OT: Tess of the d’Urbervilles

[William Hyde]

Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she echoed Dorothy in some detail:

"God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Poor friggin’ Tess is raped, bears an illegitimate child and is viewed as “unpure” by her heart-love, the fickle Angel who is unable to see past his own twisted set of morals to see the richness and purity of Tess’s spirit. Then, after Tess has been driven to murder the man who raped her, we watch the hypocrite, Angel, open his eyes to see the purity of the woman he has judged so mercilessly. And if he had continued to live in his self-pitying remorse after Tess had been hanged for murder, perhaps I might’ve gotten some satisfaction from the story. But, oh no!! Angel gets to marry his virgin – Tess’s sister, who conveniently looks like Tess as well as being a virgin – whilst the real heroine gets hanged. Yecch! Oh yes, we all know he married the virgin upon Tess’s wishes to help her family. But, why didn’t he simply pay off the family to atone? To marry the virgin Liza-Lu is simply a continuation of the double standards and hypocrisy imposed on all women at the time, and Angel’s awakening is still biased to his own self-fulfilment. There, now that I’ve finally spelled that out – been carrying it for 35 years – maybe I can turn a kinder eye toward the wonderful Thomas Hardy."

William Hyde

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,

William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
>standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
>a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
>response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
>echoed Dorothy in some detail:
>
>"God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

[schnipp]

Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

[Gene Wirchenko]

I am not challenging you, but why do you think that?

(You could be saving me from having to read it.)

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,

Well, read the description upthread. The character is handed one
catastrophe after another from the moment she is introduced until
she dies. And then, says Hardy, "The Prince of the Immortals had
finished his sport with Tess."

But because she is a fictional character, it was not God (or any
god) that did that to her; it was Thomas Hardy, all his own work.

> (You could be saving me from having to read it.)

Oh, I urgently recommend that you never read it. You are, I
believe, an adult who has finished school, and will never have to
write a book report on it. (If under some strange circumstances,
you did have to write a book report on it, fergoshsake get the
Cliff Notes or something and fake it.)

[J. Clarke]

In article <oE2D1...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

>
> In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,
> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
> >On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 01:30:56 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> >Heydt) wrote:
> >
> >>In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
> >>William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
> >>>standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
> >>>a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
> >>>response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
> >>>echoed Dorothy in some detail:
> >>>

> >>>"God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

> >>
> >>[schnipp]
> >>
> >>Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
> >>an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
> >>reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
> >>literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
> >>deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
> >>ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.
> >
> > I am not challenging you, but why do you think that?
>
> Well, read the description upthread. The character is handed one
> catastrophe after another from the moment she is introduced until
> she dies. And then, says Hardy, "The Prince of the Immortals had
> finished his sport with Tess."
>
> But because she is a fictional character, it was not God (or any
> god) that did that to her; it was Thomas Hardy, all his own work.
>
> > (You could be saving me from having to read it.)
>
> Oh, I urgently recommend that you never read it. You are, I
> believe, an adult who has finished school, and will never have to
> write a book report on it. (If under some strange circumstances,
> you did have to write a book report on it, fergoshsake get the
> Cliff Notes or something and fake it.)

One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.

[Joe Bernstein]

On Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 8:20:04 AM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:

> In article <oE2D1...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

> > In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,
> > Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:

> > >On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 01:30:56 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> > >Heydt) wrote:

> > >>In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
> > >>William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Hardy's thread-titular book stinks.]

> > >>Agreed in spades.
[Circumstances of reading]

> > >>Hardy was a sadist.

> > > I am not challenging you, but why do you think that?

> > Well, read the description upthread. The character is handed one
> > catastrophe after another from the moment she is introduced until
> > she dies. And then, says Hardy, "The Prince of the Immortals had
> > finished his sport with Tess."
> >
> > But because she is a fictional character, it was not God (or any
> > god) that did that to her; it was Thomas Hardy, all his own work.

When I was a teenager, I read <The Mayor of Casterbridge>. I don't
remember exactly what I thought, and the notebook in which I was
keeping a book log that year [1] is pretty certainly one of the
things I lost in March, but I do remember that I was in awe, and
although I never got up the guts to re-read it, I always thought I
really *should*.

Then I read <Jude the Obscure>. Which is pretty much the same thing
as <Tess of the d'Urbervilles>, minus the effects of double standards
as applied to women. (There are some applied to men in that book,
though; Hardy was an equal-opportunity sadist.)

I also very vaguely remember <Tess>, a movie I saw, on the big screen,
at an impressionable age (though certainly not as early as 1979, when
it apparently came out - probably not even in its first US release,
according to Wikipedia 1980), and although it had beautiful scenery,
I don't remember loving it as I did most of the few movies I saw in
theatres that young.

I figure maybe someday I'll read more of his earlier work - <Tess> and
<Jude> are two of his last three novels, though he wasn't elderly when
he stopped publishing fiction, he was just fed up with Victorian
objections to his writing (which weren't *these* objections). So he's
on just about my longest list, and given my age there's no reason to
expect he'll actually move up, but he's there. However, I have no
intention of *ever* reading <Tess>.

> One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
> literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
> deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
> would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.

In high school, I wound up taking "British Authors" but not "American
Authors", and when we got to the 20th century I complained to my
teacher that all the work was depressing, and there must be 20th
century British writing that wasn't. To bolster my case, I pointed
out that only half the British Nobel Prize winners in Literature were
represented in our textbook.

This is a little hard to reconstruct. I have to assume that Yeats and
Eliot were there; I'm quite sure Galsworthy, Russell, and Churchill
weren't; I'm having trouble remembering as to Shaw and Kipling; and
that's an odd number, but I can't think I'd have used the list in that
complaint if I'd excluded Yeats as Irish and the three in the book
were Eliot, Shaw (also Irish anyway) and Kipling. (Yeah, Kipling can
be depressing, but Shaw?)

My teacher actually listened to that argument, though not to the main
complaint. The reason I'm certain Churchill and Russell weren't in
the book is that she ended up handing out mimeographs of Churchill's
"My Early Life" and Russell's "Speculations and Reflections".

Joe Bernstein

[1] ObSFnally, that log also recorded my first reactions to John
Crowley; I was in awe of <Engine Summer> too.

--
Joe Bernstein, writer and tax preparer <j...@sfbooks.com>

[William Hyde]

On Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 10:30:04 AM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,
> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
> >On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 01:30:56 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> >Heydt) wrote:
> >
> >>In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
> >>William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
> >>>standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
> >>>a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
> >>>response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
> >>>echoed Dorothy in some detail:
> >>>
> >>>"God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
> >>
> >>[schnipp]
> >>
> >>Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
> >>an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
> >>reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
> >>literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
> >>deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
> >>ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.

I quoted the above because I thought you would enjoy it, but not at all because I agreed with it. It is a nice rant, but it misses a lot.

Hardy was not a sadist. He was a man who didn't like what he saw in society. He could, I suppose, have written polemics, campaigned for Parliament, and dealt with problems that way. But he was an architect and writer, not a campaigner. So, like Dickens, he portrayed the evils of his time in fiction.

Is Dickens a sadist because of the tortures inflicted on Oliver Twist? Well, in the end all comes right for Oliver, and the evil come to bad ends. Dickens has pulled his punch, and the reader can close the book without thinking too much about the real Olivers out there. No such luck with Tess. And no such luck in real life.

(Dickens didn't kill off Nell in his first drafts of "The Old Curiosity Shop", but was convinced that it was right for the novel, and did so, though he found it hard to write - clearly not a sadist.)

When he was sixteen, Hardy saw a woman executed. It stuck with him.

In "The Mayor of Casterbridge" a man sells his wife. Hardy, thinking that people would find this implausible, includes a footnote stating that this had actually happened in England, and recently. This book is about the man doing the selling, and how his regret shapes his life, but it is also about a world where this can happen. Not only does the man sell his wife, but a buyer is found, and nobody stops them. Even his wife accepts it.

Hardy didn't always write such downers. He divided his novels into three classes, "Novels of Character and Environment" (including the downers, but also "Far from the Madding Crowd"), "Romances and Fantasies" (I've read none of these), and "Novels of Ingenuity" (including one of my favourites, "A Laodicean"). He wasn't, in other words, always beating the drum.

But his most famous works fall into the first class.

"A Laodicean" also features a woman in some distress, but here it is a question of what society allows women to do. Paula Powers is rich, but has been ill educated. All society really wants her to do is marry, and she is not averse to this, but she wants more. Her problems are not a thousandth of Tess's, of course. But they are intractable and the last line of the book indicates that that universal panacea in novels, a marriage, has not solved them.

It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't describing a fantasy world.

> Well, read the description upthread. The character is handed one
> catastrophe after another from the moment she is introduced until
> she dies. And then, says Hardy, "The Prince of the Immortals had
> finished his sport with Tess."
>
> But because she is a fictional character, it was not God

Hardy was not referring to the Christian god, he makes it clear in the same sentence that it was a reference to classical Greece. One critic actually accused him of believing in such a being.

(or any
> god) that did that to her; it was Thomas Hardy, all his own work.

Hardy was writing to a middle and upper class audience, and one that on the whole approved of an ill fate for people like Tess - at least when they encountered them via a paragraph in the newspaper, not in the flesh.
As the bulk of them didn't actually believe in any such Prince the implication is clear.

William Hyde

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <0fabad9b-bed6-454f...@googlegroups.com>,

And Eliot started out American. :) And while "The Waste Land"
and "The Hollow Men" are bloody depressing (I loved them when I
was a teenager), his Quartets aren't.

>
>My teacher actually listened to that argument, though not to the main
>complaint. The reason I'm certain Churchill and Russell weren't in
>the book is that she ended up handing out mimeographs of Churchill's
>"My Early Life" and Russell's "Speculations and Reflections".
>
>Joe Bernstein
>
>[1] ObSFnally, that log also recorded my first reactions to John
>Crowley; I was in awe of <Engine Summer> too.

I've never been able to read him.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <MPG.3251b52f2...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Damfino.

