HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: elusive allusion
Date: 6 Sep 92 16:03:05 GMT
Organization: Emory University, Dept of Math and CS

I turn to the estimable rab-wits to do for me what all the reference
books around the house (including Benet's, Brewer's, and Drabble's) and
the Emory reference desk could not:  define for me a phrase in this
sunday's NYT magazine "hers" column.

*Everywhere you look, there are men talking.  It's like a giant
BLOVIATION BEE.*

Any wisdom to shed on my constricted vocabulary, anyone?

Rage away,

meg

-- 

 Meg Worley 				Internet:  mworley@mathcs.emory.edu		
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Encyclopedia Brit.
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<1992Sep9.025620.21746@athena.cs.uga.edu> <12229@optilink.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Date: 11 Sep 92 21:52:37

Try the any of the Britannica articles having to do with Soviet places.
They are really going to have to scramble to revise these.  Compare
the articles on Estonia in the 14th and 15th editions.  The earlier
tells how Estonia was taken over, and the later is Soviet propaganda.
The 15th edition article on Stalin isn't bad, however,
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: gwr@hedonist-1.lanl.gov (Graham W. Redgrave)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Tomes for 'Tweens (Was:  thoughts on recent books)
Date: 15 Sep 92 17:17:15 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory

In article <ydznc2p@lynx.unm.edu>, rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
|> 
|> I've read various books lately, some of them mentioned recently
|> here, and here are some thoughts on them.

[...the time has come, the Walrus said...{non sequitur in locem deletia}]

|> _A Wrinkle in Time_, Madeleine L'Engle
|> 	I was in the middle of this one when Ms. Klier mentioned
|> 	it recently. A teenage book, this has an outlook
|> 	that is clearly, er, Catholic :^)  Not bad, but children's
|> 	books that I liked better recently are Charlotte's Web,
|> 	The Swing in the Summerhouse, and What The Witch Left,
|> 	although I guess these don't really address the 'tweens,' as
|> 	Tolkien calls them.

One of my absolute favorites as a 'tween was _A Wizard of Earthsea_,
and to some lesser extent the others in the _Earthsea Trilogy_, by
Ursula K. LeGuin:  "... a tender fantasy adventure about a boy's
coming of age in a world of mystery, magic, and shadows ...".  But
seriously, I thought the story-telling of it was wonderful, and 
mythological style got me thinking about many Big Things when I was 
but a lad.

|> Roger Squires
|> rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu


-- 
Graham Redgrave    |    --  I don't speak for the government, 
gwr@life.lanl.gov  |        but I wish the government would speak for me ...  --
From: ekman@netcom.com (Crossly the Glad-Eyed Bear)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: elusive allusion
Summary: Harding.
Date: 6 Sep 92 21:14:51 GMT
Organization: Home for the Terminally Infirm

In article <6SEP199214375230@zeus.tamu.edu>, spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius) writes:
> 
> the term "bloviating" was coined by a past President of the United Snakes
> (Theo Roooooseyvelt, I believe) to describe politicians that talk a great
> 

Warren Gamaliel Harding.
-- 
Crossly the Glad-Eyed Bear              ekman@netcom.com
Home for the Terminally Infirm, Redwood City, California
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:16331 soc.history:8318
From: nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,soc.history
Subject: Re: The Civil War
Date: 15 Sep 92 19:28:14 GMT
Reply-To: nall@sun8.scri.fsu.edu (John Nall)
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Distribution: usa
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <CB.92Sep15120855@tamarack13.timbuk> cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster) writes:
>
>Jeff Davis reviewed the PBS Civil War series in rec.arts.books (was the
>series run recently?).  I'd like to add a couple of comments.
>
>Jeff didn't mention that Shelby Foote also wrote one of the really big
>(I'd say 20 pounds worth) multi-volume Civil War sets.  I haven't read

   ...

