HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: riawelch@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Mad City Blues)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Encyclopedia Brit.
Date: 10 Sep 92 13:11:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1992Sep9.210547.20953@ncar.ucar.edu>, chucks@uars2.acd.ucar.edu (Chuck Smythe) writes...
>I went shopping for a used Brittanica a number of years ago (Feynman had
>told us too many tales about its value as a research tool.)   Stagehouse II,
>the toniest of Boulder's used bookstores, had an 11th.  Wanted $1100 for it!

This price is ridiculous.  I bought a set of the 11th edition last April at
Paul's Bookstore in Madision, WI.  It cost 75 bucks, plus tax.  It wasn't the
big edition, but the "Handy Volume" edition distributed by Sears, Roebuck (!). 
This edition is unabridged, but the individual volumes are reduced in size,
although the maps remain the same size as in the standard edition.  The type is
still easy to read, and I appreciate the smaller, easier-to-hold volumes.

I love the 11th edition; the articles are written so well and the illustrations
and maps are so beautiful.  However, I think that 1100 bucks is just too much
to pay.

By the way, on the same trip I found a set of Brittanicas printed in 1952 or
thereabouts at Shakespeare's Books on the capitol square.  They were asking 90
dollars.  I think the moral is to shop around if you want an old set of
encyclopedias.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin W. Welch  riawelch@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu   

Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when
we were in them.--Ernest Hemingway
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Re: Crawford Kill[sic]ian
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 06:44:15 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <15122@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>.... The pretentious Irish Killians need an extra el,  ...

	Er, that's ell (or was that intentional? :) )

Roger Squires
rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Androgyny & The Arts
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 14:24:06 GMT

The blurb to Caedmon's recording of Claire Bloom's reading of Virginia
Woolf's *A Room of One's Own* contains this quotation from Mitchell A.
Leaska, President, The Vorginia Woolf Society.

	"The male chauvinist and the militant feminist were alike
	incapable of producing good fiction...Great artists, Virginia
	Woolf asserted, were androgynous, their minds were unimpeded,
	and their imagination incandescent. And androgyny could only
	exist when one had intellectual freedom, and that freedom
	depended upon material things, the most fundamental metaphors
	of which were five hundred pounds a year and a room of one's
	own."

Fido
From: klier@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: ... on Miss Manners (cough)
Date: 10 Sep 92 19:34:57 -0500
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath) writes:
> I was wondering if anyone else out there is a reader of Miss Manners,
> or if there are any other etiquette buffs out there. I'd be intersted
> to here from you, if you're out there.

Oh yes, I used to read them by the pound!  A peek at a life I'd never
know!  Butlers?  Salvers?  How to address an ambassador?  How to
eat an artichoke?  Fascinating stuff!

I have to confess, though, that with the exceptions of trying to answer
all invitations properly, write thank you notes, and similar basic kindnesses, 
my grasp of etiquette has slipped to the point that "good manners" means
you don't pick ticks at the table -- instead you excuse yourself and go
elsewhere.  Or maybe I've just been hanging around with too many field
biologists.  ;-)

Kay Klier  Biology Dept  UNI

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William R. Smith)
Subject: Re: time for burgess?
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 20:59:42 GMT

john lovett  writes:
	 
	 Burgess comes across in the book as something of a monster, at least in
	 respect to the way he treated his wife.  he watched her drink herself

Mark Taranto writes:
	 
	  After the dinner, Burgess' wife said something that annoyed
	him, so Burgess grabbed both of her hands and forced her down
	to the pavement, while berating her.  




One of myy high school English teachers said that many people who
love a particular writer or poet would not want to be around them, and
would be shocked by their behavior.  I've thought of this often when
I hear about how some artist or writer behaved.  

This teacher lived part of each year in the Virgin Islands and knew
Hemingway fairly well.  I believe she also knew a few other literary
types and may well have spoken from experience about their behavior.

I derive some hidden pleasure from knowing that persons who love the
works of an author would gringe at their lifestyle.



William Sburgfort Smith
Intel, SSD
From: "john lovett" <john.lovett@channel1.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: time for burgess?
Date: 4 Sep 92 18:35:10 EST
Reply-To: "john lovett" <john.lovett@channel1.com>
Distribution: rec
Organization: Channel 1 Communications



K> spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius) writes:
>
>Just picked up the second volume of Anthony Burgess' autobiography, and
was
>wondering if I should put of reading it until I obtain and read the
first
>volume.
>
>Any comments would be appreciated.  Well, all comments will be read,
anyway.
>
Burgess comes across in the book as something of a monster, at least in
respect to the way he treated his wife.  he watched her drink herself
to death without lifting a finger to stop her; even after the doctors
had warned that any more  alcohol would kill her.