If I were teaching an introductory class in English literature (which
God forbid), I would start them off with a couple of the
reminiscences of Gerald Durrell: _My Family and Other Animals_
and so on. The man's ability to describe the world around him
(not only the animals he found in it) is remarkable.

Then, for the second semester, I'd give them his elder brother,
Lawrence Durrell's, Alexandria Quartet, a series of novels
separated in three dimensions of space (well, POV) and one of
time. The characters have various kinds of trouble, including
World War II, but the last volume resolves on an upbeat that puts
the whole quartet into perspective.

[J. Clarke]

In article <oE307...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

>
> In article <MPG.3251b52f2...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> J. Clarke <j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >In article <oE2D1...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...
> >>
> >> In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,
> >> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
> >> >On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 01:30:56 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> >> >Heydt) wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
> >> >>William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>>Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
> >> >>>standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
> >> >>>a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
> >> >>>response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
> >> >>>echoed Dorothy in some detail:
> >> >>>

> >> >>>"God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

I've added that to my Kindle (note--for some reason it was a pre-order,
won't be delivered until mid-October). There seems to be a TV series .
. .

> Then, for the second semester, I'd give them his elder brother,
> Lawrence Durrell's, Alexandria Quartet, a series of novels
> separated in three dimensions of space (well, POV) and one of
> time. The characters have various kinds of trouble, including
> World War II, but the last volume resolves on an upbeat that puts
> the whole quartet into perspective.

Let's see how I like the first one.

[Robert Bannister]

On 25/09/2016 9:30 AM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
>> standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
>> a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
>> response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
>> echoed Dorothy in some detail:
>>

>> "God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

>
> [schnipp]
>
> Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
> an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
> reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
> literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
> deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
> ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.
>

I was given a copy of "Tess" as a prize at school. I read it for the
first time when I was still a young man in my sixties.

--
Robert B. born England a long time ago;
Western Australia since 1972

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 14:17:48 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J

Heydt) wrote:

>In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,
>Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
>>On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 01:30:56 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>>Heydt) wrote:

[snip]

>>>Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
>>>an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
>>>reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
>>>literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
>>>deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
>>>ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.
>>
>> I am not challenging you, but why do you think that?
>
>Well, read the description upthread. The character is handed one
>catastrophe after another from the moment she is introduced until
>she dies. And then, says Hardy, "The Prince of the Immortals had
>finished his sport with Tess."
>
>But because she is a fictional character, it was not God (or any
>god) that did that to her; it was Thomas Hardy, all his own work.

So Hardy was worse than Bujold?

>> (You could be saving me from having to read it.)
>
>Oh, I urgently recommend that you never read it. You are, I
>believe, an adult who has finished school, and will never have to
>write a book report on it. (If under some strange circumstances,
>you did have to write a book report on it, fergoshsake get the
>Cliff Notes or something and fake it.)

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 11:19:59 -0400, "J. Clarke"
<j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

>One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
>literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
>deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
>would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.

I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.

Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification. My
particular button for this is math.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <MPG.32522f773...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Oooh, cool.

>
>> Then, for the second semester, I'd give them his elder brother,
>> Lawrence Durrell's, Alexandria Quartet, a series of novels
>> separated in three dimensions of space (well, POV) and one of
>> time. The characters have various kinds of trouble, including
>> World War II, but the last volume resolves on an upbeat that puts
>> the whole quartet into perspective.
>
>Let's see how I like the first one.

OK. Practically spoiler-free description: first volume is a
young man (who hopes to be a writer)'s account of some time he
spent in Alexandria, including his affairs with various women and
other stuff that went on. That's _Justine._

Having finished his MS, he sends it to a friend in Alexandria,
who sends it back full of interlinear comments, mostly amounting
to "You're completely wrong, it was nothing like that," covering
the entire matter again from a different viewpoint. That's
_Balthasar._

The third volume pulls back to the viewpoint(s) of several
characters the reader has hardly seen before, in mixed
tight-third person, and we see what may be what *really* was
going on. That's _Mountolive._

The fourth volume moves forward in time, it's now into World War
II, and we find out what happened next. That's _Clea._

If you read them at all, you do really need to read them in
order.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <tdugubt8jtopinf38...@4ax.com>,

Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 14:17:48 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>Heydt) wrote:
>
>>In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,
>>Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:
>>>On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 01:30:56 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>>>Heydt) wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>>>Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
>>>>an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
>>>>reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
>>>>literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
>>>>deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
>>>>ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.
>>>
>>> I am not challenging you, but why do you think that?
>>
>>Well, read the description upthread. The character is handed one
>>catastrophe after another from the moment she is introduced until
>>she dies. And then, says Hardy, "The Prince of the Immortals had
>>finished his sport with Tess."
>>
>>But because she is a fictional character, it was not God (or any
>>god) that did that to her; it was Thomas Hardy, all his own work.
>
> So Hardy was worse than Bujold?

Good question. Hardy is about abused people, Bujold is about
abused people who however (sometimes) manage to recover, and
abused cats who don't. So maybe my answer is No. :)

[James Rau]

On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 18:32:34 -0700, Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net>
wrote:

> Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification. My
>particular button for this is math.

I have come to believe, after reviewing this thread, that my high
school English Lit. teacher must have been a saint. Instead of making
us read Shakespeare (and the other dry, dull, boring and depressing
titles/authors listed here), she introduced us to Twain, Bradbury,
Orwell and Asimov (and a host of other 'alternative' writers).

May the gods bless her, wherever she is...

James Rau

[William December Starr]

In article <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com>,

Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> said:

> I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
> covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
> fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.
>
> Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification.
> My particular button for this is math.

Leaving aside my Shakespeare deafness[1], I think there may be a
real reason for that, to wit, "Humor is _such_ a subjective thing,
don't you think?"

It goes like this: you give to an intelligent enough teenager who's
willing to learn a tragedy and tell him that it's tragic, even if he
wasn't really moved by it at all he'll accept that okay, maybe it
actually is tragic and I'm just not getting it. But if you give him
a *comedy* and tell him it's funny, and he doesn't think it is, he
won't think okay, maybe it _is_ funny and I'm just not getting
it. He'll think "No it isn't. I've seen funny, and it was nothing
like this."

And then he'll spend the rest of his high school years, and possibly
the rest of his life, doing his best to stay way the hell away from
that entire field of alleged humor.

-----------
*1: It's like tone deafness -- some people
can't hear music; I can't hear Shakespeare[2].

*2: Or rap music. These two things may be related.

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <439cf4a2-c72c-47dd...@googlegroups.com>,

William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:

> "A Laodicean" also features a woman in some distress, but here it
> is a question of what society allows women to do. Paula Powers is
> rich, but has been ill educated. All society really wants her to
> do is marry, and she is not averse to this, but she wants more.
> Her problems are not a thousandth of Tess's, of course. But they
> are intractable and the last line of the book indicates that that
> universal panacea in novels, a marriage, has not solved them.
>
> It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't describing
> a fantasy world.

If a novel is intended as entertainment but fails to entertain
because of the Fifteen Deadly Words -- "I _do_ care what happens to
these people, and I don't like it a bit" -- well, perhaps the word
"failure" applies.

(Here's a question: Was George Orwell trying to entertain with 1984?)

-- wds

[Joseph Nebus]

In <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> writes:

>On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 11:19:59 -0400, "J. Clarke"
><j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:

>[snip]

>>One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
>>literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
>>deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
>>would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.

> I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
>covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
>fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.

Whereas I remember in my high school Shakespeare was given a
pretty good spread: _Romeo and Juliet_, _King Lear_, _Julius Caesar_,
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Hamlet_, _MacBeth_, _The Tempest_, and I
feel like I'm missing one but can't swear to which it is. If you
can't find at least *one* of those that tickles your fancy then it's
not because they're making you read the dreary ones.

> Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification. My
>particular button for this is math.

Is it time for another High School Reading List review? I've
failed to start one off the past few summers but in my defense, I keep
forgetting. Anyway, the last few times we did it the consensus was
that our high schools (the ones we went to, or the ones that are in
our area) have Summer Reading lists that offer plenty of stuff that
reasonable people, by which we mean 'we', would enjoy reading.

--
Joseph Nebus
Math: Why Stuff Can Orbit, Part 4: On The L http://wp.me/p1RYhY-14h
Humor: In Which I Review The Only Thing I Get Anymore http://wp.me/p37lb5-1m7
--------------------------------------------------------+---------------------

[Joseph Nebus]

Whereas I would say I was not fully alive until I knew just how
much Alec d'Urberville deserved to get what came to him.

[Kevrob]

On Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 11:05:05 PM UTC-4, William December Starr wrote:
> In article <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com>,
> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> said:
>
> > I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
> > covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
> > fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.
> >
> > Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification.
> > My particular button for this is math.
>
> Leaving aside my Shakespeare deafness[1], I think there may be a
> real reason for that, to wit, "Humor is _such_ a subjective thing,
> don't you think?"
>
> It goes like this: you give to an intelligent enough teenager who's
> willing to learn a tragedy and tell him that it's tragic, even if he
> wasn't really moved by it at all he'll accept that okay, maybe it
> actually is tragic and I'm just not getting it. But if you give him
> a *comedy* and tell him it's funny, and he doesn't think it is, he
> won't think okay, maybe it _is_ funny and I'm just not getting
> it. He'll think "No it isn't. I've seen funny, and it was nothing
> like this."
>
> And then he'll spend the rest of his high school years, and possibly
> the rest of his life, doing his best to stay way the hell away from
> that entire field of alleged humor.
>

We did Shakespeare in my high school. "Romeo and Juliet," "MacBeth,"
"Julius Caesar" and "Hamlet," tragedies all. But we also did
Oliver Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer." It may be funny,
played, but it certainly wasn't on the page. To get half the
jokes you had to read the footnotes, and you know what they
say about explaining a joke. Still, comedies of manners like
thar are the ancestors of the "situation comedy." Some of those
on TV still swipe plots from it.

I remember telling the English Lit nun that, if books and
stories, when new, were published with "literature questions"
at the end of every chapter or selection, nobody would buy them.

> -----------
> *1: It's like tone deafness -- some people
> can't hear music; I can't hear Shakespeare[2].
>
> *2: Or rap music. These two things may be related.

