Michael’s Comments (group member since Mar 07, 2009)

Michael’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Maureen wrote: "okay, so here's something interesting: i went to check out the page for people to find groups, and it turns out that we're on the first page for books and literature. why? because of frequency of p..."

I just did a little experiment. Our group was half-way down the page of the broader "books" listing of groups, and 2nd on the narrower "literature" listing. By simply making a post I brought the group up to the top of both listing momentarily. So the frequency of post is a determining factor, basically to the extent that our group has the "last" post in the category.

The older Fiction File v1 was at one point in the top 5 on the MySpace literature group listing, but I think that was more a factor of # of members as we had 10,000 lurkers and 2000 active posters at one point.

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Margaret wrote: "...Yes, I want a mental orgasm. No Pressure."


Um, Mare; you know this is approximately the exact opposite to a good approach. Most authors perform a whole lot worse under pressure. Unless the author, of course, forgets his or her own pleasure and focuses on you. I would suggest lighting a few candles, putting on some mood music, and seducing the book a little more. ;)

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Ben wrote: "Hoyle wrote: "And knowing your own high regard for Borges, I cannot understand your dislike for Marquez. "

it's really not so much that i don't like him, as that i have a weird block against readi..."

I'd really like to respond on the similarity/difference between Marquez and Master Borges, but I think I will take it up over in the Cien Años De Soledad (was "I Seem To Have A Reader's Block") thread, when I get a chance.

Meanwhile, back to Proust. Some previous threads on Mr. Proust, indicating your long running problem with concentrating on his long winded prose, leaf blower or not:

Aubrey reads Proust...

Pavel reads Proust...

Ben reads the same 15 pages of Proust over and over again...

Lauren wrote: "Why don't we do one by a female author (I seem to remember some jibjabbing about that back at the myspace pad)?

I know we mentioned Pearl S. Buck and the Good Earth before..."

Actually reading this right now! It's been on my to-read list for 40 years and one of the kids was reading it and left it out. So much for to-read lists.

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Lauren wrote: "*stands up; clears throat*

...I'm the child of the group and apparetly lovable enough to have money thrown at me by some of the wonderful people who reside here. (psst. The plaque is hanging on my wall and JE's note is pinned to my corkboard). I am also the proud inventor of the FF family tree (and unlike JE, I have no sense of modesty)..."

I look forward to the day some high schooler wanders into the group again, at which point you will be as old as the folks you met when you came in here. And I think I remember your entire nick name now:

Lauren-Mischief Danielle MacCoup d'Etat, though Egret use to call you "Kiddo" for short.

I remember running into you first in the Literary Corner Cafe on MySpace where you posted on Plato's Symposium (I think you were a Jr. in HS), so that might have been late 2005/early 2006 at the earliest. Just feeling the nostalgia what with the state of the economy and all...

Lauren wrote: "Oh HAI errrbody!"

Hi there back Ms. Lauren-Mischief (something something) MacCoup d'Etat.

Ben wrote: "i was halfway through that when the gardener showed up with the leaf-blower..."

BTW Ben, we met your sister in this group! How cool is that. But as for the excerpt:

i) I had to break it into two pieces. I got an error message saying "Proust goes on too long."
ii) I am thinking today that I like my writers long-winded: Gibbon, Faulkner, Joyce. Proust beats them all.
ii) But what does that say about Borges. No one can get at brevity like the Master. And knowing your own high regard for Borges, I cannot understand your dislike for Marquez. That surprised me. But you are sideways; surprising in itself.

Michael wrote: "Here is the excerpt I wanted to focus on, it is from early in Swann's Way, when the narrator is still a young boy.

How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the 'Guermantes way,..."

…Once, however, when we had prolonged our walk far beyond its ordinary limits, and so had been very glad to encounter, half way home, as afternoon darkened into evening, Dr. Percepied, who drove past us at full speed in his carriage, saw and recognized us, stopped, and made us jump in beside him, I received an impression of this sort which I did not abandon without having first subjected it to an examination a little more thorough. I had been set on the box beside the coachman, we were going like the wind because the Doctor had still, before returning to Combray, to call at Martinville-le-Sec, at the house of a patient, at whose door he asked us to wait for him. At a bend in the road I experienced, suddenly, that special pleasure, which bore no resemblance to any other, when I caught sight of the twin steeples of Martinville, on which the setting sun was playing, while the movement of the carriage and the windings of the road seemed to keep them continually changing their position; and then of a third steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, which, although separated from them by a hill and a valley, and rising from rather higher ground in the distance, appeared none the less to be standing by their side.

