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What are we reading? 16th August 2021
The opening to Bleak House
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
Tryna remove my eyes from the nightmare in the cricket on a cool, breezy August day in the Shires..Reading continues to be a very high standard in 2021, albeit at a slightly slower rate than 2020(Pandemic Year Zero). Possibly as like most i've been slightly more active since lockdown two ended in July(though not cavalier and no holidays booked)
The Jewett story collection,
which contains "The Country of the Pointed Furs" has started well, tales of late 19th century New England, in Maine, with the style reminiscent of Victorian female novelists like Eliot and GaskellNorman Mailers A Fire On The Moon is classic Norm, witty sentences and twisting paragraphs of prose as he examines the moon landings during the Summer of 1969.
In A Kindness Cup(1974) Australian author Thea Astley creates an intriguing tale around a massacre of native people in 19thc Queensland. Her style is interesting and original, the deeds of times when the settler and native were seen as from different worlds.
Lastly William Morris's travels in Iceland during 1871 are amusing me, with tales of travel by pony, the vagaries of midsummer Nordic weather and the eccentrics met on the way
Mod
In other news, Mario has a new toy bin:
Anne wrote: But it also got me thinking: do other readers here have any particular openings to books that they love with a passion?Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked, that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.....
And then there is A Tale of Two Cities (sorry, Marlon and Jake) and Little Dorrit and A Christmas Carol and...
a great opening for this weeks' thread by Anne.
Machenbach wrote: "Anne wrote: "(This series was brought to my attention by my mother when she expressed surprise at the turn that Hugh Grant's ageing process had taken.) ."Excellent burn by Carey mère. We can't co..."
I've just got The Bookesller of Florence on my ereader which will make for lighter reading. Do let me know what you think when you have read it.
The Unabomber – whose techniques of communicating his Luddite sensibilities were disastrous but whose insights into the perils of technology are sound – wrote in his manifesto, “Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening. … In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”The above quote from The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression got me interested in reading more about the Unabomber; I remember reading about his crimes and capture at the time they happened, but once the news had moved on to another subject, Ted Kaczynski, the bomber, kind of dropped to the back of my mind, though I can’t say the incident was ever completely forgotten. At any time since its publication, for instance, I could immediately identify this police sketch:
I’ve now read three “Unabomber” books, though only one deals at any length with the bomber himself. That book is Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist by Alston Chase. Chase is slightly older than Kaczynski and has certain parallel life experiences: he also has a degree from Harvard that did not turn out to be a golden ticket to wealth and influence and he, too, dropped of the rat race (though not to the extent of his subject) and moved to rural Montana. These shared experiences in place and time allow the author insight into Kaczynski’s life that undercut some of the media narratives. For example, given his background and personality, as well as conventions of the time the degree to which Kaczynski behaved as a loner at Harvard was not excessive. Also, his Montana cabin, portrayed as extremely isolated by city-based reporters, is seen by Montanan Chase as located in a relatively accessible area with a fairly dense population compared to many other parts of the state in which Kaczynski might have chosen to live.
Harvard shares title billing with the bomber for a good reason: Chase goes deeply into the school’s postwar “general education” curriculum, which he sees as forming a part of the “culture of despair” which influenced Kaczynski’s ideas about science and morality. He also writes at great length about of the life and career of Henry A. Murray, a Harvard psychology professor who conducted a series of psychological experiments on student volunteers which included Kaczynski during his last 3 undergraduate years. At one point in these experiments, subjects were hooked up to lie-detector-like monitors and filmed while being relentlessly criticized and verbally abused by someone who was supposedly another participant, but was actually an actor planted by the researcher.
Chase sees the experience of being a subject of these experiments a key factor in turning Kaczynski into the Unabomber. I can’t say that I was quite convinced by his argument; the author himself seems to hold a certain grudge against the school which makes his conclusions appear tendentious.
The other two books, despite having “Unabomber” in the subtitle, are more about the authors themselves, who both share some connection with the bomber.