The horrific nature of her illness and death is emphasized by the
straightforward way in which Burgess describes them.  He makes no
excuses for himself.  Just a bleak description of what happened.

There are several entertaining anecdotes of brawls with literary
antagonists (and others) in barrooms the world over - bottles broken
over heads, etc.  I think he was in his forties and fifties at the time.
--
Channel 1 (R)   Cambridge, MA

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: subjects to avoid
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 12:28:59 GMT

sometimes a Wombat writes:

	Francis Muir writes:

		It seems to me that there was a time in the arts in 
		England -- and it lasted about the 50 years from 1880 
		to 1930 -- when gender confusion was almost a requirement 
		to the creative spirit ...  For me, it start with the 
		pre-Raphaelites and Ruskin, and was killed by Freud. 

	I won't argue with Freud having murdered sleep, but I find the 
	first date you mention to be odd.  Wasn't the PRB first active 
	in the late 1850's/early 1860's?  How do you trace something 
	with a 1880 beginning date to them?  And, since I missed the 
	first part of the thread, how do you account for Hopkins and 
	for Tennyson?  Well, I think I can do the latter.  Samuel Butler 
	would be harder.

Did I say "the 50 years from 1880 to 1930"? I meant "the 80 years from
1850 to 1930". I must be slipping back into transpositions. Larry is
almost absolutely right. If I had to give a precise date it would be
the Wedding Day of Euphemia Gray & John Ruskin. 1848? I don't know about
Tennyson but one small detail. As Peacock's *Gryll Grange* came out
in serial form (Blackwood's?), Lord Alfred T would trot over to Peacock's
cousin and childhood sweetheart, Holly Ommany, and give her his copy.

							Semper Fido

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: abrams@dan.ccd.bnl.gov (The Ancient Programmer)
Subject: Title/Author needed
Organization: Brookhaven National Lab. Upton NY 11973
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 17:23:01 GMT

	Some years ago, I read a book about a Cornish hero/family
named Poldark.  It was set in Cornwall in the late 18th century.
Can anyone tell mne the name of the book and the author's name?
I would greatly appreciate any information.

--
abrams@bnl.gov        |/ |    ^  :"Man hears what he wants to hear,
                      |\ |__ /-\ :         and disregards the rest."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: chucks@uars2.acd.ucar.edu (Chuck Smythe)
Subject: Re: Ken Kesey's latest
Organization: Ntl Center for Atmospheric Research, Atmospheric Chemistry
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 16:08:41 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.040322.6325@NeoSoft.com> claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird) writes:
>Any early returns on Mr. Kesey's first novel in decades?

Last week's _NYT Book Review_ trashed it.

			Chuck Smythe
From: klier@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Chautauqua ? (Zen & the Art...)
Date: 10 Sep 92 19:18:48 -0500
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

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.  

The Chautauqua Society still survives, over 100 years after its 
founding in Chautauqua, NY, though the 'tent meetings' seem to have
gotten lost along the way.  It's a group dedicated to "adult cultural
literacy" in today's parlance; back in the 1870's, Chautauqua meetings
came to town and presented *real plays* (Shakespeare!), music, good
books...  It was often the only post-grade-school education available
in the hinterlands (like Iowa!), and it certainly was entertaining. 8-) 

My aunt belongs to a chautauqua group in a small Iowa town.  The
members (all ladies) choose a subject of interest, find a book on 
the subject, and everyone reads it.  Then they start researching
various aspects and report back to the group.  It's very much 
like the grad school colloquia I attended, though the subject 
is usually literary or historical, not botanical!  A chautauqua 
group from one town may also make presentations to other towns.  

As a result, my aunt, who has never attended college, has a decent
working knowledge of many subjects, easily shaming me at times with
the breadth of her knowledge!  (But then, she's had a few more years
to learn. ;-) )

I'm writing this from memory of conversations with her about chautauqua,
and I also have a vague memory of a large, white, heavily gingerbreaded
building on a lake -- I'd guess this is Chautauqua Lake, NY, being
restored in honor of the centennial of the society -- about 1974 or 75,
I think.

