HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: New Stories by Joyce
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 20:26:56 GMT

	The "is it new, is it important?" controversy surrounding the 
rediscovered Joyce manuscripts is yet another chapter in _A History of 
Scholarly Relativism, or, Whose Ox Is Gored?_

	One of my favorites concerns A. L. Rowse, cantankerous eminence of
Elizabethan and Shakespearean studies who, as I recall, opined in one book
that the identity of the Dark Lady was both unknowable and unimportant, then,
upon deciding that he knew the identity of the Dark Lady, published a book
arguing for his attribution and the sublime importance of knowing it.

	There is also, closer to home (that is to say, Joyce territory) the
rather incredible controversy surrounding the new edition of _Ulysses_,
which is told nicely in a book currently on the hardbound shelves titled
something unexpected such as _The Ulysses Controversy_.  I spent forty-five
minutes at a local bookstore caught up in the wonderful, sorry story.

	My own belief is that publication of any substantial Joyce manuscripts 
unknown to the reading public is a public benefit, and I look forward to 
seeing these.
-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		"The Reptoids eat humans like we eat chickens."
				Alex Alexander
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: RE: Stormin' Norman (was: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia)
Organization: Clark University
Date: 29 SEP 92 21:43:05 GMT

Barbara Hlavin writes:

>Loving Norman Mailer's writing

Wow!  "Love" is a pretty strong word.  Oh well, there's no accounting
for tastes.  Some people pay good money to see professional wrestling and
Monster Trucks...

>>Norman at cocktail party, approaches Gore Vidal.
>>
>>        NORMAN:  You look like a dirty old Jew.
>>
>>        VIDAL (startled): *YOU* look like a dirty old Jew.
>>
>>        (Norman slugs Vidal.)
>
>I say:
>
>This isn't writing.

No, but it's great intellectual repartee, isn't it?  Oh, and then there's
the story George Plimpton tells about how Stormin' would have skull-bashing
contests with guys at parties...  My advice to you is: read his writing
and enjoy it, but don't invite him to your house (or marry him, for that
matter).

>>Now my point, which you completely missed because you were so eager
>>to fling epithets about
>
>Why, Heather; I wasn't flinging epithets.  I merely picked up two
>that had been previously flang (one of them by you) and rearranged
>them to see what they looked like in a different configuration.

Well, now that you've seen that to your satisfaction, maybe you can
address my point: do you think there's a double standard regarding the
egotistical behavior of males and females?

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu

>--Barbara

PS.  Don't you think it would be kind of fun to invite Norman, Camille,
and Gore Vidal to the same party?  You could invite Mark Helprin too,
since he's pro-Dead-White-Males like Camille is, and they could form
a debating team.  Now there's a match made in heaven.  And just so Norman
feels that he's had a good time, you can invite Joyce Carol Oates, and he
can pick a fight with her. I bet you she'd clean his clock.
From: Christopher.Carne@brunel.ac.uk (Christopher J Carne)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Flann O'Brien -question
Date: 30 Sep 92 12:52:16 GMT
Organization: Brunel University, West London, UK

Boring but True (No. 1285 in a series of 57940)

Flann O'Brian's real name was Brian O'Nolan
There is a famous Dublin bookshop called Browne and Nolan's
Giordano Bruno (the famous hermetic philosopher) was known as 'The Nolan'

None of which explains where The Nolan Sisters (UK singing group of the
70s and 80s) fit in.


CHR$


PS By the way, Joyce (who used a Vico's ideas of history as an organising
priciple for the Wake) once taught in a school on Vico Road, Dalkey. 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: wwhitman@nevada.edu (MICHAEL WISE)
Subject: Re: Literature students
Organization: University of Nevada System Computing Services
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 08:01:03 GMT

Mark probably does not know this, but Hemingway was a true shit to Ford
Madox Ford. I did not like A Good Soldier, and have, perhaps wrongly,
based my assessment of him on that. Any recommendations, Mark? 

