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Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 10:07:01 EDT
From:         Tim Johnson <PH408014@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Science Metaphors (was Kundera)

>I must say
>that the habit of using recent scientific advances as metaphors for life
>(or whatever) does nothing for me.  There are several books, for example,
>which use quantum theory as a metaphor for Zen Buddhism.  As far as I'm con-
>cerned, a metaphor should be either useful - in that it provides an insight
>one would otherwise have missed - or else it should be capable of making
>the strange familiar and the familiar strange.  These metaphors do neither.
>They can't take you any further in understanding either science, or the rest
>of life.  They are usually too extended to provide that shock of recognition
>a good metaphor brings.

  I agree with everything you have just said, Ian.  But I don't
think it applies to the issues in question.  Entropy is a *mathematical*
concept which has found applications in a wide variety of processes.
Information theory is a legitimate study.  I am suggesting that these
ideas of entropy, information, chaos, and order do apply - literally,
and not just metaphorically - to literature or music, and possibly
to psychology.  There is nothing that sets me on edge more than some
pop psychologist or philosopher misusing heisenberg or schroedinger
to support their ideas.  But this is very different.

  I'm not sure if detailed discussions of this are appropriate to
the list - but, what I'm trying to express is that in the old days
of science, order and predictability implied a complete determinism.
That is, the projectile followed it's parabolic trajectory which
was completely predictable before firing.  More complex problems,
such as those in fluid dynamics, were ignored because they weren't
completely predictable.  But recently, scientists have begun finding
ways to describe the order and pattern formation that arises from
"undetermined" systems.  I think that these principles are as applicable
to music and literature as they are to data transmission and form
and structure in nature.  In the most general sense, they suggest
that patterns in nature will form spontaneously even where there
are systems which are chaotic, as long as there are some constraints.
This notion has been expanded to encompass theories of information -
and under that guise, applies to music and literature.  I also think
that the Kierkegaardian dichotomy is a reflection of this very concept.
Seeking a fruitful middle ground between overdetermined and completely
chaotic regimes.

>        Also, I thought the John Cage comment was more specific than your
>comment: didn't Cage  write a piece based entirely on dripping water at
>various tempi?

  He may well have.  My knowledge of Cage is completely second hand.
I have never heard any of his works or read anything he has written.

                                                   -Tim
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Date:         Sat, 22 Aug 1992 23:43:00 CDT
From:         S1MBM@ISUVAX.BITNET
Subject:      my syllabus

I'd like to share my syllabus for a course called "British Literature and
Culture," a course designed to introduce students to some of the essential
concerns of that culture's history and legacy.  Since I see the legacy of
Romanticism persisting everywhere in contemporary life, along with the
metadiscourses attending the rise of the modern state and industrialism,
I have chosen texts which exemplify the tension between the Romantic ideal
of *unlimited* self-expression and the discursive disciplines which
inevitably seek to limit Romantic self-assertion:

The Tempest
Moll Flanders
Gulliver's Travels
Frankenstein
Bleak House
Heart of Darkness
Mrs Dalloway
The French Lieutenant's Woman

(The works appear in the order in which they will be taught.)

I welcome your comments and suggestions.  However, please don't tell me not
to use any of these works; they've all been ordered.

I was assigned this course a few days ago, and the semester starts Monday, so
I'll be handing out xeroxes of Blake and *Paradise Lost* for the first week's
reading.

McBruce (a silly name, but i hope it will distinguish me from the distinguished
         MBM)
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Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 07:40:42 EST
From:         LBH <helfrich@SIAM.ORG>
Subject:      Re: erotica (was Re: Milorad Pavi)'
Comments: To: literary@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu

     Have you read _Vox_?  (Sorry, the name of the author escapes me.)
     It takes "telephone sex" to new heights.  It's erotica with a sense
     of humor.
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Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 13:04:55 EDT
From:         Ken Koester <MAINT2@ERS.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: Trollope

On Wed, 26 Aug 1992 22:27:00 EST MARGARET WRIGHT said:
>I would submit that *Ulysses*, *To the lighthouse*, and *The sound and the
>fury*
>are stylistic masterpieces that cannot be duplicated.

