HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 10 Sep 92 16:33:54 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner


For opening sentences, there is always STEEL BEACH, John Varley's
latest book:

	"In ten years, the penis will be obsolete," he said.

or something like that.

	The every-helpful Mr. E-----
--

                                \  "The work is rather too light, and bright,
LNH@physics.arizona.edu          \  and sparkling; it wants ... a long chapter
The insane don't need disclaimers \ of solemn specious nonsense." --Jane Austen
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 11 Sep 92 22:10:24

In article <1992Sep9.170026.22202@cmcl2.nyu.edu> cruz@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Nancy Cruz) writes:

   In article <9209062116.AA27492@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
   >
   >Professor McCarthy might like to know that "Insidious intent" was a
   >literary allusion.  Someone might like to tell him what poem it is
   >from.
   >

   Let us go then, you and I
   when the evening is spread out across the sky
   like a patient etherrized upon a table;
   Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
   the muttering retreats
   of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
   and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
   Streets that follow like a tedious argument
   of insidious intent
   To lead you to an overwhelming question...
   Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'
   Let us go and make our visit.


   Ah, Eliot.....


   -- 
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | Nancy Cruz - a.k.a. "Tensha, the Icewoman" |   New York University    |
   |      cruz@lab.ultra.nyu.edu                |Ultracomputer Research lab|
   +--------------------------------------------+--------------------------+

Woe is me.  I have to confess yet further literary incompetence.  Now
that I see the context of "insidious intent" in "The Lovesong of J.
Alfred Prufrock, I no longer have the remotest idea what Mark Taranto
meant in suspecting Clayton Cramer of it.  I promise to take a literature
course next year if someone will assure me that after taking it I
will understand what Mark Taranto meant.

What "overwhelming question" might Clayton Cramer have been leading
us to?
 
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: alisg@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Subject: Re: Fowles' `The Collector'
Reply-To: alisg@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Organization: Montana State University
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 03:30:17 GMT

In article <78942@ut-emx.uucp>, asim@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Asim Rehman Khan) writes:
>I would love to hear other comments on this work. Are there any other good 
books by Fowles?
>
>Asim Khan

I liked _The Magus_ very much, and have read it at least twice in the fifteen
or more years since the first time. It's interesting to compare it to Dickens'
_Great Expectations_. 
I didn't much care for _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, though I liked it
rather better than the weird movie made from it, in which Meryl Streep went
through her predictable emoting and accenting.

george
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,rec.arts.sf.misc
From: skulldoc@milton.u.washington.edu (Gregory Faulkner)
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 02:15:55 GMT

In article <SEAN.92Sep6190137@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu> sean@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu (Joseph Sean Livingston) writes:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>IF THIS DOESN'T STOP, IM GOING TO START THE WORST CASCADE EVER.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>WHILE EATING THIS SLOP, I SEWED THE FIRST BROCADE BEAVER.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>BILE FITTING RIG STOP, LIE SPEWED THIRST LIVER !!!!
>>>>>>>>>>>>IF YOU MUST CONTRIBUTE, AT LEAST DELIVER...
>>>>>>>>>>>WHO MAY I ATTRIBUTE TO THIS BEASTLY SLIVER?
>>>>>>>>>>TO SPAY A LUTE IN A GREASY RIVER
>>>>>>>>>DAMN CASCADERS THINK YOU'RE SO CLEVER
>>>>>>>>I WILL NOT CASCADE; NOPE, NO, NEVER
>>>>>>>WOULD YOU, COULD YOU, ON A TRAIN?
>>>>>>WOULD YOU, COULD YOU, IN THE RAIN?
>>>>>R2-D2 ON THE BRAIN?
>>>>This cascade is damn insane!
>>>And it's really getting lame!
>>This lower case is going against the grain!
>LeTs TrY mIxEd UpPeR aNd LoWeR CaSe ThEn AnD "rAiSe SoMe CaIn."
>--
>Ich bin ein Virus.  Mach' mit und kopiere mich in Deine .signature.



Cool, man, cool......

    			and amen (so to speak)..... ;-}
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof
Date: 14 Sep 92 14:40:51 GMT
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway


jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy):
 
> Well all right, but Taranto said that I was too uneducated to know
> that "insidious intent" was a literary reference.
 
What I wrote was:
 
        Professor McCarthy might like to know that "Insidious intent"
        was a literary allusion.  Someone might like to tell him what
        poem it is from.
 
I never said that he is uneducated.  His credentials prove that he is.
I do believe that he is not a careful reader. This is not the same as
being uneducated.
 