   And, having got on a Civil War (strange term, that.  It was most
   emphatically *not* civil - at least not toward the last) kick a
   few months ago, and having embarked on an orgy of reading just
   everything I could put my hands on regarding it, I, too, would
   like to add a couple of comments.

   First, for me, things did not really start to fall into place
   until I had read a *lot* about it.  That is, there are a lot of
   different books, about a lot of different events, but until one
   has an overall grasp of why different battles were fought, the
   characteristics of the different generals involved, the political
   battles being waged behind the scenes (both North and South) and
   the simultaneous things happening in the different geograpical
   areas, it is hard to really appreciate these individual books.

   Second, having achieved that overall grasp (which I arrogantly claim
   to have done :-) ) it is amazing how much can be gotten out of
   re-reading the same material again! 

   I don't know whether watching the PBS series would give that 
   overview or not.  Possibly it would, but I've never seen it.

   John



--
John W. Nall              | Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
nall@mailer.scri.fsu.edu  | Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
   "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou....and perhaps some
	 munchies, couple of pillows, some music.." - Omar Khayyam (modern)
From: fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Bernard Berenson
Date: 14 Sep 92 19:55:41 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:

> What a load of codswallop. "nearly paralyzed"? To the contrary. Berenson
> brought order to the marketplace.

     Ah.  He maka da trains runna on time.


> Of course there were "incidents". In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries
> there was a huge demand for art here in the States, and masses of money
> behind the demand. Young countries being what they are, there were plenty
> of charlatans around to fill the demand with fake stuff.

     Sympathies entirely with the charlatans.  All art markets are inherently
confidence games and where there are millionaires who ache to become Art Patronsbut no forgers to fatten on their vanity the times are seriously out of joint.

                                                 -- jf
From: robin@duich.turing.ac.uk (Robin Boswell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: King in Yellow, publication date?
Date: 7 Sep 92 14:57:28 GMT
Organization: The Turing Institute Limited, Glasgow, Scotland.


   Can anyone tell me when William Chambers' "The King in Yellow" was
first published?  (I've recently acquired a version published by
Dedalus (sic) which rather surprisingly doesn't include this
information).

                  Thanks,

                    Robin Boswell.
From: amnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Lord Byron
Date: 15 Sep 92 21:14:00 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In <1992Sep15.194245.19470@unlv.edu> frank@snooks.isri.unlv.edu 
(Frank Jenkins) writes:

>I am looking for a good, available biography of Lord Byron. Any suggestions?

Sure.  I suggest you give the biography industry a well-deserved
break and read our mad, bad and dangerous-to-know friend's Letters
and Journals from Picador, unfortunately only a 'selected' few by
Leslie Marchand.  Debauchery is so much more interesting when recounted
first-hand, don't you think?  I think the lout even broke Russell's
record in Venice, with well in excess of _two hundred_ willing victims
in one year, lovingly selected from all levels of Venetian Society.

-- 
Marko Amnell
amnell@klaava.helsinki.fi
Graduate Student in Philosophy
From: lew@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (lewis.h.mammel..jr)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Back to Books
Summary: children's books
Date: 11 Sep 92 15:00:15 GMT
Organization: AT&T

In article <4994@balrog.ctron.com>, mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown) writes:
> 
> Read children's literature. Specifically, children's picture books, then
> children's fiction.
> 

I recently ( a few months ago ) bought Pinochio at Crown Books.
It's one of those reprints of an old edition. Did you know that
in the book Pinochio squashes Jiminy Cricket? ( Well, it's a
talking cricket, anyway. ) Pinochio was written by Carlo Collodi
circa 1870.

I have a book of fairy tales, also purchased at Crown Books and
also a reprint of an old edition. I picked it up mainly because
of "The Bushy Bride", but it was a nice thick handsome book for
about $10.


Lew Mammel, Jr.
From: kassover@rumsey.crd.ge.com (David Kassover)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Crawford Kill[sic]ian
Date: 15 Sep 92 15:26:03 GMT
Organization: what, me organize?

