HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Literature Students/Small World
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 12:50:39 GMT

Mark Taranto writes:

	Late last night, while flipping through the channels, I saw 
	part of a rerun of one of those "reality based" programs.  

	[there follows a tale which includes a string of Extraordinary
	Coincidences]

You are too ready to suspend disbelief. Better stop channeling and get
back to books. "Reality" TV is intended to compete with those curious
weeklies sold near check-out counters; Sons of Big Foot, 47 month long
pregnancies (in Oregon of course, where else?), photos of aliens endorsing
Clinton, &c., &c.

							Fido
From: mdcutts@ukpr.uky.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Lempriere's Dictionary/Foucalt's Pendulum?
Date: 8 Oct 92 12:11:58 GMT
Organization: The Great Beyond

Has anyone read Lempriere's Dictionary yet?  Comments on whether its worth the  
reading?  Also, does anyone know of more novels along the lines of Umberto  
Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum or The Name of the Rose?  I'm looking for some prose  
fiction densely written by experts and chock full of allusions I only mildly  
understand.  8-)
Matt Cutts -- uk02914@ukpr.uky.edu     or    mdcutts@afterlife.ncsc.mil
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Literature Students/Small World
Date: 8 Oct 92 04:02:46 GMT



barclay@RAIL9000.gatech.edu (Barclay Blanchard) writes:
 
> This morning in class a fellow student asked me if I'd been writing
> about our class on the net; she heard about it from her boyfriend in
> Holland.  Wow!
 
I should stop being so amazed by these "small world" things.  It happens too
often.  But I still say "Wow!" too.  Here are a few examples:
 
        Joe Green (once and future r.a.b.ble) turned out to
        be a friend of my first wife.
 
        The guy she was going out with when I met her turned out
        to be the best friend (in 9th grade) of my best friend
        (in 10th grade).  All three of us had moved going into
        10th grade.
 
        Mike Godwin and I both studied Philosophy with Herbert
        Hochberg.  This would not be unusual if we had gone to
        the same school -- but Mike was at UT, while I had been at
        Minnesota.
 
        This still isn't so strange, because while at U of MN, I discovered
        that my favorite professor at Villanova was my friend's
        favorite professor at Oakland, in Michigan.  He was also a
        Philosophy professor.
 
        In 1980, while having lunch in an Italian restaurant in NYC,
        while on vacation, I overheard a man say "I've got a meeting
        in St. Paul, next week."  One week later, I was introduced to
        this man during a meeting in my office in St. Paul.
 
This sort of thing has made its way into the arts.  I believe that it
is an important factor in SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, and know that it
is essential to THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST and to the movie ON THE TOWN.
 
Perhaps the funniest use of this phenomenon is in THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE
TO THE GALAXY, whenever the Improbability Drive is used.
 
Mark
 
 
PS
 
Late last night, while flipping through the channels, I saw part of
a rerun of one of those "reality based" programs.  It included a
story about a woman who was adopted.  Throughout her life, she tried
to find out information about her natural parents.  Only as an adult,
did she discover her real mother's name.  In the mean time, she fell in
love & married a man.  His best friend married a woman who became her
best friend.  A few years later, this other woman's mother died.  While
searching through some papers that had been hidden away, she discovered
that she, too, had been adopted.  It turned out that these two women were
sisters (same mother and father).  They had been told that they looked
somewhat alike -- but never thought that they could possibly be related
(especially since one of the women did not know she had been adopted).
Granted -- this is pretty freaky.  There are other coincidences.  Both
were named Barbara, and both were adopted by women named Rose.
 
Perhaps there is something to all that "nonsense" about the similarities
between the Kennedy & Lincoln assasinations, after all (BTW, I'm predicting
that Gerald Ford will die by being run over by a Lincoln while in a phone
booth at Kennedy airport).
 
Quick -- hit the Improbability Drive button!
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Books in the time of love
Date: 11 Oct 92 20:51:41 GMT
Article-I.D.: cfdev1.9210112051.AA29310



John Wojdylo writes:

> Yes, yes, oh yes...