Mark
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: jmc's views on left (was Re: The Literary Canon)
Date: 10 Sep 92 17:10:43 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <anand.715967951@negril>, anand@Cadence.COM (Anand Bemra) writes:
> jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
# #Soviet cultural influence was enormous in the early years of the
# #Soviet Union---the romanticism of the worker and peasant run socialist
# #revolution and the rational socialist society.  For example, it
# #recruited for them numerous spies all over the world, ignited civil
# #wars almost all over the world and let a minor tyranny North Vietnam
# #defeat a major military power.  That cultural influence is still
# #powerful in American cultural and academic life, especially among
# #people who do not admit even to themselves that they are under its
# #influence.
# 
# I guess in your view any country, be it North Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua
# which wants to solve its problems in its *own* way is tyrannical. May

Like mass murder?  Persecution of people based on their religious
beliefs?  Three million Vietnamese left the North for the South
in the mid-1950s, to get away from Ho Chi Minh's tyranny.

# be it is a tyranny against the imperalism of US which wants to dictate
# how other countries must run their house. Or as Oxfam, a relief 
# organisation puts it, "The threat of a good example", which neighbouring
# countries might be tempted to follow,  would piss off US.
# Countries actually producing stuff they want to eat! How dare they
# do that instead of producing coffee, cut-flowers, ...

I suggest that you do some reading.  The transition from 
subsistence to cash crops took place in places like El Salvador
in the 1880s, because of the ruling classes of El Salvador, not
because of the U.S.

# anand
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Alcohol prohibition didn't work; drug prohibition doesn't work; gun
prohibition won't work.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: entpph@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Reply-To: entpph@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 12:49:43 GMT

"...More than a mystery."

Erik Timmerman
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Garnett, Garnett, Garnett & Garnett
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 14:48:02 GMT

Charles Blair writes:

	Francis Muir writes:

		Richard Garnett may still be remembered
		for his novel *Twilight of the Gods*...

	TWILIGHT OF THE GODS is a short story collection, which I really
	liked.  I would guess that the most frequently anthologized piece 
	in it is "The Elixir of Life."

I guess it is obvious how much Richard Garnett I have read -- always
excepting his Pavonian footnotes, of course.

								Fido
From: das@voodoo.boeing.com (Deb Schwartz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Access to authors (was Re: Ota Benga - the pygmy in the zoo)
Date: 11 Sep 92 22:50:15 GMT
Organization: Yet Another Graphics Project, Bellevue, WA

In article <18dmeoINNbse@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum) writes:
>
>What a wonder:  immediate access to the author and at his
>request no less!
>
Terry Pratchett (British humorous fantasy author) is a regular contributor
to alt.fan.pratchett.

Debbie Schwartz // das@voodoo.boeing.com  // or uunet!bcstec!voodoo!das 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Walpole's _The Castle of Otranto_
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 17:11:13 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu:
>In other words, he believed his characters acted realistically.  But
>who reading this story can fail to be struck by the indifference of Manfred,
>the villain, to repeated visitations of spirits, the appearance of...

What's unrealistic?  I've never in my life been perturbed, let alone
swayed from my designs, by the repeated visitations of spirits, and I'm 
sure you haven't either.

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

Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Date: Tue,  8 Sep 1992 18:44:39 -0400 
From: "Jonathan R. Ferro" <jf41+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: utopias and distopias
Distribution: world

nevins@husc.harvard.edu writes:
> are there classic sci-fi utopia texts?

Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
> 1. The Utopia is an island or otherwise inaccessible region ...
> 2. The Utopian language is morally significant (cf Newspeak in 1984)
> 3. Sex is "rational" or at any rate dealt with in an ostensibly rational way.
> 4. Documents are very important; plot is not.

Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
> But there's an idea for another thread: books that changed your life.

6 out of 6!  The winner is: "The Dispossessed" by Ursula LeGuin.

--
Jon Ferro		MIT Transportation Modelling Research Center (TMRC)
jf41+@andrew.cmu.edu	"We can hack it!"
SGNTR VRS VRSN 3.1B: Strppd nd cmprssd fr qckr trnsmssn! nfct yrs tdy!
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Yet another tangent
Date: 9 Sep 92 17:52:57 GMT
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius) writes:
>
>Sir: your mother, under the pretense of maintaining a bawdy house was the
>reciever of stolen goods.
>			--Sam Johnson

This reminds me of the flyting of John Sylvester and Ben Jonson.  The
former challenged the great playwright to a constest of impromptu
insulting rhymes, giving as an example

	I John Sylvester
	Lay with your sister.

To which Master Jonson replied

	I Ben Jonson
	Lay with your wife.

When Sylvester protested that that didn't rhyme at all, Jonson said,
"No, but it is TRUE."


