ARE ALL YOU GUYS ON DRUGS?
vampi...@webtv.net
of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
A BOOK!
vampi...@webtv.net
tejas
Are you mentioning a book? What have you read? Let me see your library
card.
--
TBSa...@richmond.infi.net (also te...@infi.net)
'Do the boogie woogie in the South American way'
Hank Snow THE RHUMBA BOOGIE
David J. Loftus
: this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
: of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
: groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
: A BOOK!
I'm taking a break from the second volume of Richardson's biography of
Picasso to dip into _A History of Reading_ by Alberto Manguel. As a boy
in Buenos Aires, he got a job reading aloud to the aged, blind Borges --
talk about a cool assignment!
It's been fun reading about the first millenium scriptoriums, where all
the monks pretty much read out loud while copying texts. There's a neat
reference to a friend of the author's, whose father, a classics scholar
who died at Sachsenhausen, knew many works by heart and served as a
walking, talking library for the other inmates; Manguel makes the
obvious, direct reference to the people at the conclusion of Ray
Bradbury's _Fahrenheit 451_.
And I ran across that famous quotation from Kafka again:
"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us.
If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the
skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us
happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books
at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write
ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful
misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love
ourselves, that make use feel as though we had been banished to the
woods, far from any human presence, like suicide. A book must be the axe
for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe."
A little literary hyperbole aside, this passage seems very exciting to
me, but I can't think of any book that has had such an effect on me. To
have such an experience now and then might be instructive and even
inviting, but I can't imagine a book that could do this. The only books
I think that might hit me like a blow to the skull would be racist texts
such as would codify the beliefs of the so-called church that inspired
that Midwestern shooter. I heard the head of that organization
interviewed on NPR last night, and that was pretty bracing. I don't know
that it did me any good, however.
Am I simply living in a different time? Or have I a different
sensibility from the many folks around the country -- let alone the world
-- who can be aroused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
such an experience?
David Loftus
Bill Knighton
Possible).
This book has sat on my desk for over two years and I finally picked it
up yesterday and will complete it this evening and so far all I can say
is "Bravo"
Bill K
David E. Latane
> vampi...@webtv.net wrote:
> >
> > this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
> > of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
> > groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
> > A BOOK!
nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
pulsanda tellus
as in the notable translation of Wordsworth:
One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall _drink_ at every "pour"
The spirit of the season.
So lighten up; we talk very seriously about very serious books all winter
long.
D. Latane
Sofonisba
Sofonisba
and again, but there's nothing wrong with something soothing if you're in the
mood.
No doubt Kafka was 20 and hadn't been laid in a while when he made the quote.
sofonisba
<a href="http://www.popula.com">www.popula.com</a>
Whose members are known around the world for their wit, charm and bonhomie
midtown neon
asked:
" ...who can be roused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
such an experience?"
Oh, yes! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me.
[ Wouldn't you know it; neon! ]
It was The Wasteland by T.S.Eliot which affected me so profoundly.
By great good fortune, it was the first Eliot I ever read. I found it
in a 1922 copy of Poetry [the magazine] which had been abandoned, with
the other usual detritus, to the young housecleaner; me.
The Wasteland, and by the time I read it, I had been reading for years,
and had been shocked, or uplifted, or terrorized by earlier readings,
was the first words I ever read which gave a sense of logic to the
illogical world which was my domain.
Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass had, using nonsense,
made sense of a nonsensical world, but had not left me awestruck. Poe's
The Tell-tale Heart & The Pit and the Pendulum, which I'd read, much too
soon, perhaps, at age seven or eight, gave me the terrors enough from
which to construct my nightmares. But so had Hansel and Gretel. Other,
later, horror stories, by Welles, by Stevenson, had also been effective.
Feeling quite shocked, upon having finished reading a book by H.P.
Lovecraft, I threw it into the fire. It didn't erupt in the fiery
whirlwind I'd expected it to, but it did save the world. Or, so I
thought then, by assuredly preventing others from reading it. Not at
least, that copy. We do what we can.
There were other books: The Happy Prince; The Little Prince; The
Mysterious Stranger; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Notre-Dame de Paris, were a few
of those which moved me to sadness, to gladness, to ... feelings.
Now these, all before having read the Eliot, were, of course, childhood
readings. Nonetheless, they were readings and most emotionally effective
ones.
But, The Wasteland. At the time I read it, I was a student.. My study
was the psychology of visual perception. Optics, the Phi phenomenon,
the retina, the cortex, brightness, constancy, the moon illusion, you
know. Especially, my focus was on the reversal-of-figure-and- ground.
And, The Wasteland gave me a reversal- of-figure/ground experience like
none other. Except for all of the other Eliot poems and plays which I
read as my literary digestion would permit. It was The Wasteland, as a
first time experience, which opened my mind to the potential that things
might not be as they seemed.
I think now, that we like that which we think to be in accord with us.
Hence, agreeable to us. that we read, or not read, according to our
senses of the recognitions. If it's ourself we see, we agree with what
we read; we like it. If there's a non-identity, we regard it as enemy
and treat it accordingly.
To return to David's question ... yes; books have moved me. Had they
not, why would I have bothered to read them?
neon, m.
midtown neon
vampiraBabe posted:
"...I came here to discuss books and all I see here is a bunch of
arguing."
1. Which books did you come here to discuss?
2. Some people who read some books sometimes argue. Sometimes, some
people who read some books argue with each other! Sometimes ... they
argue about books! [or at least they think that they do. The world of
misdirected seriouness is undoubtedly without limit.]
3. As for the drugs, are they what make people argue? and, aren't
there, by the way, drugs which put their users to sleep?
neon, m.
midtown neon
"Speak for yourself, Silke!"
But,
she was speaking for herself. She was.
neon, m.
Sojourner
kmow....hmmm....ahhh....Dracula??
In the grip of grace!
http://community.webtv.net/Nickvh/ASOJOURNER
Falco...@webtv.net
Onyx " by Harlen Ellison. Hell just about all of Harlens work tends to
knock me upside the head, wether it be his early SF shorts or later
novellas or his non-fiction essays, he always gets my attention.
Janice
Larisa Migachyov
> this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
> of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
> groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
> A BOOK!
Well, at present, being rather immersed in learning Electrical Engineering
(midterms next week), my reading material is rather restricted to my
textbooks, assorted handouts, and (though I'm afraid that this will earn
me the contempt of the RABble) various mystery novels and short stories.
I'm currently acquainting myself with the work of Ngaio Marsh, at a rate
that is probably not compatible with academic excellence. In particular,
I highly recommend "Light Thickens" to any of the RABble who might,
occasionally, stoop to mysteries in their reading choices.
--
Larisa Migachyov http://www.stanford.edu/~lvm
Richard Harter
>David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom12.netcom.com> wrote:
>: vampi...@webtv.net wrote:
>
>: : this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
>: : of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
>: : groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
>: : A BOOK!
>
>
>: I'm taking a break from the second volume of Richardson's biography of
>: -- who can be aroused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
>: such an experience?
>
>Any book that shows you to yourself in all your ugliness, if you're ready.
ObBook: _A Mirror For Observers_
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
My goals in life are to bring small wisdom to small minds
and to bring everyone a bit closer to the Twilight Zone
Richard Harter
>vampi...@webtv.net wrote:
>>
>> this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
>> of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
>> groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
>> A BOOK!
>
>Are you mentioning a book? What have you read? Let me see your library
>card.
What we need here is a rabble summer reading program, complete with
silver stars and gold stars. People who complete the program get an
engraved certificate.
Sofonisba
Perhaps a little David Mamet when he or she is feeling particularly light?
Puss in Boots
> What we need here is a rabble summer reading program, complete with
> silver stars and gold stars. People who complete the program get an
> engraved certificate.
A fine and quiet suggestion, but we'll have to see if it's
widely embraced.
-- Moggin
Joann Zimmerman
> vampi...@webtv.net wrote:
> > this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
> > of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
> > groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
> > A BOOK!
Syllogism:
1: I came here to discuss books, therefore
2: I am a reader.
3: Readers are supposed to be better than hacker groups, therefore
4: I am better than a member of a hacker group [whatever the hell that
is, anyway]
ObQuestion:
Then why doesn't VampiraBabe try to sound ("read") like it?
>
> Well, at present, being rather immersed in learning Electrical Engineering
> (midterms next week), my reading material is rather restricted to my
> textbooks, assorted handouts, and (though I'm afraid that this will earn
> me the contempt of the RABble) various mystery novels and short stories.
> I'm currently acquainting myself with the work of Ngaio Marsh, at a rate
> that is probably not compatible with academic excellence. In particular,
> I highly recommend "Light Thickens" to any of the RABble who might,
> occasionally, stoop to mysteries in their reading choices.
Standard academic problem, as I noted a few months back. Don't
apologize. I, by the way, do not "stoop" to classic mysteries; I
aspire.
Projected reading:
Margaret Rosenthal, _The Honest Courtesan_ (scholarly examination of
the life and oeuvre of 16th-c. Venetian poet/courtesan Veronica Franco;
the movie _Dangerous Beauty_ was based on it)
_The Count of Monte Cristo_ (inspired by the Bravo mini-series, I
decided I really should reread it, this time in an unabridged version.
Read the translator's intro (Oxford edition) last night, and was most
interested to discover that Dumas based the thing on a true story he'd
unearthed from the Paris police archives.)
Continuation of Proust's _Within a Budding Grove_ (I got becalmed--or
maybe that's just distracted--a few days into the project, not to
mention irritated by what appear to be excessive social scruples on the
part of everyone involved, including Proust himself; this may be a
long-running problem for me.)
Just finishing up C.S. Friedman's _This Alien Shore_ for light evening
reading. Science fiction that seems to be all too well rooted in
current notions of cyberspace, with not enough of a dash of _Dune_
thrown in. Enjoyable, though. Maybe the last hundred pages will
surprise me; it's happened before.
Here in Central Texas it's not as hot as in previous years at this
time, much less what's been going on recently on the East Coast, so my
annual heat-defying pilgrimage to Darkover is proceeding tentatively,
and--so far--out of custom rather than necessity.
--
"I never understood people who don't have
bookshelves." --George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@harrispk.com
David J. Loftus
: David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom12.netcom.com> wrote:
: : sensibility from the many folks around the country -- let alone the world
: : -- who can be aroused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
: : such an experience?
: Any book that shows you to yourself in all your ugliness, if you're ready.
And did any book do that for you?
I reiterate that I have never had such an experience and find it hard to
imagine one, partly because A) I'm not all that ugly, and B) sometimes a
work that shows humans in their ugliness (e.g., Celine), does it in a
sufficiently beautiful way that it doesn't feel like a blow to the skull
either. Badly written books are either a bore, or they don't know HOW to
show us in "all our ugliness."
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
: David Loftus, quoting the great Kafka, as to books which shake us awake,
: asked:
: " ...who can be roused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
: such an experience?"
: Oh, yes! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me.
Cool post, neon.
I hope there are equally passionate and illuminating posts further down
the thread.
: But, The Wasteland. At the time I read it, I was a student.. My study
: was the psychology of visual perception.
ObBook: _Art and Illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorical
representation_ by E.H. Gombrich
: Optics, the Phi phenomenon,
: the retina, the cortex, brightness, constancy, the moon illusion, you
: know. Especially, my focus was on the reversal-of-figure-and- ground.
: And, The Wasteland gave me a reversal- of-figure/ground experience like
: none other. Except for all of the other Eliot poems and plays which I
: read as my literary digestion would permit. It was The Wasteland, as a
: first time experience, which opened my mind to the potential that things
: might not be as they seemed.
Cool. Not sure when I recognized that, but I suspect some of it may have
been earlier. I just loved Eliot, though, when I could understand it;
it didn't leave me wasted, so to speak.
: I think now, that we like that which we think to be in accord with us.
: Hence, agreeable to us. that we read, or not read, according to our
: senses of the recognitions.
ObBook: _Ecce Homo_ Nietzsche says most people read only what they
know.
: If it's ourself we see, we agree with what
: we read; we like it. If there's a non-identity, we regard it as enemy
: and treat it accordingly.
But what I get from Kafka's remark is the notion of a book that is very
much linked to identity, though probably to our surprise and therefore
upsetting. silke has alluded to this, but she's not offering any
specifics.
: To return to David's question ... yes; books have moved me. Had they
: not, why would I have bothered to read them?
I don't entirely agree with this equation. I've been moved by lots of
books -- and especially movies -- that I decided, AFTERWARD, had not been
worth the trouble. They moved me because I helped them. That's my job
as a reader or viewer.
But what Kafka seems to be talking about is a book that moves -- or
really shocks -- you whether you were prepared to help it do its job or
not.
David Loftus
Richard Gordon Campbell
vampi...@webtv.net wrote:
: this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
: of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
: groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
: A BOOK!
--
-----------------------------------
Richard Campbell
-----------------------------------
e...@canada.com
-----------------
David J. Loftus
: Let Kafka read what he likes. Not that I mind a little shake from a
: book now and again, but there's nothing wrong with something soothing
: if you're in the mood.
: No doubt Kafka was 20 and hadn't been laid in a while when he made the
: quote.
Your manner of sniffing is no better than that of the person who started
this thread, no matter how much more elegantly stated and spelled.
You wanna lay money on this proposition?