Rhyme schemes?

Kevin R

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

If you tried any of his later work and bounced, that doesn't surprise
me. _Engine Summer_, though, is much more accessible than his others.




--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <nsa38p$q3q$1...@panix2.panix.com>,

William December Starr <wds...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com>,
>Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> said:
>
>> I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
>> covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
>> fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.
>>
>> Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification.
>> My particular button for this is math.
>
>Leaving aside my Shakespeare deafness[1], I think there may be a
>real reason for that, to wit, "Humor is _such_ a subjective thing,
>don't you think?"
>
>It goes like this: you give to an intelligent enough teenager who's
>willing to learn a tragedy and tell him that it's tragic, even if he
>wasn't really moved by it at all he'll accept that okay, maybe it
>actually is tragic and I'm just not getting it. But if you give him
>a *comedy* and tell him it's funny, and he doesn't think it is, he
>won't think okay, maybe it _is_ funny and I'm just not getting
>it. He'll think "No it isn't. I've seen funny, and it was nothing
>like this."
>
>And then he'll spend the rest of his high school years, and possibly
>the rest of his life, doing his best to stay way the hell away from
>that entire field of alleged humor.

Shakespeare's comedies are funnier on the stage (or screen) than
on the page.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <0evgubd4amm82ceu1...@4ax.com>,

Oh, you lucked out. I got (junior year of high school) an
American Literature teacher who *loathed* SF/F. He made us read
Emerson's essays, and Cather's _My Antonia_, for instance, which I found
incredibly dull, and he retoreted, "But I bet it's better than
any SF you've ever read."

I had my revenge, though. (Those who've heard this story before,
hit 'n' now.) The school published an annual literary magaxine,
whereof he was the editor. I got a couple of pieces into it, but
the first place was won by a guy who submitted a story about a
native dancer whose rain dances always made it rain. So her
grandfather taught her a different dance, a war dance, and over
the noise of the patrons fighting in the night club one could hear
the roar of sirens all over the city.

It was an adequate sort of story, and I owned the copy of either
_Amazine_ or _Fantastic_ in which it had originally appeared. I
turned the magazine over to the teacher and you never heard such
a silence. (It wasn't even that good a story, it could never
have sold to _F&SF_.)

>
>May the gods bless her, wherever she is...

Amen.

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 04:45:09 +0000 (UTC), nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph
Nebus) wrote:

>In <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> writes:
>
>>On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 11:19:59 -0400, "J. Clarke"
>><j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>[snip]
>
>>>One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
>>>literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
>>>deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
>>>would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.
>
>> I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
>>covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
>>fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.
>
> Whereas I remember in my high school Shakespeare was given a
>pretty good spread: _Romeo and Juliet_, _King Lear_, _Julius Caesar_,
>_Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Hamlet_, _MacBeth_, _The Tempest_, and I
>feel like I'm missing one but can't swear to which it is. If you
>can't find at least *one* of those that tickles your fancy then it's
>not because they're making you read the dreary ones.

The only actual laugh-out-loud comedy on that list, though, is _A
Midsummer Night's Dream_, which performed properly (including the
dirty puns) I consider hysterically funny, but which is most often
encountered by modern audiences in movie form, and none of the movie
versions I've watched (three of 'em) were anywhere near as funny as
the better stage versions I've seen. Two of the three were far too
busy "doing Shakespeare" to worry about details like comic timing, or
emphasizing the right words to help the audience notice the naughty
bits, or anything else that would really make people laugh. The third
(with Callista Flockhart) does try, but still puts more effort into
the cinematography and costumes, and making people look sexy, than
into being funny. And it miscast two roles so that all the height
jokes misfire, since the two women are about the same height.

_The Tempest_ is technically a comedy, but I never found it all that
funny. (I've also never seen it performed, but I've read it.)

I'm irrevocably biased on _Julius Caesar_ because when my 9th grade
honors English class read it, we were all bused to see it staged at
Boston Latin, and those guys did a fabulous job with it, including
some really nifty staging -- probably the best amateur production of
any play I've ever seen, though there were a couple of others that
came close, and one version of _A Midummer Night's Dream_ gives it
serious competition. So I probably like _Julius Caesar_ more than it
deserves.

[David Johnston]

On 9/25/2016 11:15 PM, Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:

> _The Tempest_ is technically a comedy, but I never found it all that
> funny. (I've also never seen it performed, but I've read it.)

The Tempest is only formally a comedy. It had a happy ending therefore
it is a comedy because the only other alternative (for a non-history)
was tragedy. Really it had no more, perhaps less comedic content than
Hamlet.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 01:15:30 -0400, Lawrence Watt-Evans
<l...@sff.net> wrote
in<news:4vahub1rtledba5pb...@reader80.eternal-september.org>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 04:45:09 +0000 (UTC),
> nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:

>> In <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com> Gene
>> Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> writes:

[...]

>>> I remember literature in high school. In various
>>> classes, we covered three of Shakespeare's four
>>> tragedies and discussed the fourth. Did we cover any
>>> of Shakespeare's comedies? No.

>> Whereas I remember in my high school Shakespeare was
>> given a pretty good spread: _Romeo and Juliet_, _King
>> Lear_, _Julius Caesar_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_,
>> _Hamlet_, _MacBeth_, _The Tempest_, and I feel like I'm
>> missing one but can't swear to which it is. If you
>> can't find at least *one* of those that tickles your
>> fancy then it's not because they're making you read the
>> dreary ones.

It’s still a bloody lopsided list, leaning heavily towards
dreary and/or unsatisfying. There are only two there that
I’d (re)read for pleasure.

> The only actual laugh-out-loud comedy on that list,
> though, is _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, which performed
> properly (including the dirty puns) I consider
> hysterically funny, but which is most often encountered
> by modern audiences in movie form, and none of the movie
> versions I've watched (three of 'em) were anywhere near
> as funny as the better stage versions I've seen. Two of
> the three were far too busy "doing Shakespeare" to worry
> about details like comic timing, or emphasizing the
> right words to help the audience notice the naughty
> bits, or anything else that would really make people
> laugh. The third (with Callista Flockhart) does try,
> but still puts more effort into the cinematography and
> costumes, and making people look sexy, than into being
> funny. And it miscast two roles so that all the height
> jokes misfire, since the two women are about the same
> height.

As a general rule I prefer to read plays. I did happen to
see the 1968 movie version with Helen Mirren and Diana Rigg
when it was shown on CBS early in 1969, as I was
babysitting that night for someone who had a TV; I actually
liked it quite a bit. The fact that it’s the one with
which I’m most familiar may have helped, of course. (I had
a very good eighth grade English teacher who took us
through it at some length and, amazingly enough, quite
enjoyably.)

> _The Tempest_ is technically a comedy, but I never found
> it all that funny. (I've also never seen it performed,
> but I've read it.)

I don’t consider it funny, but I like it, if not so much as
some of the true comedies.

> I'm irrevocably biased on _Julius Caesar_ because when my
> 9th grade honors English class read it, we were all
> bused to see it staged at Boston Latin, and those guys
> did a fabulous job with it, including some really nifty
> staging -- probably the best amateur production of any
> play I've ever seen, though there were a couple of
> others that came close, and one version of _A Midummer
> Night's Dream_ gives it serious competition. So I
> probably like _Julius Caesar_ more than it deserves.

I also had it in ninth grade, and I’m just as happy that we
simply read it. Watching and listening is more work than
reading and mostly just gets in my way.

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 9:20:04 AM UTC-6, J. Clarke wrote:

> One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
> literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
> deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
> would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.

Yes, indeed.

Thomas Hardy may not deserve to be criticized for writing Tess of the
d'Urbervilles any more than Harriet Beecher Stowe would for writing Uncle Tom's
Cabin, but at least one can say of the latter book that we no longer need to
read it, since slavery has been abolished.

Even once people get past the notion that a woman who is the victim of rape is
somehow to blame for what has happened to her - or is otherwise diminished in a
moral sense - one still is left with a serious problem.

In a society where:

Women are economically dependent on men;

Marriage is for life, divorce being strictly forbidden;

a woman needs a husband, but, since a woman who has been raped may have
psychological problems interfering with her being a true sexual partner to her
husband - when divorce is not available, the risk becomes unacceptable.

So even if one takes out the hypocrisy, and takes out the double standards, the
strict absolute standards of sexual morality of old would *of themselves* lead
to severe problems for sexual assault survivors.

Today, a sexual assault survivor has the choice of not involving herself with
men; or, if she believes herself recovered, finds love, marries a man... and
then finds out that engaging in sex is more difficult for her than she thought,
they can divorce amicably. That would not be true under the old regime even if
the double standard were eliminated.

But it was Jesus Himself Who said: "What God hath put together, let no man put
asunder". Thus, it appears that only one conclusion is possible; the words of
Jesus are not authoritative on matters of morals, and, hence, the supernatural
claims of Christianity are false.

John Savard

[Brett Dunbar]

>In "The Mayor of Casterbridge" a man sells his wife. Hardy, thinking
>that people would find this implausible, includes a footnote stating
>that this had actually happened in England, and recently. This book
>is about the man doing the selling, and how his regret shapes his
>life, but it is also about a world where this can happen. Not only
>does the man sell his wife, but a buyer is found, and nobody stops
>them. Even his wife accepts it.

There wasn't any method of divorce other than a private act of
parliament. Wife sales were mostly a quasi-legal consensual method of
ending a marriage. Most of the time the purchaser was an existing lover.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling_(English_custom)>

Separation

Five distinct methods of breaking up a marriage existed in the early
modern period of English history. One was to sue in the ecclesiastical
courts for separation from bed and board (a mensa et thoro), on the
grounds of adultery or life-threatening cruelty, but it did not allow a
remarriage. From the 1550s, until the Matrimonial Causes Act became law
in 1857, divorce in England was only possible, if at all, by the complex
and costly procedure of a private Act of Parliament. Although the
divorce courts set up in the wake of the 1857 Act made the procedure
considerably cheaper, divorce remained prohibitively expensive for the
poorer members of society.[1] An alternative was to obtain a "private
separation", an agreement negotiated between both spouses, embodied in a
deed of separation drawn up by a conveyancer. Desertion or elopement was
also possible, whereby the wife was forced out of the family home, or
the husband simply set up a new home with his mistress. Finally, the
less popular notion of wife selling was an alternative but illegitimate
method of ending a marriage. The Laws Respecting Women, As They Regard
Their Natural Rights (1777) observed that, for the poor, wife selling
was viewed as a "method of dissolving marriage", when "a husband and
wife find themselves heartily tired of each other, and agree to part, if
the man has a mind to authenticate the intended separation by making it
a matter of public notoriety".