I'm glad to see John quoting from ULYSSES.  It adds meaning to a work which
otherwise appears to be devoid of value.

My apologies to everyone I badgered into revealing secrets about love and
books -- I had no idea it would have this kind of effect on John.  Perhaps
he is jealous that others have had love.

Mark
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: 1992 Nobel Prize
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:13:05 GMT



spg@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Stephen P. Guthrie) writes:
 
> Just announced: winner of 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature is
 
>       Derek Walcott, from the Caribbean island nation of St.Lucia
 
> My question: who the heck is this? I've never heard of him before?
> Is he a poet? novelist? Are his books in print? I don't recall ever
> seeing any?
 
 
A quick stop at the Rizzoli's downstairs reveals that he is a poet and
playwright.
 
They had one of his books -- an 8000 line poem called OMEROS.  There
was no "About the author" page -- but it looks like he has put out
several collections of poetry, and has written six or seven plays.
 
It also appears that he writes in English.
 
Mark
 
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: sparkle@access.digex.com (Pat)
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up.
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 19:51:45 GMT


Not only is this a wonderful thread, but the title (subject) is
absolutely inspired.

I may be a small minority, but I find it impossible to wade through
Jane Austen's works.  Too wordy and stilted.

Pat
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: JURGEN -- James Branch Cabell
Date: 7 Oct 92 23:02:03 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

Jeffrey Klein writes:
>I would just like to thank everyone who recommended that I read JURGEN.
>
>It was a very good book.

Okay, so.  Good HOW?  Witty?  Good plot?  Good characters?  Good
writing style?  Has a certian not-to-be-missed manner about it?

Of, some of us already know that the answer to all of those is yes.

	the seconding the recommendation Mr. E-----
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu     \   Hidden harmony is better than
GEnie: L.HAMMER2             \  manifest.  -- Heraclitus, #47
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Mr Roberts (was: Re: Books in the time of school)
Date: 8 Oct 92 04:05:00 GMT


 
 
This is a re-post.  The gateway I usually use doesn't seem to be passing
my articles along.  Please forgive me, if you've already seen this.
 
----------------------------------------
 
hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu (Heather) writes:
 
> wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William R. Smith) writes:
 
>> Mister Roberts, first officer of the Reluctant, wages a subtle war
>> against the inept captain.  He is a hero to Ensign Puliver and the
>> champion of the men on board.  Only he brings any meaning to the boredom.
 
> I enjoyed the book in high school too.  Written by Thomas Heggie, or Heggen?
> I don't believe he wrote anything else.  Could be seen as a precursor to
> the later style of war "comedies" such as "MASH" and "Catch-22", at least
> in regards to the portrayal of individualism vs. the military.
 
Tom Hagen.  He didn't write anything else, because he committed suicide.
The Journalism Library at The University of Minnesota is named for him.
 
Mark
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Fictitious Fiction
Keywords: Morgenstern, Garp, Trout
Date: 15 Oct 92 11:46:21 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Oct14.144505.1348@netwise.com> hilary@netwise.com (Hilary Lane) writes:

>Byatt's _Possession_ is a total satire on academia and collectors. I read the
>book seriously and thought it was wonderful, until the last 150 pages, when
>I thought it fell apart. I subsequently read critiques of the book and
>discovered the satire aspect. Had I read it with that in mind, I would've
>enjoyed it that much better. 

What, 150 pages of satire and _no_smileys_? :-)

You can train yourself to recognise satire, irony, sarcasm, and other
indirections. The idea is to become thoroughly paranoid, suspecting
that everything you hear and read is actually ironic. This is a very
useful skill to develop, because not only do you become adept at
recognising satire, you also become able to re-interpret mind-numbing
and totally serious self-parodies of the sort indulged in by
politicians as satire. Thus you can listen to a speech of Bush's, and
instead of getting distressed, roar with laughter at the successful
satire.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 20:22:27 GMT

In article <12738@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:

>Mr. Maddox laughs.  Would he laugh if David Duke were President?