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
: I agree with Kafka, and in that sense in heartily recommend " Mefisto in
: Onyx " by Harlen Ellison. Hell just about all of Harlens work tends to
: knock me upside the head, wether it be his early SF shorts or later
: novellas or his non-fiction essays, he always gets my attention.
That's "Harlan" Ellison. And yes, his writing tends to grab you and
shake you up. Not a bad recommendation. "The Deathbird," "I Have No
Mouth and I Must Scream" and "Croatoan" are up there for challenging
reads, too.
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
: 3. As for the drugs, are they what make people argue? and, aren't
: there, by the way, drugs which put their users to sleep?
I haven't been acquainted with any drugs that tend to make people argue.
(Other than alcohol, maybe.) Curious notion.
jennifer allee
> tejas <tbsa...@richmond.infi.net> wrote:
>
> >vampi...@webtv.net wrote:
> >>
> >> this place sucks i came here to discuss books and all i see is a bunch
> >> of arguing! Please readers are suppsed to be better than the hacker
> >> groups! Seems like you guys are just like them. Do yourself a favor READ
> >> A BOOK!
> >
> >Are you mentioning a book? What have you read? Let me see your library
> >card.
>
> What we need here is a rabble summer reading program, complete with
> silver stars and gold stars. People who complete the program get an
> engraved certificate.
>
> Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
> URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
> My goals in life are to bring small wisdom to small minds
> and to bring everyone a bit closer to the Twilight Zone
Oh Oh! I have summer reading club experience! We do TIME read, rather than
PAGES, for those who read slowly. For every hour you read, give yourself a
silver star. 5 silver stars equal a gold star. 5 gold stars and you go get
yourself Mcdonald's french fry. EVERYONE gets a certificate, as long as you
read at least one hour. (Or do we change the rules and make them harder because
adults aren't as in need of "self-esteem" as kids? I'm sure there are a few
adults here how need the boost!)
And on Wednesdays, everyone grabs a carpet sample square and we'll illegally
watch a Disney movie together! :)
jennifer, 6 year reading club veteran...
ps - anyone know any usenet friendly clowns or magicians?
--
http://www.414.org/~mighty
Ted Samsel
: Richard Harter wrote:
: ps - anyone know any usenet friendly clowns ?
Just hang around here some. They'll show up.
--
Ted Samsel....tejas@infi.net (or tbsa...@richmond.infi.net)
"do the boogie woogie in the South American way"
Rhumba Boogie- Hank Snow (1955)
Gary Lee Stonum
Ted Samsel <te...@sl001.infi.net> wrote in message
news:7m5bpo$glf$1...@nw003t.infi.net...
> : ps - anyone know any usenet friendly clowns ?
>
> Just hang around here some. They'll show up.
>
ObSondheimLyric: "Don't bother, they're here."
jennifer allee
many years. I know...some of them are the reason I lurked so long....
They're funny, but not so cute as Bingo and Chuckles and such!
jennifer,
not trying to sound like a weird three name stalker or anything...
Gary Lee Stonum wrote:
Bruce McGuffin
"David J. Loftus" <dl...@netcom16.netcom.com> writes:
> Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
> : David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom12.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> : : sensibility from the many folks around the country -- let alone the world
> : : -- who can be aroused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
> : : such an experience?
>
> : Any book that shows you to yourself in all your ugliness, if you're ready.
>
>
> And did any book do that for you?
>
> I reiterate that I have never had such an experience and find it hard to
> imagine one, partly because A) I'm not all that ugly, and B) sometimes a
> work that shows humans in their ugliness (e.g., Celine), does it in a
> sufficiently beautiful way that it doesn't feel like a blow to the skull
> either. Badly written books are either a bore, or they don't know HOW to
> show us in "all our ugliness."
>
The most disturbing book I ever read was The Painted Bird, but I don't
consider that book to be "good" literature in any sense of the word. I
don't think it had any point other than to depict "man's inhumanity to
man", and I don't think it had any aesthetic value. It made its point
by beating you over the head again and again with depictions of the
awful things people can do to each other.
I certainly wouldn't want to read books like The Painted Bird all the
time. If someone does, they should consider getting into therapy.
And of course, in the best human tradition, I knew viscerally that I
wasn't one of those ugly people depicted in that book.
Bruce McGuffin
obbook: Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (now heres a book that gave me
nightmares as a teenager)
David J. Loftus
: David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom16.netcom.com> wrote:
: : : Any book that shows you to yourself in all your ugliness, if
: : : you're ready.
: : And did any book do that for you?
: Sure. Kafka is one of the authors who do it.
: : I reiterate that I have never had such an experience and find it hard to
: : imagine one, partly because A) I'm not all that ugly
: That's just crap, excuse me, on the same level as those two web-tv idiots'
: defensive responses. We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
: ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea. If you don't find it in
: reading, you simply haven't read yet. If reading masterly prose doesn't
: give you a keen and painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
: limitations, you know nothing about books or writing. I must say, however,
: that I don't experience you to be this dense or this defensive, and I
: think you're simply striking a pose here.
Jeezus, silke, lighten up.
Not everyone is like you, nor should everyone aspire to be.
I may be a little defensive NOW, since you've managed to be offensive in
both senses of the word, but I wasn't up to this point.
If reading masterly prose doesn't give me a keen and painful sense of my
own eternal shortcomings and limitations, it may be that I don't find
that sense all that painful. I find your poetic hyperbole here to evince
a sort of romantic cynicism.
My reading -- perhaps not that deep but reasonably wide -- has suggesetd
to me that people are at LEAST as unaware of their own beauty, or
potential beauty (as well as the beauty of life and the world about
them), as they are of whatever "ugliness" you have in mind.
It just so happens that six weeks ago I read Philip Gourevitch's bracing
book on the Rwandan massacres, _We Wish To Inform You that Tomorrow We
Will be Killed With Our Families_, and two weeks ago I received my
ordered copy of _The Graves: Vukovar and Srebenica_, a graphic photo
collection and essay by Eric Stover and Gilless Peress about the Bosnian
massacres, but I cannot say they have shown me anything of my own "ugliness."
Perhaps you could inform the rest of us how Kafka's work strikes you like
an axe or a blow to the skull, and what ugliness is revealed to you.
David Loftus
HRH1962
>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the compliment
>in that.
You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a compliment.
> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as conversations
instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a lot less defensiveness and
you might actually understand what the other person is saying.
--
Heather Henderson
HRH...@aol.com
http://scc.net/~heather
Jeff Inman
> Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> apparently wrote:
> > I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
> >defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
>
> Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
conversations
> instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a lot less
defensiveness and
> you might actually understand what the other person is saying.
Does this mean we aren't all on drugs ??
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
David J. Loftus
: David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom17.netcom.com> wrote:
: : Jeezus, silke, lighten up.
: Well, no, I won't. You came into this thread wielding a Kafka citation and
: wistfully stated that no book has ever reached the "frozen sea within
: you." You want this to suggest that there is no frozen sea within you, I
: take it. You are wrong, and surely you know it somewhere.
Don't give me that shit. I take no position on the existence or
non-existence of a frozen sea within me. I merely asked if anyone else
had had an experience such as Kafka described, and you replied that you
had, but would not share any details and proceeded to attack me on the
basis of what you THINK I feel and believe.
I'm not even convinced Kafka was necessarily being all that serious.
Sometimes the humor and fancifulness of his mots tends to get overlooked
because of his reputation, I believe.
: : Not everyone is like you, nor should everyone aspire to be.
: Nobody can escape being "like me" in this regard. It is the human
: condition.
It's especially hilarious to hear this coming from someone who is so
often combative on this newsgroup, so ready to assure others that their
beliefs and feelings are of course wrong.
: : If reading masterly prose doesn't give me a keen and painful sense of my
: : own eternal shortcomings and limitations, it may be that I don't find
: : that sense all that painful.
: I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the compliment
: in that.
I don't care that you want to offer it as a compliment; if it is not
taken as a compliment -- if you cannot communicate it sufficiently well
to convey the compliment -- then it does not qualify as a compliment.
: You sound like someone who's gone into cognitive therapy and came
: out diminished but pseudo-content on the other side.
Rather than talking about what I "sound like," why not confine
yourself to addressing my comments directly or answering my question?
: I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
: defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
I'm quite ready to be honest -- more honest than the average netizen.
Not having my remarks treated with a modicum of respect does not
encourage honesty, however. Condescension is such a welcoming approach....
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
:>From: Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu>
:>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the compliment
:>in that.
: You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a compliment.
:> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
:>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
: Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
: conversations instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a lot
: less defensiveness and you might actually understand what the other
: person is saying.
Another way to say this is that a more optimistic person might posit that
whatever the medium, there is always a more accurate and politic method of
addressing a point.
David Loftus
fido
> HRH:
> > Silke-Maria Weineck:
> > > I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium
> > > breeds defensiveness and does not encourage
> > > specific kinds of honesty.
> > Don't blame the medium. If you approached these
> > discussions as conversations instead of excuses to
> > berate people, there'd be a lot less defensiveness
> > and you might actually understand what the other
> > person is saying.
> Does this mean we aren't all on drugs ??
Cranks and crack-pots, come away, come away.. . .
--
fido
Richard Harter
>Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>: David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom17.netcom.com> wrote:
A certain small decency dictates that I excise this exchange. It is
marvelously refreshing, though.
Michael Zeleny
>>>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the compliment
>>>in that.
>>You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a compliment.
>>> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
>>>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
>>Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
>>conversations instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a lot
>>less defensiveness and you might actually understand what the other
>>person is saying.
>Another way to say this is that a more optimistic person might posit
>that whatever the medium, there is always a more accurate and politic
>method of addressing a point.
Indeed. Herewith an apposite example: neither you nor Heather would
know the first thing about changing your mind in deference to the
truth, whereas Silke, for all her vanity, occasionally does that.
Cordially -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu * M...@ptyx.com ** www.ptyx.com
God: "Sum id quod sum." ** 7576 Willow Glen Road, Los Angeles, CA 90046
Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum." * 323.876.8234 (fon) * 323.876.8054 (fax)
Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum." **** www.alonzo.org
established on 2.26.1958 ** itinerant philosopher * will think for food
Richard Harter
>David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom17.netcom.com> wrote:
>: Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>: : David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom16.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>: : : : Any book that shows you to yourself in all your ugliness, if
>: : : : you're ready.
>
>: : : And did any book do that for you?
>: : Sure. Kafka is one of the authors who do it.
Kafka!!??
>: : : I reiterate that I have never had such an experience and find it hard to
>: : : imagine one, partly because A) I'm not all that ugly
>
>: : That's just crap, excuse me, on the same level as those two web-tv idiots'
>: : defensive responses. We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
>: : ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea. If you don't find it in
>: : reading, you simply haven't read yet. If reading masterly prose doesn't
>: : give you a keen and painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
>: : limitations, you know nothing about books or writing. I must say, however,
>: : that I don't experience you to be this dense or this defensive, and I
>: : think you're simply striking a pose here.
As others have delightedly informed you, there is far too much anger in
this prose to form the basis for a conversation. This anger is your own
affair and none of my own. Still, one might speak to the public face of
the text.
Kafka's famous quotation presents a dichotomy - painful truth or mere
happiness - and suggests that one should read for the former since
reading is not necessary for the latter. Let me mark this as a dubious
bit of romanticism and go on.
David remarks that he hasn't read, in Kafka's words, that which would
"shake us awake like a blow to the skull" except for people whose views
make him angry and asks wistfully if others have read such.
Silke then remarks "Any book that shows you to yourself in all your
ugliness, if you're ready." Now this is a major move; Kafka says
nothing about showing you to yourself, let alone in all your ugliness.
Being exposed to ourselves in all our ugliness may be painful (then
again it may merely be a familiar image - one can only go to that mirror
so many times) but it is not the only pain nor is the fixed concealment
of that which one is ashamed the only "frozen sea". It is not so clear
to me that Kafka's frozen sea is Silke's frozen sea at all.
Moving on to David's quoted remark above: David unconsciously accepts
Silke's move and reflects that perhaps he hasn't been hit with the axe
because he isn't all that ugly. He is right about not being all that
ugly - few people are - and it is given to few to be ugly in any but
rather commonplace ways. Sins are almost always unoriginal and banal.
Still there is an issue which Silke lays into David beginning with
"That's just crap". Now it both is and isn't. It isn't crap because
Silke is working the wrong issue, so to speak; she is using the wrong
language and castigating David for not wearing her shoes. It is crap
because David is speaking in self-satisfied complacent tones. Let us
leave David for the nonce and return to Silke's little diatribe.
We have a thesis sentence, "We all carry the images of our own ugliness
within ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea.", a thesis which is
later dogmatically reaffirmed as being the human condition. It is a
nice poetic image but is it so? Is it the human condition to have a
frozen sea? Is a frozen sea the right image? (Images of ugliness is
Silke's personal language - translate as needed.) I don't think so. I
suggest that "the frozen sea" is far too rigid a symbol. We have,
perhaps, barriers but they are not all of one piece nor are they icily
impenetrable.
This is followed by a interesting sentence: "If reading masterly prose
doesn't give you a keen and painful sense of your own eternal
shortcomings and limitations, you know nothing about books or writing."
This can be read in either of two senses depending on what sort of
shortcomings and limitations one is talking about. Thus, it might refer
to one's shortcomings et cetera as a writer. That is quite supportable
although it is really only of consequence if you desire to write. I
don't suppose that is the sense that Silke means since it doesn't fit
with the context.