Although some 19th-century wives objected, records of 18th-century women
resisting their sales are non-existent. With no financial resources, and
no skills on which to trade, for many women a sale was the only way out
of an unhappy marriage. Indeed, the wife is sometimes reported as having
insisted on the sale. A wife sold in Wenlock Market for 2s. 6d. in 1830
was quite determined that the transaction should go ahead, despite her
husband's last-minute misgivings: "'e [the husband] turned shy, and
tried to get out of the business, but Mattie mad' un stick to it. 'Er
flipt her apern in 'er gude man's face, and said, 'Let be yer rogue. I
wull be sold. I wants a change'."

For the husband, the sale released him from his marital duties,
including any financial responsibility for his wife. For the purchaser,
who was often the wife's lover, the transaction freed him from the
threat of a legal action for criminal conversation, a claim by the
husband for restitution or damage to his property, in this case his
wife.

[1] In his 1844 judgement against a bigamist, at Warwick Assizes,
William Henry Maule described the process in detail. "I will
tell you what you ought to have done; ... You ought to have
instructed your attorney to bring an action against the seducer
of your wife for criminal conversation. That would have cost you
about a hundred pounds. When you had obtained judgment for
(though not necessarily actually recovered) substantial damages
against him, you should have instructed your proctor to sue in
the Ecclesiastical courts for a divorce a mensa et thoro. That
would have cost you two hundred or three hundred pounds more.
When you had obtained a divorce a mensa et thoro, you should
have appeared by counsel before the House of Lords in order to
obtain a private Act of Parliament for a divorce a vinculo
matrimonii which would have rendered you free and legally
competent to marry the person whom you have taken on yourself to
marry with no such sanction. The Bill might possibly have been
opposed in all its stages in both Houses of Parliament, and
together you would have had to spend about a thousand or twelve
hundred pounds. You will probably tell me that you have never
had a thousand farthings of your own in the world; but,
prisoner, that makes no difference. Sitting here as an English
Judge, it is my duty to tell you that this is not a country in
which there is one law for the rich and one for the poor. You
will be imprisoned for one day. Since you have been in custody
since the commencement of the Assizes you are free to leave."
This affirmation later contributed to the passing of the 1857
Act.
--
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
Livejournal http://brett-dunbar.livejournal.com/
Brett Dunbar

[Mart van de Wege]

Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> writes:

> On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 11:19:59 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> <j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
>>literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
>>deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
>>would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.
>
> I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
> covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
> fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.
>

Shakespeare gets killed by reading him. He really needs to be acted out,
or at least spoken out, trippingly on the tongue, not studied to death
on paper. I agree with Peter Hall, if you assume that Shakespeare's use
of iambic pentameter was a poetic reconstruction of the normal rhythms
of English speech, and speak it fluently, it comes alive.

The same in Dutch. One of our masterworks is Van den Vondel's Lucifer,
but it's so often either solemnly declared, or needlessly
popularised. Last night I read out Lucifer's opening speech as close as
I could get it to normal speech, and found out Vondel was using his
alexandrines much as Shakespeare did his pentameter. Especially the
final bit where Lucifer declares:

"Liever d'eerste in enig lager hof,
dan in 't gezaligd licht een tweede,
of nog een minder."
(Rather first in any lower realm, than in the blessed light a second, or
even less)

Vondel breaks his rhythm, and it becomes an angry snarl. Lovely
poetry. But most literature teachers will ignore the effects the need
for staging had on the poetry, and thus kill it.

Mart

--
"We will need a longer wall when the revolution comes."
--- AJS, quoting an uncertain source.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:59:32 +0200, Mart van de Wege
<mvd...@gmail.com> wrote
in<news:86eg47j...@gaheris.avalon.lan> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> Shakespeare gets killed by reading him.

Or not. I *much* prefer to read him.

> He really needs to be acted out, or at least spoken out,
> trippingly on the tongue, not studied to death on paper.

I agree that the rhythm is important, but one can perfectly
well ‘speak him out’ mentally.

[...]

[Mart van de Wege]

"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> writes:

> On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:59:32 +0200, Mart van de Wege
> <mvd...@gmail.com> wrote
> in<news:86eg47j...@gaheris.avalon.lan> in
> rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> [...]
>
>> Shakespeare gets killed by reading him.
>
> Or not. I *much* prefer to read him.
>
>> He really needs to be acted out, or at least spoken out,
>> trippingly on the tongue, not studied to death on paper.
>
> I agree that the rhythm is important, but one can perfectly
> well ‘speak him out’ mentally.
>

I think this is a function of experience. It takes a lot of reading and
listening to get a good feel of the rhythms of language just from the
page alone.

In the context of literary education at teenage ages, I think this is
asking a bit too much of your target audience.

[Kevrob]

Our junior year all read "Julius Caesar." We all did a bus trip to
the now, long-closed Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford, CT to see
the play, which was awesome. I, being a history nerd who had
finished 2 years of Latin and won a county-wide contest for
translating Caesar, may have been biased. Still, a field trip
where we all wore "civilian clothes" rather than the school uniform?
Righteous. The girls looked even better than usual, too, to
16-year-old horndog eyes.

> I also had it in ninth grade, and I’m just as happy that we
> simply read it. Watching and listening is more work than
> reading and mostly just gets in my way.
>

You may be an outlier, there, Brian. Most people find watching
and listening easier than reading, even in the days when you
couldn't rewind when you missed something, which is still the
case in live theatre.

Kevin R

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 12:17:02 +0200, Mart van de Wege
<mvd...@gmail.com> wrote
in<news:86a8evj...@gaheris.avalon.lan> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> writes:

>> On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:59:32 +0200, Mart van de Wege
>> <mvd...@gmail.com> wrote
>> in<news:86eg47j...@gaheris.avalon.lan> in
>> rec.arts.sf.written:

>> [...]

>>> Shakespeare gets killed by reading him.

>> Or not. I *much* prefer to read him.

>>> He really needs to be acted out, or at least spoken
>>> out, trippingly on the tongue, not studied to death on
>>> paper.

>> I agree that the rhythm is important, but one can
>> perfectly well ‘speak him out’ mentally.

> I think this is a function of experience. It takes a lot
> of reading and listening to get a good feel of the
> rhythms of language just from the page alone.
>
> In the context of literary education at teenage ages, I
> think this is asking a bit too much of your target
> audience.

My real point is that no one approach is going to be right
for everyone. What I wrote applied to me at age 13 as much
as it does 55 years later.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 05:08:28 -0700 (PDT), Kevrob
<kev...@my-deja.com> wrote
in<news:eb863353-b67c-4290...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Monday, September 26, 2016 at 2:31:46 AM UTC-4, Brian
> M. Scott wrote:

[...]

> Still, a field trip where we all wore "civilian clothes"
> rather than the school uniform? Righteous. The girls
> looked even better than usual, too, to 16-year-old
> horndog eyes.

>> I also had it in ninth grade, and I’m just as happy that
>> we simply read it. Watching and listening is more work
>> than reading and mostly just gets in my way.

> You may be an outlier, there, Brian. [...]

Oh, almost certainly. Probably also in not caring much for
field trips in general and not being much interested in any
of the girls in the school: we simply hadn’t enough in
common for looks or hormones to matter much.

[William Hyde]

On Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 8:01:54 PM UTC-4, J. Clarke wrote:
> In article <oE307...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...
> >
> > In article <MPG.3251b52f2...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> > J. Clarke <j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >In article <oE2D1...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...
> > >>

> > >> In article <p3oeubpvcg4hqoko9...@4ax.com>,
> > >> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:

> > >> >On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 01:30:56 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> > >> >Heydt) wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> >>In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
> > >> >>William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> >>>Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
> > >> >>>standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
> > >> >>>a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
> > >> >>>response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
> > >> >>>echoed Dorothy in some detail:
> > >> >>>
> > >> >>>"God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
> > >> >>
> > >> >>[schnipp]
> > >> >>

> > >> >>Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
> > >> >>an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
> > >> >>reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
> > >> >>literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
> > >> >>deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
> > >> >>ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.
> > >> >
> > >> > I am not challenging you, but why do you think that?
> > >>
> > >> Well, read the description upthread. The character is handed one
> > >> catastrophe after another from the moment she is introduced until
> > >> she dies. And then, says Hardy, "The Prince of the Immortals had
> > >> finished his sport with Tess."
> > >>
> > >> But because she is a fictional character, it was not God (or any
> > >> god) that did that to her; it was Thomas Hardy, all his own work.
> > >>

> > >> > (You could be saving me from having to read it.)
> > >>
> > >> Oh, I urgently recommend that you never read it. You are, I
> > >> believe, an adult who has finished school, and will never have to
> > >> write a book report on it. (If under some strange circumstances,
> > >> you did have to write a book report on it, fergoshsake get the
> > >> Cliff Notes or something and fake it.)
> > >

> > >One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
> > >literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
> > >deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
> > >would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.
> >

> > Damfino.
> >
> > If I were teaching an introductory class in English literature (which
> > God forbid), I would start them off with a couple of the
> > reminiscences of Gerald Durrell: _My Family and Other Animals_
> > and so on. The man's ability to describe the world around him
> > (not only the animals he found in it) is remarkable.
>
> I've added that to my Kindle (note--for some reason it was a pre-order,
> won't be delivered until mid-October). There seems to be a TV series .

The TV series was remarkably and disturbingly short.

There are three related books - MFAOA, "Birds, Beasts, and Relatives", and "The Garden of the Gods". All set in Corfu in the 1930s, all, to me, a delight. The stories in "Fillet of Place" also feature Durrell and his family, but don't all take place in Corfu.