True enough.  But then, so is =Middlemarch=.

>. . . . On the other hand the
>19th century blockbusters are less easily separated from othe works by their
>authors because their theme was the human comedy/tragedy of the ordinary man
>(and woman).

?  Not sure what you mean by this.  I certainly can't separate =S&theF= from
=As I Lay Dying=, "The Bear", =The Town=, & various other Faulkners. =Protrait=
clearly stands beside =Ulysses= by its ending; the latter clearly stands beside
=Finnegan's Wake= by the time you reach Molly's monologue.  There is human
comedy/tragedy aplenty in Faulkner, and in most other 20th century novelists
I've read.  In fact, I'd vote for the moderns in terms of substance over the
Victorians any day of the week.

>. . . .  It is the entire canvas rather than the individual works that I
>find so incredible.  And of course the novel did not exist in isolation - the
>art, music, political development, all while building on the 18th century
>enlightenment did create a period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and
>1914 that to a later historian may seem as unique (and as temporary) as 5th
>century Greece.
>                Maggie Wright

Possibly.  But I doubt it.  It was a time of ferment, no doubt, but historians
can point to plenty of those.  And I'd say the early part of the period was
more like a *reaction* to Enlightenment, rather than a building on it.
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Date:         Wed, 26 Aug 1992 14:15:00 EDT
From:         IAN YORK <YORK@MCMASTER.BITNET>
Subject:      SF

>Once again, we are back to how do we measure the worth of literature and
>what is its purpose.  Science fiction has introduced ideas into the minds
>of men--AND WOMEN--which, when brought to fruition, have advanced our
>civilization.  Although this may be a mixed blessing, with technology vs
>the environment, it beats the heck out of not dreaming at all.  Clarke's
>'Childhood's End' is, in my mind, the ultimate philosophical approach to
>the human condition.

        I absolutely agree with you.  I am a scientist, and may well have
become one because of SF.  HOWEVER.  This has absolutely nothing to do with
SF AS LITERATURE.  I don't know how to define "literature" but surely it
involves more than ideas.  There is question of style, internal consistency,
believable characters, intelligent plot, etc etc etc.  (And yes, I know that
we could come up with exceptions  to all of those which are still "litera-
ture", but you know what I mean.)
        This does not mean that it's morally wrong to read and enjoy SF, for
the ideas if you like, or the plots or the action or whatever.  I have read
several thousand (I'm guessing as I don't keep a journal) and liked most of
them and enjoyed almost all.  The vast majority haven't been keepers, though
(if I'm not going to re-read a book, I sell it to a used bookstore).  You
could argue that SF is working within its own style, and so on.  The simple
question is, would the average SF book be improved if it was written as well
as the average "mainstream" novel (excluding here things like harlequin ro-
mances and so on) and the simple answer is, yes.
        Also, for what it's worth, most of the ideas in SF which I am quali-
fied to judge are garbled up real good.  But at least they told me that the
questions existed.
        Ian
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Date:         Mon, 31 Aug 1992 19:41:00 CDT
From:         S1MBM@ISUVAX.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Zen

It doesn't seem right to me that Watts' approach to Zen is especially
intellectual (especially insofar as you seem to imply that intellectual
is somehow exposed to, say, experiential).  I always found Watts warm,
colorful, and anything but austere, but it's been a long time, I'll admit.

The great American writer Peter Mathiessen has a fairly interesting (and
very intellectual) book on his experiences in various Zen monasteries.  I'll
look up the title if anyone is interested.

