham@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Ji H. Ham)
Subject: MURDER MYSTERY IN HOUSTON/GALVESTON TEXAS NEEDED!!
Originator: jhham@rodan.acs.syr.edu
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 14:21:03 EDT

Hello Folks,

	As usual, I come to the world of vast knowledge I know some of
you have to get me out of a jam. I need to find a murder mystery book written
about Houston and/or Galveston Texas area. I would greatly appreciate if 
some of you could e-mail me the name and author of the book/story etc...
			
							Thanks in advance,
								TJH.  
	
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: d40374w@kaira.hut.fi (Tero Valkonen)
Subject: A Faulkner quote - help
Organization: The rational midnight star
Distribution: rec
Date: 6 Oct 92 22:58:35


I recently read a rather good Faulkner quote in Finnish and I'd like to
know the original. The direct translation of the Finnish version is 
something along the lines of "scratching the face of oblivion", but I
wouldn't be surprised if the original were different. Help, anyone?

Email preferred. 
--
Tero Valkonen
d40374w@kaira.hut.fi
From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Not exaclty a repentance....
Date: 6 Oct 92 22:33:31 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens


	I just thought I'd post thhis here for the amusement of those
who remember my rantings during the "Canon" thread. I am currently
taking yet another class toward my English degree, and this time its
"18th Century Prose and Poetry" (to fulfill the requirement that I
take at least three classes on pre-1800 English lit).  We're reading
Pope, Dryden, Swift, Defoe and a coupla others whose names escape me
right now.  
	Anyway, here's the rub : I'm actually enjoying the class. I
don't know whether it has more to do with the material or the
professor. Anyway, I went in expecting to hate it, but have gotten to
enjoy it in a few short weeks.



-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: BL.JYC@forsythe.stanford.edu (Jon Corelis)
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 15:54:10 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.043734.27722@eff.org>,
mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>
>Jon, your dates are wrong. Paglia was already in the limelight when the
>various versions of her ARION article were published. This can be
>confirmed by a Nexis check of references to Paglia prior to the 1991
>publication of her article in ARION. (She became famous prior to the
>publication of the ARION piece because of her book, SEXUAL PERSONAE.)
>

   My statement was that the NTYBR article and subsequent reprints made
her "a celebrity" -- that is, well known to the world at large outside
the academic community.  I suppose we can argue about the definition of
celebrity, but at least I think most people would agree that her public
recognition took a major leap after the article in question.

   At any rate, this topic is beginning to do what Paglia has long since
accomplished:  bore me stiff.  I've had my say on this subject and don't
propose to contribute any further to the fuss over this person.
From: bl959@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Philip G. Terrie)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Wodehouse  Question
Date: 30 Sep 1992 23:22:25 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


I'm not sure the following is a complete list, but it's at least
a start:
The Inimitable Jeeves, 1923
Very Good, Jeeves, 1930
Right Ho, Jeeves, 1934
These are all reprinted in my Life with Jeeves, a wonderful Penguin 
anthology; I infer from the copy on the back that this is not thee
complete Jeeves. It is funny as hell, though.
From: jim@rand.org (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: New Stories by Joyce
Date: 5 Oct 92 20:27:39 GMT
Organization: Banzai Institute

The LA Times version included somebody's astonishing hyperbolic effusion
to the effect that this is the most important literary discovery of the
20th century.  I wonder how far down this person's list the Dead Sea
Scrolls would be.  On *my* list even the Voynich Manuscript would come
before James Joyce, and Hemingway's missing suitcase (if it turned up)
would still be behind the Qumran stuff.

Pfui!

-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	jim@rand.org
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: yarnot@csusac.csus.edu (Jan Yarnot)
Subject: Re: WWII Novels?
Organization: Moi?
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 02:52:38 GMT

In article <2AC8D478.5726@news.service.uci.edu> eaeg181@orion.oac.uci.edu (John Robinson Dooley) writes:
>
>Of course, Wouk also wrote "The Caine Mutiny", a WWII novel published 
>in the early '50's too.
>
If ever there was an author my mother (a Navy brat born, bred, married, and
buried) would have enjoyed eviscerating and inventing whole new tortures for,
it was Wouk, for this book.  "There NEVER was a mutiny on an American ship!"
and don't you forget it.  I haven't read it.  I did enjoy the WAR books...
putting various of my relatives into the character-slots.  My grandfather bore
some resemblance to Pug, and the young eager USN officer could have been my
dad.  You get the picture.

Do you ever get into these books and realize how old the people would be now?
Peter Wimsey is contemporary to my grandfather, and would be a doddering 102
now.  *sigh*
>May I also suggest --- "Catch 22"  -  Joseph Heller.
>
>
>
>


-- 
---Jan Yarnot, net.grandma.-- | A lifetime of smirking behind your hand
                              | is a lot better than a few seconds of
                              | triumph.
CSUS depends on my every word.              Kinsella, _Box Socials_
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: hasch@chem.queensu.ca (Hartmut Schmider)
Subject: Re: Kafka's "Metamorphasis"
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Summary: Who's laughing ?
Keywords: Kafka, Die Verwandlung, Laugh Affairs
Organization: Dept. of Chemistry, Queen's University
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 13:50:04 GMT

In article <1allkgINN95e@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col) writes:
>
>Kafka and his friends are reported to have laughed quite heartily when
>he  read his stories out loud to them.  They clearly found them amusing.

Could you substantiate that a bit? Perhaps by telling us who reports
this. There are humorous aspects in Kafka's books, no doubt, but I can't
see him and his friends laughing themselves silly about the jokes in
`Die Verwandlung'. But what do I know?