In article <15122@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>David Fiander apologizes for misspelling my name...no need. It's the curse of
>the Kilians. The pretentious Irish Killians need an extra el, while we simple
>German peasant Kilians make do with one. We're convinced, however, that the
>original St. Kilian (an Irish missionary to the Germans, killed for his
>trouble) spelled his name our way. I guess if we hadn't martyred him, we
>wouldn't be under the curse. (But if we hadn't martyred him, we wouldn't have
>adopted his name in a burst of belated guilt... :))

How big is an extra ell of land, and what would either a peasant
or a pretentioner do with one?

One such letter was deemed good enough for a galactic hero, at
least for the first book or so.



-- 
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
From: sph0301@utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu (Kate Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: thoughts on recent books
Date: 15 Sep 1992 19:47:26 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Texas School of Public Health

In article <1992Sep15.140637.26443@grebyn.com> fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster) 
writes:
>Subject: Re: thoughts on recent books
>Roger Squires writes:
>>_What's Bred in the Bone_ by Davies
>>	The High Priestess of the RAB Circle of Eight assigned this
>>	one for us to read :) and it was quite enjoyable.
>
>I hope, Roger, you weren't expecting us to giggle without question
>here.  I, for one, would like to know: who *are* the RAB Circle of
>Eight?  Who is their High Priestess?  And most importantly, what
>deity or deities do they worship, and by what rites?




Circle of Eight...I love it!  And since it's the Ides of September the
time has come for some discussion of this month's selections (and my 
e-mail isn't working :(  ).

                                                        High Priestess
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Marriage as Hell: Charlotte Perkins Gilman on TV
Date: 7 Sep 92 19:26:33 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner


For those of us still bumming about the campus, "The Yellow Wallpaper"
is also collected in the Norton Anthology of American Literature, in I
believe volume 2.

Also read Gilman's classic, HERLAND, which ties into the utopialist
thread going on here.

Tying in a third thread, I avoid any new book labled a "classic".  It's
okay in old, dead ones, tho'.

 	Larry "Bring out yer dead books!" Hammer
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu          \  "What can be seen, heard, and learned, 
The insane don't need disclaimers \  this I prize." -- Heraclitus, #13
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: wwhitman@nevada.edu (MICHAEL WISE)
Subject: Re: notebook computers (was Re: Books on Disc)
Organization: University of Nevada System Computing Services
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 09:41:52 GMT

Cool. Most of the fogies in my department think of a computer as a glorified
typewriter. My dream would be to carry the notebook with a complement of
"great literature" on board to wherever my wandering instincts happen to
take me. The next best solution is to take the Norton Anthologies, which
don't select the same stuff I would select. Literature people and com-
puter people need to come together on this. We've done thousands of studies
on how readers respond to texts. How about some studies on how readers re-
spond to different presentations on computer screens? A significant passage
of "Walden" greets me in Ultrafont when I turn on the computer; other
passages greet me when I open various applications. Fingerers are greeted
with a passage from Faulkner when they look me up. I have something that 
beats a dictionary of quotations since I can call up the whole work through
Gutenburg and the magic of electronic text. What are people afraid of?
Books will not disappear just because we can put them on disk. The ideas
are not lost, just the paper. And the reader chooses the presentation,
whether it's a cursory scan or a phonological transcription. Books are
not sacred; it is the ideas, the language, the style that is sacred. 
	On another note... sometimes a novel affects you at certain times
in your life when you are receptive to those ideas. I read Sons and Lovers
and got a certain impression of the novel and its ideas. I don't think
a revised edition with the nasty bits thrown in will significantly alter
that impression. The shock value is lost on the modern reader, but the
subtle way Lawrence broaches the taboo is fine craftmanship. Isn't it more
like life to titillate than to bare it all? I still closmy eyes when I
kiss her lips...