I read her as saying, in effect, that great writing is supposed to
trigger insight, that it should be read and used as some sort of
diagnostic tool in auto-therapy in which we learn the squalid truth
about ourselves. There may be something to this: modern library
editions are cheaper than paying psychotherapists so much an hour.
There is the difficulty that one must pick the right author - if we all
have our squalid little truths still we each of us have different
squalid little truths. On the whole, though, I think the entire notion
is a waste of good writing.
>: Jeezus, silke, lighten up.
>
>Well, no, I won't. You came into this thread wielding a Kafka citation and
>wistfully stated that no book has ever reached the "frozen sea within
>you." You want this to suggest that there is no frozen sea within you, I
>take it. You are wrong, and surely you know it somewhere.
Well, not exactly. You suggested he had to reach his ugliness. It is
that he responded to - you moved him from the frozen sea to somewhere in
the hinterlands.
>: Not everyone is like you, nor should everyone aspire to be.
>
>Nobody can escape being "like me" in this regard. It is the human
>condition.
True: not even you are like that in that regard.
>: If reading masterly prose doesn't give me a keen and painful sense of my
>: own eternal shortcomings and limitations, it may be that I don't find
>: that sense all that painful.
>
>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the compliment
>in that. You sound like someone who's gone into cognitive therapy and came
>out diminished but pseudo-content on the other side.
Codswallop.
> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
Even so.
tejas
>
> "David J. Loftus" <dl...@netcom15.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> >Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
> >
>
> A certain small decency dictates that I excise this exchange. It is
> marvelously refreshing, though.
Not unlike the cold plunge.
--
TBSa...@richmond.infi.net (also te...@infi.net)
'Do the boogie woogie in the South American way'
Hank Snow THE RHUMBA BOOGIE
tejas
>
> David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom16.netcom.com> wrote:
> : Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>
> : : : sensibility from the many folks around the country -- let alone the world
> : : : -- who can be aroused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
> : : : such an experience?
>
>
> : And did any book do that for you?
>
> Sure. Kafka is one of the authors who do it.
>
> : imagine one, partly because A) I'm not all that ugly
>
> That's just crap, excuse me, on the same level as those two web-tv idiots'
> defensive responses. We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
> ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea. If you don't find it in
> reading, you simply haven't read yet. If reading masterly prose doesn't
> give you a keen and painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
> limitations, you know nothing about books or writing. I must say, however,
> that I don't experience you to be this dense or this defensive, and I
> think you're simply striking a pose here.
Eternal shortcomings? You give us too much credit in a temporal way.
"I'm short, nasty and brutish. Wanna go get a burger and a beer?"
tejas
>
> hrh...@aol.com (HRH1962) wrote:
> > Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> apparently wrote:
>
> > >defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
> >
> conversations
> > instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a lot less
> defensiveness and
> > you might actually understand what the other person is saying.
>
Would this include meds for hypertension and cholesterol?
HRH1962
>Date: Sat, 10 July 1999 04:25 AM EDT
>Message-id: <7m702f$euo$1...@carroll.library.ucla.edu>
>>>>in that.
>
>
>>>>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
>
>>>Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
>>>conversations instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a lot
>>>less defensiveness and you might actually understand what the other
>>>person is saying.
>
>>that whatever the medium, there is always a more accurate and politic
>>method of addressing a point.
>
>Indeed. Herewith an apposite example: neither you nor Heather would
>know the first thing about changing your mind in deference to the
>truth, whereas Silke, for all her vanity, occasionally does that.
Don't be fooled - she's merely striking a pose.
HRH1962
>HRH1962 <hrh...@aol.com> wrote:
>:>From: Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu>
>
>:>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the compliment
>:>in that.
>
>: You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a compliment.
>
>Depth, self-awareness, articulated ties to the human condition -- I note
>that you would not in any way be associated with those.
>
>You're in the right line of work.
Look out or you'll "mess up my project".
>Surprise me, don't respond.
You have a strange need to ask me not to respond. You did that in email too.
ObMovieQuote: "Don't speak!"
Michael Zeleny
>From: zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
>>>>>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the
>>>>>compliment in that.
>>>>You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a
>>>>compliment.
>>>>> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
>>>>>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
>>>>Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
>>>>conversations instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a
>>>>lot less defensiveness and you might actually understand what the
>>>>other person is saying.
>>>Another way to say this is that a more optimistic person might
>>>posit that whatever the medium, there is always a more accurate and
>>>politic method of addressing a point.
>>Indeed. Herewith an apposite example: neither you nor Heather would
>>know the first thing about changing your mind in deference to the
>>truth, whereas Silke, for all her vanity, occasionally does that.
>Don't be fooled - she's merely striking a pose.
Whereas you and Loftus are openly full of self-congratulating shit.
A big improvement there.
HRH1962
>HRH1962 <hrh...@aol.com> wrote:
>>From: zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
>>>David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom15.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>>HRH1962 <hrh...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>>>>From: Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu>
>
>>>>>>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the
>>>>>>compliment in that.
>
>>>>>You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a
>>>>>compliment.
>
>>>>>> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
>>>>>>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
>
>>>>>Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
>>>>>conversations instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a
>>>>>lot less defensiveness and you might actually understand what the
>>>>>other person is saying.
>
>>>>Another way to say this is that a more optimistic person might
>>>>posit that whatever the medium, there is always a more accurate and
>>>>politic method of addressing a point.
>
>>>Indeed. Herewith an apposite example: neither you nor Heather would
>>>know the first thing about changing your mind in deference to the
>>>truth, whereas Silke, for all her vanity, occasionally does that.
>
>>Don't be fooled - she's merely striking a pose.
>
>Whereas you and Loftus are openly full of self-congratulating shit.
>
>A big improvement there.
"Hey, good shit - if I do say so myself!"
Michael Zeleny
>tejas <tbsa...@richmond.infi.net> wrote:
>>Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
>[...]
>>Eternal shortcomings? You give us too much credit in a temporal way.
>Quite right, in a sense. Eternal because absolute. If it were just
>you or this guy or that guy, and if the tall, kind and stylish ones
>were exempt, things would be different.
I am crestfallen.
>>"I'm short, nasty and brutish. Wanna go get a burger and a beer?"
>In lieu of nice shoes, wanna fuck?
Bet you say it to all the boys.
Richard Harter
>Richard Harter <c...@tiac.net> wrote:
>[...]
>
>
>: Kafka's famous quotation presents a dichotomy - painful truth ormere
>: happiness - and suggests that one should read for the former since
>: reading is not necessary for the latter. Let me mark this as a dubious
>: bit of romanticism and go on.
>
>You guys are marvelously dismissive. At the same time, you and David
>simply must be aware of the fact that Kafka was Kafka and you are David
>Loftus and Richard Harter, and what that means in regard to your strained
>criticisms.
Ayup. I am not Kafka. David is not Kafka. Even Kafka is not Kafka.
>: Silke then remarks "Any book that shows you to yourself in all your
>: ugliness, if you're ready." Now this is a major move; Kafka says
>: nothing about showing you to yourself, let alone in all your ugliness.
>
>You may allow for the possibility that I've read a lot of Kafka and do not
>base my reading on a single Usenet passage.
Fair enough. It remains, however, a major move given the text on the
table.
>: Moving on to David's quoted remark above: David unconsciously accepts
>: Silke's move and reflects that perhaps he hasn't been hit with the axe
>: because he isn't all that ugly. He is right about not being all that
>: ugly - few people are - and it is given to few to be ugly in any but
>: rather commonplace ways. Sins are almost always unoriginal and banal.
>
>And here is both your and David's interesting misrecognition -- you take
>"ugly" to refer to individuals, you are defending against that nagging
>feeling that "ugly" might mean you as opposed to others.
I don't know that it is all that interesting - it's the natural
interpretation. The situation is that you had a specialized meaning in
mind which is not evident to your readers.
>But this ugly
>doesn't mean you or David; as I said, it means the human condition itself
>-- the way we are beholden to desire that which perishes in a process of
>continuous decay.
Well, now, this is quite another matter. As a side note the term "the
human condition" is near worthless; it is an empty cannister that people
fill with whatever happens to be handy. In this case it seems to be
"the way we are beholden to desire that which perishes in a process of
continuous decay" which indeed is one of the aspects of "the human
condition". Is it is this that is the ugliness referred to in "Any book
that shows you to yourself in all your ugliness, if you're ready"? (How
we evade individuals in "shows you to yourself" is a mystery.)
Why this transience is to be thought of as ugliness is quite unclear to
me. An occasion for anger, or shoulder shrugging, or pangs of angst -
these, yes - but ugliness?! Then again you may not actually mean
ugliness.
>That is neither Romantic (I wish you guys would actually
>_read_ some Romantic theory before you slandered the movement) nor
>hyperbole, it's simply a fact which you have to move _through_.
Er, yes, I know it's not Romantic in the lit-crit sense. I used it as a
shorthand for posturing in false melodramatic fashion. And yes, I think
Kafka is doing exactly that although not at all in the style of the
Romantics. I think the term hyperbole is warranted; the language and
imagery are florid. I will grant that mortality and its avatars is a
fact that we have to move through but that is not what Kafka says; that
is what you say. He is, after all, talking about why one should read a
book and what one should get from it as experience.
> You know I'm very fond of you, Richard, and perhaps you've even
>earned the pose you're striking in all the stuff I've snipped, but that
>stuff was painfully inadequate to the questions raised, and it is that
>very inadequacy that rises like vapor from the frozen sea.
I'm willing to be convinced - Lord knows that there is much that I do
not know and I often enough totally miss the point. Still, I am not
convinced, not at all, not even that questions have actually been
raised.
SubGenius
tejas (tbsa...@richmond.infi.net) wrote:
: Richard Harter wrote:
: > A certain small decency dictates that I excise this exchange. It is
: > marvelously refreshing, though.
: Not unlike the cold plunge.
+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
It always strikes Your Humble Narrator, when returning from a sojourn
to the r.a.b. antipodes, that there are several Fellow Interlocutors
whose earnest prose is indistinguishable (to Your Humble Narrator's
cognition, at any rate) from an attempted rude burlesque of that
same Interlocutor's quote style unquote.
Candour insists that I observe that Your Humble Narrator is not, by any
means, necessarily exempted from this category.
Yours etc.,
SubGenius
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Richard Harter
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>
>tejas (tbsa...@richmond.infi.net) wrote:
>
>: Richard Harter wrote:
>
>: > A certain small decency dictates that I excise this exchange. It is
>: > marvelously refreshing, though.
>
>: Not unlike the cold plunge.
>
>+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
>It always strikes Your Humble Narrator, when returning from a sojourn
>to the r.a.b. antipodes, that there are several Fellow Interlocutors
>whose earnest prose is indistinguishable (to Your Humble Narrator's
>cognition, at any rate) from an attempted rude burlesque of that
>same Interlocutor's quote style unquote.
>
>Candour insists that I observe that Your Humble Narrator is not, by any
>means, necessarily exempted from this category.
Dreadfully perceptive on your part, old bean.
tejas
>
> su...@atheist.tamu.edu (SubGenius) wrote:
>
> >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >
> >
> >tejas (tbsa...@richmond.infi.net) wrote:
> >
> >: Richard Harter wrote:
> >
> >: > A certain small decency dictates that I excise this exchange. It is
> >: > marvelously refreshing, though.
> >
> >: Not unlike the cold plunge.
> >
> >+---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
> >It always strikes Your Humble Narrator, when returning from a sojourn
> >to the r.a.b. antipodes, that there are several Fellow Interlocutors
> >whose earnest prose is indistinguishable (to Your Humble Narrator's
> >cognition, at any rate) from an attempted rude burlesque of that
> >same Interlocutor's quote style unquote.
> >
> >Candour insists that I observe that Your Humble Narrator is not, by any
> >means, necessarily exempted from this category.
>
> Dreadfully perceptive on your part, old bean.
Do tell.
Paul Ilechko
wrote:
>The most disturbing book I ever read was The Painted Bird, but I don't
>consider that book to be "good" literature in any sense of the word.
I agree with you. In fact, I found that book boring after a while, in
the same way that endless news about bombing Serbia becomes boring to
the outsider.
fido
> It always strikes Your Humble Narrator,
> when returning from a sojourn to the r.a.b.
> antipodes, that there are several Fellow
> Interlocutors whose earnest prose is
> indistinguishable (to Your Humble Narrator's
> cognition, at any rate) from an attempted rude
> burlesque of that same Interlocutor's quote
> style unquote.
> Candour insists that I observe that Your Humble
> Narrator is not, by any means, necessarily
> exempted from this category.
Who said: "self-referencing is the highest form of self-flattery" ?
--
fido
Michael S. Morris
Silke:
We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea. If you
don't find it in reading, you simply haven't read yet.
If reading masterly prose doesn't give you a keen
and painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
limitations, you know nothing about books or writing.
I must say, however, that I don't experience you to be
this dense or this defensive, and I think you're simply
striking a pose here.
I must be striking a pose as well, I'm afraid, because
I'm with David on this. It is the mythic reason for
my rejection of Christianity, in fact---I am not ugly,
not a concentration-camp guard or a serial killer but
for the grace of different historical or autobiographical
circumstances. I don't need to be saved. I am imperfect
in many ways, of course, but I refuse to admit the ground
for the need of sacrifice in the first place.