In ascertaining and noting the shape of their spires, the changes of aspect, the sunny warmth of their surfaces, I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once to contain and to conceal.

The steeples appeared so distant, and we ourselves seemed to come so little nearer them, that I was astonished when, a few minutes later, we drew up outside the church of Martinville. I did not know the reason for the pleasure which I had found in seeing them upon the horizon, and the business of trying to find out what that reason was seemed to me irksome; I wished only to keep in reserve in my brain those converging lines, moving in the sunshine, and, for the time being, to think of them no more. And it is probable that, had I done so, those two steeples would have vanished for ever, in a great medley of trees and roofs and scents and sounds which I had noticed and set apart on account of the obscure sense of pleasure which they gave me, but without ever exploring them more fully. I got down from the box to talk to my parents while we were waiting for the Doctor to reappear. Then it was time to start; I climbed up again to my place, turning my head to look back, once more, at my steeples, of which, a little later, I caught a farewell glimpse at a turn in the road. The coachman, who seemed little inclined for conversation, having barely acknowledged my remarks, I was obliged, in default of other society, to fall back on my own, and to attempt to recapture the vision of my steeples. And presently their outlines and their sunlit surface, as though they had been a sort of rind, were stripped apart; a little of what they had concealed from me became apparent; an idea came into my mind which had not existed for me a moment earlier, framed itself in words in my head; and the pleasure with which the first sight of them, just now, had filled me was so much enhanced that, overpowered by a sort of intoxication, I could no longer think of anything but them. At this point, although we had now travelled a long way from Martinville, I turned my head and caught sight of them again, quite black this time, for the sun had meanwhile set. Every few minutes a turn in the road would sweep them out of sight; then they showed themselves for the last time, and so I saw them no more.

Without admitting to myself that what lay buried within the steeples of Martinville must be something analogous to a charming phrase, since it was in the form of words which gave me pleasure that it had appeared to me, I borrowed a pencil and some paper from the Doctor, and composed, in spite of the jolting of the carriage, to appease my conscience and to satisfy my enthusiasm, the following little fragment, which I have since discovered, and now reproduce, with only a slight revision here and there.

Alone, rising from the level of the plain, and seemingly lost in that expanse of open country, climbed to the sky the twin steeples of Martinville. Presently we saw three: springing into position confronting them by a daring volt, a third, a dilatory steeple, that of Vieuxvicq, was come to join them. The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and yet the three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like three birds perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in the sunlight. Then the steeple of Vieuxvicq withdrew, took its proper distance, and the steeples of Martinville remained alone, gilded by the light of the setting sun, which, even at that distance, I could see playing and smiling upon their sloped sides. We had been so long in approaching them that I was thinking of the time that must still elapse before we could reach them when, of a sudden, the carriage, having turned a corner, set us down at their feet; and they had flung themselves so abruptly in our path that we had barely time to stop before being dashed against the porch of the church.

We resumed our course; we had left Martinville some little time, and the village, after accompanying us for a few seconds, had already disappeared, when, lingering alone on the horizon to watch our flight, its steeples and that of Vieuxvicq waved once again, in token of farewell, their sun-bathed pinnacles. Sometimes one would withdraw, so that the other two might watch us for a moment still; then the road changed direction, they veered in the light like three golden pivots, and vanished from my gaze. But, a little later, when we were already close to Combray, the sun having set meanwhile, I caught sight of them for the last time, far away, and seeming no more now than three flowers painted upon the sky above the low line of fields. They made me think, too, of three maidens in a legend, abandoned in a solitary place over which night had begun to fall; and while we drew away from them at a gallop, I could see them timidly seeking their way, and, after some awkward, stumbling movements of their noble silhouettes, drawing close to one another, slipping one behind another, showing nothing more, now, against the still rosy sky than a single dusky form, charming and resigned, and so vanishing in the night.