If you haven't read Gary Snyder on Zen, he's the man (which remains true even
if you have read him).  Again, titles gladly proffered upon request.

mbmcdonald
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Date:         Sat, 22 Aug 1992 23:24:00 CDT
From:         S1MBM@ISUVAX.BITNET
Subject:      Re: The French Lieutenant's Woman

Tim, you are correct that Fowles spends a good deal of time displaying the
fruits of his research in *FLW*, but your post leaves out the crucial fact
of Fowles' metafictional style:  the ironic self-parody of his own mastery.
While my copy is buried away somewhere in one of my many unopened boxes of
books (having just moved here), I think that we can look again at the sentence
you quote, the sentence which seems to have curled the beard on your goat.
Yes, from a certain perspective the sentence over-displays a certain kind of
learning and mastery, but this is precisely where Fowles displays his genius
in writing a book about Victoriana *for contemporary readers*:  most of us
*would not* have a clue about the allusion had he not told us that Gk. travelers
were expected to deliver Periclean orations along with the news, whereas a
learned Victorian audience just might not need to be reminded of this.
Throughout, Fowles brilliantly juxtaposes the values and knowledge of a
contemporary audience over against that of Victorian readers, thus managing
to set up a remarkable tension between the world of his subject and that of
his reading subjects in a very rare way indeed.  See you no humor in that
infamous sentence?  The humor of an author feeling he needs to provide info
that does indeed confuscate the interests of simple narrative motion?  The
humor of the periodic sentence gone to seed.  This is the humor of *Tristram
Shandy*, which I'll have your nose for should you dare to offer it any criticism
   ; this is the humor of the digressiveness that undergraduates tend to see as
useless and annoying, but which Sterne call the very life and soul of good
literature.  Essential tension, anyone?

McBruce
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Date:         Sat, 29 Aug 1992 00:44:16 -0900
From:         the First and Only Nude Vaxer <FSCLL@ALASKA.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Two-minute mini-survey!

I found Mind's Eye to be a bt too strict and on topic... it seemed
merely pedestrian whereas Godel Escher Bach was a piece of
art as far as I am concerned. There are definitely things
I do not understand or were confused by, but the best puieces of poetry
always leave a person hanging too  (or this person)

Havea ny of you read D. Hofstadters (sp?) book Metamagical Themas?

chris
poet and pauper
From: KGODDEN@cmsa.gmr.com
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary
Subject: Re: Confession, speed reading, et al.
Date: 26 Aug 92 13:38:04 GMT
Organization: GM Research Labs

In article <2C45D54EC02119D0@SSCvax.CIS.McMaster.CA>
YORK@MCMASTER.BITNET (IAN YORK) writes:

>
>Kurt brought up 1 1/2 points I'd like to respond to (he brought up more than
>that but there were only 1 1/2 I can comment on right now)
>1.  Steinbeck:  We had a discussion of him a little while ago.  My point then
>was not that he wasn't technically very good, even great, but that the content
>and depth of his work had problems.  I feel that he is overly romantic (think-
>ing particularly of Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday here, but applicable to G
>of W and others as well); and also, I think that most of his books have a
>definite and rather obvious theme; lacking subtlty, I guess, is concept I'm
>incoherently trying to get across.  Do you agree?  Do you like Steinbeck
>in spite of this?  (I definitely like his work, don't get me wrong; but
>I wouldn't put him in the "great" category.)

Yes, he is somewhat romantic.     I suppose that's a matter of taste (I like
it.)  Lacking subtlety?...hmmm, first of all I suppose I disagree that this
would be a fault to begin with.  What do you think about Gatsby?  I think
that book is pretty obvious, yet it is a GREAT novel, imho.  Secondly,
I'm not so sure Steinbeck lacks subtlety.  I'm trying to remember the name of
one of his books--similar in spirit and characters to Cannery Row and Sweet Th.
Anyway, it's my understanding that S. was trying to say something about
the Arthurian legend, but the critics apparently all missed it at first.
So you could either praise it for being subtle, or criticize it for being
obtuse.  (wish I could remember the title....)