Kafka and Dostoevsky and Nietzsche all revel in
the accusation of this submerged ugliness. They
are great writers. But I object specifically to
the notion---which would seem to flow from what
you say here---that their peculiar strain of
revel is the hallmark of all greatness in writing
or depth in reading.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Silke:
I don't think you're striking a
pose; I think you truly believe what you
say, more so than even Richard. Remember
that old parlor game, "what would this person
be if he were a landscape?" I have you down
as a park in Westphalia.
Sorry, I don't know whether you mean the
one in Iowa or the one in Michigan.
Oh, and lose the pose right now, sister.
You have no inside line on depth or
aesthetic experience.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
David E. Latane
On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> :>In lieu of nice shoes, wanna fuck?
>
> : Bet you say it to all the boys.
>
> No Birkenstocks, though.
That's too bad.
D. Latane
ObBook: _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (1790).
David E. Latane
On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> : I must be striking a pose as well, I'm afraid, because
> : I'm with David on this.
>
> I don't think you're striking a pose; I think you truly believe what you
> say, more so than even Richard. Remember that old parlor game, "what would
> this person be if he were a landscape?" I have you down as a park in
> Westphalia.
Not watching Candide & hooszits in the bushes by any chance?
D. latane
tejas
>
> On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
>
> >
> > : Bet you say it to all the boys.
> >
> > No Birkenstocks, though.
>
> That's too bad.
>
> D. Latane
>
> ObBook: _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (1790).
You aren't going to bring the sans-culottes into this again, are you?
David E. Latane
On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, tejas wrote:
> David E. Latane wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 11 Jul 1999, Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> >
> > > :>In lieu of nice shoes, wanna fuck?
> > >
> > > : Bet you say it to all the boys.
> > >
> > > No Birkenstocks, though.
> >
> > That's too bad.
> >
> > D. Latane
> >
> > ObBook: _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (1790).
>
> You aren't going to bring the sans-culottes into this again, are you?
What do you call it when your kid turns the water on his Scoutmaster?
It's a son's-leader-hosin'
And since Silke started this we want to keep our nationalities straight.
D. latane
Michael S. Morris
pose; I think you truly believe what you
say, more so than even Richard. Remember
that old parlor game, "what would this person
be if he were a landscape?" I have you down
as a park in Westphalia.
M: Sorry, I don't know whether you mean the
one in Iowa or the one in Michigan.
S: I mean Westphalia, Westphalia. Surrounding
Muenster, up to Oldenburg by some definitions.
A lovely landscape, green, very fertile, ordered,
and defined by horizontal lines.
How silly of me to think so provincially! Aachen
aber durchaus, the park commemorating the events of
October, 1944, there must be one?
M: Oh, and lose the pose right now, sister.
You have no inside line on depth or
aesthetic experience.
S: I sure do, my brother. Not the only one,
needless to say, but a line it
is, and a strong one.
Then, if you do recognize that it is
not the only one, I suggest you go apologize
to David for responding to his courageous
observation with an empty commonplace that
accuses everyone else of soullessness who does
not share your peculiar readership or the
peculiar line, howsomever strong, of your chosen
ghetto. The frozen lake marks arguably one
third of Dante's cosmos. Neither "l'amore
che move il sole e l'altre stelle" nor "hos
hoi g'amphiepon taphon Hektoros hippodamoio"
nor "Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan" nor
"A way a lone a last a long the" are about
showing us to ourselves in our ugliness.
If you'd like to discuss the serious point
David made with David respectfully, I'd be
happy to sit it out.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Jim Collier
>
> Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
> : Sunday, the 11th of July, 1999
>
> : Silke:
> : We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
> : ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea. If you
> : don't find it in reading, you simply haven't read yet.
> : If reading masterly prose doesn't give you a keen
> : and painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
> : limitations, you know nothing about books or writing.
> : I must say, however, that I don't experience you to be
> : this dense or this defensive, and I think you're simply
> : striking a pose here.
>
> : I'm with David on this.
>
> say, more so than even Richard. Remember that old parlor game, "what would
> this person be if he were a landscape?" I have you down as a park in
> Westphalia.
I've always wanted to be a eucalyptus grove. However, you are
unlikely to see one in Westphalia without first consuming a controlled
substance.
JC
tejas
Put a Fisherman's Friend in your mouth. Close your eyes. Visualize
koalas. Stand on your head.
Poof! You're an antipodal eucalyptus grove.
ObSong: THE WILD COLONIAL BOY
tejas
Da, jass stimmt.
Steve Hayes
>The most disturbing book I ever read was The Painted Bird, but I don't
>consider that book to be "good" literature in any sense of the word.
PI> I agree with you. In fact, I found that book boring after a while, in
PI> the same way that endless news about bombing Serbia becomes boring to
PI> the outsider.
I found it interestying - perhaps I'm disturbed.
Keep well,
Steve Hayes
WWW: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/steve.htm
Jim Hartley
> +---------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+
> It always strikes Your Humble Narrator, when returning from a sojourn
> to the r.a.b. antipodes, that there are several Fellow Interlocutors
> whose earnest prose is indistinguishable (to Your Humble Narrator's
> cognition, at any rate) from an attempted rude burlesque of that
> same Interlocutor's quote style unquote.
>
> Candour insists that I observe that Your Humble Narrator is not, by any
> means, necessarily exempted from this category.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> SubGenius
Too little white space to be an authentic SubGenius Post. If you want to
emulate him, you'll have to do better.
Yours, etc.
Helpful St. NonSubGenius
Jim Hartley
> Silke:
> We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
> ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea.
>
> my rejection of Christianity, in fact
I too noted the indistinguishability of Silke's comments from those of
Paul in Romans. Silke as a devout Lutheran?
The Mandatory Book Reference: Luther: *Bondage of the Will*
--
Jim Hartley
jhar...@mtholyoke.edu
Ted Samsel
: Jim Hartley (jhar...@mtholyoke.edu) wrote:
: : Michael S. Morris (msmo...@netdirect.net) wrote:
: : > Silke:
: : > We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
: : > ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea.
: : >
: : > I must be striking a pose as well, I'm afraid, because
: : > I'm with David on this. It is the mythic reason for
: : > my rejection of Christianity, in fact
: : I too noted the indistinguishability of Silke's comments from those of
: : Paul in Romans. Silke as a devout Lutheran?
: A lapsed Lutheran, indeed. Those are probably the worst.
Probably?
I wonder if the Missouri Synod has ever evangelized in der Heimat.
Susan, do you know?
--
Ted Samsel....tejas@infi.net (or tbsa...@richmond.infi.net)
"do the boogie woogie in the South American way"
Rhumba Boogie- Hank Snow (1955)
Joan Marie Shields
>textbooks, assorted handouts, and (though I'm afraid that this will earn
>me the contempt of the RABble) various mystery novels and short stories.
>I'm currently acquainting myself with the work of Ngaio Marsh, at a rate
>that is probably not compatible with academic excellence. In particular,
>I highly recommend "Light Thickens" to any of the RABble who might,
>occasionally, stoop to mysteries in their reading choices.
Not at all, but then I'm in a similar predicament. I adore a good mystery
and Ngaio Marsh certainly wrote some good mysteries. If, however, you would
like to feel as though you are reading more serious works (and even if you
don't want to) I can suggest Maj Sjowall and Per Whaloo's series (10 books,
best to read them in order as they also encompass a bigger story together)
and Jan Williem Van der Wettering's series of mysteries (in order is a good
idea for these as well as there is a also a bigger story there).
As for short stories, I am of the opinion that they are far more difficult to
write than novels. A good short story is marvelous. Yanasuri Kawabata was
a genius when it came to the very very short story - I strongly recommend
his book "Palm of the Hand Stories".
yours in wet fishes,
joan
--
Joan Shields jshi...@uci.edu http://www.ags.uci.edu/~jshields
University of California - Irvine School of Social Ecology
Department of Environmental Analysis and Design
I do not purchase services or products from unsolicited e-mail advertisements.
David J. Loftus
: HRH1962 <hrh...@aol.com> wrote:
:>Don't be fooled - she's merely striking a pose.
: Whereas you and Loftus are openly full of self-congratulating shit.
: A big improvement there.
I might have said we learned from a master, but you haven't taught us
anything, sad to say.
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
<fW8i3.455$uf.1...@news2.itd.umich.edu> <37896F...@netdirect.net>
<7mcte3$dlf$2...@netnews.upenn.edu:
> Organization:
Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
: Let me think about this. Okay, so David admitted that he's never been
: struck hard by a book --
Well, not in the way Kafka seems to imply -- struck in a manner that
evokes fear, terror, pain.
I've been struck with wonder, delight, and deep, abiding pleasure by a
number of books -- in a manner that made me feel glad to be human, glad
to be alive, glad to be able to appreciate such a book. Although I do
not equate that with seeking happiness -- some of the books who had such
an effect on me included death and destruction -- I don't think that is
what Kafka was talking about.
Hence, my questions. Although the ensuing discussion has been a hoot,
with all the personalities turning out on parade (and nice to see Mr.
Morris on my side of this one -- I'm still pondering your equation of the
banning of weapons with the banning of books, Mike), so far I have seen
no one actually address my question: who has had such an experience as
Kafka describes, and with which books? (Well, silke answered both, but
did not specify the work or say anything about how or why it had such an
effect).
: after all, the "frozen sea" was just one of many
: images in the passages cited, my interpretation of the frozen sea only one
: of possibly interpretations, even though, seeing Kafka's diaries, a
: plausible one, and David didn't merely reject my reading and my
: suggestion (which was by no means offered as exclusive or anywhere ear
: exhaustive) but the passage as a whole. Yeah, in a way that's courageous.
: It reminds me of the assistant professor in _Changing Places_ who becomes
: so intent on winning the humiliation game that he triumphs by admitting
: that he hasn't read _Hamlet_.
It would be interesting to see if you are capable of debating ideas at
all without insulting the other party or whole groups of human beings at
the same time, silke. Is it possible for a person like myself to be
wrong, or thick-headed, on a particular point without actually qualifying
as generally stupid or utterly unread? Or is that beyond a proper sense of
logic or fairness?
: Now, if I remember correctly, I argued that I didn't believe that
: David could possibly be an avid and long-term reader and not resonate to
: the Kafka passage.
Correct.
: So, you want me to apologize to David for suggesting that he does
: get deeply and painfully affected by books. Okay, I apologize, because
: Michael says so. I take it back, okay?
This, of course, is no apology at all, but yet another slap. Not that I
expect an apology or request one. I gather from some of the other folks'
comments here that the more you go on in this vein, th more it redounds
to your discredit. In this, you resemble Mr. Michael Zeleny: the more
he talks, the more people are disinclined to pay attention to him.
: : If you'd like to discuss the serious point
: : David made with David respectfully, I'd be
: : happy to sit it out.
: I don't consider "I'm not that ugly" a serious point in this context,
: since David's personal ugliness was never at stake.
Since Mr. Morris also misunderstood your point (and perhaps Mr. Harter
as well), I suggest that it was poorly expressed.
: And I don't consider somebody who focuses on the non-hell in order to
: deny hell altogether "serious," either. Not a serious reader.
It assists confusion if you don't bother to define hell for the benefit
of your listeners. It also supports your position of you assume that
whatever you mean by hell is inherently as frightening to anyone else as
it is to you. We are involved in yet another Usenet discussion, I take
it, where the terms of debate have yet to be defined in terms that are
agreeble to all the disputants, though some are all too happy to bowl
right on ahead as if they had been.
: And you do realize, I take it, that the figure of "eternal
: feminity" is a child-murderer?
I have no idea what place this has in the discussion. You seem quite
happy to demonstrate that you know lots of things other folks do not,
without displaying the slightest interest in communicating with others.
By the way, the only place I have run into the word "feminity" was in the
first American translation of Kuprin's _Yama: The Pit_, and I assumed it
was a typo there, too.
David Loftus
Jim Collier
>
> HRH1962 <hrh...@aol.com> wrote:
> >From: zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
> >>David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom15.netcom.com> wrote:
> >>>HRH1962 <hrh...@aol.com> wrote:
> >>>>>From: Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu>
>
> >>>>>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the
> >>>>>compliment in that.
>
> >>>>You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a
> >>>>compliment.
>
> >>>>> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
> >>>>>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
>
> >>>>Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
> >>>>conversations instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a
> >>>>lot less defensiveness and you might actually understand what the
> >>>>other person is saying.
>
> >>>Another way to say this is that a more optimistic person might
> >>>posit that whatever the medium, there is always a more accurate and
> >>>politic method of addressing a point.
>
> >>Indeed. Herewith an apposite example: neither you nor Heather would
> >>know the first thing about changing your mind in deference to the
> >>truth, whereas Silke, for all her vanity, occasionally does that.
Kermit alludes anew to the occasion when he changed his mind after
I corrected him concerning the French adoption of inappropriate
super-regional names. From that, he will be able to go forth
forever saying: see, *I* changed, why can't you?
> >Don't be fooled - she's merely striking a pose.
>
> Whereas you and Loftus are openly full of self-congratulating shit.
>
> A big improvement there.
Well, David Loftus, do you take an akita to restaurants?
Kermit is a zero with a dial-up connection to a freebie Internet
service provider. He's never built a frame relay, but that
doesn't stop him from hyperventilating about an area where he has
no technical expertise. He doesn't read, but that doesn't prevent
him from posting 77 times a week to a books newsgroup. And he doesn't
sleep with women, but that doesn't stop him from pontificating on
fatherhood. He is completely consistent screaming loudest where
he has no business screaming at all.
