HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dkodmur@ocf.berkeley.edu (Daniel Kodmur)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Robertson Davies
Date: 28 Jul 92 20:42:02 GMT
Organization: U. C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: bigbang.berkeley.edu


 I was very happy to see Davies mentioned in a recent post. Though
 I had not heard of him a year ago, now I am an addict. I try constantly
 to turn other people on to his work, but all I get are blank and
 uncomprehending stares.  Is it because he is Canadian, and most
 Americans are woefully ignorant of our northern neighbors? Is it
 because he writes old-fashioned big books that require a lot of
 attention?  Or is it just that he is too "serious" to be considered
 funny, and too "funny" to be considered serious?

 All these are great questions, and I would love to get a Davies
 discussion going on the net or via private e-mail.


 Thanks!

 Danny
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dmpowell@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Darin M. Powell)
Subject: Re: Great last sentences
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 13:32:01 EDT

>In article <1992Jul22.013857.2385@athena.mit.edu> kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan) quotes Charles Dickens:

>>	It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was
>>the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of
>>belief, it was the age of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it
>>was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the
>>winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before
>>us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the
>>other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period,
>>that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received,
>>for good, or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
>>
>>Dickens - just a hack? Naaaa!


	It was a list of words, it was not a list of words, it was
	a run-on sentence, it was not a sentence, it was the beginning
	of a book, it was not the beginning of a book, it put me sleep --
	in short, put me into an irreversable coma....

	To bad Dickens never met Mr. Strunk.

	Darin Powell

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: levine@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Lenore Levine)
Subject: Re: Little Men
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 18:59:22 GMT

jahb@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JENNIFER A. HEISE) writes:

(Re Little Men, by Louisa May Alcott...)

>My boss said she hated it when she read it, because Jo had dwindled into "just
>a wife." Did anyone else have this impression?

Not at all...

It seems that she's the one who runs the school as much as the
Professor...

I think I would have been happy with her life...
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: vince@cadence.com (Vince Gibboni)
Subject: Re: Anyone know this quote?
Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 22:46:00 GMT

norbeck@castor.cs.bucknell.edu (nancy norbeck `93) writes:
>
> Might anyone know where I could find the source of a recent quote?  
> I'm guessing it must be fairly recent, but I'm really not sure *how*
> recent it is (I think it might be from an episode of Blake's Seven,
>  but never having had the opportunity to watch B7, I'm not sure.  
> I found it in a catalog of stickers and graphics a while
> ago, and I desperately want to use it for a character in a working 
> story, but I want to be able to attribute it to its author.  Anyway,
> this is the quote, in case anyone recognises it:
>
>    "There are very few personal problems that can't be solved
>    with a suitable application of high explosives."
>

    Well it may just be the power of suggestion, but I swear I can
    remember Avon (from Blake's Seven) saying this line. You might
    want to ask over in rec.arts.tv.uk...


--
                                                       vince@gda.cadence.com
	They told me everything was guaranteed
	Somebody somewhere must have lied to me
		- Elvis Costello
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rob@xyzoom.info.com (Rob Lingelbach)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Something along the lines of "Pillars of the Earth"
Reply-To: rob@xyzoom.info.com (Rob Lingelbach)
Organization: Altruistic Intentions, Hollywood CA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 06:24:24 GMT

In article <Brsu2E.4sF@hsi.com> daub@hsi.com (Marshall Daub) writes:
>
>   I am currently reading "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett and find the 
>book fascinating. Can anyone recommend other novels of the same writing style 
>and pace, but not necessarily the same subject matter.
>
>   Please respond directly via email. Thank you.

I loved that book.  Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale" and "A Soldier of
the Great War" (especially the latter) are outstanding.

I asked the same question you did about two years ago and collected a
file of responses: I will email it to you.

