HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: vance@speech.sri.com (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Q about _Gravity's_Rainbow_
Date: 14 Apr 92 22:01:14 GMT
	<1992Apr9.174800.19856@infonode.ingr.com>
	<1992Apr9.142342.16989@hemlock.cray.com>
	<1992Apr10.195958.25042@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
	<VANCE.92Apr10151438@kyoto.speech.sri.com> <1992Apr13.1439
Organization: Speech recognition group, SRI
In-reply-to: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu's message of 14 Apr 92 20:26:16 GMT

In article <1992Apr14.202616.14990@watserv1.waterloo.edu> msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris) writes:
							   I consider
	  it a fair question to ask whether a certain sincerity about this
	  last endeavour does not or should not motivate the very highest
	  art.

	[and I wrote, in a word, "Sincerity???"]

   But saying what I meant by this sincerity is difficult for me. You noted
   that a work may not buy into my categorization in terms of form and content.

Does any work so buy, as opposed to its perceivers?  (We're down to
Philosophy 101 here, I suppose -- let's skip it.)

   Perhaps form and content don't quite give me the dichotomy
   I want. How about Apollonian and Dionysian (I am waxing too Paglia-tive here,
   but it all really comes from Nietzsche and Frazer, so...)?

Is a verbal sensibility like Joyce's Apollonian or Dionysian?  Not
Bacchically abandoned, nor proper as Pope.

   There's some sort of tension in art between rational creative control
   and the chthonian soup. Even in music I would think there'd be
   musical works which you would think are so much raw energy, others
   which are too clever (or pretty) by half.

And even in music, it's easy to find people who play both ends against
the middle -- Stockhausen comes to mind, whose musical personality is
so strongly composed of both.

   The question I'm asking about
   Joyce is whether any spiritous liquour from out of this primal soup
   bubbles up in him. Joe says yes. I think Joyce is heavily Apollonian,
   perhaps so much so as to be out of the balance that *I* might prefer.

I agree with Joe, though I don't think I mean to call Joyce
Apollonian, Dionysian, or anywhere on the scale between.  As Raymond
Chandler wrote in a somewhat different context, "She was strong with
the madness of love or fear, or a mixture of both, or maybe she was
just strong."

Just out of curiosity, who is Dionysian, for you?

	Vance
From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Q about _Gravity's_Rainbow_
Date: 7 Apr 92 16:01:31 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: vince@cadence.com (Vince Gibboni)

In article <1992Apr7.000918.27926@Cadence.COM>, vince@cadence (Vince Gibboni) writes:
>> Pynchon provides a different experience to the reader than Dostoevsky.
>> The good reader realizes this and responds in kind.

>> GR is certainly not a Pollock-like creation.  It has strong patterns
>> and interconnections and movements and themes which simply cannot be
>> presented in a traditional format, is all.

>    Fair enough, but how does one read this non-traditional format ?

Good luck, is how.  Pynchon is harder than most.

>    I've been told - and she certainly _seemed_ serious - that my 
>    mistake was in reading it "page by page", and I'm quite sure that 
>    this indeed is my problem - I just can't quite figure out what 
>    it means.

Pick a page at random and start reading.  If it bores you, try another
page.  Keep going.  There's a good chance you'll start getting fascinated
somewhere along the way.

>	       Are you _supposed_ to understand what's going on - 
>    or are you just supposed to let the images sort of wash over 
>    you or something ?  

Both.  Or neither.  There are certainly enough books on Pynchon to help
you see some kind of overall picture.

Since you mentioned Pollack, let me ask: do you have any appreciation
for non-representational painting?  Say a "typical" Picasso.  I'll
assume that you do.  The appreciation comes from both the closeness
to and the disparity from traditional painting.  You can find elements
of familiarity, but somehow they are put together non-literally.  The
same goes for non-narrative novels.  The author is doing something
different, and it takes a different response to appreciate.  In the
case of Pynchon, it also takes a good deal of stamina and homework.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: ptm57791@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Patrick T. Murzyn)
Subject: Re: Fantasy suggestions - list
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 19:49:03 GMT

jespah@milton.u.washington.edu (Kathleen Hunt) writes:

>??                      Incantations of Immortality serie

Just for the record, its the 'Incarnations of Immortality' series, by Piers
Anthony. Highly enjoyable, and I would recommend it myself..

