HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin)
Subject: BOOKS:  by Gore Vidal 
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 18:02:11 GMT


I've been inadvertently working my way backward through Gore Vidal's 
novels about U.S. political history.  I started with HOLLYWOOD when 
I was facing a 14-hour plane trip from Hong Kong to Seattle and had 
just finished the last page of the huge tome I'd brought with me 
(Diedre Bair's biography of Simone de Beauvoir).  I picked HOLLYWOOD 
from the airport bookstore because it was the thickest book on the 
shelves, and I had confidence in Vidal's ability to amuse.  HOLLYWOOD 
is not about the early days of motion pictures, although that's a sub- 
theme, but rather the last days of Woodrow Wilson's government and 
the machinations and corruption of D.C. politics. 

I find I have to be careful with Vidal, having myself a distressing 
tendency to lapse from what I consider a wholesome scepticism into 
cynicism.  Last week I picked up a copy of _1876_ for twenty-five 
cents at a garage sale, and am enjoying Vidal's entertaining gift 
for malice. 

_1876_ is a first-person narration by Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, 
who along with Martin van Buren is alleged to be the illegitimate 
son of Aaron Burr.  After almost 50 years of self-imposed exile in 
Europe, where he has supported himself by various literary enterprises 
and an ingratiating manner with royalty, he returns to New York on 
the verge of financial disaster accompanied by his daughter Emma, 
a young widow of considerable wit and spirit.  

Power, money, influence-peddling, eternal scheming, and betrayal -- 
of one another certainly, but primarily of the American populace, 
the rabble, for whom Vidal shares his characters' contempt.  In 
this interesting view of American history, politics has nothing to 
do with governing, everything to do with self-interest and personal 
ambition of the most venal sort. 

Vidal seems to share the belief of both Emerson and Disraeli that 
There is properly no history; only biography" and "Read no history: 
nothing but biography, for that is life without theory." 

This book is not recommended for those of you who already hold a dim 
view of representative government as practiced in the U.S.A.  (Practice, 
practice!  When are we going to get it right?) 


--Barbara
From: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Morally good hypertext
Date: 23 Dec 1992 03:19:18 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc12.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, robj@netcom.com (Rob Jellinghaus) says:
[several things to Minsky, Morris, and Campin about whether
hyptertext will further the brave new world and then adds:

>I recommend the following book:
>
>_Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and
>Technology_, George P. Landow, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992,
>ISBN 0-8018-4280-0 (paperback 0-8018-4281-6).
>
>Landow is a professor of English at Brown, and has taught an
>undergraduate writing course as well as several graduate seminars
>using a hypertext system.  He has extensive experience actually
>working with such systems in an educational milieu, and discusses the
>transformations wrought by hypertext on our traditional notions of
>"the text", authorship, collaboration, publication, and criticism.
[small bit deleted}
>
>I found the book to be exceptionally clear and far-reaching in its
>portrayal of the uses of these new literary tools.  I whole-
>heartedly commend this book to anyone who is concerned with the
>impact of new media on intellectual discourse.  Landow's viewpoint
>is hopeful, or at least stimulating.  I would be very interested to
>hear others' opinions on the book's thesis.
>

I also would be interested to hear your opinions, partly because I
have some of my own and partly because I am in desultory fashion
collaborating with a number of other folk interested in thinking
about all those traditional notions cited above.  

[In fact--semi-commercial message: next week at the Modern
Language Assn convention in NYC the aforesaid group will be
holding forth at various points.  Notably Jay David Bolter
on hypertext and Pamela Samuelson on netmedia and intellectual
property law, with commentary by yours truly.]