Michael Wise
alias O Captain! My Captain!
UNLV English Department

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: Androgyny & The Arts
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:18:53 GMT

Francis quotes a blurb pertaining to Woolf's "A Room of One's Own":
>	"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."

I've been puzzling over this for a while now.  Curious that the author
would choose such hackneyed, emotionally charged phrases as "male
chauvinist" and "militant feminist" to set up in contrast to mental
and imaginative androgyny (whatever that is).  My usual response to
anyone who insists on maleness as superior to femaleness, or vice
versa, is to mumble, "Methinks he doth protest too much."  In other
words, I wonder (don't you?) whether an outspokenly "macho" male, for
example, is secretly conflicted about his heterosexuality, and
frightened of the female traits he encounters within himself.  Such
conflicts, as we know well from such examples as Hemingway, can
often lead to excellent fiction.  Androgyny in a state of total
freedom might be too self-accepting, too content, to sustain the
passion that gives rise to good storytelling.  

But the sort of androgyny that contrasts to "(fe)male chauvinist" is
not exactly what Woolf meant, is it?  I suspect that Francis posted
this blurb because it doesn't quite hang together, because this
assertion cries out to be challenged.  So let's do it: let's challenge
it.  If the money for time and a "room of one's own" is available,
then what remains to justify calling androgyny a useful quality in
the artist?  If a mind is "unimpeded," then what will drive the com-
pulsion to write?  And can one not write with passion, while remaining
very much invested in a set of (supposedly) female, or male, virtues?

Another way of putting it: I feel, intuitively, that there is truth
in the statement that androgyny is good for art.  But how do we
re-cast Woolf's version of it, for the times we live in now?  What
are *defensible* arguments for the value of androgyny?

							--Fiona
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: nevins@husc.harvard.edu
Subject: _What's Bred in the Bone_
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 09:42:28 GMT

Mr. Squires gave a very good review of this book, I think, but I'd like
to add to his "I didn't learn anything from it" that I, at least, did
learn a good deal about painting, forgery, and the art world.  The
book is a very pleasant read--intellectual light reading, I'd say, not
quite "trash."   I should note, however, that _Bone_ is, I think,
the *second* book in the trilogy, the first being _Rebel Angels_, which
I found equally enjoyable, and learned a bit about gypsies.  I think
the third book is called _The Lyre of Orpheus_--I'm saving it for a
time when I need a light relaxing read.

I also agree with the review of _Book of Laughter and Forgetting_--it's
a brilliant weave of genres and modes (including a few very insightful
pages of literary criticism on Kafka).  I thought it was a better "novel,"
if one can call it that, than _Unbearable Lightness_, and it also seemed
to grapple with weightier philosophical issues (or perhaps the same
philosophical issues, but in a more satisfying way).  And he's a 
good storyteller.  Any reviews on _Immortality_, his latest.

Tonight I'll finish off a novel by another Czech writer--_I Served the
King of England_ by Bohumil Hrabal.  This is a light and very pleasing
work, written in a most unusual style.  I'd recommend it--I got mine
hardback remaindered.  Has anyone got any thoughts on Hrabal's _Closely
Watched Trains_? (It's a nice title).

Oh well, back to work
Best
Mark
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Publishing...
Date: 11 Sep 92 15:38:05 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

I'm having trouble replying to this, so I'll post in the hopes it will
answer the questions of other would-be writers as well.

The place to ask your question on how to publish your book is 
misc.writing.

	Larry "See ys there!" Hammer
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu          \  "People ought to fight for their law as
The insane don't need disclaimers \  for a wall."  -- Heraclitus, #100
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: utopias and distopias
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 07:57:38 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

In article <14913@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>Gee, I seem to have annoyed Tom Maddox by referring to something earlier than
>last week's People Magazine.

	I'm not annoyed, merely struck by mild wonderment concerning 
your absolute dependence on one critical work to the apparent exclusion
of all others.