>2. re economics: . . . if we want to win. . .  Why is economics always treated
>like a zero-sum game?  And who's this "we". Yankee?  [just kidding]
>
You bring up a VERY good point, to which I must apologize.  Thurow mentions
in fact that econ. need not be a zero-sum game with losers.  (It currently
seems to be, though, doesn't it?)  Really, he says that whether or not the
U.S. has the highest standard of living in the world, we certainly want to
have a rising standard of living, and that the ONLY way we will achieve that
is to convert ourselves from a consumption-based economy to a production-based
one.  We can accomplish this without lowering our actual consumption; all we
need to do is to produce at a faster rate than we currently do, and simply
slow down our consumption (as opposed to lower it).  He estimates that in one
decade of this our econ. health would return.

But in any case, if any of you readers out there don't recognize the
significance of the date January 1, 1993, then I suggest you find out.
It will affect your life regardless of where you live in the world.
Lester Thurow's book is simply one (highly enjoyable, albeit scary) way
to educate yourself.

-Kurt (enjoying the intellectual exchange)

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Date:         Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:23:49 -0500
From:         "MRGATE::\"A1::LEISUR42\""@MMC.BITNET
Subject:      Re: The Novel

From:   NAME: Carole Leisure
        FUNC: Marketing and Development
        TEL: (615) 327-5940                   <LEISUR42@A1@MMC>
To:     NAME: VMSMail User IN%"LITERARY <IN%"LITERARY@UCF1VM.BITNET"@MRGATE>


         Maybe I'm missing something because I haven't read the book,
         but where has "The Critic" been for the past twenty or so
         years?  There are lots of authors not worth studying from the
         '70s and 80's.  As one who has enjoyed reading something from
         each of the 'overrated' Americans, I also question the
         standards used.  However, perhaps it is one thing to read and
         enjoy and quite another to engage in study.  What do you
         think?

         Carole

         LEISUR42%MMC@CTRVAX.VANDERBILT.EDU
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Date:         Wed, 26 Aug 1992 20:40:42 -0900
From:         the First and Only Nude Vaxer <FSCLL@ALASKA.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Changes, Rooshians

I agree that we should not want to be happy that Tina B. is taking
over the helm at new yorker just because she is a woman, Sonia---

but let's not slough it off to tokenism quite yet!

Maybe she can do something to breathe a little life back into a
once great magazine?

chris
poet and pauper
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Date:         Fri, 28 Aug 1992 12:31:34 EDT
From:         Tom Frenkel <FRENKEL@CPMAIL-AM.CIS.COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Two-minute mini-survey!
Comments: To: LITERARY@ucf1vm.cc.ucf.edu

> Date:          Fri, 28 Aug 1992 11:42:00 EDT
> From:          IAN YORK <YORK@MCMASTER.BITNET>

> Have you read _The Mind's I_, edited by Douglas Hofstadter and someone
> else - Martin Gardner, I think; a collection of short stories and essays, with
 c
>    ommentaries by the editors, on the nature of self vs. non-self, concious-
> ness, self-awareness etc.

No... but I've read a previous book by Hofstadter, _Godel, Escher,
Bach_ ... which I found stimulating but also, as I remember,
a bit confused, or confusing...  I think Gardner (by himself) is
terrific though... did _Mathematical Games_ at Scientific American
for years, and I don't think they ever found an successor to equal
him at that magazine.
                                                --Tom
-------
Tom Frenkel,    Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center,
161 Ft. Washington Ave.,  DAP-1310,  New York, NY 10032-3784  USA
Internet:  FRENKEL@CPMAIL-AM.CIS.COLUMBIA.EDU
<<< Opinions expressed not necessarily those of my employer >>>
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Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 09:28:53 EDT
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From:         "Lana Brown, VIARC, IRD" <VIAEM105@SIVM.BITNET>
Subject:      speed