While I find hypermedia and related stuff as fascinating to
play with as Landow, I'm skeptical of his claims and especially
of his optimism.  The claim of his book is that hypertext materially
(electronically?) instantiates a lot of post-structuralist ideas
about writing, language, and symbolic exchange.  In a very loose
way, comparable to the pop science analogies of quantum physics
and Eastern lore, the claim is probably true but may be trivial.
What Landow does not take very seriously are questions of the production
and circulation and "consumption" of linked information.  These
are precisely the questions being debated on this thread, under
the rubric of whether it would have made any difference if
we could all have hyperactively checked Reagan's facts and
beliefs.  

But for all that I'm supposed to be meditating upon this
professionally my own thoughts remain confused and stillborn,
so (to repeat) I'd be very interested in what you all think.

Gary Stonum
English Department
Case Western Reserve University
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Non-rabelaisian farts
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 19:58:34 GMT

Stunned at the reaction to what I thought was a noncontroversial use of
term "Rabelaisian," I stumbled to a nearby dictionary and found the
following entry:

Rab-el-lai-si-an. adj. Pertaining to or characteristic of Rabelais;
broadly or lustily humorous.

I feel confident that one can call Chaucer's frequently broad and lusty
humor "Rabelaisian" without having attributed to one the opinion
a) that Chaucer and Rabelais are profoundly similar writers, or
b) that "The Miller's Tale" is about a fart.

Careful readers will have noted that I have never argued (a) or (b).
It's true that I also did not enumerate the many differences between
Chaucer and Rabelais, but such a critical essay fell outside the scope of
my modest intentions.

Even so, I recognize that there can be something jarring in a description
of one author in terms of another who lived and wrote centuries later.
But given the broader meaning of "Rabelaisian," I had thought the
jar would be a minor one.


--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
From: thsskem@iitmax.iit.edu (Kevin Edward Marth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: ISBN information wanted
Date: 3 Jan 93 22:05:11 GMT
Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology

I am attempting the somewhat brain-dead task of entering all the books
I own into a database (i.e. title,author,type,isbn,price,publisher,etc)

In an attempt to salvage my wrists, I'd like to find a database that
maps a book's ISBN number to the above information...

I could then simply enter ISBN numbers and fill in the rest of the info
from this ISBN database....

Does anyone know if anything like this exists, and if so where I might
get hold of it?

Please send all e-mail replies to bukovins@rtsg.mot.com
(or post replies here ;-)

Thanks

--dave

PS. Do not reply to this account...
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: don@helix.nih.gov (donald seto)
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Organization: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 19:15:05 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.182407.22541@u.washington.edu> twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin) writes:
>In article <1992Dec23.180850.26863@cbnewsd.cb.att.com> lew@cbnewsd.cb.att.com 
>(lewis.h.mammel..jr) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Dec20.091759.27869@netcom.com>, tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes:
>>> 	A *joking* attitude, it's called, and is easily recognized as such
>>> by anyone with either a clue or a sense of humor.
>
>>The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest, but the frogs die in earnest.
>
>
>Someone, somewhere, recently remarked that the biggest growth industry 
>in this country is Taking Offense where None is Intended.  

and who says boys throw stones in jest; what does it have to
do with humor, warped or otherwise...
depending on where you live/from, people also shoot each other in jest,
and die in earnest...loosen up!!!

i mean, it's like those two maggots that were fighting in dead earnest...
--
don@helix.nih.gov
301-402-0580   Bldg10/Rm8D14    NIDDK/NIH       Bethesda, MD  20892
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,misc.books.technical,alt.internet.services,comp.org.eff.talk
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: The Online BookStore Announcement: The Internet Companion
Organization: The World
	<1992Dec18.220916.21674@netcom.com> <1h7n3rINNk21@cae.cad.gatech.edu>
	<1h88sdINN9fg@nym.ossi.com>
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 03:36:22 GMT


>Huh, I'm only a dumb foreigner, so maybe the subtleties of the American
>political system are beyond me ... but isn't Danny still VP for a few
>more days ... Al Gore won't be VP until he gets sworn in January '93.
>(Not to mention that in many states there is no vote for VP, so Al didn't
>actually "win the election" ... Bill did the winning thing, Al just comes
>with the package).