I have just recently walked out of a class after explaining the Hemingway-
esque fascination with bullfighting and big game hunting, assuming that
my students would not identify with the values of Hemingway in these
activities, mainly because you have to know bullfighting to understand the
aesthetics involved. But that was not what I wanted to get at. Hem-
ingway was a bastard: he hated women, he hated Jews, he hated homosexuals,
he hated blacks. He can be very one-dimensional in his portrayals. How-
ever, the style of writing, short, terse, objective, devoid of adjectives,
is a style we are taught in an abstract way to value. Since our bastard-
ised Intro to Lit class is also a writing course, making studentsware
of style is important, and bringing Hemingway in works because it is an
easy style to dissect. 

It is a question of bringing them into a world where no one has been 
willing to give them a straight answer, because many English TEACHERS
feel they should go with their own feeling. I have the opposite sense
of the students that the original poster has. To me, they come in with
nothing: no formula, no original thoughts. I would be pleasantly sur-
prised to see either a genuine reaction to a work, or even a standard 
interpretation. My impression is that students don't bother to look 
critically at a work because they get the Cliff Notes impression and 
the TEACHER'S thesis on it, and they never bother to read it themselves.
(It should be readily apparent that I'm using teacher in a pejorative
way here) If the instructor can make it worth their while to read works
critically, some of them will do it. However, most (as has been mentioned
before) will not. Improving their writing doesn't have much of a draw
for most students, and that is perhaps the most material advantage a 
literature instructor can offer. Let's not kid ourselves: those who read
because it changes their perspective, makes them think of things in
new ways, are not going to be in classes like Intro to Lit. 

Welcome back, Mark. Have a nice weekend?

"If I had more time, it would have been shorter"
From: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: New Stories by Joyce
Date: 6 Oct 1992 13:27:17 GMT
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Reply-To: ncramer@labs-n.bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com

In article <3864@randvax.rand.org> jim@rand.org (Jim Gillogly) writes:
>The LA Times version included somebody's astonishing hyperbolic effusion
>to the effect that this is the most important literary discovery of the
>20th century.  ...  Pfui!

I purposely (and, I thought, mercifully) omitted this paragraph when I
transcribed the version that appeared in the Boston Globe.

If anyone's interested, the paragraph in question read:

   "It is the most significant textual find of this century.  It alters
    forever our current model of Joyce.  We must reconsider what Joyce
    achieved, everything has to be seen in a different context," Rose said.

([Danis] Rose --as should come as no surprise-- is the scholar who
discovered the manuscripts of the seven previously unknown stories.)

N
From: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Anti-Arab racism on the net
Keywords: Equality, Fairness, Same Standards?
Date: 29 Sep 92 16:06:47 GMT
Reply-To: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation

Please keep this out of misc.legal.

Terry Carroll - tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com - 408/992-2152
The opinions presented above are not necessarily those of a sound mind.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jeff@cns.nyu.edu (Jeff Fookson)
Subject: Re: gold bug variations
Reply-To: jeff@cns.nyu.edu
Organization: New York University, Center for Neural Science
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 14:18:23 GMT

I started reading this newsgroup in the middle of the Gold Bug Variations thread
(and also while in the middle of reading the book) but waited to post until I had finished it. I had read "Three Farmers..." some years ago and was enthralled, and
I'm even more impressed by the GBV. The erudition doesn't bother me at all and is
for the most part crucial to the scope of the book and the personalities of the
characters, but what I am most touched by is the warm-hearted humanity and love
that seeps from the writing. In his caring and moral tone, Powers reminds me
more of someone like Irving (particularly in a book like "The Cider House Rules")
than Pynchon.

How appropriate (and portentious) that  "Science" this week (and reprinted in 
today's  New York Times `Science Times') would publish the most recent Human Genome
Project maps. Strangely, too, a friend had recently given me the CD re-release
of the 1955 Glenn Gould Goldbug Variations recording. Listening to it will never be the same...