I never thought again of this page, but at the moment when, on my corner of the box-seat, where the Doctor's coachman was in the habit of placing, in a hamper, the fowls which he had bought at Martinville market, I had finished writing it, I found such a sense of happiness, felt that it had so entirely relieved my mind of the obsession of the steeples, and of the mystery which they concealed, that, as though I myself were a hen and had just laid an egg, I began to sing at the top of my voice.

Here is the excerpt I wanted to focus on, it is from early in Swann's Way, when the narrator is still a young boy.

How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the 'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself, made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the special pleasure that each of them gave me, and also because they appeared to be concealing, beneath what my eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and seize from them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover. As I felt that the mysterious object was to be found in them, I would stand there in front of them, motionless, gazing, breathing, endeavoring to penetrate with my mind beyond the thing seen or smelt. And if I had then to hasten after my grandfather, to proceed on my way, I would still seek to recover my sense of them by closing my eyes; I would concentrate upon recalling exactly the line of the roof, the color of the stone, which, without my being able to understand why, had seemed to me to be teeming, ready to open, to yield up to me the secret treasure of which they were themselves no more than the outer coverings. It was certainly not any impression of this kind that could or would restore the hope I had lost of succeeding one day in becoming an author and poet, for each of them was associated with some material object devoid of any intellectual value, and suggesting no abstract truth. But at least they gave me an unreasoning pleasure, the illusion of a sort of fecundity of mind; and in that way distracted me from the tedium, from the sense of my own impotence which I had felt whenever I had sought a philosophic theme for some great literary work. So urgent was the task imposed on my conscience by these impressions of form or perfume or color--to strive for a perception of what lay hidden beneath them, that I was never long in seeking an excuse which would allow me to relax so strenuous an effort and to spare myself the fatigue that it involved. As good luck would have it, my parents called me; I felt that I had not, for the moment, the calm environment necessary for a successful pursuit of my researches, and that it would be better to think no more of the matter until I reached home, and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in my mind, since I was taking it home with me, protected by its visible and tangible covering, beneath which I should find it still alive, like the fish which, on days when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to carry back in my basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool and fresh. Once in the house again I would begin to think of something else, and so my mind would become littered (as my room was with the flowers that I had gathered on my walks, or the odds and ends that people had given me) with a stone from the surface of which the sunlight was reflected, a roof, the sound of a bell, the smell of fallen leaves, a confused mass of different images, under which must have perished long ago the reality of which I used to have some foreboding, but which I never had the energy to discover and bring to light…

Hi, I’m Michael. Back in ’05 I got on to MySpace to see what my kids were all in to. They have since migrated to Facebook to avoid the “turd in the punchbowl” effect of parents seeing them online. They will probably need to move on once again if my peer’s adoption of Facebook is as ubiquitous as it seems from here.

The story continues: I found my way to an interesting enough MySpace chat group called “Literary Corner Café”. And for a time this corner was happening. I mean really happening. I was surprised. There was a collaborative wa which was happening there, maybe because of the pictures, that just didn’t happen on USENET (ur-networking kids, don’t even ask) back in the day. And even though my interests tend towards classical philosophy and music, I found that once talking about literature I had a lot to say, and a lot to learn. I was hooked. Then one day I befriended a gentleman from Seattle, whose avatar looked suspiciously like Hunter S. Thompson, and he invited me to join a new group he was building called our own Fiction Files, pun intended I am sure. Sweet guy Jonathan, and just full of gitty up, wit, and a working knowledge of Kant.

Here we find “gitty up” defined: Gitty Up

If our young experiment in democracy was even further threatened and I had to sew the books I loved into the lining of my coat, I would probably grab Plato’s dialogs before I grabbed the Bible . But it would be a close call for me. That and James Joyce, probably 1001 Nights, my man Soren K., and Borges. Maybe Borges first because he would be lighter on the lining.

But I am open to change. Reading much of Cormac McCarthy of late and finally read Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and was taken aback. Gibbon might even take The Bard down in the British version of Literary Death Match. He’s that good, IMVHO.