Kay Klier  Biology Dept  UNI
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: The Civil War
Date: 14 Sep 92 16:41:38 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences


  Television has been described as an invention for which there is
  no use. Until PBS aired Ken Burns' monumental documentary on the
  Civil War that might have true. I remember deciding to ignore it,
  but after catching 20 seconds of it during a remote control stop
  over, I was hooked. Wonderful stuff. Recently I was able to latch
  on to the CD of the soundtrack, and it too is wonderful. It has
  all of the recurring melodies and concludes with a love letter
  which is so eloquent and wrenching (written a week before the
  writer's death at the first battle of Bull Run) that it justifies
  the claim made in the CD liner notes that in 1861 Americans were
  probably the most literate nation on earth (As opposed to Mars,
  I guess. As opposed to now.) My father used to embarrass me by
  starting to tear up whenever he heard the Battle Hymn of the Republic,
  so I ought to have been innoculated against the bathos of some of
  those sounds, but I guess not.

  I post this here, since no other forum has quite the catch-all
  quality of r.a.b. Besides the film and the music, there is also
  a coffee table companion book, I believe, and any number of Shelby
  Foote's novels and histories have benefited from exposure in the
  project. For those of you who missed it, Foote acts something
  like a guardian angel or presiding genius for the project, his
  bourbon drawl being almost unbearably appropriate for the material.
  There were several other historians who appeared on camera, but
  Foote's charisma and story telling magic divied the contributors into
  2 camps: Foote and everyone else. Which is unfortunate, since many
  of those were learned, charming folk who just didn't happen to 
  be talented Southern story tellers.

  Anyway, if you missed it, the whole thing exists on video tape and
  is readily available and overwhelmingly addicting.

-- 
Coach Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> Season: 0-3 Lifetime: 0-5 
I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you all to repent from your sins.
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Progress (Was : Re: The Literary Canon)
Date: 9 Sep 92 19:16:01 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <MATT.92Sep8142949@physics3.berkeley.edu>, matt@physics3.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes:
# Are there two races?  Six?  A hundred?  And do you want to make the
# division according to skin color, or blood type, or nose shape, or
# length of the femur, or shape of the skull, or something else?  You
# will get a different classification depending on what you choose.
# 
# People have made a number of different racial classifications
# throughout history, all equally good, and equally arbitrary.  Perhaps
# because of this, about half of today's physical anthropologists no
# longer feel that it is a useful concept.
# 
# Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a

It rather depends on your purpose.  For determining public policy,
I agree.  For deciding who to hire, I agree.  But if I were given
a large sum of money to attempt to do genetic screening for 
Tay-Sachs disease, or sickle-cell anemia, I would rely on the
useless concept of race to target populations likely to be 
carriers of either disease.
-- 
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: anand@Cadence.COM (Anand Bemra)
Subject: jmc's views on left (was Re: The Literary Canon)
Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 15:59:11 GMT

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
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, ...

>Of course, Soviet crimes and blunders began to blunt this influence
>almost from the first.  However, it's not gone.  Look in
>misc.activism.progressive for the continued romanticism about Castro
>and compare it with the much earlier romanticism about the Soviet
>Union, and the more recent romanticism about the Sandinistas.

If people sympathise with Cuba for the kind of economic warfare
it is suffering due to US, you can hardly call that romanticism.
Why is that, US which has "Free Market" banner stapled to its
dick, prevents India from selling rice to Cuba? Why should US
prevent India from donating a few hundred buffalos to Vietnam as
it did after the Vietnam war?

And by the way, every leftist is not your starry eyed communist
as much as you'd like to believe that.

"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked
why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist"
 
               --Dom Helder Camara
               Brazilian Bishop
               Nobel Peace Prize nominee


anand


--
Screw PBS & NPR news. Tired of news "sanitized for your protection?". Try:
misc.activism.progressive, "Lies Of Our [NY]Times", "Z" magazine (Boston).
KPFA 94.1 FM (Bay Area), 90.7 (L.A.), 90.1 (Houston, TX), 89.3 (Washington, DC)
These are my opinions, not my employer's. 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 20:21:00 GMT

Maven o'Mirth writes...
>Indeed.  Refer to the comment I made about a difficulty with the *thought*
>behind the genre, and I think you will find we have reached some modicum
>of agreement as to why I like Kerouac as Kerouac and why you do not like
>Kerouac as a Beat writer, and perhaps, *the* Beat writer.  I do not see
>him as such primarily, but rather see him first as an author I enjoy and
>second as a Beat writer.  I therefore do not exclude myself from something
>I might potentially enjoy because it belongs to a genre I previously
>decided I disapproved of.  Which is not to say necessarily that you do,
>but it seems that way to me from the tenor of your comments.  (There are
>some excellent country-western artists out there who do not play a steel
>guitar or sing with a twang :), which I am hoping was exactly the point
>you were trying to make.)
+----------------------------------------SubG--------------------------------+
Nope.  The reason why I make general statements about the "Beat artists" is
because I have read/see/heard the bulk of what they've produced (or rather,
what they've produced that survives into the common body of "Beat art"),
and I tend not to like any of it, largely because the quality, IMNSHO, is
lacking.  This is not something I declared outright after reading a Ginsberg
poem (several of which I quite like) or, say, _On the Road_, but something
that I discovered after having gone through the lot:  "I don't like 75% of
Ginsberg," "I don't like 80% of Kerouac," "I don't like 90% of Burroughs,"
u.s.w. THEREFORE "I don't generally like Beat writers."  
				-but not-
"I didn't like _The Naked Lunch_, _Queer_ or _The Western Lands_"  THEREFORE
"I probably won't like _Desolation Angels_, _On the Road_ or _Dharma Bums_."
THEREFORE "I don't generally like Beat writers."
+-------------------------------------SubG----------------------------------+