I agree with Joann Zimmerman (jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu ) that Powers is

> one of the most absorbing and
>involving novelists that it has been my pleasure to read in the past
>few years. He is able to make the reader a full participant in the
>explorations that are shared by him and his characters. I come away
>both enlightened and entertained.

To `enlightened and entertained' I would add `moved'.

Can someone give me any biograhical information on Richard Powers? Has anyone read
"The Prisoner's Dilemma"?
   Jeff Fookson
   jeff@cns.nyu.edu
From: rancke@diku.dk (Hans Rancke-Madsen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Fictitious Fiction
Date: 2 Oct 92 23:11:32 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

There's the bibliography in Michael Chricton's "The Andromeda Strain".
That is, I _presume_ that most of the works mentioned there were
ficticious.


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     rancke@diku.dk
------------
"I know there are some people in the world who do not tolerate their
fellow human beings, and I just can't _stand_ people like that!"
                                (after Tom Lehrer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: bhanafee@deimos.ads.com (Brian Hanafee)
Subject: Re: Edward R. Hamilton
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems, Mountain View, CA 94043, +1 (415)
	960-7300
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 21:51:50 GMT


In article <1992Sep29.005517.23439@mixcom.com> tom.damm <tom.damm@mixcom.mixcom.com> writes:
[various complimentary ramblings deleted]
>I've ordered twice from ERH.  They only charge $3.00 postage, no matter the
>number of books you order.

   OK, I'm convinced.  Would someone *please* post an address or phone
number for Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller.  The best lead I have is
that someone posted awhile ago that it is in Falls Village, CT.  I
tried calling information, but they claimed to have no commercial
listing under that name.

Many thanks,

-- Brian


--
Brian Hanafee                         Advanced Decision Systems
bhanafee@ads.com                      1500 Plymouth Street
(415) 960-7300                        Mountain View, CA 94043-1230
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Books in the time of Love
Date: 5 Oct 92 03:28:08 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

In article <9209301932.AA28340@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
>And Tom Maddox?  I'll bet there is some literary connection to the story
>about his dances with the sailor Guillaume (if this is the sailor
>that Joe Green means) <to new r.a.b.ble -- this is a reference to Joe
>Green's classic "Well Met in Minnesota" thread last spring>.

	That was no sailor.

	That was Barbara Hlavin in a charming sailor suit.

	She recited the four Unknown Verses that Kalypso sang to 
Odysseus, after which I will follow her anywhere.


-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		"The Reptoids eat humans like we eat chickens."
				Alex Alexander
From: maverick@fir.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Literature Students/Small World
Date: 6 Oct 1992 18:24:05 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: fir.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <6OCT199210232680@portal.lasc.lockheed.com>, le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel) writes:
|> 
|> [heart vs. head as ways of reading]

Ron, I think this is simplistic.  It's quite true that there are
different ways of reading; but there is no book for which a
single way of reading is accessible to everyone, with the same
results.  For example, you give romance novels as an example of
works which "give much pleasure".  I am living proof this is
false: no way of reading which makes them interesting has yet
become accessible to me.

|> Is a work, as a whole, really good in your estimation if you don't like it
|> at first exposure? 

Let me first give you my definition of "good": a work of
literature is good if one finds an interesting way of reading it.
Thus _The Ambassadors_ was not good for me in high school, but
was good for me in college.  So the simple answer to your
question is No, because you have thrown in the saving phrase "in
your estimation".  The longer answer is "Potentially later, or
for some other person."

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.

	Vance
From: jessec@yang.earlham.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: the Novel of Ideas-- is it a good Idea?
Date: 3 Oct 92 22:28:34 GMT
Organization: Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

Heya--

   I'd like to hear what people think about the Novel of Ideas.  When 
writers like Milan Kundera and Thomas Pynchon weave philosophical and 
scientific concepts into the backgrounds of their books, do they make the 
characters merely mouthpieces or puppets? Does this cheapen them, 
somehow-- make the novel less humanistic? I'm thinking of Virginia Woolf's 
"Mrs. Brown" essay, in which she insisted that the whole *purpose* of a 
novel is to create and explore characters...
   A very fuzzy question, so feel free to spout anything you think of.