Regards--
--Rob
-- 
Rob Lingelbach KB6CUN | 2660 Hollyridge Dr LA CA 90068 213 464 6266 (voice) 
rob@xyzoom.info.com   | "I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or 
robl@netcom.com       |  cat are not the better for it."  --Abraham Lincoln
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Unspoken Words
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 17:34:05 GMT

Mark Taranto writes:

	There are lots of words which have multiple accepted pronunciations.
	"Miasma" is one (with the "Mi" pronounced as "My" or "Me").  Another
	is "Flaccid" where the "flassid" pronunciation is common, but the
	"flacksid" pronunciation ('cc' as in access, accept, accident, etc.)
	was once considered the "correct" one.  Since I pronounce it with a
	hard 'c', I often get strange looks.  Therefore, I don't use the word
	very often.  Fortunately, I don't have to.

Since flaccid is often used to describe a state of the penis, pronouncing
it with a hard "c" would seem somewhat inappropriate. Fortunately, as Mark
says, we may not often have to.

	When I was in grad school, there was a 12-year-old in one of th 
	classes I was taking.  He used to come up to my office after 
	class to talk.  On one occasion, he pronounced "Euclidean" as 
	"YOU-sill-id-ian."  When I corrected him, he thanked me & said 
	"I've never heard it pronounced before."

Another mathematical one. I have never met an American wdo did not
mispronounce Sturm-Liouville as Sturm-Louisville. It makes the
relative positions of Math and Baseball in AmeriKult quite clear.

							Fido
From: rafem@gvlf7-e.gvl.unisys.com (Ralph Marrone)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: philip k. dick
Date: 31 Jul 92 18:01:05 GMT
Organization: Unisys Defense Systems, Great Valley Labs, Paoli, Pa

In article <9207311645.AA00884@husc10> nevins@husc.harvard.edu writes:
>thanks for the (quick!) reply.  my understanding is that his books REALLY
>vary in quality--it's my guess that Vintage is only reprinting the good
>ones (i.e. the "respectable" PDK books that a scholar who likes to dabble
>in pop culture (quite the hip thing for post-modernist academics to do these
>days--problem is, most of them don't know a damn thing about the pop culture
>that they attempt to write about) wouldn't be embarassed to have on his/her
>bookshelf.  Note the lack of traditional s-f cover illustrations (i.e.
>compare other earlier editions!).
>	Dick's main vision seems to be the disintegration of reality, and
>extreme paranoia--and these he does quite well in _Flow My Tears, The Policeman
>Said_--the style isn't brilliant, but the ideas are compelling.  I enjoyed
>it well enough.  If you like this sort of thing, I strongly recommend
>Stanislaw Lem's _Memoirs Found in A Bathtub_--I don't know what Lem
>"intended" (oops, we're not supposed to write about authorial intent anymore,
>are we?), but the thing reads to me as a brilliant and maddening essay on
>the inability to really _understand_ anything; it's also a neat illustration
>of many poststructuralist ideas about the indeterminacy of meaning in texts,
>and the difficulties ("problematics") inherent in any attempt at interpretation.


This S. Lem connection is interesting because Philip K. Dick is one of
the few SF authors that Lem has any time for.  One of his essays in
_Microworlds_ talks about the SF genre in general, and P. Dick in 
particular.


Regards,

Ralph
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,alt.religion.kibology
From: st890270@pip.cc.brandeis.edu (LUCIFER)
Subject: Re: help please, when did Isaac Asimov die?
Reply-To: st890270@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 19:48:46 GMT

billn@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com (bill nelson) writes
>An agnostic would say that he did not currently believe in the supernatural
>but is open to proof otherwise.

I consider myself an agnostic, yet I am a practicing Jew, becouse I think
that that religion has a lot going for it. But I am not certain that it's
(Judeaism) is correct.
I think most agnostics practice athiesm, simply becouse it is easier. or that
they are closet athiests, but are afraid to admit it)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: vince@cadence.com (Vince Gibboni)
Subject: Re: Nobel winners
Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 20:47:24 GMT

cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>
> Churchill wrote two multivolume works: _A History of the English Speaking
> Peoples_ and _The Second World War_.  It was for the former work, not
> the latter, tha the Nobel Prize was awarded, wasn't it?  

    I'm fairly certain that the prize was awarded for (or at least 
    specifically mentioned) _The Second World War_ series (even though 
    it was, IMHO, nowhere near as good _A History of the English Speaking 
    Peoples_ - which is wonderful). There is, by the way, at least one
    more multi-volume Churchill series, one on the _first_ world war
    (The Crisis Years ?). Hmmm... now that think I think about it, didn't
    he also do a four-part biography of the Duke of Marlborough ? 