I'll be in France, networking so to speak, for three weeks, where the
patron that doesn't quite come up to the height of the table is likely
to be somebody's Peke. (But your Lyonnais is not as disgusting as
the Parisien in this regard.) He should have 231 new RAB posts by the
time I return.
JC
Jim Collier
>
> Jim Collier wrote:
> >
> > Silke-Maria Weineck wrote:
> > >
> > > Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
> > > : Sunday, the 11th of July, 1999
> > >
> > > : We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
> > > : don't find it in reading, you simply haven't read yet.
> > > : If reading masterly prose doesn't give you a keen
> > > : and painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
> > > : limitations, you know nothing about books or writing.
> > > : I must say, however, that I don't experience you to be
> > > : this dense or this defensive, and I think you're simply
> > > : striking a pose here.
> > >
> > > : I'm with David on this.
> > >
> > > say, more so than even Richard. Remember that old parlor game, "what would
> > > this person be if he were a landscape?" I have you down as a park in
> > > Westphalia.
> >
> > I've always wanted to be a eucalyptus grove. However, you are
> > unlikely to see one in Westphalia without first consuming a controlled
> > substance.
>
> Put a Fisherman's Friend in your mouth. Close your eyes. Visualize
> koalas. Stand on your head.
>
> Poof! You're an antipodal eucalyptus grove.
I had in mind a grove five hundred feet from where I'm sitting. But
I can't see it for the goddamned jacarandas dropping purple splotches
all over everything and the weed bougainvillea. I'm headed out of
town and the purple will be but a distant memory when I return. (They
were a month late this chilly year.) But the bougainvillea will remain
a thorny perennial.
JC
Michael S. Morris
M: Oh, and lose the pose right now, sister.
You have no inside line on depth or
aesthetic experience.
S: I sure do, my brother. Not the only one,
needless to say, but a line it
is, and a strong one.
M: Then, if you do recognize that it is
not the only one, I suggest you go apologize
to David for responding to his courageous
observation with an empty commonplace that
accuses everyone else of soullessness who does
not share your peculiar readership or the
peculiar line, howsomever strong, of your chosen
ghetto.
S: Let me think about this.
Thank you.
S: Okay, so David admitted
that he's never been struck hard by a book --
Careful, he said "terror or rage".
S: after all, the "frozen sea" was just one
of many images in the passages cited, my
interpretation of the frozen sea only one
of possibly interpretations, even though,
seeing Kafka's diaries, a plausible one,
and David didn't merely reject my reading
and my suggestion (which was by no means
offered as exclusive or anywhere near
exhaustive) but the passage as a whole.
Yeah, in a way that's courageous.
David said:
I reiterate that I have never had
such an experience and find it hard to
imagine one, partly because A) I'm not
all that ugly
You said:
That's just crap, excuse me, on the same
level as those two web-tv idiots' defensive
responses. We all carry the images of our own
ugliness within ourselves, precisely below
the frozen sea. If you don't find it in reading,
you simply haven't read yet. If reading masterly
prose doesn't give you a keen and painful sense
of your own eternal shortcomings and limitations,
you know nothing about books or writing. I must
say, however, that I don't experience you to be
this dense or this defensive, and I think you're
simply striking a pose here.
Now, David says he has not had such an experience
partly because he's not all that ugly. You call
his statement crap, at the level of web-tv idiocy
(which stereotype by this point---if only for
midtown neon's sake---we can dispense with), and "defensive".
Then you presume to tell us *all* about the images
we carry around inside ourselves in some sort of
Freudian subtext how if David doesn't agree with you,
he's in denial, being "defensive", or repressing
those things. And then we get "if you don't find it
in reading, you simply haven't read yet"---*all* reading
which doesn't wallow in self-ugliness in the way that
"The Penal Colony" does gets thereby dismissed
by you with a wave of the hand. And then, in case we
didn't get the generality and universality of your point,
"if reading masterly prose doesn't give you a keen and
painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
limitations, you know nothing about books or writing".
Sounds good, and it is no doubt the strong party line.
But most of great literature ain't about introspective
hell. And it ain't necessarily defensiveness or stupidity
or denial or repression or shallow readership
when the introspective-hell variety of prose---
being the tiny part of all great prose that
it is---doesn't just grab us with the panic terror
you suppose it should.
S: It reminds me of the assistant professor
in _Changing Places_ who becomes so intent
on winning the humiliation game that he
triumphs by admitting that he hasn't read
_Hamlet_.
And the fact that you make such a connection
means you haven't understood the seriousness
of his point. It may well be that he sees deeper
into it than you can possibly imagine.
S: Now, if I remember correctly, I argued
that I didn't believe that David could
possibly be an avid and long-term reader
and not resonate to the Kafka passage.
So, you want me to apologize to David for
suggesting that he does get deeply and painfully
affected by books. Okay, I apologize, because
Michael says so. I take it back, okay?
The thing I am wanting you to take back
is the assumption that you see deeper into
David than David sees into you---the assumption
that *your* line is necessarily the stronger one.
M: If you'd like to discuss the serious point
David made with David respectfully, I'd be
happy to sit it out.
S: I don't consider "I'm not that ugly" a
serious point in this context, since David's
personal ugliness was never at stake.
Oh, yes it was. The question is whether
there are demons---a concentration-camp guard
and a serial killer and an underground man---deep
under the frozen lake inside David. You have
been presuming there are, and that if they
don't resonate in David, he's either in
denial about them, or isn't reading very deeply
or well. But your presumption comes from Freud and
Kafka and Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and is
a peculiar modern convention about the human
psyche. It may well be that the demons live in
a very *shallow* place in the soul, and that
stroking them the way those guys do is little
more than a kind of narcissism. It may
be that love and mercy and light and joy are
deeper still. It may be that not even *you*,
Ms. Weineck, are as ugly as you like to believe.
S: And I don't consider somebody who focuses
on the non-hell in order to deny hell
altogether "serious," either. Not a serious
reader.
There you go again. It is not "focusing" on non-hell
for me to bring up non-hell in the first place and to
suggest that, given the sweeping claims you have
now made for hell, that the great bulk of great
literature isn't necessarily about hell at all.
S: And you do realize, I take it,
that the figure of "eternal
feminity" is a child-murderer?
Just as you realize, I take it,
that slaughter and mutilation precede
the return of Hector's corpse by Achilles
to Priam, and Hell and Purgatory precede
Paradise, and "phall if you will" precedes
"rise you must". Perhaps you should
be pronouncing instead on the shallow
readership of those who are not so
personally engaged by great literature as
to drop to their knees and accept Christ
as Saviour at the turn of the first page?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Joan Marie Shields
>: : : sensibility from the many folks around the country -- let alone the world
>: : : -- who can be aroused to terror or rage by a book? Has anyone here had
>: : : such an experience?
[snip]
David:
>: I reiterate that I have never had such an experience and find it hard to
>: imagine one, partly because A) I'm not all that ugly
Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>That's just crap, excuse me, on the same level as those two web-tv idiots'
>defensive responses. We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
>ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea. If you don't find it in
>reading, you simply haven't read yet. If reading masterly prose doesn't
>give you a keen and painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings and
>limitations, you know nothing about books or writing. I must say, however,
>that I don't experience you to be this dense or this defensive, and I
>think you're simply striking a pose here.
On one hand I agree with Silke, but on the other hand I can see David's point.
Perhaps it's because while I can agree with Silke I can also see that she doesn't
go quite far enough. For me, it's not a "frozen sea" and the shortcomings I have
aren't necessarily eternal. There are those that will remain with me, in some
form, probably for my life but there are others that I have and will turn around.
It's one thing to see your shortcomings with the aid of a book (or a friend or
through intense self-evaluation) - it's another thing to actually face them and
work through them.
I've read a little Kafka, I can't say he was the one who gave me an opportunity
to me to look my particular demons in the eye although other authors have done
this. Somerset Maugham, for instance, and Ursala K. Le Guin's "The Lathe of
Heaven" struck me that way. Hmmm... on second thought, some of the books I have
read have made me aware of certain demons but self-reflection has enabled me to
actually face them and work on them.
So, I guess on one hand I can say that reading certain books has caused me to
realize demons or, to use Kafka's metaphor, see that "frozen sea" - but that's
just the first part. I certainly don't think that every book I read must force
me to do so - 1) I am quite capable of doing that without being sparked by a book
2) the purpose of art is also to show us our better natures and 3) we should also
be reminded not to take ourselves so seriously.
Books (and paintings and music) help me to better see my true self - or rather,
help encourage me to seek my true self. In turn, when I write (or paint or make
music) honestly I come closer to seeing my true self.
So, perhaps it's simply the metaphor I disagree with - a "frozen sea" and "eternal"
suggest a perpetually unchanging state. Am I misreading or do you hold with that,
Silke?
Of course, the validity of this metaphor could be based in religious dogma, which
Morris made a comment about. I'm not much of a Christian, more a Zen Buddhist and
I certainly don't hold a Calvinistic view. Do you believe in the possibilty of
change (or redemption) or 'salvation' and if so, does it entail breaking the ice
of that frozen sea? Or is that sea impossible to thaw and so simple acceptance of
its existance enough or all that we can hope for?
Then again, I could be wrong - all this simply delusion.
David J. Loftus
Organization:
Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
: Jim Hartley (jhar...@mtholyoke.edu) wrote:
: : Michael S. Morris (msmo...@netdirect.net) wrote:
: : > Silke:
: : > We all carry the images of our own ugliness within
: : > ourselves, precisely below the frozen sea.
: : >
: : > I must be striking a pose as well, I'm afraid, because
: : > I'm with David on this. It is the mythic reason for
: : > my rejection of Christianity, in fact
: : I too noted the indistinguishability of Silke's comments from those of
: : Paul in Romans. Silke as a devout Lutheran?
: A lapsed Lutheran, indeed. Those are probably the worst. But Luther was a
: lusty fellow.
ObTerrificLutherQuote: Peccave fortiter.
David J. Loftus
: It always strikes Your Humble Narrator, when returning from a sojourn
: to the r.a.b. antipodes, that there are several Fellow Interlocutors
: whose earnest prose is indistinguishable (to Your Humble Narrator's
: cognition, at any rate) from an attempted rude burlesque of that
: same Interlocutor's quote style unquote.
: Candour insists that I observe that Your Humble Narrator is not, by any
: means, necessarily exempted from this category.
Groucho: I used to know a man named Emanual Ravelli who looked a lot
like you
Chico: I am Emanuel Ravelli.
Groucho: YOU'RE Emanuel Ravelli?
Chico: I am Emanuel Ravelli.
Groucho: Well, no wonder you look like him. But I still insist there is
a resemblance.
Chico: Ha, ha! He thinks I look alike.
David Loftus
David J. Loftus
: David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom15.netcom.com> wrote:
: : Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
: : : David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom17.netcom.com> wrote:
: : : : Jeezus, silke, lighten up.
: : : Well, no, I won't. You came into this thread wielding a Kafka citation and
: : : wistfully stated that no book has ever reached the "frozen sea within
: : : you." You want this to suggest that there is no frozen sea within you, I
: : : take it. You are wrong, and surely you know it somewhere.
: : Don't give me that shit. I take no position on the existence or
: : non-existence of a frozen sea within me.
: None? How curious. Then, this discussion is indeed pointless.
Apparently, since you appear to have less interest in answering a straight,
sincere question relating to books than in pointing out other people's
shortcomings.
David Loftus
Michael Rooney
Jim Collier <ct...@home.com> wrote:
>
> I'll be in France, networking so to speak, for three weeks, where the
> patron that doesn't quite come up to the height of the table is likely
> to be somebody's Peke. (But your Lyonnais is not as disgusting as
> the Parisien in this regard.)
Is it too late to get in on the Jim Collier Death Pool?
I'll put $5 on autoerotic asphyxiation -- assuming no
one's taken it already.
Cordially,
M.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Richard Harter
>Richard Harter (c...@tiac.net) wrote:
>: Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>[....]
>: >
>: >And here is both your and David's interesting misrecognition -- you take
>: >"ugly" to refer to individuals, you are defending against that nagging
>: >feeling that "ugly" might mean you as opposed to others.
>
>: I don't know that it is all that interesting - it's the natural
>: interpretation. The situation is that you had a specialized meaning in
>: mind which is not evident to your readers.
>
>It's a natural interpretation that Kafka was talking of David Loftus and
>Richard Harter? Or that I think Kafka was talking of David Loftus and
>Richard Harter? Nature is amazing, indeed.
Er, are you trolling? It is hard for me to believe that you meant that
misinterpretation seriously.
>: >But this ugly
>: >doesn't mean you or David; as I said, it means the human condition itself
>: >-- the way we are beholden to desire that which perishes in a process of
>: >continuous decay.
>
>: Well, now, this is quite another matter. As a side note the term "the
>: human condition" is near worthless; it is an empty cannister that people
>: fill with whatever happens to be handy.
>
>It can be that; on the other hand, your and my betters have filled it
>with some delicious goodies as well as the seeds of the bitter melon.
My point was the simpler one that the term "the human condition" can
mean almost anything - people have very different conceptions of what
the term means - if anything. Please do not be so free with "your and
my betters" - we have different conceptions of who our betters are, what
their nature is, and of their legitimacy. As you may guess, I opine
that "the seeds of the bitter melon" is so much melodrama. That said,
it is often interesting to see what people put in the canister.