I am now one of JE’s readers and he was kind enough to mention my name in his acknowledgments in Lulu. I take that as one of the best things I have accomplished in this life. I am encouraging him to write more, to aim high, and to try and be one of the best writers ever. I think the published writers we have in this group all have this potential, and it is a real privilege to be able to discuss their works with them, first hand, and to see the flower bloom, as it were, while they are still on the bud.

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Dewey is actually the index to the v2 Fiction Files (after MySpace dropped the group's home page somehow). I know as well as anyone, that the original v1 Fiction Files is where the magic happened. We're still living that one.

Index to Original (2006-2007) Fiction Files

Pavel wrote: "I don't think Proust's prose is a struggle at all. It was written in a cork-lined room, and it needs to be read in a cork-lined room. The 300-word sentences are perfectly fine. The reading becomes ..."

I will try to link the previous Fiction Files threads on this topic in short order, but wanted to second Pavel on the quality of Proust's waking/dreaming bit. I found Proust's fin de cycle trance/aesthetic a little dull at times, maybe just a little too self-absorbed, maybe too French (the whole Temps Perdu enterprise a little too much like setting gemstones into the shell of a tortoise) but I can attest that there are moments in the first four volumes which have had a profound resonance with me.

If you remember the epileptic scenes from The Idiot we read together last winter; that kind of resonance.

Mo - is there any way to post excerpts in this Goodreads thingy, outside of just dumping them into a post? Proust does not excerpt lightly, but there is one scene in particular I would like to share.

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Martyn wrote: "Proust is rubbish."

Our paleomoronic grouch is back! Talk about kismetipoea. Welcomme home tyrant! How is your communist society of one doing these days?

As you can see, our little tribe has migrated to Goodreads. It seems more than a coincidence to have found you lurking like a troll under a bridge in this new place; you've been missed, despite your inability to a) say anything positive, b) construct a sentence greater than three words long. Is that what they teach in university in decedent old England?

Cheers friend,
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Shel wrote: "If Michael is too busy with his plans for world domination, I will do my best to lead with insightful questions, at least.

It does seem people want to wait. In the poll I suggested May 1, just to..."

Maybe by that point I can join in a re-read. I'd also like to explore his other works. I know 100 Years is recognized as his best, but does anyone have some insight on his other works, and which would be the 2nd best for me to explore.

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Maureen wrote: "michael: i see from the poll that you've been nominated to lead the discussion on this book. when do you think you wanna start?

Maureen wrote: "Lara wrote: "And I may have to read it again after all this."

"If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve." He also said "He stuck with me when I was crazy, and I stuck with him when he was drunk. Now we'll stick together always."

In other words, I must decline. I am something of a town father these days, and I take it as a priviledge to serve the town. But it is budget season in very exceptional times and the town is looking to cut back on *something*; believe me, the political juices are really flowing. You ever fire someone or cut their pay? It will definitely bring out the beasts.

For those of you not from New England, the Commonwealth is divided not into counties (though they exist) but 300 smaller "town" units. Government is actually run by an unruly body called "town meeting". It is a wonder. But, to amble back somewhere near to the point, I just don't see having the focus to moderate a focus group at this point, being already pointed at by poll to help lead town. Wish me luck. The experience might come in handy when we take over Port Townsend.

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Maureen wrote: "Michael wrote: "That and we need the guidelines to post somewh..."

HOLD THE PRESSES. This group is now located in CANADA??!! Nobody told me about that part of the deal, eh. ;)
"
i was wonderin..."

BTW, I like the change to our location to "Reunion". Where the heck is that country anyway?
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I wanted to begin filling this folder out with some of our best homegrown reads. Let's start with Mr. James Patrick Othmer.

The Futurist A Novel

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, General Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - opening words of novel

At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.
One Hundred Years of Solitude

It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate stew of truths and mirages that convulsed the ghost of José Arcadio Buendía with impatience and made him wander all through the house even in broad daylight.
One Hundred Years of Solitude

The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o'clock and the Conservatives at eight.
One Hundred Years of Solitude

The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight.
One Hundred Years of Solitude

Carmelia Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano José had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards.
One Hundred Years of Solitude

He [Aureliano II :] had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - last words of novel

Nevermind me, just playing. Talk amongst yourselves...

'cuse me. I'm just trying to see if I can force One Hundred Years of Solitude into the "books mentioned" column to the right. Carry on...