> In any case,
> to characterize _The Second World War_ as "How I won the war" is the
> sort of snotty remark I would expect from a country that didn't have
> any moral problems helping the Nazis to invade Norway, and continued
> to sell the Nazis raw materials until 1943.
>
    Yeah, but somehow you just can't get mad at Sweden (they're just too 
    damn _nice_) - perhaps they count on this. 


    
--
    Massachusetts (also an Indian word, meaning "place that is hard to spell")
    is one of the most historic states in the union, which is why each year
    tens of thousands of visitors flock here, only to be killed in traffic.
        - Dave Barry
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Asimov and the Decay of SF
Date: 28 Jul 92 23:34:58 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1992Jul24.194709.1844@sco.com>, joannee@sco.COM (Joanne Eglash) writes:
> This discussion has encouraged me to ask the following:
> I have a friend who claims that my love of literature is "a mere
> hobby" and that "reading any kind of fiction would be a waste of
> my time."  He's a scientist (specializes in an esoteric branch of
> biology that I can't even remember how to spell, let alone 
> understand :-), and he refuses to read ANY novels.  He reads only
> books by scientists (and yes, I've seen him check their credentials
> on the book jacket -- a doctorate from Yale or Harvard is approved
> worthy of his reading time).
> 
> joanne

What a narrow, crabbed view of life.  Does he do anything for 
pleasure?  I know a guy like this, who purports that reading
anything that doesn't directly help him make money is a waste
of time, and so he doesn't bother -- but I catch him sneaking
recreational reading, sometimes.

You sure he isn't just trying to impress you?


-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
"Well, maybe the Holocaust was right *for that culture*." -- a moral relativist
with whom I work.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Bathroom reading
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 21:40:52 GMT


betsyp@apollo.hp.com (Betsy Perry) writes (of M.F.K.Fisher):

> I like her translation of Brillat-Savarin; it's the ideal
> back-of-the-toilet book, amenable to non-chronological and
> interrupted reading.

I've always found Eliot's THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK to be
the perfect length for a shit.

Any other suggestions?


Mark
From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: isolation
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:05:42 GMT
Reply-To: jjh00@OUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA


 mbvg9741@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (plain) writes:
>
>    I've been interested lately in the effects of prolonged
>    isolation of an individual or a small group.  Could any
>    body out there tell me of some fiction that deals with
>    this or perhaps some pschological works?
>    Thanks.
>    -Vincent

Byrd, _Alone_ (spends Antarctic winter alone in research station)
Defoe, _Robinson_Crusoe_
LeGuin, _The_Left_Hand_of_Darkness_
Slocum, _Sailing_Alone_Around_The_World_
Bligh, _The_Mutiny_On_HMS_Bounty_
???, _We_Die_Alone_ (out of print, check library)

---
Joel Hanes
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: harper@oracorp.com (Douglas Harper)
Subject: Re: Bored Of The Rings
Organization: ORA Corporation, Ithaca, New York
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 02:10:31 GMT

In article <u906610.711635629@bruny> u906610@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (Eric The Viking) writes:
>
>Greets,
>I'm looking for copies of two books:
>
>	Bored Of The Rings,	(a Harvard Lampoon Publication?)
...
>If anyone can help me, either with a name and address, (email or otherwise),
>of a publisher, or ...

Here're some (pre-ISBN) bibliographic data:  Bored of the Rings, Henry
N. Beard and Douglas C. Kenney of the Harvard Lampoon, Signet, New
York, 1969.  Signet books were (are?) published by New American
Library, Inc., 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019,
USA.

-- 
Douglas Harper     | ORA Corporation | 301A Dates Drive | Ithaca, NY 14850 
harper@oracorp.com | (607) 277-2020  | FAX: 277-3206    | USA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: gere@umunhum.stanford.edu (Susan Gere)
Subject: Re: Spoilers - continuing discussion, part 2
Organization: Stanford University CSL
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 20:49:35 GMT

Fiona Webster writes of "willed forgetting"--a mental maneuver erasing 
by various techniques any spoilers you have been unwillingly subjected to--

I find I don't "forget" a startling fact, which can rise to the surface 
when least wanted, so much as let my mind slip into an alternate timestream 
where the known future is once again subject to random outcome. (Perhaps 
familiarity with that common sci-fi device is a bonus here.)