> In this case it seems to be
>: "the way we are beholden to desire that which perishes in a process of
>: continuous decay" which indeed is one of the aspects of "the human
>: condition". Is it is this that is the ugliness referred to in "Any book
>: that shows you to yourself in all your ugliness, if you're ready"? (How
>: we evade individuals in "shows you to yourself" is a mystery.)
>It is individual because we all experience this empirically, sooner or
>later. Books help.
The problem is that you said that David and I took this individually and
that we wrong to do so. I am guessing that you meant something like:
Every individual faces this boojum; you people are in error to take it
personally as something to be defended against.
>: Why this transience is to be thought of as ugliness is quite unclear to
>: me.
>
>The ugliness is in how we deal with the consequences. But perhaps you and
>David are already resigned to the loss, and you aren't merely parading
>the inner grandfather.
I surely won't speak for David and in this regard I see no point in
speaking for myself. I disagree fundamentally with the notion that
"dealing with the consequences" is a matter of ugliness.
> An occasion for anger, or shoulder shrugging, or pangs of angst -
>: these, yes - but ugliness?! Then again you may not actually mean
>: ugliness.
>Or perhaps I have higher expectations of beauty.
Now here you are getting into a religion that I fundamentally do not
share. For that matter, I don't even think that ugliness and beauty
form a dichotomy.
>: >That is neither Romantic (I wish you guys would actually
>: >_read_ some Romantic theory before you slandered the movement) nor
>: >hyperbole, it's simply a fact which you have to move _through_.
>
>: Er, yes, I know it's not Romantic in the lit-crit sense. I used it as a
>: shorthand for posturing in false melodramatic fashion.
>
>Kafka scholars no doubt will take note.
No doubt.
Equally well if Christianity does not provide revealed truth neither
does Kafka.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
Changing your mind is no big deal provided
You remember to change your underwear
Susan Young
> I wonder if the Missouri Synod has ever evangelized in der Heimat.
> Susan, do you know?
Yes, I believe it does/has/is. To show all those Unionists what they missed by
not heading west with Martin Stephan, C.F.W. Walther, et al.
ObBook: the Baier/Walther _Compendium of Positive Theology_ (1877)
Susan, oft rebellious but as yet unlapsed
Susan Young
> ObTerrificLutherQuote: Peccave fortiter.
The whole quote, from a letter to Philipp Melanchthon from Luther: "Be a
sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger,
and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world."
The whole letter is at http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/letsinsbe.txt
Susan
Michael Zeleny
>Michael Zeleny wrote:
>>HRH1962 <hrh...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>From: zel...@oak.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny)
>>>>>>>I don't believe you, and it is curious that you cannot see the
>>>>>>>compliment in that.
>>>>>>You have peculiar notions about what should be considered a
>>>>>>compliment.
>>>>>>> I realize this is the wrong venue; the medium breeds
>>>>>>>defensiveness and does not encourage specific kinds of honesty.
>>>>>>Don't blame the medium. If you approached these discussions as
>>>>>>conversations instead of excuses to berate people, there'd be a
>>>>>>lot less defensiveness and you might actually understand what the
>>>>>>other person is saying.
>>>>>Another way to say this is that a more optimistic person might
>>>>>posit that whatever the medium, there is always a more accurate and
>>>>>politic method of addressing a point.
>>>>Indeed. Herewith an apposite example: neither you nor Heather would
>>>>know the first thing about changing your mind in deference to the
>>>>truth, whereas Silke, for all her vanity, occasionally does that.
>Kermit alludes anew to the occasion when he changed his mind after
>I corrected him concerning the French adoption of inappropriate
>super-regional names. From that, he will be able to go forth
>forever saying: see, *I* changed, why can't you?
There you are, Kackentrager. So why haven't my lawyers heard from you
regarding my public exposure of your scrofulous business ethics? Get
your attorney Bernie to serve his writ posthaste to Barton, Klugman &
Oettinger LLP. Hurry up so that we get to enjoy it over lunch at the
club -- mulling over these mountains of preferred stock issues makes
us ever so eager for unintended comic relief.
>>>Don't be fooled - she's merely striking a pose.
>>Whereas you and Loftus are openly full of self-congratulating shit.
>>A big improvement there.
>Well, David Loftus, do you take an akita to restaurants?
>
>Kermit is a zero with a dial-up connection to a freebie Internet
>service provider. He's never built a frame relay, but that doesn't
>stop him from hyperventilating about an area where he has no
>technical expertise. He doesn't read, but that doesn't prevent him
>from posting 77 times a week to a books newsgroup. And he doesn't
>sleep with women, but that doesn't stop him from pontificating on
>fatherhood. He is completely consistent screaming loudest where he
>has no business screaming at all.
How true it is. On the same note, job seekers desirous of drawing on
our non-existent payroll are welcome to fill out applications on the
ptyx web page. The sysadmin position calls for an aptitude test -- so
how about a free-for-all contest for the most creative way of bringing
down Jim Collier's network?
>I'll be in France, networking so to speak, for three weeks, where the
>patron that doesn't quite come up to the height of the table is likely
>to be somebody's Peke. (But your Lyonnais is not as disgusting as
>the Parisien in this regard.) He should have 231 new RAB posts by the
>time I return.
Don't go away mad now.
Cordially -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu * M...@ptyx.com ** www.ptyx.com
God: "Sum id quod sum." ** 7576 Willow Glen Road, Los Angeles, CA 90046
Descartes: "Cogito ergo sum." * 323.876.8234 (fon) * 323.876.8054 (fax)
Popeye: "Sum id quod sum et id totum est quod sum." **** www.alonzo.org
established on 2.26.1958 ** itinerant philosopher * will think for food
David J. Loftus
Organization:
Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
: David J. Loftus <dl...@netcom14.netcom.com> wrote:
: : Silke-Maria Weineck <wein...@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
: : : Let me think about this. Okay, so David admitted that he's never been
: : : struck hard by a book --
: : Well, not in the way Kafka seems to imply -- struck in a manner that
: : evokes fear, terror, pain.
: : I've been struck with wonder, delight, and deep, abiding pleasure by a
: : number of books -- in a manner that made me feel glad to be human, glad
: : to be alive, glad to be able to appreciate such a book.
: Good for you. However, you cannot win the Trojan War without going back
: for wounded, screaming, stinking, ugly Philoctetus.
What if I have no interest in winning the Trojan War? I disagree, for
one thing, that wars are an inherent factor of human experience, so of
course there's no reason they should be in literature. And even if one
reads about them in literature, their honest and/or vivid depiction
should hardly necessitate fear, horror, or a blow on the skull like an
axe to the frozen sea within us.
: By extension, I
: suggest that being "human" is not exhausted in wonder, delight, and
: pleasure. Let me ask you a different question, then: have you ever had the
: experience you didn't find in books _anywhere_?
Many. I have yet to see a book successfully depict sexual pleasure, let
alone sexual orgasm, though I've seen sexual jealousy well delineated a
number of times. I also haven't experienced the peculiar pleasure of
writing well, oddly enough, in books as I have in life.
: Or has your whole life been either indifference or delight?
Obviously it hasn't. If anything, the angst and boredom of life is often
and well depicted in books, but I can't say the experience of reading
about it has hit me like a blow on the skull.
: And if not, why do you think that it is books that can't give you pain?
Could be any number of reasons. (Note the implication above that
indifference, delight, or pain hardly constitute the spectrum of human
experience.) For instance, perhaps there are some human experiences that
are very difficult, if not impossible, to convey well in a book. Second, it
could be that conveying them well hardly measures up to the actual
experience anyway. Third, I may not have been reading the right books.
Fourth, I may not have had the ability to participate in the aesthetic and
intellectual experience at a level that would give me such pain. (You
implied as much, but as the ONLY possible option, not one among many).
Fifth, I may not have gone to books for such a reason or response (i.e.,
books that were intended to give such pain, that give other people such
pain, do not give me pain because I looked for other rewards).
: : It would be interesting to see if you are capable of debating ideas at
: : all without insulting the other party or whole groups of human beings at
: : the same time, silke. Is it possible for a person like myself to be
: : wrong, or thick-headed, on a particular point without actually
: : qualifying as generally stupid or utterly unread? Or is that beyond
: : a proper sense of logic or fairness?
: Since I explicitly suggested to you the very opposite and you explicitly
: rejected my impression of you, it seems that you will have to contend with
: that image of yourself all by yourself.
Maybe someone else can explain why Mike Morris thought you should
apologize to me for "explicitly suggesting the very opposite." Does it
not strike you as odd that your compliments occasionally get read
negatively by other folks?
: : You seem quite
: : happy to demonstrate that you know lots of things other folks do not,
: Actually, my mistake was the opposite, assuming that folks _do_ know these
: things. It is precisely my original refusal to condescend that infuriates
: you so, or would have infuriated you if you were capable of admitting to
: the emotion of fury.
Fury overstates what I would characterize as disgust. It is an odd bird
who answers innocent questions with attacks.
David Loftus
Bruce McGuffin
Philistine <aaron+...@bfr.co.il> writes:
> Bruce McGuffin <mcgu...@ll.mit.edu> writes:
>
> > The most disturbing book I ever read was The Painted Bird, but I
> > don't consider that book to be "good" literature in any sense of the
> > word.
>
> I do.
>
> > I don't think it had any point other than to depict "man's
> > inhumanity to man",
>
> OK, how about this: Because of his desperate need to survive, the boy
> is drawn into one incredibly brutal situation after another. He
> escapes each time, but there's no question of his breaking out of the
> pattern. No matter how horrible the relationships are, the alternative
> is worse. He literally cannot survive alone. Now generalize to what
> smw calls the "human condition".
I didn't need to suffer through The Painted Bird to learn that.
>
> > and I don't think it had any aesthetic value.
>
> I thought the cyclic structure was aesthetically pleasing.
Chacon a son gout.
> Same with
> Sade's _Justine_. The two books remind me of each other.
>
> > It made its point by beating you over the head again and again with
> > depictions of the awful things people can do to each other.
>
> Exactly. A beautiful instance of structure conveying content. Again,
> like Sade's _Justine_.
>
> >
> > I certainly wouldn't want to read books like The Painted Bird all
> > the time. If someone does, they should consider getting into
> > therapy.
>
> Thanks, I'll consider it.
Just don't let the therapist get on the couch with you.
Bruce McGuffin
Larisa Migachyov
> Larisa Migachyov <l...@leland.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> >textbooks, assorted handouts, and (though I'm afraid that this will earn
> >me the contempt of the RABble) various mystery novels and short stories.
> >I'm currently acquainting myself with the work of Ngaio Marsh, at a rate
> >that is probably not compatible with academic excellence. In particular,
> >I highly recommend "Light Thickens" to any of the RABble who might,
> >occasionally, stoop to mysteries in their reading choices.
>
> Not at all, but then I'm in a similar predicament. I adore a good mystery
> and Ngaio Marsh certainly wrote some good mysteries. If, however, you would
> like to feel as though you are reading more serious works (and even if you
> don't want to) I can suggest Maj Sjowall and Per Whaloo's series (10 books,
> best to read them in order as they also encompass a bigger story together)
> and Jan Williem Van der Wettering's series of mysteries (in order is a good
> idea for these as well as there is a also a bigger story there).
Thanks. I do like van der Wetering's books; I've read most of them, I
think. Haven't heard of the other series, though.
> As for short stories, I am of the opinion that they are far more difficult to
> write than novels. A good short story is marvelous. Yanasuri Kawabata was
> a genius when it came to the very very short story - I strongly recommend
> his book "Palm of the Hand Stories".
I agree with you; and I prefer short stories to novels, actually. Is the
translation of the Kawabata any good? Japanese is, I think, nearly
untranslatable into English.
--
Larisa Migachyov http://www.stanford.edu/~lvm
Michael S. Morris
M: Oh, and lose the pose right now, sister.
You have no inside line on depth or
aesthetic experience.
S: I sure do, my brother. Not the only one,
needless to say, but a line it
is, and a strong one.
M: Then, if you do recognize that it is
not the only one, I suggest you go apologize
to David for responding to his courageous
observation with an empty commonplace that
accuses everyone else of soullessness who does
not share your peculiar readership or the
peculiar line, howsomever strong, of your chosen
ghetto.
S: Let me think about this.
M: Thank you.
S: Okay, so David admitted
that he's never been struck hard by a book --
M: Careful, he said "terror or rage".
S: No. He cited the entire passage and
claimed that nothing in that passage
resonated with his experience of reading.
Cf. his recent post about joy
and delight.
I've read it. I don't see that you have
a point to stand on here at all. "Struck
hard" came from a plain Kafkan context of
terror or rage and was underlined as such
by David after you introduced the ugliness thing.
M: The thing I am wanting you to take back
is the assumption that you see deeper into
David than David sees into you---the assumption
that *your* line is necessarily the stronger one.
S: What an idiotic request.
Thank you.
S: Just like you assume that your line is the
stronger one, I assume that mine is.
Good, since I don't assume that "my line"
is stronger at all, maybe your line could
evince a little humility.
S: I find his experience of books lacking.
It is incomplete. I have since recognized
that he does indeed not have the feelings
that I originally thought he did have. Is that
the apology needed?
And who the fuck (Am. usage) are you to
go around pronouncing his (or my, for
that matter) feelings or experience
incomplete or lacking? And how the
fuck (Am. usage) do you know that it
isn't your own inexperience or shallowness
that would account for the peculiarities
of your readership?