>If I seem to harp on Northrop Frye, it's because his archetypal view of
>literature makes sense, and it frees literature of dependency on other kinds of
>social anxieties like politics or social values--that turn literature, in
>effect, into good or bad propaganda depending on our own ideologies. Frye's
>Anatomy of Literature is, literally, the book that changed my life; 

	While I admire your Moonie-like devotion to Frye and the no doubt
wonderful change his _Anatomy of Criticism_ (which I presume is the book
you're talking about, unless in Canada you have access to the Hidden
Northrop Frye) wrought in your life, I cannot join you in it.  Those 
of us who haven't experienced The Change may not find Frye's categories or
methods so utterly compelling that they make all other criticism 
irrelevant.  

>I only wish
>I'd read it as an undergraduate, instead of putting up with insults from the
>likes of Lionel Trilling (who despised those of us naive enough to take his
>modern lit course). 

	Well, this is unanswerable logic.  Obviously, the only choices 
open to you were to take abuse from Lionel Trilling (the shit) or to 
read (and be Changed by) the _Anatomy_.

>Frye went on to write many more books and articles, 

	He even wrote *previous* books and articles, including _Fearful
Symmetry_, his major reevaluation of Blake's importance and meaning--and
a key book for understanding why Frye reads literature the way he does in
the _Anatomy_ (which itself can be read as Frye's attempt to tranpose 
Blakean categories to criticism).

>the
>last of which was published posthumously and shows the old guy had more
>intellectual power, even when dying of cancer, than the combined mass of Usenet
>on a good day.

	God, ain't it the truth?  Since Frye died, there's virtually no
one around who can even think.  I don't know why anyone even bothers to
publish--criticism especially, but books in general.

>But there's an idea for another thread: books that changed your life. Anyone
>want to take that one up, even at the risk of boring poor old Tom with any
>title the far side of Generation X? :)

	Don't worry, Kilian.  Just keep the goofiness coming, and I won't
be bored.


-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		   "I swear I never heard the first shot"
                Wm. Gibson, "Agrippa:  a book of the dead"
From: spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 10 Sep 92 00:30:00 GMT
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

Mark Taranto writes...

[personae deletia]

> 
>For the record, I didn't think Mike's comments to SubGenius were rude.
>(I state this for Ron Nadel, who, I hope, is still keeping score :-)
> 
>In fact, I've always assumed that SubGenius was just a persona that Mike
>posts under.  There is the Texas connection, after all.  Come to think of
>it, Isn't Fiona also a Texan?
> 
>Mark

+------------------------------------------SubG-------------------------------+
Nope.  I'm a cad and a lout in person, also.







Yours etc.,




SubGenius
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: librik@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David Librik)
Subject: Re: King in Yellow, publication date?
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 07:34:27 GMT

robin@duich.turing.ac.uk (Robin Boswell) writes:


>   Can anyone tell me when William Chambers' "The King in Yellow" was
>first published?  (I've recently acquired a version published by
>Dedalus (sic) which rather surprisingly doesn't include this
>information).

It's Robert Chambers, and it's 1895.

I am amazed at the number of times references to an 1895 book I thought no-one
else owned or read but myself have come up recently.  Is the Dedalus reprint
a complete one, or has it just got the spook stories?  I continue to be amazed
that anyone has reprinted it; no matter how deep you delve into the back stacks
of old libraries and older bookshops, someone's been there before you.

- David Librik
librik@cory.Berkeley.edu

There is no question but that Chambers was the Piers Anthony of his day.
(This will make no sense to those who haven't plowed through much of the
rest of RWC's output, looking for the occasional spark amidst the mire.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 19:41:08 GMT

In article <8SEP199212140448@zeus.tamu.edu> spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius) writes:

>A similar opening can be found in Penelope Ashe's _Naked Came the Stranger_,
>as ludicrous and lurid a novel as has been penned:

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



-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact 
mnemonic@eff.org| of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, 
(617) 864-0665  | both are transformed."
EFF, Cambridge  |                           --Carl Jung 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books