					Patrick Murzyn
					ptm57791@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
					s
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: read any good books lately?
Date: 9 Apr 92 18:10:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: athena.1992Apr9.181055.5314
Followup-To: Rec.arts.books
Distribution: na
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I have read one new book that impressed me greatly. It's called
_Desierto: Memories of the Future_ by Charles Bowden. Essentially it's
about the Sonora desert and the impact of that environment on the
people. It's chock full of interesting characters. Bowden talks to
Charles Keating, the Lincoln Savings and Loan hustler, Alfonso the
former alcoholic turned painter, and Harley Shaw, the tracker of
mountain lions, and many others. He writes of the Seri Indians and of
the drug kingpin Caro Quintero. This is putatively a novel, although
Bowden has written six other books of non-fiction, none of which I
have read. It's written exceptionally well which is just as well due
to the essential bleakness of the topic. To conclude, a quick sample:

"I live in a time when the imagination is dead and everything is
memories. We call these memories the future. We have developed new
religions to pursue this faith and to win converts. The future will be
clean, the loins carefully sterile, the trash neatly sorted into
proper piles of plastics, paper, and metal, the food pure, always
there will be honey, never white sugar, the underarms unshaven yet
fresh with herbal aromas. It will all be memory of course, memory of a
white America before the Latins, the blues, the Asians who work too
hard and score too well on all the tests. In this memory, we speak
Ecology the sacred tongue, we park washed Volvos outside log A-frames,
pluck succulent vegetables from the black soil of our gardens, read
non-sexist books to each other in the glow of the evening."

This is just page 3! Just wait 'til he gets going - whiteheat!
It's published by Norton, 1991, ISBN 0-393-02935-2.

Keith

 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: vince@cadence.com (Vince Gibboni)
Subject: Re: Q about _Gravity's_Rainbow_
Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 23:13:58 GMT

mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>
> What seems to give you problems, though, is
> the fact that he assumes that the novel-reading public has learned a bit
> in the 100 years since Dostoyevsky wrote. GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is a
> quintessentially 20th-century novel--to complain because it doesn't follow
> the novelistic conventions of Dostoyevsky or (say) Dickens is like
> criticising these authors for failing to rely on the epsitolary form.
>
    While I grant you that the Novel-Reading Public may indeed have learned 
    a trick or two in the last hundred years, I find this hardly sufficient 
    criteria on which to base the assertion that they should then, de facto, 
    be prepared to make sense of - and to find the _significance_ in - some 
    daft punter raving about bananas.

    Kurt Vonnegut, who has an annoying habit of phrasing things better than 
    me, has said (in a better-phrased way) that the reader's job is hard enough
    and that a writer, while he may not enjoy it, is obliged - if only out
    of politeness - to exercise self-disipline on the reader's behalf.
    This, I think, is where Pynchon falls short.
    
> If this is a sample of your ability to interpret authorial intent, I
> advise you not to quit your day job. The notions that Pynchon gives a
> moment's thought to what "the true _artiste_" does, that he simply writes
> "whatever occurs to him" (your confession that you miss the structure of
> GR, I guess), or that he resorts to a "Pollock-like splash of adjectives
> wherever ... it seems best" are not merely false--they would be laughable
> if they were not so pathetic. If you wanted to set out to prove that you
> hadn't understood a word of Pynchon, you could not have done better than
> to write the paragraph I quote above.
>
    Well, not "authorial intent" so much as an authorial attitude problem.
    It would be folly, to be sure, to argue against the _possibility_ that
    Pynchon strove coldly and soberly to achieve a sense of sloppiness,
    but, in any event - or with any intent - it sloppiness which he has
    achieved. Although, to be fair, I think there's is definitely something
    of value to the book; it's just that - it seems to me - Pynchon
    wants us to be impressed by the great Truth he allows us to glimpse
    behind the clever packaging, when _mostly_ what's behind the clever
    packaging is more clever packaging.