You assumed the Eternal-Feminine
was in the shadow of Gretchen's
prison cell. It could equally well
be that Gretchen's prison cell is
in the light of the Eternal-Feminine.
M: If you'd like to discuss the serious point
David made with David respectfully, I'd be
happy to sit it out.
S: I don't consider "I'm not that ugly" a
serious point in this context, since David's
personal ugliness was never at stake.
M: Oh, yes it was. The question is whether
there are demons---a concentration-camp guard
and a serial killer and an underground man---deep
under the frozen lake inside David.
S: No, the question was never whether David has a
concentration-camp guard or a serial killer
inside him, and you know it. The question is
whether we have Philoctetus inside us, as I
said to David: wounded, screaming, and stinking.
Philoctetes wounded, screaming, stinking and
wishing vengeance is exactly the same thing,
in my humble opinion.
M: You have
been presuming there are,
S: Are you lying or do you really
believe this? I do want to know.
I really believe this. The Philoctetes
schtick convinces me of it, in fact.
M: and that if they don't resonate in
David, he's either in denial about
them, or isn't reading very deeply
or well. But your presumption comes
from Freud and Kafka and Nietzsche
and Dostoevsky
S: And Homer and Sophocles and the Bible.
Sounds well-founded to me. Excellent
ancestry. Thank you.
Not Homer, not Sophocles, not the Bible.
The lineage is excellent enough without
trying to displace them in odd directions.
M: and is a peculiar modern convention
about the human psyche
S: Didn't you just call it Christian a
short while back? Is Christianity also
a "peculiar modern convention"?
It derives from Christianity, of course,
but Easter Sunday as well as Good Friday
come from there. The idea of Good Friday
without Easter Sunday is more recent, and is
a hallmark of the modern arc of prose authors
I have listed for you.
M: It may well be that the demons live in
a very *shallow* place in the soul, and that
stroking them the way those guys do is little
more than a kind of narcissism. It may
be that love and mercy and light and joy are
deeper still. It may be that not even *you*,
Ms. Weineck, are as ugly as you like to believe.
S: How pathetic, Mike.
Perhaps Noel could teach you something about
reading after all.
S: I believe in the coexistence
of ugly and beautiful, and I've
passed through the anxiety this
coexistence creates.
Who the fuck (Am. usage) cares
what you believe or whether you have
passed through to the other side of
something or are still only skimming
the surface? I used "it may be" quite
logically precisely here, and the fact
remains that "it may be".
S: Mercy is the suspension of justice,
but it presupposes that something
requiring mercy happened in the
first place.
Etc..
S: And I don't consider somebody who focuses
on the non-hell in order to deny hell
altogether "serious," either. Not a serious
reader.
M: There you go again. It is not "focusing" on non-hell
for me to bring up non-hell in the first place and to
suggest that, given the sweeping claims you have
now made for hell, that the great bulk of great
literature isn't necessarily about hell at all.
S: And who said it is?
You said:
We all carry the images of our own
ugliness within ourselves, precisely below
the frozen sea. If you don't find it in reading,
you simply haven't read yet. If reading masterly
prose doesn't give you a keen and painful sense
of your own eternal shortcomings and limitations,
you know nothing about books or writing.
Is not William Hickling Prescott's _History
of the Conquest of Mexico_ masterly prose?
Is its effect even meant to be "a keen and
painful sense of your own eternal shortcomings
and limitations"? Who the fuck (Am. usage)
are you to pronounce on knowing
about books or writing at this point?
S: Your need to create blatant
straw-targets doesn't speak well
for you.
I'm an ugly, ugly boy. But think for
just one moment *where* I entered this
thread, and you'll see that it was
right at the point you started accusing
difference of opinion from yourself
of being shallow or inexperienced.
S: At issue isn't the prevalence of
ugliness but it's very existence
and its painful recognition as
_part_ of reading and writing.
Good, then I take it you concede
my point that most of the greatest
of great literature is concerned
with non-hell. Hell and heaven both are
only tiny parts of it, after all.
S: Nothing was said about predominance.
Of course, reading about beauty and
delight and glory will not make you
unhappy. I don't endorse Kafka's stance
that we should only read the books to
strike us. But I don't believe that you
can be a reader and avoid those that do
for very long.
Ah, at last something substantive. Thank
you. I do believe we respond differently
to hell. And this has precisely to do with
our own personal involvement, and how it
is that we have come to terms with evil.
I see no reason a person can't be a
great reader of great books and still
not be stirred particularly by their
efforts to show him his own ugliness.
There is no question of avoidance. There's
just not having bought into the peculiar line
to begin with. I think Richard said it quite
well---that bit about ugliness is so much
melodrama.
Personally, I don't think anyone
could be called a reader who
has not wept for the beauty of
Euclid's _Elements_, the Duino Elegies
be damned.
S: And you do realize, I take it,
that the figure of "eternal
feminity" is a child-murderer?
M: Just as you realize, I take it,
that slaughter and mutilation precede
the return of Hector's corpse by Achilles
to Priam, and Hell and Purgatory precede
Paradise, and "phall if you will" precedes
"rise you must".
S: Yes. So you do recognize the importance
of the one and the other?
Of course.
M: Of the one as the condition
of possibility of the other?
Which is the condition, which the possibility
is another question entirely.
M: Perhaps you should
be pronouncing instead on the shallow
readership of those who are not so
personally engaged by great literature as
to drop to their knees and accept Christ
as Saviour at the turn of the first page?
S: I think you want to rewrite this passage.
No, says just what I wanted it to say.
You were telling David either he hadn't
read enough or that his response to
great literature was inadequate. I figure
he's read a bunch and his response
is a perfectly intelligent one. I also see
that my response in that respect is
like unto his, though no doubt he's read
much more than I have. So I just imagined
for you a way in which *your response*
to great literature could be seen by
some people---even some intensely
smart and well-read people---as inadequate
in every respect. Being lapsed as
you style yourself, you would seem
(to these people) to be missing the
most important response to literature
of all. All the rest (to these people)
is so much posing.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Richard Harter
>Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
>[...]
>: the Duino Elegies
>: be damned.
>
>Which aptly summarizes his position and needs no further reply.
One cannot but admire the elegance of dismissal.
Michael S. Morris
Silke:
his position and [...] no further
Doch.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Sofonisba
to be depressed so much as entertained?
sofonisba
<a href="http://www.popula.com">www.popula.com</a>
Whose members are known around the world for their wit, charm and bonhomie
Richard Harter
>Richard Harter <c...@tiac.net> wrote:
>: Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>:>Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
>:>[...]
>:>: the Duino Elegies
>:>: be damned.
>:>
>:>Which aptly summarizes his position and needs no further reply.
>
>: One cannot but admire the elegance of dismissal.
>
>I didn't find Mike's dismissal very elegant; if you mean mine, I'm
>flattered -- it is a rare accomplishment to give elegant form to that
>which is heart-felt.
Oh yours, of course. Mike doesn't deal in elegance, precisely, but he
does an excellent ponderous.
Michael S. Morris
Mikhail:
And now we are given to understand that
Silke, as an institutionally certified
aesthetician,
First mistake. There is no such thing
as an institutionally certified aesthetician.
Mikhail:
or the counterpart of Mike
the institutionally certified
astrophysicist,
A curious point here, not so much about
astrophysics, but astronomy: The
non-institutionally-certified amateurs
are damned good. In fact, the professional
observational resources have so much demand
put on them and the amateurs are so good, that
the professionals trust the amateurs to monitor
a lot of stuff (asteroids, satellites, comets,
and the like) that the professionals can't.
A different curious point: Robert Shaw
has been quoted to me as saying "Music,
like love, is too important to be left to
the professionals."
There *is* such a thing as general readership,
Mikhail, in a way that there is not a physics
for the many. This readership can be very intelligent,
and deep as well and *not* tune itself to the dictates
of academic fashion. Silke's authority comes from
the fact she's read a lot and is intelligent.
That is all the inside line she gets.
Mikhail:
is as authoritatively entitled to pronounce
one's feelings or experience incomplete or
lacking, as Mike himself is entitled to judge
one's understanding of General Relativity.
Utterly false comparison. I would expect her to be
expert about a few things---works or authors.
I would not expect that such expertise would
translate into permission for her to deride
David's feelings or experience, as she has done
from the start. Don't get me wrong: Such expertise
would permit her to deride some feelings and
experience. However, given that she hasn't paused
for one second to hear what it is he had to say, given
the evident intelligence of both his readership
and what he has had to say, she has no permission
or grant of authority to do what she has done. I
might have said exactly the same thing that David
did, namely that I have never been struck by a book
in quite the way that Kafka puts it. But, then again,
you have just been trying to get me to acknowledge
the moral equivalency of driving an suv and
cannibalistic murder, so I'm not sure that
you yourself can claim much in the way
of authority about what might lie under the
surface of that frozen sea.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael Zeleny
>Jim Collier <ct...@home.com> wrote:
>>I'll be in France, networking so to speak, for three weeks, where the
>>patron that doesn't quite come up to the height of the table is likely
>>to be somebody's Peke. (But your Lyonnais is not as disgusting as
>>the Parisien in this regard.)
>Is it too late to get in on the Jim Collier Death Pool?
>I'll put $5 on autoerotic asphyxiation -- assuming no
>one's taken it already.
Indeed, Collier's history of sexual desperation is well known.
Lest we forget, in article <3768B6B4...@home.com> he wrote:
>>By the way, Usenet women with IQ over 140, I've been available
>>for eight weeks.
>>
>>"Bookish, piano-playing poly-degreed biz owner w/2 cats, house by
>>ocean 55 mi. s. of L.A., 54, graying brown, blue-gray, 5'10-1/2,
>>178, grown kid, solves transposition ciphers in head seeks/needs
>>brainy, mildly athletic woman in sci-eng who has undisclosed
>>curiosity about something related to her work that turns her on,
>>can ideate fluently and draw, and has history of long-term, if
>>slightly serial, monogamy."
However I recommend that you refine your position by stipulating
the means of Jim Collier's impending suffocation as strangulation
or attempted auto-fellation.
Incidentally, competent computer job seekers are invited to submit
their applications on the ptyx web page. Since the Unix sysadmin
position calls for an aptitude test, extra consideration may be
given to anyone capable of reliably predicting the periodic demise
of Jim Collier's network.
Michael Zeleny
Weineck concerning David Loftus' manifest aesthetic idiocy:
>And who the fuck (Am. usage) are you to go around pronouncing his (or
>my, for that matter) feelings or experience incomplete or lacking?
>And how the fuck (Am. usage) do you know that it isn't your own
>inexperience or shallowness that would account for the peculiarities
>of your readership?
Elsewhere, in article <3605F1...@netdirect.net>, Mike wrote:
>I perfectly well agree that in Moral Theorem Space, there are many
>propositions we cannot prove and do argue about, and will go on
>arguing about to the end of time. I'm perfectly happy to admit the
>uncharted greyness (the "through a glass darkly") of most of Moral
>Theorem Space. But the real question is not whether there are wide
>stretches of disagreement or ignorance, but: Are there *any*
>Propositions we can identify as proven Theorems? I think there are
>some. This has for me one very important consequence: Namely, that
>moral philosophy is not some useless endeavour we waste our time to
>think about, better abdicating all such consideration to the
>sociologist, but rather it is a living exploration of a real body of
>knowledge that we needs must keep discovering and thinking about.
>[...]
>Personally, the analogy I'd use is Euclid Proposition I.47 for plane
>geometry ("The Pythagorean Theorem"). There are people who either are
>ignorant of this Theorem, or who posit the existence of an
>alternative, contradictory Theorem. Personally, the obvious existence
>of these people doesn't dissuade me from belief in an objective plane
>geometry.
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=393199402&fmt=text
Elsewhere yet, in article <35B618...@netdirect.net>, Mike wrote:
>Why privilege aesthetics? I mean, it seems to me that classically we
>have three standards of judgement in three judgmental "dimensions"---
>the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
>[...]
>Without chasing down all the permutations and combinations of what
>you might get when elevating (or depressing) any particular standard
>of judgment with respect to the others (scientism, for example, when
>materialistic Truth is allowed to overwrite both the Good and the
>Beautiful), it seems to me something like an Aristotelian analysis
>and allocation of each dimension of judgment to its proper subject,
>together with a Platonic synthesis of the three standards of judgment
>as aspects of one integral reality is suggested. Such an analysis and
>synthesis I think should illumine a perfectly honoured place for
>astrophysicists as well as for poets (and moralists, too).
http://www.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=373888008&fmt=text
And now we are given to understand that Silke, as an institutionally
certified aesthetician, or the counterpart of Mike the institutionally
certified astrophysicist, is as authoritatively entitled to pronounce
one's feelings or experience incomplete or lacking, as Mike himself is
entitled to judge one's understanding of General Relativity.
Cordially -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu * M...@ptyx.com ** www.ptyx.com
Michael Zeleny
astrophysical competence. My point in bringing up the analogy was to
contrast it with his erstwhile request for an Aristotelian analysis
and allocation of each dimension of astrophysical, poetic, and moral
judgment to its proper subject, together with a Platonic synthesis of
Once the validity of this request has been admitted, the poet and the
moralist alike attain a standing from which to criticize certain raw
feelings and experiences particular to the general readership, just as
the astrophysicist is entitled to correct bizarre cosmological fancies
of hoi polloi. Needless to say, Mike's PC railing against the patent
inconsequentia of academic fashion has no relevance to this argument.