   --Jesse.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: junior high & high school (was Re: I forget what it was Re:)
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 14:32:51 GMT

Tom Maddox eloquently laments "the predeliction of American junior and
high school teachers for the dreary precincts of early-to-mid 20th century
American writers such as Steinbeck, Dreiser, O'Hara, Wilder . . . ah, Christ,
>I can't go on--"

I was in high school in 1970: we were all so wild-eyed and ferocious
about our politics, the teachers had to use heated discussion (although
I suppose sex would have worked too--'thinking now of other people
in this thread who've talked about those valuable "naughty bits") to
hold our attention.  So what did we read in our lit classes?  Well,
I recall

	John Dos Passos' _U.S.A._
	Sartes' _Huis_Clo_ ("No Exitt")
	_The_Autobiophrapy_of_Malcolm_X_
	Hershey's _Hiroshima_
	Baudelaire's _Fleurs_de_Mal_
	Archibald MacLeish's _J.B._
	Fyodor Dostoevsky's _Crime_and_Punishment_

and also, most appropriately--we all noticed their pertinence to the
Cold War!--we read the _Inferno_, and _Hamlet_.  It wasn't 'til college
that I discovered Durrenmatt's _Die_Physiker_, but that's another
play that would have been a hit in my high school.

		*	*	*	*	*

Here's one on the subject of sexy passages (-:... when I was in sixth
grade, I arrived at school one morning to find a tight cluster of
my classmates--twelve-year-old girls sitting on the thick St.
Augustine, their heads bowed together over a book they were sharing.
It was _Fanny_Hill_.  (Of course.)  I was at a terribly shy, spastic,
and tender-breasted age, myself, so I immediately walked the other
direction and tried to avoid catching their attention.  It didn't
work.  They all cried out my name and insisted I provide definitions.
And so for a weird twenty minutes, while waiting for the bell to
ring, I grasped at words to explain my understanding of "voluptuous,"
"nether lips," "lascivious," and so on.  It was my day in the sun.

							--Fiona
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker)
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 00:06:32 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.212802.4550@epas.toronto.edu> sfysh@epas.utoronto.ca (Stephanie Moskal Fysh) writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.062354.18381@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> baker@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Baker) writes:
>>
>>Why is this bonkers?  It sounds like an excellent idea (although it might
>>be better to require more than one play).
>
>It's bonkers because Shakespeare's English is now 375 or so years old.
>Why should we be expecting 14-year-olds to comprehend it?

Even at 375, it is still more eloquent than most modern stuff.  I find
the speeches by Brutus and Marc Antony to be easier to understand than
typical speeches by Bush and Clinton, and certainly easier to understand
than the latest poetry by rap artists (who don't seem to have any trouble
selling their stuff to 14-year-olds). 

>It's no
>wonder so many people dislike reading, and never go to the theatre.
>Personally, I'd be quite happy to see Shakespeare completely taken out
>of high school curricula, except for advanced (special) classes and -
>perhaps - university-qualification level senior classes.
>
>Stephanie Fysh
>Dept. of English
>Univ. of Toronto
>(sfysh@epas.utoronto.ca)

Let's compromise; take Shakespeare out of the Canadian curriculum!
From: rm009b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (ryan sky mills)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Margery Sharp
Summary: Wanted Margery Sharp Books
Keywords: Margery Sharp
Date: 7 Oct 92 01:33:33 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York

Does anybody have any Margery Sharp books?  I would be willing to pay
shipping and a reasonable price for them.

Sky
E-Mail  rm009b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 04:42:13 GMT

In article <BvBA3z.4px@news.cso.uiuc.edu> levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine) writes:

>I think, therefore, that in 1992, it is extremely insensitive to lambaste
>rape theorists, without making it *very* clear exactly what you are 
>lambasting, and why.  

I think Paglia is very clear on this.