[deletia]

>I myself am concerned with the prior.  And concerned with keeping this
>"intellectual" in the sense that it not creep over into the personal. 
>Which, undoubtedly, was quite a bit to ask.  
>Sheryl Stover

+--------------------------------------SubG----------------------------------+
..which sounds a bit like, "'intellectual' in the sense that even if I
show myself to be a complete dunderhead, you'll have the decency not to 
point it out to others in a loud voice."  It has been my considered opinion
for some time that reading (much less WRITING) is a very personal business,
and keeping it "purely intellectual" is redoubtably a questionable process,
wont to cause collick, thinning of the blood and the pox.  







Clean living and
righteous thoughts,
Yours etc.,





SubGenius

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Ken Kesey's latest
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 16:50:21 GMT

Chuck Smythe writes:

	Cameron Laird writes:

		Any early returns on Mr. Kesey's first novel in decades?

	Last week's _NYT Book Review_ trashed it.

Pity no-one thought to trash Mr Kesey himself some time ago. He is pond 
scum.

							Fido
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Fowles' `The Collector'
Date: 6 Sep 92 21:37:28 GMT


mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
 
> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
 
>> The Narration of THE COLLECTOR is interesting.  It is written in the form
>> of journals, and the contrast in style is done well.  What came through,
>> for me, was how full the young woman's life was -- although she was held
>> captive.
 
> My take is somewhat different: I thought the first half of the book was
> the setup for the young woman's half--in which we learn not that her life
> was full, but that her reluctance to take the risk of commitment had left
> her life emptier than it would have been. The young woman is the character
> who truly interests the young writer Fowles--I'd go so far as to say that
> his portrayal of her reflects some of his (then) ambivalence about women.
> In any case, THE COLLECTOR, like all of Fowles's fiction up through THE
> FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN, is concerned with the consequences of
> existential choices, or of failing to make them. In THE COLLECTOR, the
> Collector himself is little more than a device.
 
I'll go with Mike on this.  It's been a while since I read the book.  It
IS clear that the "woman is the character who truly interests the young
writer Fowles."  Perhaps I should have written that her life was more
complex, not more full.
 
I do remember that I stayed up late finishing the book, and that the ending
upset me so much that I could not go to sleep for some time.
 
 
Mark
 
 
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: entpph@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Subject: Re: [UPI] Report: Book censorship, challenges in schools at 10-year high
Reply-To: entpph@ritvax.isc.rit.edu
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 13:04:03 GMT

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.

Erik Timmerman
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 20:08:00 GMT

Mike Godwin writes...
>Yes, but NAKED CAME THE STRANGER was *intended* to be both ludicrous and
>lurid. The book was a group project of several "name" authors, who
>published under the pseudonym "Penelope Ashe." 
>--Mike

+-----------------------------------------SubG---------------------------------+
Nice of everyone to point that out, especially since their source of information
is the same as mine--the book itself.  

Anyway, the argument that since the book was "*intended*" to be lurid and
ludicrous does not signify.  Although I intend my next line:

	We killed and ate seventeen nuns.  Belched.  Then we had sex,
	missionary position.

..to be ludicrous and lurid, that does not make it any better reading.
But feel free to continue to state the bleedin' obvious in the future if it
makes you feel better.




Yours etc.,




SubGenius
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 9 Sep 92 16:08:03 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

Fiona Webster writes:

	That is all for today.  Since Miss Manners is already taken, I shall
	adopt the moniker of Ms. Officious Courtesy

Barbara Hlavin asks:

	May I be Miss Communication?

I hereby resign my handle of "sometimes a Wombat" and my true name, and
henceforth shall be known to the net as Mr. E------.

Thank you.

	Mr. E-----
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu          \  "One like a wombat prowled obtuse
The insane don't need disclaimers \  and furry"  --Christina Rossetti