	The easily amused Mr. E------
--

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: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: A Pleasant Afternoon's Reading
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 17:16:36 GMT

Lauren L. Crawford writes:

	Maciek Blasikiewicz writes:

		One recent afternoon I chanced upon a novel by a 
		relatively unknown Sierra Leone author Arnold Dunga 
		and found it a thoroughly enjoyable read. The prose 
		evoked for me images bathed in the light of the
		setting sun, hues beveiled by crisp spring rays, blue 
		sky, water lapping onto a beach, a yacht listing over 
		wavelets whipped up by the rising afternoon breeze...

	Well, he can't have been writing about Sierra Leone, then.  
	Lepers, yes; yachts, no.  Lots of nice beaches, though.  What's 
	the name of the book?

One more statement like those two and you strike out. Hansen's Disease
may have more victims in Louisiana than it does in Sierra leone. As to
the yachts, Sierra Leone has one of the finest harbours on the West Coast 
of Africa in Freetown, and several other smaller ports and navigable 
estuaries. I would not hesitate to anchor a yacht off some of those 
glorious beaches if I felt like a dip and the swell was reasonable.

Freetown was founded by freed slaves whose descendants, the Creoles, still
form about 25% of the population of Freetown.

							Fido
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.horror
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Fritz Leiber is dead, at 81
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 18:12:53 GMT

The subject heading brings the sad news, to those who haven't heard
it yet.  I, personally, owe a lasting debt to Leiber for having
introduced me (through his superb _Our_Lady_of_Darkness_) to the
only author I've wanted to read so badly I've paid big money for
out-of-print editions: Clark Ashton Smith.  

Leiber has a tale titled "The Man Who Never Grew Young," about
a person for whom time runs backwards.  He watches many things come
and go, but is most of all saddened by the slow disappearance of human
culture.  "I have seen Shakespeare unwrite the great plays," he
says.  "I have watched Socrates unthink the great thoughts."
And so, laments the narrator,

	 All our life is a forgetting and a closing in.
	 As the child is absorbed by its mother, so great
	 thoughts are swallowed up in the mind of genius.
	 At first they are everywhere.  They environ us
	 like the air.  Then there is a narrowing in.  Not
	 all men know them.  Then there comes one great man
	 and he takes them to himself, and they are a secret.
	 There only remains the disturbing conviction that
	 something worthy has vanished.


					       --Fiona Webster
From: dac@prolix.apana.org.au (Andrew Clayton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Damned lit yokels
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 11:20:03 GMT
 <1942sqINNmh0@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
Organization: More like Dis~, really.
X-Newsreader: Arn V1.00 beta rel2

In article <1942sqINNmh0@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>, INFIDEL writes:

>> Andrew Clayton writes from Canberra.
> 
> It was reported in a major Melbourne daily yesterday that the French
> ambassador to Australia ...  once replied:  "Well, Canberra eez
> not really a place, it eez more like ... a space."

Fully cognizant that this is an international newsgroup
[which is, apparently, not universally recognised], I'm still
going to say "Who cares what a fucking Frog thinks anyhow!".

Really, Parisians are usually so concerned with how un-Parisian
everything outside of Paris is, that it's a wonder they ever
leaved the damned place at all.

Whatever Mr French Taunter of Canberra wants to say is of no
interest to me, Mr Infidel.

As for Canberra being a 'space' - well, yes, it is, and I for one
-like- it that way.

Feel free to damn the place some more - it's already cursed by
75% of the Australian population, for being the meeting place of
300 Federal politicians. Heck, 300,000 people who live here are
obviously arseholes, and never read books anyway. One more
petulent whining squeak from Bumfuck, Western Australia, makes no
real difference to the karmic quotient of the universe.

But I do hope that you are reincarnated as a real newt, and maybe
even be lucky enough to be born in a country that has its own
live volcanoes.

Dac
--
dac@prolix.apana.org.au              David Andrew Clayton.           // _| _  _
dac@prolix.sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au      Canberra, Australia           \X/ (_](_](_
munnari!labtam!eyrie!prolix!dac        I post .
"I'm not a pheasant plucker ..."             . . I am.           +61 6 290 2215
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof
Date: 8 Sep 92 14:30:55 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <9209062157.AA27514@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
>
>I do have a fancy title -- but it is usually associated with people who
>can not spell "potato."


Golly!  A golf pro!



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

I believe we are on the irreversible trend toward more freedom and
democracy -- but that could change.   -- J. Danforth Quayle  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 17:23:14 GMT

J Henderson writes:

	I'd like to agree with what Francis writes here [concerning flaming
	net personnae and not the persons behind them], but what would a 
	judge say if I posted something libellous, and then claimed "It 
	weren't me, yer onner, it were Phullovit as done it!!"