As you may know, in 1995, after a series of deadly bombings, the Unabomber offered to stop sending and planting bombs if a manifesto he had written, “Industrial Society and Its Future” were published by major media outlets. On the advice of Federal law enforcement, the newspapers published the document and from its arguments and wording, Kaczynski’s younger brother David was able to identify Ted as its author to the FBI.
Every Last Tie: The Story of the Unabomber and His Family is David Kaczynski’s memoir of the case though, being seven years younger the degree of his intimacy with the future bomber was always somewhat limited. In fact, he ceased having regular contact with his brother when Ted went off to attend Harvard at the early age of 16; thereafter, they were only together for occasional visits and a few vacations.
Much of the book deals with David’s own struggle with coming to terms with the discovery of Ted’s crimes and his decision to notify authorities. There are some interesting facts about the Kaczynski family environment, such as the brothers being raised outside of any religious tradition, and David reveals some common impulses with his older brother. For instance, he himself lived in relative isolation for a number of years, living in Texas in a dwelling that, in his description, seems to have been little more than a hole in the ground.
The third book is Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber by David Gelernter, who was severely injured by one of Kaczynski’s bombs. The best part of the book is the account of the author’s sudden and severe injuries and the story of his slow and partial recovery, which I found reminiscent of Stephen King’s account of his hit-and-run experience in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
But Gelernter also takes the opportunity to write a kind of manifesto of his own, a not especially cogent attack on Political Correctness (though he doesn’t use this term), which makes the book as a whole something of a mixed bag. Gelernter is contemptuous on the few occasions he mentions the bomber in the book, never using Kaczynski’s name, but referring to him as “Hut Man” or “Saint John of Montana”. He reads the bomber’s manifesto at the insistence of the FBI, but refuses to consider the possibility of the ideas expressed in it having any coherence, though he recognizes it as expressing a position opposed to technology.
What I found interesting, though Gelernter would never admit to the slightest possibility of such an idea, is that there are a number of ways in which Gelernter and Kaczynski are similar. For example, both express dissatisfaction and opposition to the de facto ruling class of Ivy League educated intellectuals, and it’s somewhat ironic that Gelernter ended up as one of the 14 people injured or killed by one of Kaczynski’s bombs, though as an instructor in computer science at Yale, he was certainly in one of the bomber’s preferred target groups. On learning of the bomber’s identity, Gelernter writes, “our culprit is also, it so happens, a former Berkeley professor and, almost too perfect, a Harvard grad!”; both men see the other’s elite academic credentials as marking him one of them, the enemy. (I hadn’t realized until looking it over just now, that Kaczynski’s manifesto also has a paragraph against feminism, another of Gelernter’s bugbears.)
If anyone is interested in more about any of these books, they can look up my reviews, which go into more detail at greater length on all three.
Anne was asking about book beginnings and here’s the opening of RebeccaLast night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.
The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkept, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers.
The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognize, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.
The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its former self, with gravel surface gone, and choked with grass and moss. The trees had thrown out low branches,making an impediment to progress; the gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws. Scattered here and again amongst this jungle growth I would recognize shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things of culture and grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had been famous.
No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them. On and on, now east now west, wound the poor thread that once had been our drive. Sometimes I thought it lost, but it appeared again, beneath a fallen tree perhaps, or struggling on the other side of a muddied ditch created by the winter rains. I had not thought the way so long. Surely the miles had multiplied, even as the trees had done, and this path led but to a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, and not to the house at all. I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions, and I stood, my heart thumping in my breast, the strange prick of tears behind my eyes.
There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand. The terrace sloped to the lawns, and the lawns stretched to the sea, and turning I could see the sheet of silver placid under the moon, like a lake undisturbed by wind or storm. No waves would come to ruffle this dream water, and no bulk of cloud, wind-driven from the west, obscure the clarity of this pale sky.