> By the way, I haven't ever seen Pollock splash adjectives. I take it that
> the referenced canvas is in your private collection?
>

    It is indeed. I keep it (for effect, of course) beside Salinger's 
    gift of early-blooming parantheses (((()))).


--
                                                        vince@gda.cadence.com
    At first New Englanders may appear a bit stand-offish, but once you
    get to know them you'll realize that many of them are actually dead.
        - Dave Barry
From: kassover@sagittarius.crd.ge.com (David Kassover)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE
Date: 15 Apr 92 03:24:30 GMT
Organization: GE Corporate R&D Center

In article <JMC.92Apr14101849@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>Advice for those who fear being misunderstood when they go to the
>store and ask for rubbers.  Ask for a pair of rubbers.  The wrong
>interpretation requires a considerable stretch of the imagination.

Not if you're familiar with sailors and 13-button pants.


-- 
David Kassover             "Proper technique helps protect you against
uupsi!khazad!kassover	          sharp weapons and dull judges."
kassover@aule-tek.com                   F. Collins
kassover@ra.crd.ge.com
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:7704 soc.history:3515
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Paglia's PERSONAE
Date: 24 Mar 92 20:55:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: eff.1992Mar24.205551.16321
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org

In article <1992Mar17.181701.11192@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> frab@coos.dartmouth.edu (Pamela Chandran) writes:
>I'm only about 35 pages in Camille Paglia's SEXUAL PERSONAE.  I'd
>heard a great deal about it (much of which I initially disagreed
>with), but am engaged in the book nonetheless.  I find myself
>at utter odds with her theories and am wondering on what grounds,
>which agenda she uses, to call herself a feminist.  I haven't read
>anything else by her, though.  Please, illuminate me; I
>find her totally baffling.

She is currently a feminist in what used to be the normal sense
of the word: she wants equal opportunity for, and an end to discrimination
against, women.

This is consistent with her belief about the differences that follow from
gender and from choice of sexual personae. 


--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,     |"Les vrais paradis sont les paradis
mnemonic@eff.org | qu'on a perdus."
(617) 864-0665   | 
EFF, Cambridge   |          --Marcel Proust
From: mmeagher@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Meagher)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: booker prizewinner?
Date: 15 Apr 92 13:20:23 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

In <1992Apr13.1479.8571@channel1> eliot.gelwan@channel1.com (eliot gelwan) writes:

>Who won the Booker Prize for fiction this year (I heard it on Nat
>Pub Radio several weeks ago but didn't note it down)? Has anyone
Ben Okri's "The Famished  Road".
From: andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Andy Clews)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: ISBN's on books - format of
Date: 14 Apr 92 16:19:00 GMT
Organization: University of Sussex

I'm in the process of making an inventory of all my books, and I'm
recording the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) of all those
that have one.

The trouble is that the format is rather inconsistent. The majority
are coded in this format:

		0-123-45678-9

but some are coded like

		0-12-345678-9
or
		12-3456-789

and there are several other variations.

Most of the Penguins are coded

		0-12-34.5678-9

It looks like the first digit may be a country code, and the next 3
digits are a publisher code, but this is not *always* consistent.
Quite often the final digit is an X.

Does anyone know the definitive format for ISBN's and what the various
parts of the number stand for, and how numbers are assigned?

Thanks for any help - email would be appreciated because I'm on
holiday after Easter and any responses over usenet may be expired
before I return!