Jeremy, the Law is a Ass. Leave legal matters to the assinine.

							Fido
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Chautauqua ? (Zen & the Art...)
Date: 10 Sep 92 14:04:41 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Sep10.080414.1811@bnr.co.uk> br@bnr.co.uk (Brian Robertson) writes:
>I have nearly finished reading Zen & the Art... and the author 
>continually uses the word _chautauqua_ (sp?).  Although I have 
>more or less worked out what the word means, could anyone help
>me with its origins and use.  

"Cha" is Navajo for "woman drowning."  

"Taqua", originally "t'aqua", is a contraction of "in the river."

It's widely used as a curse word at Democratic primaries.



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

I believe we are on the irreversible trend toward more freedom and
democracy -- but that could change.   -- J. Danforth Quayle  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: chucks@uars2.acd.ucar.edu (Chuck Smythe)
Subject: Re: Progress (Was : Re: The Literary Canon)
Organization: Ntl Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Chemistry
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 22:31:22 GMT

In article <MATT.92Sep8142949@physics3.berkeley.edu> matt@physics.berkeley.edu writes:
 In article <34yy02ou20wy01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes) writes:
 
 > Stephen Jay Gould's _The_Mismeasure_of_Man_ is an excellent recap
 > of the biological/anthropological evidence to date on the
 > (non)existence of human races, and presents some of the history of
 > the misuse of these data in the past.
 
 I second the recommendation of this book, as well as most of Gould's
 other ones.  (My favorite is _Wonderful Life_.)
 
A man of taste and polish.  On both counts.  _Wonderful Life_ is the first
book in this decade that I've been moved to take notes on.

 Gould, of course, isn't denying that human variation exists, nor is he
 denying that variation is sometimes distributed geographically.  The
 point is simply that there is no particularly natural way of dividing
 people into groups; whatever division you make, you'll find that you
 could make a completely different division that is equally plausible.
 You will also find that almost all diversity (i.e., more than 90% of
 the variability in human DNA) occurs within these groups, not between
 them.
 
Gould's other point is that the concept is socially counterproductive:
individuals MUST be considered on their individual merits.  To assume that
any person is merely a representative of a class is to guarantee injustice.

			Chuck Smythe
From: drm@esl.com (Don McGregor )
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 9 Sep 92 15:49:18 GMT
Reply-To: drm@esl.com

In article <1992Sep9.042813.25626@u.washington.edu> 

[Swastikas and hammer-and-sickles on book covers]

> I was not only alive and sentient during the '80s, I was in one 
> bookstore or another in a major cosmpolitan city four or five times 
> a week during that decade, and I swear to god that I can't think of 
> a single example of a single paperback book displaying either a swastika 
>or a hammer-and-sickle on its cover on any volume I set my eyes on in any
> of the 12 or more bookstores that I visted on a regular basis during 
> those years.  

You were probably in the "wrong" section of the bookstore.  The popular  
paperbacks over on the rack usually had a lurid, embossed cover, a blurb  
comparing the author to Clancy, and a plot involving either a conspiracy  
by Nazi remanents to destroy the world or of commies to overthrow the US  
government.

Just passed them by on my way to the rest of the books, honest.

[it occurs to me that embossed paperback covers are a good sign that the  
book should be avoided.]
--
Don McGregor|"Everything seems out of nature in this strange
drm@esl.com | chaos of levity and ferocity..." --E. Burke
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: [UPI] Report: Book censorship, challenges in schools at 10-year high
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 02:12:11 GMT

Erik Timmerman writes:

	There is a new book on this topic: What Johnny Shouldn't Read
	by Joan DelFattore.  Reviewed within the last month in the
	NY Times Book Review.

This book appears to be a hoot. It is concerned with the influence
that loonies from the Left and Right control content in school texts
-- particularly loonies from Texas and California which States are
influential because of their population. It is, of course, the publishers
who are made to look bad, since their interest is frighteningly
unsavoury. Example. Texas would not allow the New Deal to be mentioned
in their books, since it sounded Commie and not Free Enterprise. Result.
There is a gap -- literally, a gap -- between Hoover and Pearl Harbor
where clearly something had been there. In Texas? Yes, no sweat. But also
in Connecticut! In other words, the Goddam publishers were so cheap
that they could not allow the change just to be made for Texas' benefit.
I admire lunatic political debate -- its one of the hallmarks of America,
but the sleaze associated with the education system is not a pleasant
thing to witness.

							Fido
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 6 Sep 92 14:03:00

Several times I have enjoyed a book and later looked at the jacket and
concluded that if I had read the jacket in advance, I never would have
read the book.  I like David Lodge's later books better than his
earlier ones.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.