There are certain constraints involved in book production which might
lead someone to not want to change the text every few days.

Just a thought.


-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | bzs@world.std.com          | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William R. Smith)
Subject: Re: Good Westerns
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 21:53:56 GMT

Sandra Loosemore writes:
	
	"Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey is probably *the* classic
	western novel.  It's a rather serious book with strong philosophical
	overtones (and the sequel, "Rainbow Canyon", is even more so).  



After hearing "Riders ..." recommended for years, I tried to read it
a couple of months back.  I gave up after about 15 page.  In the first
page or two Grey used the word "purple" eight or nine times while
describing a sunset.  I think it was a sunset, I was so distracted
by all that purple I can't remember.

The book was published in the early 1900's and maybe the style got
in my way.  



William Sburgfort Smith
Intel, SSD

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Atlas reviews/Derek Walcott
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 15:54:11 GMT

Two book related articles of possible interest:

The Dec. 20th _New York Times Book Review_ has reviews of five new
atlases by John Noble Willeford. He has a lot to say about all five
but the essence of it might be this:

	"Some of the most visually pleasing maps are in the Hammond
and Times volumes. But the Oxford and National Geographic atlases are
more satisfying with their greater variety of maps and the inclusion
of so much non-cartographic information." (p.21)

And this week's _New Republic_ (Dec. 28th) has Derek Walcott's Nobel
lecture

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
From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Date: 3 Jan 93 20:08:03 GMT
Organization: UT Art History
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1



In article <1993Jan2.225827.2318@netcom.com> Tom Maddox,
tmaddox@netcom.com writes:
>In article <1huq85INNq5j@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu
(Francis 
>Muir) writes:
>>Tom Maddox writes:
>
>>	disingenumous
>
>[Fido replies]: 
>>Nevertheless, Tom does demonstrate a humungous ingenuity for neologs.
>
>	Not a "neolog" (which I believe is itself a neologism, for 
>neologism, if you see what I mean) but a double typo--that I, for one,
>rather like; it seems to be a portmanteau word of some sort, but I'm
>not sure what's packed into that suitcase.  Any conjectures?

Humongous disingenuousness (she says, typing *very* carefully). You will
note that I do not agree with Francis' spelling of what was itself a
neologism some twenty-five years ago.
--

"They like sitting around reading all the books there are. And then they 
love arguing about them. Some of those arguments go on for millenium 
after millenium. It just seems to keep them young, for some reason, 
arguing about books." -- Julian Barnes          

Joann Zimmerman (jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu)
From: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Planiverse
Date: 28 Dec 1992 03:22:58 GMT
Organization: The Sinister Icy Black Hand of Death Club
Reply-To: goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb)
NNTP-Posting-Host: tornado.berkeley.edu
Originator: goldfarb@tornado.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Dec23.054935.10892@cbnewsd.cb.att.com> lew@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (lewis.h.mammel..jr) writes:
)Another thing: our 2-d hero is named YNDRD, pronounced
)Yendred, and early on it is suggested in the narrative that
)the name might be produced from "a systematic bit error" on
)the ascii of some other five-letter word. 
)An in-joke, perhaps ?

	Reverse YNDWD and you get "Dewdney".

)Lew Mammel, Jr.

-- 
   David Goldfarb          | 
goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu  |      "Hey, mister! Your ninja's dragging!" 
goldfarb@UCBOCF.BITNET     | 
goldfarb@soda.berkeley.edu |
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,misc.books.technical,alt.internet.services,comp.org.eff.talk
From: jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele)
Subject: Re: The Online BookStore Announcement: The Internet Companion
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 18:24:26 GMT

betsys@cs.umb.edu (Elizabeth Schwartz) writes:

>   "What's the year?"
>   "lessee-- 1993"
>   <pause>
>   "What do you people know that we don't?"