	Would *you* laugh if your hemorrhoids were on fire? if Infidel
pissed in your soup? if David Duke were declared Emperor of Your
Household?  All of which is just my way of saying, Mr. Cramer, you have
just won the *Non-Sequitur of the Month Award*.  

>Fortunately, many gun owners are members of the "Assault Weapons 
>for the Clueless" program. 

	Actually, they all are.  (It's another joke, Cramer.  Get someone
with a sense of humor to explain it to you, and my previous post as well.
If no one wants to, you can always whip out the old assault rifle and 
*encourage* them, eh?)


-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		"The Reptoids eat humans like we eat chickens."
				Alex Alexander
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 17:45:52 GMT

Jon Corelis writes:

>   Actually, I remember reading somewhere that the homicide rate in
>Belfast, including all deaths from political violence, is lower than the
>homicide rate in most large American cities.

	This intrigued me so I checked some figures. I couldn't find a
rate for Belfast but based on the number of homicides per 100,000
population it looks kind of like this:

USA Murder and Nonnegligent Manslaughter:

1990: 23,438 offences Rate= 9.4 per 100,000 inhabitants
1991: 24,703	      Rate= 9.8		"	         
Percent change:
Offences: +5.4
Rate: +4.3

Northern Ireland in 1989 reported 104 homicides with a rate of 6.6
/100,000.

Provisional numbers for 1990 are 69 homicides with a 4.3 rate.

Parenthetically, some selected US cities have these rates:

New York City 	25.8

Boston		17.1

Los Angeles	25.5

St Paul, MN	5.7

Atlanta		57.7

Detroit		60.0

Aurora, CO	3.2		

All of this out of three *books*:

Crime in the United States 1991 (FBI)
Ireland Statistical Abstract 1991
Statistical Abstract of the United States 1991

The number are based on population so higher density Belfast might
throw it off somewhat; however, there's some truth in the criticisms of
our Finnish friend. You might be far safer in Belfast than in Detroit.
Of course wearing a British Army uniform and carring an automatic
weapon might only make you safer in Detroit.

Keith

--
Keith Morgan		 |I've always had a secret desire to harangue
kamorgan@athena.mit.edu  |a crowd of people for 10 hours in the
		         |sweltering heat. It's the origin of my
		         |fascination with public language.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: BL.JYC@forsythe.stanford.edu (Jon Corelis)
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 15:51:48 GMT

In article <92118@netnews.upenn.edu>,
crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:

>Oh yeah, how could I have forgotten "A Confederacy of Dunces"?  Flatulence
>and yellowed sheets...

   Well just goes to show there's no accounting for tastes.  I've read
it three times and thought it was better each time.  One thing I liked
about it -- I wonder if anyone else has felt this -- is that it seems to
have a structure like the early New Orleans jazz (which is sometimes
erroneously called "Dixieland"):  an anarchic yet unified configuration
of alternating solos and subensemble pieces, sometimes boisterous,
sometimes soulful, and ending with the complete ensemble finally
interacting together.
From: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Date: 7 Oct 1992 18:55:55 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, igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) says:

>
>I could also name some that should never be performed: Henry XIII, for a
>start...                                                     ~~~~
>
>ian
>

Well, yeah, OK, so Will wasn't that good with science fiction, but at
least the history plays about the past are worthy.

. . . Or was the Roman numeral typo just a subtle allusion to John
McCarthy's sig file?

Gary


-- 
      ||    Gary Lee Stonum                gxs11@po.cwru.edu    ||
      ||    English Department                  216-368-3342    ||
      ||    Case Western Reserve University                     ||
      ||    Cleveland, OH 44106-7117                            ||
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: This is so bad i could not put it down
Date: 12 Oct 92 18:49:28 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) wrote:
> William McGonegall has been described as "the Ossian of the ineffably
> absurd", and it is true that his oeuvre -- if you can call it that --
> defines doggerel.  But barrie saw him as a tragic figure. For many, many
> years he was the subject of an elaborate popular charade.  At his public
> recitals throughout especially Central Scotland he was given extravagant
> receptions that led the poor man to believe in his own genius.

