by Ayn Rand
Manny wrote: "Daniel wrote: "No one ever said from their deathbed, "Boy, I wish I had read more Ayn Rand books." Just something to think about, Manny."
I'm taking that as a challenge. Let's see. I envisage a mixture, in roughly equal parts, of Brideshead Revisited, The Fountainhead and Citizen Kane, with just a soupçon of Sladek to bring out the flavor. The old man is lying, delirious, on his deathbed. "John Galt..." he moans weakly. His beautiful Objectivist daughter brings him the signed first edition of Atlas Shrugged that she once gave him as a birthday present, and which he's steadfastly refused to read. Maybe he's had a miraculous change of heart? But really (and no one ever understands this) he wants his teddy bear.
What do you think? "
I'm with Daniel...it won't be on my list of top one hundred deathbed regrets. On the other hand, I can see from this depiction of a deathbed that I was planning on mine being way too dull. ]]>
by Patricia Highsmith
Tom Ripley is frightening, and I also felt oddly empathetic towards him, even protective.
That's the whole point, isn't it? A good writer - maybe I should say a good book - makes you empathise with the anti-hero as much as you would the hero. Highsmith does this time and time again, makes you sympathise and empathise with characters that in real life you'd hope never to meet.
I think I still prefer Simenon's studies of the sociopath, but gee Highsmith is good. ]]>
"I was asked on Goodreads for more experiences about my chess and I’m going to start right in the m"
...more
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You might be more likely to have seen the film, which is a good representation of the book.
I recall that the film got some flack for its representation of Washington Square Park as a den of iniquity, but it seemed spot on to me, having played there around the same time.
That trip I played quite a bit of chess, often outdoors, around Manhattan, and apart from one game in The Village Chess Shop the only time I looked like losing was in Washington Square Park. Sat down and started playing a black guy who was the consummate hustler. I'd never experienced anything like it, only read about it. Yep, I was going to lose, but it was going to be a lot of fun.
Suddenly, however, another black guy came up and asked for table money. I was happy to pay whatever, these guys, whether legitimately or not, as I found out near the world trade centre, never asked for much, so what did I care? But I was completely ignored as these two started a big black dude mother-fucker argument about who owed what to whom. After a while the board was smashed, pieces and clock flying.
I ran for it, quite nervous, I must confess, to another row of tables where people were - laughing at me. I'm not sure if this is the case or not, but when I gathered my wits it seemed like maybe the chess area is segregated and I was in the black part. Maybe somebody who has played there can answer that for me. It seemed like I'd suddenly gone from being surrounded by blacks to surrounded by whites and that the latter found the whole incident highly amusing.
New York. Everybody's a hustler. I played outside near the World Trade Centre on this trip. Somebody asked me to play and said it was usual for the loser to pay the table money, a dollar a game. Fine, I said. After I won maybe the first half a dozen games I decided that was enough. I hung around to see if my opponent handed over money to the guy running the show, but of course he didn't. I think that's what amazes me about America. Not that there's a hustler near by whereever you are, but that they are so penny ante.
There must have been a whole generation of fathers who lived vicariously through their children in that post-Fischer period. Children overburdened with unreasonable expectations. I hope they are all ashamed of themselves now. The fathers, that is.
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Really a lovely collection of patterns, quite unlike the first uninspired dedicated Summer Tweed collection.
I know, I know...if I keep up this raging love affair with the local scare-crow I might have to change my name. ]]>
by Elijah Wald
I was really rather ashamed to realise that history is in general written in quite the wrong way, that is, from our perspective. Of course, that keeps historians in jobs, but it is plain wrong.
However, the case of art in general, let's say music in this case, is complicated by the fact that what is popular at the time isn't necessarily what is influential at the level of creation. I may listen to the Beatles, but what influences my brother the composer, may be Trout Mask Replica. Both these perspectives need to be looked at.
By the way, the reason for the dichotomy between critical opinion of Whiteman and the Beatles, may stil just be a matter of timing. Whiteman may be reviled now, but was he reviled ten or twenty years after he was creating?
Paul, can't ignore your comment that "hmm, EW, this thing has been going on in literature for centuries. In your courses on 19th century novelists do we find Sabine Baring-Gould, Mary Braddon or Catherine Gore? Not a chance, big sellers though they were."
Quite. Reinventing the past based on what we think is important rather than what was important at the time is a consistent and unforgiveable unforgivable failing of the present - using the present to mean whatever it is at the time.
I wrote a history of bridge a while ago and it was clear from first sources - newspapers, people who were alive in the period - that it was an incredibly important part of the 1930s. It was arguably the first time that women got to genuinely compete on an equal footing with men. Diet changed, the divorce rate was affected, really at a social level one could not overemphasise the importance of it. Yet in social histories of the period it is completely ignored.
Why? Sorry, quoting myself:
This has occurred for a simple reason. Bridge is no longer part of the social fabric of Australia. It is not part of our culturally acquired set of prejudices regarding what is important now. Extrapolating, it was not important then. Is this the process of the constant revision of history? Is the process of history-making exclusively concerned with what is important now, rather than what was important in the past? Is history merely a matter of current fashion?
It seems to be strange that this should be so, if only because I would have thought if there were one discipline that should be able to rise above fashion, and its attendant prejudices and bigotry, that discipline would surely be history. The transience of fashion is evident from the most superficial observation of history. This should make it blatantly obvious that the fashion dictating the revision of history is itself transient, and consequently a dangerous, because so limiting, influence. Yet even historians can separate themselves from the aspects of history most important for them to live with. Is it the fate of every generation to believe that their beliefs are absolute, and not the function of fashion and prejudice?
Exactly the same thing happens in the literary canon, as my book goes on to discuss. I must confess literary criticism was not my thing and I hope maybe it let me approach it from an impartial point of view. The values one must work with as a historian are the values of the relevant past, not the present. It seems like a no brainer, doesn't it?
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bookshelves: games
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bookshelves: games
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by Thomas Pynchon
dk® wrote: "I read exactly two pages of this book before I handed it the pink slip.
At the risk of unfairly comparing books to human relationships ('unfairly' because books are generally so much more sympathetic, appealing, and resellable than human beings), I'd claim that one doesn't need to date someone for three years, come to terms with all of his/her quirks, sexual hang-ups, sadistic tendencies, pathologies, physical abnormalities, fetishes, and errors in taste, and then marry said person and remain in a mutually destructive, socially-sanctioned (and largely property-centered) contractual bond for twenty years to realize that this significant other isn't necessarily significant, or even endearingly 'other.' Reading the first two pages of this book -- along these same lines -- was the equivalent..."
dk, how splendidly observed. What a liberating experience in my life to discover, finally, at age 35, that I did not have to stick with a book that was wrong, any more than I did a relationship. They should both make you happy, shouldn't they? ]]>