> > Then, for the second semester, I'd give them his elder brother,
> > Lawrence Durrell's, Alexandria Quartet, a series of novels
> > separated in three dimensions of space (well, POV) and one of
> > time. The characters have various kinds of trouble, including
> > World War II, but the last volume resolves on an upbeat that puts
> > the whole quartet into perspective.
>
> Let's see how I like the first one.

It is quite possible to like one and not like the other. Aside from being written by brothers, they have no connection. FWIW I really like "The Alexandria Quartet", but if I need to choose one or the other for a comfort read, it would be the Corfu books (in which Larry figures largely as a character).

Both brothers wrote a great deal. If you like Gerald's work, there are twenty or thirty other books out there, the earlier ones about his expeditions to gather wildlife, the later about his running of a zoo and conservation society.

Lawrence was more of a Serious Writer and somewhat less prolific. I've not read much beyond the Quartet.

William Hyde

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 01:40:53 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

>In article <tdugubt8jtopinf38...@4ax.com>,
>Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> wrote:

[snip]

>> So Hardy was worse than Bujold?
>
>Good question. Hardy is about abused people, Bujold is about
>abused people who however (sometimes) manage to recover, and
>abused cats who don't. So maybe my answer is No. :)

Maybe. <BEG>

*Bujold: Don't worry about it. After I torture him, I'll let him
recover.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 08:17:23 +0800, Robert Bannister
<rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>On 25/09/2016 9:30 AM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
>>> standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
>>> a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
>>> response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
>>> echoed Dorothy in some detail:
>>>

>>> "God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

>>
>> [schnipp]
>>
>> Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
>> an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
>> reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
>> literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
>> deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
>> ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.
>>
>

>I was given a copy of "Tess" as a prize at school. I read it for the
>first time when I was still a young man in my sixties.

Are you old now, and is there a connection with "Tess"?

Any horses in "Tess" are, by now, dead (going by historical
periods). Yes, I am flogging one.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[William Hyde]

Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print one hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think it's safe to say that the word "failure" does not apply.

Not everyone is going to like every novel. I really, really, really like P. G. Wodehouse, where nothing bad happens to anyone, even Roderick Spode, but I can't survive a pure diet of Wodehouse.

Tragedy exists in art. Always has.

>
> (Here's a question: Was George Orwell trying to entertain with 1984?)

He was dying, and wanted to leave some money for his wife, so he certainly wanted the book to sell well. Though he's an icon today, he'd made very little money from his books before "Animal Farm" and knew his name alone wouldn't guarantee big sales.

So he wanted us to enjoy the book - a horrified enjoyment, perhaps, but something that would keep us reading. And he had a message. Writers can do two things at once.


William Hyde

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 04:45:09 +0000 (UTC), nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph
Nebus) wrote:

>In <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com> Gene Wirchenko <ge...@telus.net> writes:
>
>>On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 11:19:59 -0400, "J. Clarke"
>><j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>[snip]
>
>>>One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
>>>literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
>>>deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
>>>would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.
>
>> I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
>>covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
>>fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.
>
> Whereas I remember in my high school Shakespeare was given a
>pretty good spread: _Romeo and Juliet_, _King Lear_, _Julius Caesar_,
>_Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Hamlet_, _MacBeth_, _The Tempest_, and I
>feel like I'm missing one but can't swear to which it is. If you
>can't find at least *one* of those that tickles your fancy then it's
>not because they're making you read the dreary ones.

But note that your list has all four tragedies. They are so
literary, don't-cha-know?

>> Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification. My
>>particular button for this is math.
>
> Is it time for another High School Reading List review? I've
>failed to start one off the past few summers but in my defense, I keep
>forgetting. Anyway, the last few times we did it the consensus was
>that our high schools (the ones we went to, or the ones that are in
>our area) have Summer Reading lists that offer plenty of stuff that
>reasonable people, by which we mean 'we', would enjoy reading.

It is not necessarily the content even though schools seem to go
all literary. Fascinating things can be taught in a pedagogical
monotone.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[William Hyde]

On Monday, September 26, 2016 at 4:34:04 AM UTC-4, Brett Dunbar wrote:
> >In "The Mayor of Casterbridge" a man sells his wife. Hardy, thinking
> >that people would find this implausible, includes a footnote stating
> >that this had actually happened in England, and recently. This book
> >is about the man doing the selling, and how his regret shapes his
> >life, but it is also about a world where this can happen. Not only
> >does the man sell his wife, but a buyer is found, and nobody stops
> >them. Even his wife accepts it.
>
> There wasn't any method of divorce other than a private act of
> parliament.

Thanks for the detailed information. I had no idea wife sales were even semi-accepted. I'd have assumed the Church would object rather forcefully.

But the novel was well after the divorce act of 1857, so Hardy was perhaps right in thinking that his (fairly affluent) readership wouldn't be aware of this practice, at least in recent times.

Or perhaps I have failed to remember Hardy's exact words, and it is the nature of this sale, rather than the fact, that he fears his readers won't believe. For the woman does not want this, and the buyer is someone they have just met.

William Hyde

[William Hyde]

On Sunday, September 25, 2016 at 11:05:05 PM UTC-4, William December Starr wrote:

> *1: It's like tone deafness -- some people
> can't hear music; I can't hear Shakespeare

I do not read Shakespeare well. But I have a friend, an actor, who as part of his audition preparation memorized speeches from relatively obscure Shakespeare plays - the ones rarely put on and sparsely attended if they are.

When he gives these speeches, they are fascinating. The rhythm, the flow of the language - it's just great to listen to it. As I have no idea what the plot of any of these plays is, I don't much care what is being said.

William Hyde

[Peter Trei]

Gerard Durrell is a name I haven't heard in a while, but was a favorite author
of mine when I was in school.

His gig, for many years, was as an exotic wildlife collector for zoos; he'd
set off with a small entourage to (mostly tropical) wild places, and
spend a few weeks or a month catching critters, to take home alive. Many of his
books descriptions of these expeditions, described with humor, compassion for
both the animals and the people of the area, and a clear love of his work. The
'autobiographical' books of his childhood on Corfu are not his usual topic.

Later he founded a zoo on Jersey, and got more books out of that. I never
met him, but would have liked to.

pt

[Robert Bannister]

I have come across books exactly like that - all from American publishers.
--
Robert B. born England a long time ago;
Western Australia since 1972

[Robert Bannister]

Until I acted a couple of servants' roles in Romeo & Juliet, I didn't
realise how many dirty jokes there were in that play.

>
> _The Tempest_ is technically a comedy, but I never found it all that
> funny. (I've also never seen it performed, but I've read it.)
>
> I'm irrevocably biased on _Julius Caesar_ because when my 9th grade
> honors English class read it, we were all bused to see it staged at
> Boston Latin, and those guys did a fabulous job with it, including
> some really nifty staging -- probably the best amateur production of
> any play I've ever seen, though there were a couple of others that
> came close, and one version of _A Midummer Night's Dream_ gives it
> serious competition. So I probably like _Julius Caesar_ more than it
> deserves.
>
>
>
>


--

[Robert Bannister]

On 27/09/2016 3:52 AM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Sep 2016 08:17:23 +0800, Robert Bannister
> <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>
>> On 25/09/2016 9:30 AM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>> In article <a8f125ff-360a-412b...@googlegroups.com>,
>>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Every week the Globe and Mail interviews an author with a more or less
>>>> standard set of questions (I posted one comment on Dune from this series
>>>> a few months ago). This week's writer is Donna Morrissey, and in her
>>>> response to the question "What agreed-upon classic do you despise?" she
>>>> echoed Dorothy in some detail:
>>>>

>>>> "God forgive me, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

>>>
>>> [schnipp]
>>>
>>> Agreed in spades. I had a friend once who was an art student at
>>> an art school. She made great ceramics. But for some obscure
>>> reason the faculty demanded that she also take a class in English
>>> literature, and _Tess_ was what she was assigned. She could not
>>> deal, so for pure friendship's sake I read the damn thing and
>>> ghosted her book report. Hardy was a sadist.
>>>
>>
>> I was given a copy of "Tess" as a prize at school. I read it for the
>> first time when I was still a young man in my sixties.
>
> Are you old now,

Getting there fast if I read the numbers on my birthday cards.

and is there a connection with "Tess"?

Yes. I couldn't read more than a page of it without getting bored when I
was a teenager or even in my twenties. By the time I was in my 60s, I
appreciated the book.

>
> Any horses in "Tess" are, by now, dead (going by historical
> periods). Yes, I am flogging one.

--
Robert B. born England 1940.

[J. Clarke]

In article <ghugublf8suosni83...@4ax.com>, ge...@telus.net
says...

>
> On Sun, 25 Sep 2016 11:19:59 -0400, "J. Clarke"
> <j.clark...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >One does wonder, sometimes, whether there is a conspiracy to discourage
> >literacy by convincing students that anything contained in a book is so
> >deadly dull and dreary and depresssing that nobody in their right mind
> >would dare open the covers of same unless forced to do so.
>
> I remember literature in high school. In various classes, we
> covered three of Shakespeare's four tragedies and discussed the
> fourth. Did we cover any of Shakespeare's comedies? No.
>

> Anything taught in school seems to be subject to borification. My
> particular button for this is math.

That's why opposition to "sex education" from the Fundies cracks me up.
You want kids to not have sex, then make it a class. Seems to be
working in Japan.

[William December Starr]

In article <4a3523b9-0ae0-4b76...@googlegroups.com>,

Kevrob <kev...@my-deja.com> said:

>> *1: It's like tone deafness -- some people

>> can't hear music; I can't hear Shakespeare[2].
>>
>> *2: Or rap music. These two things may be related.
>
> Rhyme schemes?

More likely something about the pace of the patter. Though
Shakespeare did run almost all his dialogue through a "Make
poetry, heavy on the allusions please"" processor before
releasing it to the public, and on the whole that's going
degrade the quality of your signal. ("On the whole" because
yes there are some cases where poetry conveys a message, or a
feeling, better than prose.[1])

So I have huge problems with Shakespeare on paper too. To
steal from myself, "This isn't English. I've spent thirteen
years learning English, and it was [DEL] nothing [\DEL] very
little like this."