There is a touching description of MacGonagall and his career in Hugh
MacDiarmid's "Scottish Eccentrics" (a difficult book to find; good luck
to any interested US readers, you'll need it).  A man before his time;
he'd have loved the net as a medium (I imagine a combination of Gary
Stollman and Hasan Mutlu, only in verse).

[ Another "New Statesman" style competition: rewrite a posting by Hasan
  Mutlu or one of his regular antagonists in the style of MacGonagall... ]


> Why all this?  Well, a neophyte netter has suggested she might hold a
> McGonegall Night Supper rather than the now boring Burns Night ditto,
> and did I know his, McGonegall's, birthday?  I don't and I doubt that
> anyone does since the year of his birth has been given variously
> as 1825 and 1830.  Perhaps a Dundee correspondent can help? 

I've been to a MacGonagall Night, but I can't remember what date it was
held on.  (My contribution was a rewrite of the Tay Bridge Disaster to
fit Three Mile Island, as most of the company was anti-nuclear activists).
The date of the Tay Bridge collapse is an obvious one if you can't find
his birthday.

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
From: proberts@informix.com (Paul Roberts)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Neither_Here_Nor_There
Date: 16 Oct 92 16:09:37 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.

In article <1992Oct9.132841.6476@infonode.ingr.com> rusty@infonode.ingr.com (Rusty Wiginton) writes:
>
>	Has anyone read Bill Brysons latest yet? Once again he
>	has me in laughing at his travels. I knew I was hooked
>	after reading The_Lost_Continent. His journey through
>	America was so much like mine as a child that I want to
>	go back to those places to see how much they have changed.
>	But in Neither_Here_Nor_There, Bill leaves merry old
>	England to see the Northern Lights and travel as far east
>	until Europe is no more and Asia begins. It is a book well
>	worth dedicating a Saturday to. Please post or email me
>	and we will start a discussion about this book.
>-- 
>                                      Rusty Wiginton (205)730-2378
>                                      (UUCP) uunet!ingr!wyle!rusty
>                                      (Internet)rusty@wyle.ingr.com

Well, I loved "The lost continent" but I found "Neither here nor there"
more or less unreadable. It seemed to be an extended "What I did on my
summer vacation" with a lot of moaning about how boring modern
architecture is.

Paul
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: Books in the time of love
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 20:08:26 GMT

                                 Sunday, the 11th of October, 1992

Yeah, John, you're right. It was just 'cause I was jealous that
Mark gave you an opium den in Burma translating Chinese.

                     Mike Morris
              (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)
From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: RE: Attractiveness (was: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia)
Date: 14 Oct 92 04:50:24 GMT
Organization: Clark University

>From:   kate@cactus.org (Katherine M. Catmull)
>>
>I wrote:
>>
>>>To concsiously allow good-looks/non-good looks to be one of the
>>>deciding factors in hiring an employee seems to me shameful in any
>>real-world situation.
>>
>Heather replies:
>>Ah yes, the Jockey people behaved so shamefully when they hired Jim
>>Palmer to pose in his underwear.
>>
>>Be careful getting down off the soapbox.
>
>Thank you, Heather, but I'm quite comfortable here at the moment.

But from that lofty height you miss my point, O Kate.

>We can debate for hours whether it's useful or "good" whatever you'd
>like to call it for our Friendly Neighborhood Capitalists to
>encourage an obsession with physical beauty, if you think of
>Jim Palmer as beautiful, well good lord, that's a whole new
>subject . . .

Not at all, it's my original subject.  You were the one who took
my post to mean that I was in favor of job discrimination based
on attractiveness.  In fact, I am not.  My point was that men
are not the only ones who appreciate the beauty of the opposite
sex.  The "Beauty Myth" discussion which precipitated my post
implied that "beauty" was an ideal foisted upon women by Male
Oppressors.  While that may be true, it's a claim that irritates
me a bit, since it fails to recognize that women have their own
standards regarding male "beauty".  