From:    Lana Brown, VIARC, IRD
I confess: I started it. I didn't participate in it much, though, because I'm
at work and had deadlines. After the poetry group talk, someone was trying to
start up discussion on literature again and listed about ten books which he
had read in one week. Many of us were awed and/or doubtful at this
achievement, and I noted that a mentor once told me this: anything
speed-readable isn't worth reading. Since then, I've found out lots of amazing
things about the ways different people read. You must admit that in the field
of lit. this is a primaryconcern. Perhaps we could move out of it now--it is
getting a little stale--and use it as a springboard for reception theory &
particular works...or something like that. (By the way, I DO think I've
developed a very task-specific style of speed-reading just by going through
these postings in between work!)
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Date:         Fri, 28 Aug 1992 07:46:57 PDT
From:         Tim Bowden <tcbowden@CLOVIS.FELTON.CA.US>
Subject:      Two-minute mini-survey!

Since I can remember, I have had an immense curiosity about
the nature of consciousness, really, or the settling of the
`I' amoung billions of choices right here in my own presence.
Why am I me?  And what makes me me?  And what ingredient is
it that says so?  And might, at some future time, that part
of me that locates all my actions and results within the
envelope of my own skin be excised, transplanted?

I was hoping this quick shot would jar someone's recall to
say, `Yes, that's familiar, I have seen it discussed - '


-where?

--- Echodor 3.11
--
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INTERNET: tcbowden@clovis.felton.ca.us
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Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 09:33:27 CST
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From:         Melanie Willis <GS0383%SPRINGB.bitnet@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU>
Subject:      Relevance, Buffoons, and Fyodors

Tim,

Whose translation of _The Brothers Karazamov__ would you recommend?  Constance
Garnett's is the one I usually see, and the only one I've read.  Melanie
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Date:         Tue, 25 Aug 1992 15:33:00 EDT
From:         IAN YORK <YORK@MCMASTER.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Gibson/Sterling/Irving

What has Pat Cardigan written?  I don't recognize ger name, maybe I'll
know some titles.
        Ian
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Date:         Wed, 26 Aug 1992 06:47:00 EST
From:         MARGARET WRIGHT <MWRIGHT@TRINCC.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: Trollope

macdonald
        I'm afraid I had tongue in cheek in referring to the novel tradition as
"fairly new in the mid-nineteenth century" since I actually think that it all
started with Petronius.  However I do think that Dickens and the early
Victorians believed that their type of novel was new (and novel).  The sudden
explosion of the middle class with a new leisure and desire for reading created
a reading public avid for their works and the necessity of serialization and
the two or three volume format produced a remarkable group of works in spite of
the limits of publication and Victorian morality.

        What the 20th century has produced is experiments in style.  I find
that after reading Hemingway I think in Hemingway sentences and after reding
Faulkner in parenthetical phrases.  But I'm not sure that if the novel as we
know it ceases to exist that later centuries may not see the 20th century
novel as we do later Greek and Roman drama - advance in style but not in
substance.  Of course there are 19th century type novels still being produced -
*Doctor Zhivago* and *The first circle* come to mind although it can be argued
that Boris Pastrnak and Solzhenitsyn had their roots in the 19th century.  And
one wonders what Norman Mailer would have produced if he had been forced to
submit to the discipline of 19th century publication.  I see him as a major
literary artist still looking for a style.

                Maggie Wright
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Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 01:25:00 CDT
From:         S1MBM@ISUVAX.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Zen

Ian, thanks for the response.  I'll get those titles to you tomorrow (today),
just as soon as I can log back on to the library here.

Wasn't some mention made on this list of John Cage recently?  Not only was
Cage a lifelong student of Zen, but he also wrote very interestingly on the
subject.  See especially the topical essays in *Silence*, and his interestingly
Zen version of Joycean discourse in the fascinating *Writing Through Finnegans
Wake*.

mbmcdonald
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Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 15:25:01 EDT
From:         Evelyn Duncan <R3EJD@AKRONVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: New Yorker

Yes, Ian, that's one of the things I like about the New Yorker, too.
I also like the way it covers current events:  It makes one feel as if one
knows the people involved in the situation.

Evelyn Duncan