Book publishers are allowed to move the copyright date up or back within
six months of the end or beginning of a year.  So a book published in
July could have a publication date of 1993 while a book published in
June could have a date of 1991.

The only reason I can think of for moving a date back would be for
things like directories that are issued on an annual basis.  The
publisher might want to have a 1991 copyright on a 1991 book because
they want you to buy the 1992 edition when it comes out ...

--
jamesd@techbook.COM                   "2530 newsgroups & nothing on ..."  
PDaXs gives free access to news & mail. (503) 220-0636 - 1200/2400, N81  
Full internet (ftp, telnet, irc) access available. Voice: (503) 223-4245
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Subject: Re: Stark Naked
Keywords: I've got Bright's Disease and he's got mine!
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 16:24:58 GMT
Organization: Austerlitz, Gershovitz, and Carmichael

Miriam Nadel writes:
>Francis Muir writes:
>>Click & Clack, the Tappet Bros., of Car Talk have a list of these names
>>which grows increasingly excruciating as the weeks go by. Their book,
>>*CAR TALK*, may include a list.
>
>It doesn't - the book is much more to the point than the show.  
>
>But Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle used to be full of
>real-life examples and may well still be.  I believe he referred to them
>as "namephreaks."
>

I love both Car Talk and the list of names. I read _The Vale of Laughter_
(Peter DeVries) at a too impressionable age. Finding a real life
R.U. Upjohn has been a quest for me like finding the last surviving
ivorybill woodpecker.
-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> One never knows, do one?
From: hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu (Mary Loveless)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: "Ex" Catholics (was Re: 92 in rabreview)
Date: 29 Dec 1992 18:24:01 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

In article <1hpt8dINNiv5@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu
(Francis Muir) writes:
>
>BTW, there are no ex-Catholics.
>Its just that one gives up practising. Popery is more like bicycle-riding
>than piano-playing. Once learnt, never forgotten, and practise may make
>perfect, but perfection is best left to the perfectionists.
>
>							RABworm

When I left my militantly Protestant little farming community and went to
the big city and bright lights of West Lafayette, Indiana and Purdue, I
landed in a nest of folks who were religiously 'ex' Catholic.  My
boyfriend, Larry, pursued sin with the same dedication he had pursued
purity during his days as an acolyte.  He still crossed himself every time
he passed an RC church, however, and once, driving his mother's car, with
a young woman (i.e. me) under his arm, he lasciviously crossed the
unmentionables.  His mother's magnetic (glow-in-the-dark?) Praying Hands
immediately fell off the dashboard.  Larry was *seriously* perturbed, and
never again, at least with me, took such a liberty...in the presence of
religious artifacts, that is.

Which brings me to the literary question.  I have read some light fiction
about the coming of age of those raised in the RC church, how they deal
with the conflicts set up by their upbringing.  Robertson Davies 'spoke to
my condition' in _A Mixture of Frailties_ in his portrayal of a young
woman's reconciliation of her rigid protestant values with her later life
as a performing artist, with decadent Bohemians stacked like cordwood all
around her.  I would enjoy reading more books of that sort, for all
backgrounds, not just RC or Protestant.  Any recommendations?  (I have
already read _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_.)  Why don't you
E-Mail me, and I'll compile a list for posting, if it seems exciting enough.

 Mary Loveless  hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of my opinions are self-righteously my own and **certainly** have
nothing to do with the University of Washington.

"Too much of a good thing can be *wonderful*."  Mae West

"I wonder how I'd look in *Madonna's* underwear."  Zippy the Pinhead
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ah@dunaad.co.uk (Alan Hunter)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re:  Help with a title
Date: 21 Dec 92 07:26:00 GMT
Organization: Johnson Hunter Limited

In article <lynx.03ne@surrey.amigans.gen.nz> lynx@surrey.amigans.gen.nz
(Lynsey Gedye) writes: 

ah>It was revealed by Peter Cook last night on Britain's premier news
ah>analysis programme (Have I got news for you- BBC2 2200) that the so
ah>called separation is in fact a tax dodge. (You will recall that the
ah>royals will start paying tax next year).  

lg> Cool, Alan, it all seems reasonable.  What does concern me is how
lg> come on the news on the teeve here each broadcast ends with a credit to
lg> a certain *Malcolm MacLaren* - the man who got "God Save the Queen" to
lg> number one during the silver anniversary. 