Likewise as regards considerations of accomplishment in astronomy, it
being a deliverance of sedulous observation supported by a smidgen of
theoretical awareness. (Concerning music, to each Harry Partch and
Toru Takemitsu correspond innumerable hordes of tin-eared nincompoops
whose musical acumen is equivalent to Archimedes Plutonium's grasp of
astrophysics.) By contrast, the insinuated inference of claimed moral
equivalency of driving an SUV and cannibalistic murder from anything
that I have published in this forum to date, poignantly betokens the
incompetency of Morrisian general readership, which Mike is more than
welcome to remedy by revisiting the subject.
Michael S. Morris <msmo...@netdirect.net> wrote:
>Monday, the 12th of July, 1999
>
>Mikhail:
> And now we are given to understand that
> Silke, as an institutionally certified
> aesthetician,
>
>First mistake. There is no such thing
>as an institutionally certified aesthetician.
>
>Mikhail:
> or the counterpart of Mike
> the institutionally certified
> astrophysicist,
>
>A curious point here, not so much about
>astrophysics, but astronomy: The
>non-institutionally-certified amateurs
>are damned good. In fact, the professional
>observational resources have so much demand
>put on them and the amateurs are so good, that
>the professionals trust the amateurs to monitor
>a lot of stuff (asteroids, satellites, comets,
>and the like) that the professionals can't.
>
>A different curious point: Robert Shaw
>has been quoted to me as saying "Music,
>like love, is too important to be left to
>the professionals."
>
>There *is* such a thing as general readership,
>Mikhail, in a way that there is not a physics
>for the many. This readership can be very intelligent,
>and deep as well and *not* tune itself to the dictates
>of academic fashion. Silke's authority comes from
>the fact she's read a lot and is intelligent.
>That is all the inside line she gets.
>
>Mikhail:
> is as authoritatively entitled to pronounce
> one's feelings or experience incomplete or
> lacking, as Mike himself is entitled to judge
> one's understanding of General Relativity.
>
>Utterly false comparison. I would expect her to be
>expert about a few things---works or authors.
>I would not expect that such expertise would
>translate into permission for her to deride
>David's feelings or experience, as she has done
>from the start. Don't get me wrong: Such expertise
>would permit her to deride some feelings and
>experience. However, given that she hasn't paused
>for one second to hear what it is he had to say, given
>the evident intelligence of both his readership
>and what he has had to say, she has no permission
>or grant of authority to do what she has done. I
>might have said exactly the same thing that David
>did, namely that I have never been struck by a book
>in quite the way that Kafka puts it. But, then again,
>you have just been trying to get me to acknowledge
>the moral equivalency of driving an suv and
>cannibalistic murder, so I'm not sure that
>you yourself can claim much in the way
>of authority about what might lie under the
>surface of that frozen sea.
>
> Mike Morris
> (msmo...@netdirect.net)
Cordially -- Mikhail Zel...@math.ucla.edu * M...@ptyx.com ** www.ptyx.com
Michael S. Morris
Mikhail:
Mike Morris imagines a distinction between
aesthetic competence and astrophysical competence.
But the real point is that he *also* imagines
a distinction between aesthetic competence
and knowledge of literature.
Mikhail:
My point in bringing up the analogy was to
contrast it with his erstwhile request for
an Aristotelian analysis and allocation of
each dimension of astrophysical, poetic, and
moral judgment to its proper subject, together
with a Platonic synthesis of the three standards
of judgment as aspects of one integral reality.
Why Truth=astrophysical, Beauty=poetic precisely?
Why not astrophysical=(Truth + Beauty) and poetic=
(Truth + Beauty)? Both have an ethical dimension
as well. And the three judgmental dimensions remain
distinct.
Mikhail:
Once the validity of this request has been
admitted, the poet and the moralist alike
attain a standing from which to criticize
certain raw feelings and experiences particular
to the general readership, just as the
astrophysicist is entitled to correct bizarre
cosmological fancies of hoi polloi.
Of course. Nevertheless, the particular raw feelings
and experiences in question are not analogous
to the bizarre cosmological fancies of hoi polloi.
Look, I know what it is to read a book and
feel that aesthetic completion which comes
out of me as a "Wow!" I know what it to be disturbed
viscerally by a book, or more precisely by an image
in a book. I know what cathartic terror and pity
are. I know what it is for a great book to
lead my mind into new places. I know what it is
to see some ugly part of my self in a book.
I do *not* know any of this as an
ax-through-frozen-sea event, however.
Perhaps I am dimwitted, but most of it
is slow, and highly intellectualized---
not as *feeling*, but as the sum total
of a reasoned argument with myself. The ugliness
I see in the underground man I certainly do
see in myself. But there is no way I
can talk about that realization as a sudden
event happening to me during the reading of
Dostoevsky's story. It's feelings brought during
that first reading and rational reflection
on those feelings and thinking about it that
bring me to it. Likewise _Hannibal_. No
hammer blows there. A recognition of a
portrait of self-ugliness. *My* temptation
to aristocratic scorn. What crossed my mind
the last time I took Zan and Helen to see
_The Phantom Menace_ and we had to share the
cinema with a dozen or so kids who jabbered and
jabbered and got up and walked out and walked
back in and moved around from seat to seat and
section to section throughout the whole movie.
Mikhail:
Needless to say, Mike's PC railing against
the patent inconsequentia of academic fashion
has no relevance to this argument.
It has every relevance to any claim made
for Silke's authority to pronounce aesthetic
judgment. Says nothing about her pronouncing
truth judgments about text and authors she
is bound to me more familiar with than I.
The point is that the ax-through-the-sea
image is an image given to a peculiar
modern critical stance. It is not a
contemplative stance.
Mikhail:
Likewise as regards considerations
of accomplishment in astronomy, it
being a deliverance of sedulous observation
supported by a smidgen of theoretical
awareness.
Yeah, but again, within that
venue of sedulous observation, the
amateurs make a *real*, cutting-edge
contribution. The analogy with
general readership should be obvious
to you. There are presumably *multiple*
critical techniques which are available
to Silke that would not be available
to the general reader. Some of those
I believe are probably so much nonsense,
but that is neither here nor there. Some
of them would be no doubt illuminative.
However, telling someone he hasn't read
because he hasn't experienced Kafka's
metaphor in Kafka's context goes beyond
any possible competence she could
conceivably have.
Mikhail:
(Concerning music, to each Harry Partch and
Toru Takemitsu correspond innumerable hordes
of tin-eared nincompoops whose musical acumen
is equivalent to Archimedes Plutonium's grasp of
astrophysics.)
But in regards to books we *were not* talking
about tin-eared nincompoops.
Mikhail:
By contrast, the insinuated inference of
claimed moral equivalency of driving an SUV
and cannibalistic murder from anything
that I have published in this forum to date,
poignantly betokens the incompetency of
Morrisian general readership, which Mike
is more than welcome to remedy by revisiting
the subject.
Mike has never left the subject. You did
write:
The moral equivalency urged by the text
is between the social prerogative customarily
manifested in conspicuous waste, and the
predator's proud perch atop the food chain,
which takes this conspicuity to a further
level by wasting subjects morally presumed to
transcend their nutritional value.
Did you not? Or perhaps the issue is that
you don't think there is anything conspicuously
wasteful about an suv?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Joan Marie Shields
>> I can suggest Maj Sjowall and Per Whaloo's series (10 books,
>> best to read them in order as they also encompass a bigger story together)
>> and Jan Williem Van der Wettering's series of mysteries (in order is a good
>> idea for these as well as there is a also a bigger story there).
Larisa Migachyov <l...@leland.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>Thanks. I do like van der Wetering's books; I've read most of them, I
>think. Haven't heard of the other series, though.
They are set in Sweden and center around a homicide police unit. The series
covers a number of years and a number of changes - in both the unit and the
government structure. One of the authors was a relatively well-known sociologist
(I could have this wrong - he was, I know, very interested in sociology). Apparently,
the books were deliberately written to be a sociological comment as well as a set
of good police procedurals. I highly recommend them - and it is well worth reading
them in order.
>> As for short stories, I am of the opinion that they are far more difficult to
>> write than novels. A good short story is marvelous. Yanasuri Kawabata was
>> a genius when it came to the very very short story - I strongly recommend
>> his book "Palm of the Hand Stories".
>I agree with you; and I prefer short stories to novels, actually. Is the
>translation of the Kawabata any good? Japanese is, I think, nearly
>untranslatable into English.
I cannot recall who translated the ones I have read and I agree, it's very hard
to find a good translation. However, the one I read appeared to be very good -
keeping to the spare use of words Kawabata was known for. His novels are also
very good. IMO, the stories are strong enough to carry through the translations.
In fact, it seems to me that in his case the sparer the translation the better.
It's easy, strange as this may seem, to forget that you are reading - the writer's
voice is so quiet, in a sense. It's hard to describe - I guess it's more that you
are not necessarily aware of the writer's "style" as you are of the characters and
the story. I like that.
Joan Marie Shields
>[...]
>: So, I guess on one hand I can say that reading certain books hascaused me to
>: just the first part. I certainly don't think that every book I read must force
>: me to do so
Silke-Maria Weineck <sm...@umich.edu> wrote:
>Neither do I.
>: - 1) I am quite capable of doing that without being sparked by a book
>Certainly demons can appear elsewhere -- even though I'm not that
>concerned with demons but with the troubles of desire.
Troubles of desire? I don't think I follow.
>: 2) the purpose of art is also to show us our better natures
>I disagree. Why should that be "the" purpose of art?
I should have said "one of the purposes of art" - sorry, I thought the "also" made
that clear.
>: and 3) we should also
>: be reminded not to take ourselves so seriously.
>That happens precisely after you've hacked away at the ice, I think.
Sometimes, though I've seen people (and read books) that concentrate so much on
the hacking that they never seem to get around to facing the demons once they
come across them.
>[...]
>: So, perhaps it's simply the metaphor I disagree with - a "frozen sea" and "eternal"
>: suggest a perpetually unchanging state. Am I misreading or do you hold with that,
>: Silke?
>I like the image of the frozen sea because it suggests that things are
>moving below. The sea never freezes to the bottom, so to me, it's an image
>of cautious optimism. I agree with the violence of the image -- I think it
>is a fearful thing to hack through the ice, and if I've been at fault in
>this exchange, then in supposing that everybody can or ought to submit to
>it.
No, I think the problem is more that you suppose that everyone else looks at
it the same way you do. Like I said, I don't see it as a frozen sea - more
like a rolling sea (to keep with the water metaphor) - things coming up to the
surface. Some look at it as an onion with an almost infinite number of layers
while others look at it as a journey (I'm actually more along this last line).
"Frozen sea" is merely a metaphor - not all that important. Although, too much
emphasis in making the reality conform to the metaphor can be, well, difficult.
As in what I wrote below:
>: Of course, the validity of this metaphor could be based in religious dogma, which
>: Morris made a comment about. I'm not much of a Christian, more a Zen Buddhist and
>: I certainly don't hold a Calvinistic view. Do you believe in the possibilty of
>: change (or redemption) or 'salvation' and if so, does it entail breaking the ice
>: of that frozen sea? Or is that sea impossible to thaw and so simple acceptance of
>: its existance enough or all that we can hope for?
>I think that Augustine's recommendation is the most radical one: love only
>things that you cannot lose against your will. From the very little I know
>about Asian religions, some seem to counsel in a similar direction,
>towards detachment.
This is nice, though just scratches the surface, however your response is not as
clear as I would prefer. How much hope, do you believe, does a person have in
actually addressing and changing/defeating (I prefer the former to the latter)
those demons below the surface? Do we merely accept that the demons are there
or are we obliged to face them? Can we change?
I think that's why the metaphor of the frozen sea doesn't work for me as well as
it appears to work for you. Like I said, it suggests and eternal state and puts
the emphasis on 'hacking' rather than the actual dealing with demons. Perhaps it's
because there's a tradition of 'break-throughs' being more dramatic than the work
that comes after. The trouble is that the actual 'hacking through' is not always
dramatic - sometimes, oftentimes in my experience, it's much quieter. With some
people they don't even realize they've broken through.
Anyway, all in all it's a personal thing and therefore very hard to judge. You
have no idea what David has gone through - what demons he has faced and how he
has faced them or what. It seems to me that the emphasis has been more on the
metaphor than on the process. David's experience has not been the same as yours -
go figure. He does seem to be happy and content with his life, can any of us ask
for more than that?
>I think most of us will incline towards the risk and
>the loss, with the hope that they will bear the inevitable pain with
>dignity.
Oftentimes a lost hope - most of us stumble about, not very gracefully but, as
the old saying goes "Would you rather save your face or your ass?" :).
sayan bhattacharyya
> If reading masterly
> prose doesn't give you a keen and painful sense
> of your own eternal shortcomings and limitations,
> you know nothing about books or writing.
I dunno about that, but reading masterly prose (or verse,
even more so) arouses in me intense feelings of JEALOUSY
("Why can't I write like _that_ ?).
In particlular this is why I have a hard time reading
Neruda -- I like him intensely, and hate him intensely
for having written much better than I possibly could.
Maureen Scobie
stories, I recommend the Ian Rankin novels set in Edinburgh and the
short stories of Alice Munro and of Mavis Gallant.
Maureen