I *did* find _The French Lieutenant's Woman_ intensely annoying when
the book itself used this reality-switching technique, however. Texts 
ought to keep their places.
From: ramscar@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Ramscar)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: What happens to authors when they die
Date: 27 Jul 92 17:26:31 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

Keith Morgan & Mark Taranto muse on the ultimate:


MT      Is it possible that an atheist could die, and then discover
MT      that he is wrong -- that there is a God and that there is
MT      an afterlife?  Yep!

KM  This reminds me of a very funny early Steve Martin routine: guy dies,
KM  ends up at Pearly Gates, looks around and moans: "Oh no! They told us
KM  in college that this was all bullshit!"  

I once saw Rowan Atkinson do similar sketch in which the devil welcomes
newcomers to hell. After the more obvious "Atheists on the left please 
- I bet you feel a right bunch of charlies..." and the organising of
some other arrivals, Atkinson/the devil says, almost as an aside,
"... christians..".

Michael
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.religion.misc,sci.skeptic
From: max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb)
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Organization: Cypress Semiconductor Northwest, Beaverton Oregon
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 14:59:09 GMT

In article <11455@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>In article <24866@dog.ee.lbl.gov>, sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>> In article <1992Jul24.151332.19380@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>, simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale) writes...
>Which prepackaged religions predicate "the Universe being roughly
>6000 years old"?  I seem to have missed that one.

And yet I encounter people claiming just that, all over the place.

>Even many fundamentalist Christians don't subscribe to that notion, and 
>certainly, most Christians of all stripes don't.  In any case, it
>isn't part of the religion.

Many of them claim it is ... and BTW, a few recent polls have shown that
approx. 50% of Americans are creationists. Pretty scary, eh? I weep for the
state of lower science education in this country.

>-- 
>Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!

Max
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: citrin@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Wayne Citrin)
Subject: Re: Recent Reading
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 17:39:19 GMT

In article <1992Jul31.171311.28578@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> spg@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Stephen P. Guthrie) writes:
>>Jeff Davis writes:
>>
>>	While _Utz_ can be read straight up, the fact that Chatwin thought
>>	he was dying of a rare and exotic bone disease which he contracted
>>	in China turns the elegant, chilly themes of _Utz_ into something
>>	a little more Purgatorial. 
>>
>
>Was it, in fact, AIDS that Chatwin died of? I've heard conflicting reports.
>

In an interview with Salman Rushdie in the NY Review of Books last year,
Rushdie and James Fallows discuss the death of mutual friend Chatwin from
AIDS.  This was the first I had heard that AIDS was the cause.

Wayne

-----------
Wayne Citrin   citrin@soglio.colorado.edu   citrin@cs.colorado.edu
From: peercy@dopey.crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Wizard Of OZ
Date: 25 Jul 1992 19:28:02 -0500
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: dopey.crhc.uiuc.edu

jfl@world.std.com (John Lovett) writes:

| I heard Milton Friedman on a talk show today, saying that
| 'The Wizard Of Oz' is really an advocacy of William Jennings Bryan's
| policy of a dual monetary standard, using both Silver and Gold.

| So, for example, 'OZ' stands for ounces.

| Can someone deconstruct the book, giving us the real story?  It would
| make the movie a lot more fun to watch.

The following is from memory of commentaries I read some time ago.

Yellow brick road                    --> gold (standard)
Silver slippers                      --> silver
  [ruby was used in the film because
  silver's a waste of technicolor]
Silver slippers on the yellow        --> adding silver to the gold standard
  brick road

Emerald [money color] City           --> Washington

Scarecrow                            --> farmers
Tinman                               --> labor [in the book, he's a man
                                           who kept chopping off his limbs
                                           --> the mechanization and
                                           dehumanization of labor]
Lion                                 --> William Jennings Bryan
                                           [If I remember the commentaries
                                           right, this is not certain.]