-----------
*1: For example, the final verse of Paul Simons'
"The Boxer":

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

or Don McLean's brilliant "American Pie." What does:

"Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die"

mean? I don't know, but I can _feel_it.

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <e52ddd13-63b0-4525...@googlegroups.com>,

William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:

> I do not read Shakespeare well. But I have a friend, an actor,
> who as part of his audition preparation memorized speeches from
> relatively obscure Shakespeare plays - the ones rarely put on and
> sparsely attended if they are.
>
> When he gives these speeches, they are fascinating. The rhythm,
> the flow of the language - it's just great to listen to it. As I
> have no idea what the plot of any of these plays is, I don't much
> care what is being said.

That's where they lose me. My list of priorities for being on the
receiving end of storytelling tops out at "I want to know what's
going on here, to the extent that the storyteller is willing to tell
me directly or dole out sufficient hints and clues." Being dazzled
by things like the rhythm and flow of the language is _way_ down on
the list.

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <eb863353-b67c-4290...@googlegroups.com>,
Kevrob <kev...@my-deja.com> said:

> Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
>> I also had ["Julius Caesar"] in ninth grade, and I'm just as

>> happy that we simply read it. Watching and listening is
>> more work than reading and mostly just gets in my way.
>
> You may be an outlier, there, Brian. Most people find
> watching and listening easier than reading, even in the days
> when you couldn't rewind when you missed something, which is
> still the case in live theatre.

But would he be an outlier _here_?

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <18m1j42r1bji8$.1xbqurhfro36s$.d...@40tude.net>,
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> said:

> Mart van de Wege said:
>
> [Shakespeare] really needs to be acted out, or at least

> spoken out, trippingly on the tongue, not studied to death
> on paper.
>
> I agree that the rhythm is important, but one can perfectly
> well 'speak him out' mentally.

One can also translate at one's own pace, at least outside of
school walls.

-- wds

[William December Starr]

In article <62a5d409-2e96-4bff...@googlegroups.com>,
William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:

> William December Starr wrote:

>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
>>
>>> It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't describing
>>> a fantasy world.
>>
>> If a novel is intended as entertainment but fails to entertain
>> because of the Fifteen Deadly Words -- "I _do_ care what happens to
>> these people, and I don't like it a bit" -- well, perhaps the word
>> "failure" applies.
>
> Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print one
> hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think it's safe
> to say that the word "failure" does not apply.

I did say "fails to entertain," not "fails to stay in print."

[...]

>> (Here's a question: Was George Orwell trying to entertain with 1984?)
>
> He was dying, and wanted to leave some money for his wife, so he
> certainly wanted the book to sell well. Though he's an icon
> today, he'd made very little money from his books before "Animal
> Farm" and knew his name alone wouldn't guarantee big sales.
>
> So he wanted us to enjoy the book - a horrified enjoyment,
> perhaps, but something that would keep us reading. And he had a
> message. Writers can do two things at once.

Can, but it's very difficult. One's perception of how often it
happens may be skewed by a version of sampling bias: the failures
generally sink pretty quickly[1] and are forgotten, while the ones
that succeed get remembered and promoted for a long time (again,
generally).

-----------
*1: Unless it's got words like "Star Wars" on the cover, of course.

-----------
*2: I was thirteen or fourteen and was determined to plow through
to the end, but if I had known then what I know now I would
have said: "Great world-building, very weak story told in that
world[3]."

-----------
*3: THE INTEGRAL TREES, anyone?

-- wds

[Kevrob]

There's an allusion to the Buddy holly hit, "That'll Be The Day."

Aand to the "see the USA" theme song of Dinah Shore's TV show.

[quote]

Well, that'll be the day, when you say goodbye
Yes, that'll be the day, when you make me cry
You say you're gonna leave, you know it's a lie
'Cause that'll be the day when I die

[/quote] - Buddy Holly & Jerry Allison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcveTkoahXU

Figuring out "American Pie" was a great 1970s "parlor game,"
if dormitory rooms littered with beer cans and hazy with funny
smoke could be called parlors.

see: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jab/cty/pie.html

http://www.whrc-wi.org/americanpie.htm

http://understandingamericanpie.com/index.htm

And from the mouth of the author:

[quote]

People ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course
I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements.
The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.

[/quote] The Gruaniad

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/13/don-mclean-sells-american-pie-manuscript-saying-all-will-be-revealed

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/08/gloomy-don-mclean-reveals-meaning-of-american-pie-and-sells-lyrics-for-1-2-million/

Kevin R

[Cryptoengineer]

wds...@panix.com (William December Starr) wrote in news:nscg00$bao$1
@panix2.panix.com:

If you think Shakespeare used a 'heavy on the allusions' filter,
wait till you see 'American Pie' deconstructed. It's an amazingly
dense history of US/UK pop music from the death of Buddy Holly
in 1959, through Altamont in 1969.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/music/american-pie/

pt

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <nscgj8$3o$1...@panix2.panix.com>,

My guess is that probably the best way to *study* Shakespeare would be
a graphic novel and that the best way to *enjoy* Shakespeare would be
a performance.

I know my cousin just bounced off the new Harry Potter, and she probably
had more desire to read that than most kids do to read Shakespeare.
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, September 26, 2016 at 6:54:26 PM UTC-6, William December Starr wrote:
> Though
> Shakespeare did run almost all his dialogue through a "Make
> poetry, heavy on the allusions please"" processor before
> releasing it to the public,

Actually, it was the other way around.

What is usually considered to be the "best" version of the plays of Shakespeare
are what was known then as the "foul papers" - the plays as he originally wrote
them for his own use, before he cut them down to make them more suitable for
real-life audiences.

So, before they were performed, Shakespeare took the allusions _out_.

John Savard

[Robert Carnegie]

On Tuesday, 27 September 2016 01:54:26 UTC+1, William December Starr wrote:
> In article <4a3523b9-0ae0-4b76...@googlegroups.com>,
> Kevrob <kev...@my-deja.com> said:
>
> >> *1: It's like tone deafness -- some people
> >> can't hear music; I can't hear Shakespeare[2].
> >>
> >> *2: Or rap music. These two things may be related.
> >
> > Rhyme schemes?
>
> More likely something about the pace of the patter. Though
> Shakespeare did run almost all his dialogue through a "Make
> poetry, heavy on the allusions please"" processor before
> releasing it to the public, and on the whole that's going
> degrade the quality of your signal. ("On the whole" because
> yes there are some cases where poetry conveys a message, or a
> feeling, better than prose.[1])
>
> So I have huge problems with Shakespeare on paper too. To
> steal from myself, "This isn't English. I've spent thirteen
> years learning English, and it was [DEL] nothing [\DEL] very
> little like this."

Well, you can get it translated...

By the way, on keeping Thomas Hardy in print, if
that was a point - being used as a schoolbook helps
with that.

In real life he stopped writing novels, for whatever
reason; I hope the characters who didn't suffer were
grateful.

[David DeLaney]

So have I; they tend to be either children's or 'young adult', presumably so
that someone can point at it and say "LOOK! it's edumacational! we thought of
the chillldrunnn!".

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
website on VIC is down, probably for good - oh well/ I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[David DeLaney]

On 2016-09-26, Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> Harriet Beecher Stowe would for writing Uncle Tom's
> Cabin, but at least one can say of the latter book that we no longer need to
> read it, since slavery has been abolished.

... and once again the whooshbird takes a quick trip over John's head.

Dave, it doesn't even need to file a flight plan anymore, it just radios the
local tower and says "hey, me again"

[Gene Wirchenko]

On Tue, 27 Sep 2016 05:50:19 -0500, David DeLaney
<davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>On 2016-09-26, Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:
>> On 26/09/2016 12:51 PM, Kevrob wrote:
>>> I remember telling the English Lit nun that, if books and
>>> stories, when new, were published with "literature questions"
>>> at the end of every chapter or selection, nobody would buy them.
>>
>> I have come across books exactly like that - all from American publishers.
>
>So have I; they tend to be either children's or 'young adult', presumably so
>that someone can point at it and say "LOOK! it's edumacational! we thought of
>the chillldrunnn!".

"... Little monsters thinking they can enjoy reading! Well, we
showed them!"

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

[William Hyde]

"A Laodicean" was reprinted in 2015. I'd be surprised it it has ever been used as a schoolbook.

> In real life he stopped writing novels, for whatever
> reason;

The frequently cited reason is that he was put off by the reaction to "Jude the Obscure". Given that some bookstores refused to stock this, there was the chance that his next novel might not be published at all. People who knew Hardy scoffed at this explanation.

Hardy thought of himself as a poet first, novelist second. But his poetry was not appreciated in his early years (his reputation as a poet has grown dramatically since), so once he ceased to be a practicing architect, only novels could provide an income. My guess is that by 1900 or so he had enough money and felt he could make up for lost time. Besides, his fame was now such that I suspect he now got reasonable money even for poetry.

I don't recall ever studying a story or novel by Hardy in school. But his poetry, yes.

William Hyde

[William Hyde]

You misunderstand. I am being given an excerpt from a play I've never read, so naturally I don't know what the point of the speech is. The speeches are not at all unclear in themselves. If I was watching the play, I would get the point.

And I think if you heard this, you'd move it well up your list. I can't be sure, of course. Certainly I was surprised - poetry of most kinds just bounces off me.

William Hyde

[William Hyde]

On Monday, September 26, 2016 at 9:29:32 PM UTC-4, William December Starr wrote:
> In article <62a5d409-2e96-4bff...@googlegroups.com>,
> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
>
> > William December Starr wrote:
> >> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
> >>
> >>> It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't describing
> >>> a fantasy world.
> >>
> >> If a novel is intended as entertainment but fails to entertain
> >> because of the Fifteen Deadly Words -- "I _do_ care what happens to
> >> these people, and I don't like it a bit" -- well, perhaps the word
> >> "failure" applies.
> >
> > Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print one
> > hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think it's safe
> > to say that the word "failure" does not apply.
>
> I did say "fails to entertain," not "fails to stay in print."