That merely confirms NZ's standing as the last true hope of the british
empire. It seems pretty clear to me that only after the entire House of
Windsor has left these once great shores and hung itself upside down (or
however it is that you guys stay attached) somewhere in your beautiful
land, will the empire rise again to greatness. The prescence of an advance
party, including a great showman like Malcolm MacLaren, shows that they're
thinking the same way. 

lg> Do you think that the extra publicity could help sell the royals books

Well I hear that the markets pretty saturated in North America,
Australasia and Europe.  There's been some sales resistance among the
boers in South Africa, but there doesn't seem much to be done about that. 
However the Queen has taken positive action re the disappointing sales in
the balkans and ordered another 20 minute cease fire in order to get more
stocks into the city centre book shops. The big story on royal book sales
is, of course, the immense assistance forthcoming from GB (no coincidence
there), in the last days of his reign; sending all those US boys out to
restock the country book shops in Somalia. We're hoping that they'll be
moving on to Ethiopia around the beginning of January (I believe that the
Orthodox Church runs 14 days behind Rome). 

lg> and is there a chance of reclaiming my family estate in Cornwall? 

Try writing Charlie for a house swap deal.

>  And is BBC2 2200 something like Transylvania 6-5000?

No its a tv channel and a time. Fortunately IBM have recently announced
SOM to help us deal with these weird compound objects.

Rgds
Alan

ObBook. Wouldn't it be nice if someone would write a "Decline and Fall of
the British Empire" with a little bit of grandeur, decadence and whatnot.
The material just doesn't seem to be there though. Plenty of sleaze but
not much real decadence.

-- 
Alan Hunter
Johnson Hunter Ltd
Isle of Islay, Scotland
A.Hunter@dunaad.co.uk          fax: +44-496-2336         voice: +44-496-2286
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Schooling, Rabbis, and Asparagus -- a temporally cohesive post
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 02:03:11 GMT

The problems with the school system are a perhaps-inevitable outgrowth
of a more general collapse of values:  What else can you expect in a 
society which trains teenagers to make hamburgers with mayonnaise unless
you *insist* on mustard?  Perhaps if we concentrate on getting the 
mustard back into hamburgers, the problem of getting the schooling back
into school will take care of itself.

I went out and got Kemelman's "The Day the Rabbi Resigned".  The title
has a note of finality to it, which is just as well.  There have been
good Rabbi Small mysteries and there have been indifferent ones, but this
one is actively bad.  I think Kemelman may be sick of Rabbi Small.  Certainly
in this book he was just going through the motions:  A little pinch of
Jewish philosophy, a dash of friction between the Rabbi and the congregation,
a murder which is neither interesting nor challenging... Is resignation
the rabbinical equivalent of going over the Reichenbach falls?

I finally got to Suetonius, which had been sitting on my shelf for too
long (the book, not...), and I'm sorry I didn't read it earlier.  I
noticed, in passing, that Augustus used the expression "quicker than you
can cook asparagus", which implies that asparagus doesn't take long to
cook.  Well, it takes *me* a long time to cook asparagus, so I deduce that
either asparagus has mutated significantly in the past couple of millenia,
or Augustus liked his asparagus almost raw, or the Ancients had a since-
forgotten super-microwave technology, or the boiling point of water was
significantly higher in those days -- perhaps due to a change in the
values of Universal Constants over time.  Now there's glory for you!

And a happy new year to you.

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

Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books