I'll state this as clearly as possible: if you want to prevent
men from admiring good-looking women, then, in fairness, women cannot
be free to admire good-looking men.   That would be too bad.
Therefore, I'm not in favor of preventing men from admiring female
"beauty".  

Obviously taste is subjective, and Jim Palmer is not my type,
but Kate, you must agree that he's better-looking than Pete Rose!
So does that not indicate a certain feminine standard for male
attractiveness?


Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu
From: U48073@uicvm.uic.edu (Cole Kendall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: RE: Ted Williams (was Re: Baseball etc. etc.)
Date: 14 Oct 92 18:43:45 GMT
Article-I.D.: uicvm.92288.134346U48073
 <92286.105253U48073@uicvm.uic.edu> <1992Oct12.222331.25505@cactus.org>
 <Bw30EA.BE5@news.cso.uiuc.edu> <14OCT92.04505430@vax.clarku.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

In article <14OCT92.04505430@vax.clarku.edu>, hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu says:
>
>I never received your original posting on this subject, unfortunately,
>so I missed any other observations you may have made.

[deleted material]

>Thomas D. is right, Williams would scream this at the top of his lungs,
>but the wording recorded in "Ball Four" is a little different, and
>I think more poetic, in its way.
>
>Ted's litany, accompanied by line drives:
>
>"My name is Ted fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball."
>        (blam)
>"Jesus H. Christ himself couldn't get me out."
>        (smash)
>"Here comes Jim Bunning, Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit
>slider of his."
>        (blam)
>"He doesn't really think he can get me out with that shit!"
>        (wham)
>"I'm Ted fucking Williams!"
>        (smash)
>
Actually, the "original" was my connection between the Ted Williams
worshipped by Taranto et. al. and the Ted Williams depicted in Bouton's
_Ball Four_.   I (perhaps overly tersely) wondered about the divinity
of such a man; yet, in high school, when we read the Aeneid, my
teacher used to compare Ajax to Bill "Moose" Skowron (sp?), Yankee first
baseman, so maybe there is a place in a pantheon for the Splendid
Splinter.

Cole Kendall
From: maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Literature Students/Small World
Date: 9 Oct 1992 18:05:44 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: fir.cs.berkeley.edu

Combining two responses:

In article <92305@netnews.upenn.edu>, crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:
|> In article <1992Oct9.012051.6207@bohra.cpg.oz.au> jane@bohra.cpg.oz.au (Jane Lean) writes:
|> >>
|> >> People do say things like "I didn't enjoy it, but I know it was
|> >> good"; I regard this as an example of the willing submission to
|> >> authority which made Fascism possible.
|> >
|> >Sorry, I have to take issue with this one.  Something can be movingly, 
|> >soul-wrenchingly, beautifully written ("Good" in most people's estimation),
|> >and yet not _enjoyable_.  I can't think of an example off the top of my
|> >head, but do people know what I mean?

Not that my answer counts, but "No".  :)

|> Also, I'd put the entire book "As I Lay Dying" in this category.  I didn't
|> enjoy it, but I knew it was good, even great.  It's not that I found it
|> boring or difficult to get through at all; I was riveted.  But that is
|> _not_ an enjoyable book.

Well, it was enjoyed by me!  I don't know the Dillard -- what I've read
of hers has struck me as lapidary, which may be the kind of unenjoyable
"goodness" Jane was after.

I think what we have here is a failure of communication.  Perhaps
there's some mental contortion I perform to reconfigure almost any
complex reading sensation as enjoyment?  Who knows....

	Vance
From: maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Humiliation [Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.]
Date: 8 Oct 1992 16:46:13 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: fir.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <92282.111122U48073@uicvm.uic.edu>, Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
|> 
|> This thread is starting to remind me of the game played by
|> the English professors in that satire of "Great Classics I
|> Admit Never Having Read" (or enjoyed).
|> 
|> PS  Now that I think of it, I never read the book in which
|> the game was described, and don't remember the title.

You admit that you haven't read it?  What humiliation! :)

The source is David Lodge -- but which one?  _Small World_?

	Vance