Doesn't stay in print if people are not buying it. Quite a few people have been entertained by Hardy's work in the past century and a bit.

Mind you, I wasn't too entertained by "Tess". For reasons not identical but not altogether different from Dorothy's, I lost interest halfway through, though I finished it. Other books by Hardy I did enjoy, however.

> *1: Unless it's got words like "Star Wars" on the cover, of course.
>
> -----------
> *2: I was thirteen or fourteen and was determined to plow through
> to the end, but if I had known then what I know now I would
> have said: "Great world-building, very weak story told in that
> world[3]."

I missed the reference to (2).

>
> -----------
> *3: THE INTEGRAL TREES, anyone?

Alas. But at least it was short.

William Hyde

[Peter Trei]

Not everyone takes WDS's position. Many are quite happy to watch opera in
languages they don't speak, and have only a vague understanding of the plot,
let alone the lyrics. Particularly in song and drama, the performance can
be the point, rather than the content. It's not really the case for books,
but there you can go back and re-read if you missed something.

I can listen to John Gielgud recite Shakespeare quite happily, even when I've
entirely lost the plot. "Prospero's Books", anyone?

OTOH, I'm a big fan of Broadway style musical theater, since by and large you
*can* understand what's being said. eg: "Into the Woods".

pt

[Kevrob]

Nowadays, opera has supertitles, or sub-titles on the home screen.
Alan W could probably chime in on what works best, though I'd suppose
he's familiar enough with an opera's book not to need the titles.

Kevin R

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 13:17:00 -0700 (PDT), Peter Trei
<pete...@gmail.com> wrote
in<news:d149fbf4-ab7e-4af1...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> Not everyone takes WDS's position. Many are quite happy
> to watch opera in languages they don't speak, and have
> only a vague understanding of the plot, let alone the
> lyrics.

And some of us not only don’t give a damn about the plot
but would be much happier if they got rid of the damned
singers altogether and turned the opera into an
instrumental piece.

[...]

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[Peter Trei]

Sure, and when I'm at the opera I use them (I prefer sur-titles on the
proscenium arch; the NY Met has a small display built into seatbacks, reading
that takes my eyes away from the stage a lot more).

But people were enjoying opera in foreign languages long before.

" Wagner’s music is better than it sounds" – Mark Twain :-)

pt

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <67595cea-6a3b-45c6...@googlegroups.com>,

>" Wagner's music is better than it sounds" -- Mark Twain :-)
>
>pt

All it needs is the *proper* English translation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jDcWAWRRHo

[Brian M. Scott]

On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 14:51:20 -0700 (PDT), Peter Trei
<pete...@gmail.com> wrote
in<news:67595cea-6a3b-45c6...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> " Wagner’s music is better than it sounds" – Mark Twain :-)

I take the view attributed to Rossini, save that I think
him a bit overgenerous: ‘Mr. Wagner a de beaux moments,
mais de mauvais quart d’heures!’

[Scott Lurndal]

Kevrob <kev...@my-deja.com> writes:
>On Wednesday, September 28, 2016 at 4:17:10 PM UTC-4, Peter Trei wrote:

>> Not everyone takes WDS's position. Many are quite happy to watch opera in
>> languages they don't speak, and have only a vague understanding of the plot,
>> let alone the lyrics. Particularly in song and drama, the performance can
>> be the point, rather than the content. It's not really the case for books,
>> but there you can go back and re-read if you missed something.

>

>Nowadays, opera has supertitles, or sub-titles on the home screen.
>Alan W could probably chime in on what works best, though I'd suppose
>he's familiar enough with an opera's book not to need the titles.

OperaSJ uses supertitles at the California Theatre. They work well,
so long as the operator can keep up (and understands some italian).

Just saw Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor a week ago. While I cannot
listen to opera on the stereo or radio, a live performance is a completely
different experience - and this performance showcased some incredable
vocal talent, particuarly the lead soprano, Sylvia Lee.

[William Hyde]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2016 at 6:41:46 PM UTC-4, Brian M. Scott wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Sep 2016 14:51:20 -0700 (PDT), Peter Trei
> <pete...@gmail.com> wrote
> in<news:67595cea-6a3b-45c6...@googlegroups.com>
> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>
> [...]
>
> > " Wagner’s music is better than it sounds" – Mark Twain :-)
>
> I take the view attributed to Rossini, save that I think
> him a bit overgenerous: ‘Mr. Wagner a de beaux moments,
> mais de mauvais quart d’heures!’

My view accords with that of Brahms: love the music, despair of the man, hate the cult of Wagner.

William Hyde

[Brett Dunbar]

In message <nsci1p$28n$1...@panix2.panix.com>, William December Starr
<wds...@panix.com> writes

>In article <62a5d409-2e96-4bff...@googlegroups.com>,
>William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
>
>> William December Starr wrote:
>>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
>>>
>>>> It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't describing
>>>> a fantasy world.
>>>
>>> If a novel is intended as entertainment but fails to entertain
>>> because of the Fifteen Deadly Words -- "I _do_ care what happens to
>>> these people, and I don't like it a bit" -- well, perhaps the word
>>> "failure" applies.
>>
>> Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print one
>> hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think it's safe
>> to say that the word "failure" does not apply.
>
>I did say "fails to entertain," not "fails to stay in print."

To stay in print it has to entertain, ultimately any other objective is
dependent on the novel being read. So it needs to actually convince the
reader that there is some value in finding out what happens next, that
is there must be entertainment value all else is secondary.
--
Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
Livejournal http://brett-dunbar.livejournal.com/
Brett Dunbar

[Kevrob]

On Friday, September 30, 2016 at 3:29:13 PM UTC-4, Brett Dunbar wrote:
> In message <nsci1p$28n$1...@panix2.panix.com>, William December Starr
> <wds...@panix.com> writes
> >In article <62a5d409-2e96-4bff...@googlegroups.com>,
> >William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
> >
> >> William December Starr wrote:
> >>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
> >>>
> >>>> It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't describing
> >>>> a fantasy world.
> >>>
> >>> If a novel is intended as entertainment but fails to entertain
> >>> because of the Fifteen Deadly Words -- "I _do_ care what happens to
> >>> these people, and I don't like it a bit" -- well, perhaps the word
> >>> "failure" applies.
> >>
> >> Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print one
> >> hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think it's safe
> >> to say that the word "failure" does not apply.
> >
> >I did say "fails to entertain," not "fails to stay in print."
>
> To stay in print it has to entertain, ultimately any other objective is
> dependent on the novel being read. So it needs to actually convince the
> reader that there is some value in finding out what happens next, that
> is there must be entertainment value all else is secondary.
> --

...not if enough school teachers and college instructors assign
it for required reading, it doesn't. That doesn't mean that
assigned reading cannot be entertaining, but it isn't required to be.

Kevin R

[Kevrob]

When I was a bookseller, we used to have the English National Opera Guides
(ENO Guides, for short,) so people could listen and follow along in the
pamphlet. They had the complete text of the opera, in English and in
the original. John Calder was the publisher, and, if memory serves, they
were distributed to the trade i the US by Routledge.

They were great for padding orders for meeting minimums to get a trade
discount, when you were doing special orders that the jobbers like
Baker & Taylor or Ingram didn't have, or were charging too much for.
They were light, so you didn't get hit for extra freight, and they
didn't take up room on the shelf. The buggers always sold, eventually.
There was always a conservatory student or opera buff who would *squee*
with delight in finding a new (to her or him) one and snap it up.

Kevin R

[William December Starr]

In article <yEFIQLKa...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk>,

Brett Dunbar <br...@dimetrodon.me.uk> said:

> William December Starr <wds...@panix.com> writes

>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
>>
>>> Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print one
>>> hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think it's
>>> safe to say that the word "failure" does not apply.
>>
>> I did say "fails to entertain," not "fails to stay in print."
>
> To stay in print it has to entertain, ultimately any other
> objective is dependent on the novel being read. So it needs to
> actually convince the reader that there is some value in finding
> out what happens next, that is there must be entertainment value
> all else is secondary.

That's certainly true of storytelling, but does it apply to (a)
literature and/or (b) The Classics?

-- wds

[J. Clarke]

In article <yEFIQLKa...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk>,
br...@dimetrodon.me.uk says...

>
> In message <nsci1p$28n$1...@panix2.panix.com>, William December Starr
> <wds...@panix.com> writes
> >In article <62a5d409-2e96-4bff...@googlegroups.com>,
> >William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
> >
> >> William December Starr wrote:
> >>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
> >>>
> >>>> It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't describing
> >>>> a fantasy world.
> >>>
> >>> If a novel is intended as entertainment but fails to entertain
> >>> because of the Fifteen Deadly Words -- "I _do_ care what happens to
> >>> these people, and I don't like it a bit" -- well, perhaps the word
> >>> "failure" applies.
> >>
> >> Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print one
> >> hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think it's safe
> >> to say that the word "failure" does not apply.
> >
> >I did say "fails to entertain," not "fails to stay in print."
>
> To stay in print it has to entertain, ultimately any other objective is
> dependent on the novel being read. So it needs to actually convince the
> reader that there is some value in finding out what happens next, that
> is there must be entertainment value all else is secondary.

Convince enough elderly maiden ladies that it is "lit her a tour" and it
will continue to sell, inflicted unwillingly on legions of hapless
schoolchildren to poison for ever any hope of their becoming interested
in reading.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <MPG.325973c12...@news.eternal-september.org>,

My junior-uear English teacher was neither elderly, a maiden, nor
a lady, but he still made us read Willa Cather and Ralph Waldo
Emerson.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

[J. Clarke]

In article <oEDFK...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

Elderly maiden lady is an attitude. I have known older single women who
were not elderly maiden ladies and I have known young married men who
were.

[Kevrob]

Emerson isn't ALL crap. He was Thoreau's friend, so he had
that going for him. Transcendentalism was a thing, and it
strikes me as important to know about it, even if one is not
a big fan. It was influential.