Good witches : South                 --> old agraria
               North                 --> industry
Wicked witches : East                --> New York banks
                 West                --> western banks [the ones who kept
                                           harassing the little Kansans
                                           like Dorothy]

Dorothy represented nothing but little America, tossed into the Populist
movement not particularly of her own accord, and wanting nothing but to
get back home.

That should be enough to make the mapping from story to history.

But it should be noted that, as I recall, the commentaries state that
Baum meant _The Wizard of Oz_ first and foremost as a children's story,
not allegory.

Mike Peercy                   "I didn't do it.  Can I still have my dog?"
peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu                                           - Dorothy
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Anglophily reigns at the new New Yorker
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 23:46:40 GMT

I think that Tina from the Tatler must now be in command at the NYer.
The veddy British cartoonist Ronald Searle has done the cover for the 
July 27 issue. Gawd, it looks like a reincarnation of Punch.

							Fido
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:13225 rec.arts.sf.misc:2251 rec.humor:24660
From: johnson@spectra.com (boyd johnson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.humor
Subject: Re: help please, when did Isaac Asimov die?
Date: 27 Jul 92 21:53:07 GMT
Organization: Spectragraphics Corporation

In article <1992Jul22.115103.8412@njitgw.njit.edu> lxf8351@hertz.njit.edu (lawrence finkel cis stnt) writes:
>
> Asimov was freeze dried 2 hours before his official _Death_.
> Attempts will be made to reconstitute him in 2437.

Freeze dried?  What do they do with the powder?  Put it in a Tasters
Choice jar?
If you mean cryonic freezing they may thaw him out then providing there
are no power outages in the next 400 some years.
Please let us know what is significant about 2437?

Also:
In article <1992Jul22.132513.29828@CERIS.Purdue.EDU>
jheath@CERIS.Purdue.EDU (Jim Heath) writes:
>
>But do atheists _go_ anywhere when they die?

If I jump out of a plane because I don't believe in gravity does that
mean I'll float in the air forever?

Death  n - 1. Natures way of giving you the answer to the ultimate question 
"Is there such a thing as God or Heaven and Hell?"

No, the answer isn't forty-two.

-- 
======== Boyd Johnson    nosc!spectra.com!johnson  San Diego, Ca. ========
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews
From: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Subject: Re: Re-reading (was RAH)
Reply-To: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Organization: Iowa State University
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 17:27:46 GMT

In article <LEE.92Jul28164702@meercat.wang.com>, lee@wang.com (Lee Story)
writes:
> In article <SWB.92Jul27102057@mitchell.cit.cornell.edu>
> 	  swb@nr-tech.cit.cornell.edu (Scott Brim) writes: 
> 
>       That leads me to my question: Have any of you gone back and
> 	  re-read books from any genre that you loved/liked as a child, up
> 	  through, say, high school? Did the book hold up well?  Was it
> 	  awful? Why do you think either reaction happened? I took a
> 	  children's lit course this summer, and had to re-read
> 	  _Charlotte's Web_. I'm really sorry I did, since I had liked it
> 	  as a kid. I really disliked it as an adult.
> 
> Well, Scott has a point.  I first read _The_Brothers_Karamazov_ and
> _Ulysses_ as a teenager, and going back to them I can see that they
> are simply awful.  The same for _Charlotte's_Web_, _Stuart_Little_,
> _The_Trumpet_of_the_Swan_, and (while we're at it)
> _Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland_, _The_Phantom_Tollbooth_,
> _A_Wrinkle_in_Time_, and the tales of H.C.A. and those lousy Grimm
> brothers.  Ray Bradbury and Piers Anthony have held up much better.
> 
> The $21K/year English teachers tell me this is because people in the
> computer business have inferior discrimination and generally bad taste,
> but I think they're just jealous of our six-figure salaries!
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>         Lee Story (lee@wang.com) Wang Laboratories, Inc.
>             (this email address disappears 14 August;
>  I may be reborn as lee@bostech.com or something similar in September)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

You'd reject _Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland_ in favor of Piers Anthony?
The English teachers may have a point.

Marie Coffin
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books