Cheers





-- 
Andy Clews, Computing Service, Univ. of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QJ, England
JANET: andy@uk.ac.sussex.syma      OTHER NETWORKS: andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kaschenb@fraser.sfu.ca (Kevin Ernest Aschenbrenner)
Subject: Another DAVID EDDINGS Q
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 21:11:37 GMT



Does anyone know the names of the next books in
the series that began with THE DIAMOND THRONE?
I remember reading it, and then not seeing the rest
of the series...are there anymore?  Has he finished
it yet--or is he going to make us wait like he did
with the last one.
From: mfriley@wpi.WPI.EDU (Margaret F Riley)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Martha Grimes
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:07:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: wpi.1992Apr8.170708.1301
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

In article <1992Apr08.030443.24342@crash.cts.com> jhitch@crash.cts.com (Jeffrey Hitchin) writes:
>In a previous article, mfriley@wpi.wpi.edu said:
>Another American member of the circle is Elizabeth George who now has out
>4 or 5 books featuring Inspector Thomas Lynely and Sergeant Barbara Havers of
>the Yard.   If you think Grimes was gory, try George!
>--------
>
>	Yes, but at least George can write!  Lately, Grimes has been
>absolutely AWFUL:
>

--trite quotations from Grimes deleted

>
>	You get the idea.  Ms. Grimes needs to find the difference
>between wild metaphors and good writing.  Also her characters are
>sometimes so unlikeable that I want to scream!  Of course, she
>doesn't need to write well, she sells enough that people will buy
>her crap no matter how bad it is.

Yes, I do have to agree with your observations about Grimes.  I personally
will take Marsh, James, or even George over her.   However, there is no
more to worry about.  she has switched to psychological thrillers with
a new publisher.    c'est la guerre!

Margaret
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: More English second authors (was r.a.b FAQ)dir
Date: 9 Apr 92 09:15:38 GMT
	<1992Apr8.164801.13870@samba.oit.unc.edu>
	<1992Apr9.000639.7667@sea.com>
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista

In article <1992Apr9.000639.7667@sea.com> wetering@sea.com 
(B. Van de Wetering) writes:

   >Having read at least one of his books in both languages, I'm not sure that
   >they are straight translations. 

  I think we can be pretty sure that they are not straight
translations, for the simple reason that it is *much* more difficult
to translate a book into English than to rewrite it in English. If the
author is producing the English version himself, he doesn't have to
confront the myriad problems that a translator has to deal with.
From: matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Q about _Gravity's_Rainbow_
Date: 7 Apr 92 22:31:42
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
	<1992Apr7.000918.27926@Cadence.COM> <73066@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu's message of 7 Apr 92 16:01:31 GMT

In article <73066@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:

> The
> same goes for non-narrative novels.  The author is doing something
> different, and it takes a different response to appreciate.  In the
> case of Pynchon, it also takes a good deal of stamina and homework.

Depends on which Pynchon you're talking about, of course.  _Vineland_
isn't really difficult reading, and _The Crying of Lot 49_ is even
less so.  I don't think there's anything particularly non-traditional
about the form of _The Crying of Lot 49_, for that matter.

--
Matthew Austern              I dreamt I was being followed by a roving band of
(510) 644-2618               of young Republicans, all wearing the same suit,
matt@physics.berkeley.edu    taunting me and shouting, "Politically correct
austern@theorm.lbl.gov       multiculturist scum!"... They were going to make
austern@lbl.bitnet	     me kiss Jesse Helms's picture when I woke up.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: packer@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Packer)
Subject: Re: Lit., Etc., Triv.  [was: ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE]
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1  
Organization: Dept. of Independence
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 01:10:00 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.122243.13877@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@midway.uchicago.edu writes...
>a hobby, and one of the more fun ones centers around the Kennedy
>assassination as a diversion to distract the world from the removal of
>two of the "voices crying out in the wilderness" against the less
>benign aspects of modernity.  He doesn't take it particularly


Now, let's think about this...Huxley's fiction often dealt with
the implicit irony of somebody in an exalted position suddenly
becoming dead meat or otherwise meeting crude reality head-on...
Huxley had cancer and could have gone at any time...He could
even have chosen to go at a particular time... 

What was the situation with Lewis? How did he die? Is there
anything in his work that would resonate with a situation like 
the Kennedy assassination?
From: adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Italo Svevo
Date: 15 Apr 1992 17:07:03 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mizar.usc.edu

In article <1992Apr15.225939.29118@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> 
br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col) writes:
|
| I've read ZENO several times, and my students in 20th
| Century World Lit. are reading and discussing it this
| week and next.  It's a splenedid book, an unjustly
| neglected masterpiece.  The wry, north Italian humor
| is priceless, and his senup of psychiatry is one of the
| best ever.  P.N Furbank's biography of Svevo is a good
| place for background on him and his milieu in Trieste.