Kevin R

[Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy]

Brett Dunbar <br...@dimetrodon.me.uk> wrote in
news:yEFIQLKa...@dimetrodon.demon.co.uk:

> In message <nsci1p$28n$1...@panix2.panix.com>, William December
> Starr <wds...@panix.com> writes
>>In article
>><62a5d409-2e96-4bff...@googlegroups.com>, William
>>Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
>>
>>> William December Starr wrote:
>>>> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> said:
>>>>
>>>>> It was intended as a pure entertainment, but he wasn't
>>>>> describing a fantasy world.
>>>>
>>>> If a novel is intended as entertainment but fails to
>>>> entertain because of the Fifteen Deadly Words -- "I _do_ care
>>>> what happens to these people, and I don't like it a bit" --
>>>> well, perhaps the word "failure" applies.
>>>
>>> Speaking of fantasy worlds! When a novel is still in print
>>> one hundred and twenty five years after publication, I think
>>> it's safe to say that the word "failure" does not apply.
>>
>>I did say "fails to entertain," not "fails to stay in print."
>
> To stay in print it has to entertain, ultimately any other
> objective is dependent on the novel being read.

No. To stay in print, it has to _sell_. It doesn't matter if anyone
ever reads a single word of it. There is an entire industry of
"coffee table books" that sell quite well, and that nobody ever
reads (or even looks at the pictures).

--
Terry Austin

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <XnsA6946747EC0...@69.16.179.42>,

Well, "Tess", of course, is on Project G, so in 5 years or so (or
whenever schools go 100% ebook), it won't even have to be "in print"
to be inflicted on a new generation.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <2a13347b-44a0-4dfb...@googlegroups.com>,

From what I've read about (not by) Thoreau, he was what a
Salinger character would call a phony. He went on about living
the simple life, far from the madding crowd, in the peace and
solitude of nature. But whenever he got tired of the solitary
uncluttered life, which was frequently, he'd wander over to one
of relatives (who lived nearby) and mooch off them.

As for transcendentalism, I associate that with Bronson Alcott,
who is what in my youth we called a male chauvinist pig.

[Joe Bernstein]

On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 10:09:12 AM UTC-7, Gutless Umbrella

Carrying Sissy wrote:

> No. To stay in print, it has to _sell_. It doesn't matter if anyone
> ever reads a single word of it. There is an entire industry of
> "coffee table books" that sell quite well, and that nobody ever
> reads (or even looks at the pictures).

Oh, that depends. I've looked at the pictures of some, especially
ones given as gifts - it's a much easier route to offering convincing
thanks than actually reading is.

(Separately, many art books are, physically, coffee table books, but
people *do* look at *their* pictures.)

Recently, some scholars have noticed that the coffee table book
publishers don't actually care what the text says, and have started
publishing scholarly tomes as coffee table books. I've seen major
histories of astrology and of Central Asia published as coffee table
books. Possibly someone actually reads these for their content; I've
read parts of each of those two.

Joe Bernstein

Oh, all right.

Christoph Baumer, <The History of Central Asia>, at least two volumes
so far, I've seen at least one in a scholarly library. Baumer focuses
on what the Chinese sources say, which isn't enough to do the job
really right but is an important part, so he's serving a useful
scholarly purpose.

The astrology one will have to wait until tomorrow - I know where to
find it in the library but don't remember who wrote it.

--
Joe Bernstein, writer and tax preparer <j...@sfbooks.com>

[Don Kuenz]

_The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction_ regards Egdar Allan Poe as
the first writer to experiment with the science-fictional method. And
Poe regards his contemporary Emerson as yet another Frogpondian
Euphuist. A couple of Poe's essays eloquently elucidate the problem with
Emerson. :0)

It has been well said of the French orator, Dupin, that "he
spoke, as nobody else, the language of every body;" and thus his
manner seems to be exactly conversed in that of the Frogpondian
Euphuists, who, on account of the familiar tone in which they
lisp their outre phrases, may be said to speak, as every body,
the language of nobody - that is to say, a language emphatically
their own. [1]

even when we let these modern hexameters go, as Greek, and
merely hold them fast in their proper character of Longfellowian,
or Feltonian, or Frogpondian, we must still condemn them as
having been committed in a radical misconception of the
philosophy of verse. [2]

Note.

1. http://www.eapoe.org/works/pollin/brp20416.htm
2. http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/english/poebostonexhibit/poesquarrel/34.html

Thank you,

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU

You mistake me in supposing I dislike the transcendentalists. It is
only the pretenders and sophists among them. - Poe

[J. Clarke]

In article <oEDp3...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

If you want a very different view of Thoreau, read Henry Petroski's "The
Pencil", which is a history of same. He doesn't discuss Thoreau the
visonary, he discusses Thoreau the pencil maker.

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

On Sat, 1 Oct 2016 17:11:45 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

>From what I've read about (not by) Thoreau, he was what a
>Salinger character would call a phony. He went on about living
>the simple life, far from the madding crowd, in the peace and
>solitude of nature. But whenever he got tired of the solitary
>uncluttered life, which was frequently, he'd wander over to one
>of relatives (who lived nearby) and mooch off them.

He ate Sunday dinner with the Emersons every week. And his cabin is
(it's been rebuilt in the same spot) right beside a railroad
embankment, though in his day there were only a couple of trains a
day.

On the other hand, Walden Pond sits in a lovely little valley (the
railroad embankment is along one of the surrounding ridges), and in
his day there was no public beach on the other side, so it really was
pretty isolated in the sense of not being able to see anything manmade
other than the railroad and his cabin.

I took swimming lessons at Walden Pond when I was eight. It's not out
in the wilderness and wasn't in Thoreau's day either, but it's still
surrounded by natural beauty.





--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <48b7eb0c-f221-4ef9...@googlegroups.com>,

We await with breathful anticipation.

I hae a whole row of coffee table books but no coffee table; they
sit in a tall row atop a short bookcase about eight feet from
where I'm sitting. Some of them are on astronomy and/or space
travel, some are by Macauley ("City", "Underground," et ceterra),
some are art, one is the Condensed OED. All they have in common
is their size, which will not let them fit into a standard
bookcase. The only one I take out and look at regularly is the
one full of Pre-Raphaelite art.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

I have learned a new word: Frogpondian. Still don't know what it
means, but what the hey.

[J. Clarke]

In article <oEDvF...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

Once I get all the work on the house done, a coffe table with
bookshelves might be an interesting project.

[David Johnston]

Person from Boston. I don't know why he referred to Boston as
Frogpondium.

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

You've never visited the Public Gardens?

[David Johnston]

I've never visited Boston.

[Don Kuenz]

It's my pleasure to provide the Oxford definition:

Frogpondian
noun
depreciative

Poe's word for: an adherent of transcendentalism.
Origin

Mid 19th century ; earliest use found in Edgar Allan Poe
(1809\xe2\x80\x931849), fiction writer, poet, and critic. From Frog Pond,
the name of a pond on Boston Common (Boston being the centre
of New England transcendentalism) + -ian.

It's the least that I can do for someone who so eloquently expressed the
nuances in domestic servant nomenclature. Your remark about the use of
such nomenclature in murder mysteries makes me question whether people
actually speak that way to their servants in real life?

One of my late upper class associates had a domestic helper. The helper
didn't wear a uniform and everybody just used first names for each
other all of the time.

Thank you,

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape
those who dream only by night. - Poe

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <nsp457$43g$1...@dont-email.me>,

Maybe there were frogs there? Two or three centuries ago?
Sounds likelier than, say, Frenchmen.

[Tom Kratman]

If Edgar Allan Poe had written about Terry Austin

Hear the whining of the troll,
Crippled troll,
Bellowing his hatred of the people that are whole.
How he rages, rages, rages
In a mind that’s dark as night.
And the only bit of bright to
Pierce the cobwebs of that foul mind
Is his monitor’s own light.
Hear him whine, whine, whine
His pathetic little lines:
“You must answer,” “you’re my bitch now;” his illusion of control
From the troll, troll, troll, troll,
Troll, so droll
From the screaming-for-attention, bitter troll.

[J. Clarke]

In article <oEE3I...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...

There's a pond on Boston Common called "Frog Pond". For some reason
unknown to me Poe associated Frog Pond with the Transcendentalists and
called them "Frogpondians". Apparently he had issues with them.

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 5:19:31 PM UTC-6, J. Clarke wrote:

> There's a pond on Boston Common called "Frog Pond". For some reason
> unknown to me Poe associated Frog Pond with the Transcendentalists and
> called them "Frogpondians". Apparently he had issues with them.

Given that the British currently call Americans "Leftpondians", the term was
confusing.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 11:58:16 AM UTC-6, Joe Bernstein wrote:

> Recently, some scholars have noticed that the coffee table book
> publishers don't actually care what the text says, and have started
> publishing scholarly tomes as coffee table books. I've seen major
> histories of astrology and of Central Asia published as coffee table
> books. Possibly someone actually reads these for their content; I've
> read parts of each of those two.

And, clearly, being able to claim honestly that the text of the book is
comprehensive and authoritative is a potential selling point. I mean, even if
people don't read the things, they want to feel they've gotten value for their
money?

John Savard

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 1 Oct 2016 22:33:06 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote
in<news:43d0fb97-b959-4897...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

I have seen the term (and its counterpart ‘Rightpondian’)
used by Americans at least as often as by Brits.

[William December Starr]

In article <2a13347b-44a0-4dfb...@googlegroups.com>,

Kevrob <kev...@my-deja.com> said:

> J. Clarke wrote:
>> In article <oEDFK...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com says...
>>

>>> My junior-uear English teacher was neither elderly, a maiden,
>>> nor a lady, but he still made us read Willa Cather and Ralph
>>> Waldo Emerson.
>>
>> Elderly maiden lady is an attitude. I have known older single
>> women who were not elderly maiden ladies and I have known young
>> married men who were.
>

> Emerson isn't ALL crap. He was Thoreau's friend, so he hathat

> going for him. Transcendentalism was a thing, and it
> strikes me as important to know about it, even if one is not
> a big fan. It was influential.

If I recall correctly, it was also one of those things better
learned from Cliffs Notes than from the original texts.

-- wds