--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
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 13:50:54 GMT

Ian G Batten writes:

	Clayton Cramer writes:

		Shakespeare's plays are one of those reminders that, 
		regardless of one's culture, there is literature of 
		lasting value.

	Which is why quite a lot of Shakespeare was left unperformed 
	for 300 years, of course.

Difficult to make out Ian's point. My '47 Lafitte Rothschild is only now
coming into its own.  In his *Letter to Maria Gisborne* Shelley wrote
of another writer:

				...let his page,
	Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
	Fold itself up for the serener clime
	Of years to come, and find its recompense
	In that just expectation.

So was it with the Shagger Pagger.

							fido
From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: gold bug variations
Date: 5 Oct 92 23:12:43 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX

In article <BvD1tn.5F4@NCoast.ORG> ppetto@NCoast.ORG (Peter Petto) writes:
>Leslie Kaelbling could stand it no longer, and felt compelled to decry
>Richard Powers for trying much to hard to impress the reader with the
>depth and breadth of his knowledge in _The Goldbug Variations_.

>Powers is good in altogether different ways -- I think his work
>embodies a caring & kindness that Pynchon is just starting to warm up
>to.  If I remember right, TP has chided himself for just this same
>trying-to-impress failing; and since I'm often guilty of it myself,
>I'm not about to throw any such stones.

>_The Goldbug Variations_ is worthwhile reading as is.  It's not
>"Pynchon minus paranoia" or any other glib reduction.

I'm going to have to disagree a bit with both of you. 

First, I do see a number of similarities with Pynchon--most of all in
tone. There's a certain, well, gonzoness of occurrence and occasional
ripeness of description that reminds me very much of Pynchon. I will
admit that I see this much more in _Three Farmers on Their Way to a
Dance_ (which I'm almost finished with) than in _Gold Bug Variations_.
The scene in _Three Farmers_ where Schrenck-turned-Langerson visits
the catacombs of Paris is right at home in _Gravity's Rainbow_.

Second, I do not feel that Powers is "trying to impress," unless you
feel that you must castigate him for an ambitious choice of
theme/subject matter. This isn't a sin--if no one got ambitious, I'm
not sure what we'd be reading, but I doubt that it would have the
range, power and interest of modern literature. Powers just happens to
choose difficult themes. I think that he does so at least as much to
have the task of exploring them himself as to inform us about them,
which puts him squarely into the "writing to learn" camp, where he
then shows his ability by being able to manipulate his subject in what
are, to me, very informative and gripping ways.

Third, I'm going to stick my neck out and state that there's almost as
much paranoia in Powers as there is in Pynchon--it's just a little
more impersonal, and therefore qualifies to come down on the "fate"
end of the continuum of determinism.

In any case, I find Powers to be one of the most absorbing and
involving novelists that it has been my pleasure to read in the past
few years. He is able to make the reader a full participant in the
explorations that are shared by him and his characters. I come away
both enlightened and entertained.


-- 
"Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion
borders on the chaos of memories" 
                                                -- Walter Benjamin
 ...!cs.utexas.edu!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!jzimm   
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: ve3pak@micor.ocunix.on.ca (Alayne McGregor and Brett Delmage)
Subject: De-acquisitioning (was Re: How I Spent My Summer Vacation)
Organization: M.B. Cormier INC., Orleans (Ont)
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 20:39:53 GMT

In article <80719@ut-emx.uucp> jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman) writes:
>I am reminded, by the way, to ask if anyone else has noticed the
>gradual disappearance of older books from public library shelves? If I
>buy them at library sales, they can no longer be in the libraries.
>Only university libraries seem to have, say, anything beyond _Count of
>Monte Cristo_ and _Three Musketeers_.

It's caled de-acquisitioning and is a major subject of library science study
(I'm serious!). It's also a major problem for readers who are fond of older
novels that haven't safely made it into "classic" status.

To be fair to the librarians, they do have limited space and many patrons
who want the latest books and will be turned off my shelves stuffed
with 40-year-old novels, but I think more discrimination should be
exercised.

Alayne McGregor
alayne@ve3pak.ocunix.on.ca