I agree with you entirely, but I do have a question about the
standard English translation.  I am without Italian, unfortunately,
but I understand that the translation is not true to the original
in tone.  Is this true?

Arne
From: sullivana@gtephx.UUCP (Anne Sullivan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Children's book name wanted
Summary: Dr.Seuss
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:56:41 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona

In article <rtfbiINNfnv@agate.berkeley.edu>, shirriff@sprite.berkeley.edu (Ken Shirriff) writes:
> Does anyone recognize the following book:
> It involves a dike that's protecting the land and there are trees holding
> the dike together.  Birds come and peck at the tree roots, putting holes
> in the dike and endangering everyone.  It's like a Dr. Seuss book, but I've
> checked the Dr. Seuss books and it doesn't seem to be one of them.
> 
I'm sure it is a Dr.Seuss book.  The title Bartholemew and the Oobleck popped
into my head when I read your description, but I'm not sure that's right.
Maybe it's another book with Bartolemew.  (spelling looks wrong, sorry)

Anne Sullivan  @ AG Communication Systems, Phoenix AZ  
(A joint venture of GTE and AT&T)
UUCP: ...!{ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!samsung!romed!asuvax | att}!gtephx!sullivana   
Internet: gtephx!sullivana@asuvax.eas.asu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: repnomar@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler)
Subject: Re: Children's book name wanted
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 23:23:35 GMT

>In article <rtfbiINNfnv@agate.berkeley.edu>, shirriff@sprite.berkeley.edu (Ken Shirriff) writes:
>> Does anyone recognize the following book:
>> It involves a dike that's protecting the land and there are trees holding
>> the dike together.  Birds come and peck at the tree roots, putting holes
>> in the dike and endangering everyone.  It's like a Dr. Seuss book, but I've
>> checked the Dr. Seuss books and it doesn't seem to be one of them.

Yes, it is a Dr. Seuss book.  It's called _The King's Stilts_, which may not
have rung a bell when you were looking for it.

In this book, we discover that "PC" doesn't stand for "Politically Correct" at
all: it stands for "Patrol Cat!"

/Janet

-- 
send mail to repnomar@leland.stanford.edu
Purdy...lowered his voice.  "Now.  We never had this conversation."   B.J. was 
alarmed to hear it.  Who _had_ had this conversation and what had he been 
doing while they had it?
From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: King Arthur. Many Many Versions...
Date: 10 Apr 92 17:33:43 GMT
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA

In article <29E23641.15251@ics.uci.edu> tittle@ics.uci.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) writes:
>Two files here: one is my arthur-novels list.  The second is my
>arthur-related list.  I can make this a FAQ if people want.

Yes, please!

And here are some "adds":

Williams, Charles:  TALIESSIN THROUGH LOGRES and THE REGION OF THE
SUMMER STARS.  A couple of dozen poems which are William's version of
the Matter of Britain.  Packaged (in the U.S., by Eerdman's) in a
single volume with ARTHURIAN TORSO, a pair of essays -- Williams's
incredibly well-researched history of the Arthuriad (incomplete because
he died) and C.S. Lewis's commentary-cum-explication-cum-panegyric on
Williams's poems.

Lewis, C.S.:  THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH.  Belongs here if KNIGHT LIFE does,
anyway. . .  Merlyn returns.

I have others at home, but my memory is fading.  (I can feel it, Dave.
Please stop.)


			Lord!  Here comes the flood,
			We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood.
			If again the seas are silent, and any still alive,
			It'll be those who gave their island to survive.
			Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry. . .
				-- Peter Gabriel
		
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 20:12:00 GMT

	'Turnpike' always sounded to me like it should refer to a 
Swiss traitor: where does the word come from?

							James Nicoll