Hartmut Schmider

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Exit Shakespeare....
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 19:34:53 GMT

Jeff Davis writes:

	As a partial reprieve from the Enforced Shakespeare gas...who
	would be our Shakespeare, say, had the little balding bugger
	been skewered poaching deer? I mean...someone would be. Chaucer?
	"par-fit kan-nicked"? I dunno. Milton? Too dour. Too....pedagogical.
	Ben Jonson? 2nd tier. Donne? Warmer...maybe...Wordsworth...("Damn...
	"The Excursion"!!!)...no...("whew!")....someone more beautiful....
	could it be...John Keats? Yes...that's the ticket. 

John Barlett had it right. The only person he personally quoted in his 
*Familiar Quotations* was Chaucer:

	Go, litel bok...

There is no other author in English English whose message is so populist
and unphilosophical -- the two qualities that are essential for wide 
acceptance in the British Isles. There is the slight matter of language,
but that barrier seems to be more frightening in America (particularly
Canada, apparently) than in the UK. *Romeo & Juliet* are well replaced
by *Troilus & Criseyde*, which is a better tale, in any case:

	If no love is, O God, what fele I so?
	And if love is, what thing and which is he?
	If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?

and the Prologue to the *Canterbury Tales* is a wonderful introduction
to the tongue and manners of our times in so far as they do not change.

But I would not choose Chaucer alone, but pair him with the poet, Robert
Burns. Every child at school in England should learn at least one other
dialect beside his own.

							Fido
From: gwr@hedonist-1.lanl.gov (Graham W. Redgrave)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Pedantry, and Ignorance Flaunted (Was:  Re: lit quiz)
Date: 2 Oct 92 19:35:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: newshost.1992Oct2.193501.804
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory

In article <9210012013.AA19638@cfdev1.shearson.com>, mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
|> 
|> rbeville@tekig5.pen.tek.com (Robert E Beville) writes:
|> 
|> >       Why is the name of the literary? plot? style, in western
|> >       literature of the Holmes-Watson type of story.  
|> >       [...]
|>  
|> >       What was the first piece of western lit to introduce this
|> >       form?  What were the names of the duo?
|>  
|> It was certainly around in Ancient Greece -- Plato gave a number of
|> sidekicks to his Socrates character.  Thaetetus is my favorite.

Mine too, though I think it's Theaetetus (yeah, I know, it's Greek, so
who cares how it's transliterated ;-).  What was it II^atwv compared to 
pouring oil.  Did he say that T's mind was as fluid as pouring oil...
I loved that image; I'll look it up when I get home, but if someone knows
what the comparison really is, I'd love to hear.  Damn, now I'm going --
what's the dialogue where the exchange this happens:

  Socrates:  "Is that a scroll under a toga, or are you just happy to 
              see me?"

Seriously -- S is walking _outside_the_city_ (where all good corrupters-
of-youth should be) and, what, someone catches up with him, he meets someone
walking toward the city (I think that's it), I don't know.  I think it's in one 
of those lesser-known dialogues, y'know, like the Republic, or something.
Hell, for all I know, it's the Theaetetus (that is _not_ easy to type!).

Yers in stirring the muddy waters,

Graham

|>  
|> Mark
|>  

-- 
Graham Redgrave    |    --  I don't speak for the government, 
gwr@life.lanl.gov  |        but I wish the government would speak for me ...  --
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:38:03 GMT

Barbara Hlavin writes:

	Fine.  Camille Paglia is a pompous, dick-waving fathead.  

	*Norman Mailer* is an intellectual vampire bitch.  (But at 
	least he can think his way out of a paper bag, and jesus 
	can he write.) 

didn't you mean ...and mother of god can he write?

							fido
From: vks0@bunny.gte.com (Vijay Samalam)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: The Talk Of The Town
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:33:19 GMT
Distribution: world,local
Organization: GTEL


A good friend of ours whom we have known 
for a long time writes to us more in 
sorrow than in anger :

"The latest issue of The New Yorker blew into
our house the other day, all tarted up, fat and
frowzy, reeking of cheap perfume. As my wife
and I thumbed through it with our noses held we
were suddenly struck by a question that we had
never thougt of before: What exactly do Editors
do ?  In our innocence we had always assumed that
they worked closely with writers on the *contents*
of the magazine. Obviously not Tina Brown ! She 
seems to have spent a considerable portion of her
negligible talents making inconseqential changes
to unimportant formats. There is the detailed
sub-headings to all the articles in the Table of 
Contents. Does she realize that readers of the 
New Yorker actually *read* many of the articles and
that we don't need any editorial assistance in making
up our minds about which article to read ? Does she 
take us for the Vanity Fair crowd who skim through
the magazine while on the excercize bike ? (Program
time set to 12 mins, Level set to 6 with a Ralph Lauren
towel  casually draped around the neck with the body
encased in day-glo spandex). The most alarming indication
of the future direction of the magazine is the ruthless elimination
of those charming lead ins in the Talk of the Town section. Those 
lead ins, we have always felt, struck just the right note; not too
chatty as to be presumptuos but not too cold and imperious either,
in fact they brought back in a small way the tradition of the 
friendly victorian author where the author drew the reader
aside as it were and imparted privileged information meant 
solely for the reader alone. These signs of civility, where
the author does not condescend and neither does she beat 
the reader over the head with a two by four, we have always 
treasured.  I am afraid the future does not look good. "

Regards,
-Vijay

************************************
Vijay K. Samalam        fiat experimentum in    
GTE Laboratories          corpore vili                    
Waltham , MA 02254
e-mail vks0@gte.com INTERNET
************************************
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books