Machenbach wrote: "Wow, R. Crumb was also a police artist?"I don't really see the similarity, being struck by the gray tones used in the police sketch vs. Crumb's typical crosshatched black-and-white rapidograph style, but here's a bookish Crumb drawing that I liked:
Not that eTL&S would need a patron saint (I suppose?), but I was delighted to learn of Saint Wiborada of St. Gall just now, and thought this might be of interest to some: In Switzerland, Wiborada is considered the patron saint of libraries and librarians. In art, she is commonly represented holding a book to signify the library she saved, and an ax, which signifies the manner of her martyrdom.
Not only did she bind many of the precious books of the St Gall Abbey library, she was all for saving the good things in life:
In 925, she predicted a Hungarian invasion of her region. Her warning allowed the priests and religious of St. Gall and St. Magnus to hide the books and wine and escape into caves in nearby hills.
Both quotes from wikipedia article on this saint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiborada
And here are some images featuring this bookish saint - the most surprising, to me, is the last one!
From the https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg...
(From St. Gallen Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 602, manuscript title: Deutsche Heiligenleben, St. Gallen, 1451-1460)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...
(not sure about the original date and source)
Now the surprising one (to me): https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.49907...
As you can see, you can even buy a "hermit friends" t-shirt with Wiborada on it! The pink is... er... unexpected, though (no pink for me, ta).
@ Hushpuppy/ scarlet/ gpfr: In French, she is also called Sainte Vilborade or Guiborade in addition to Wiborada.
I encountered Saint Wiborada, just now, in Thomas Hürlimann's Fräulein Stark, https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio... (translated into quite a few languages, apparently, not English yet):
The narrator looks back on his early teenage years, when he had a summer job thanks to his uncle, the Monsignore: Handing out protective felt slippers to all the visitors of the precious library's holdings. Not too hard a job, as he describes it - he manages to get in quite a bit of reading on the side.
The boy also seems involved in peeping activities in the course of fitting the slippers... not sure how this will turn out. What would Wiborada have said?
Edit: Sorry, bad manners there. (Having cold symptoms tonight, if that's any excuse.)
Thank you, MrsC, for a great start to a new reading week!
Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "As you can see, you can even buy a "hermit friends" t-shirt with Wiborada on it! "Oh my. That T-shirt image, combined with the fact that there was already some talk of R. Crumb, reminded me of Crumb's story in Tales from the Leather Nun. Here's the relevant page (under the "spoiler" cloak as it contains both nudity and extreme violence, so consider yourself warned).
(view spoiler)
Regarding beloved opening passages, I agree to Bleak House. Another Dickens favourite is the opening of Great Expectations, with the boy making sense from the shape of the letters and stones - both funny and touching.My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
http://www.online-literature.com/dick...
I also like how he describes the world being tilted upside-down in the following paragraphs, when the strange, frightening man gets hold of him.
Another favourite: Jane Eyre with "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." - and then you find out that she prefers to stay in and read!
Machenbach wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "I've just got The Bookesller of Florence on my ereader which will make for lighter reading. Do let me know what you think when you have read it."Unless something very strange ..."
Thanks Mach.
saw 16th August 2012 and wondered if i had found a rogue thread there.....lol
First lines...The Stranger (Camus)"aujourd hui...maman est morte"
always made me wonder this slim novel,possibly the best of tiny selection of re-reads as i'm not a re-reader and it always causes images to rise in my head when i think back to reading it at 21...the heat...the city of Algiers...the dead man on the beach.
I enjoyed "The Meursault Investigation" too
Lljones wrote: "Thanks, Anne, lovely opener. I've always loved the opening to Bleak House, you've made me want to read it again! Can't come up with anything to top that at the moment, though I enjoyed the opening ..."Is Bleak House the satire on the court system? I remember a law professor doing a reading from Dickens on an endless court case one holiday eve. Good photo of Mario, by the way.
AB76 wrote: "saw 16th August 2012 and wondered if i had found a rogue thread there.....lol"
Thanks for pointing that out! Now fixed.
Thanks for pointing that out! Now fixed.
Robert wrote: "Is Bleak House the satire on the court system?"Yes. In large part it's the story of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce a seemingly interminable court case whose resolution is, for me, one of the most memorable moments in literature.
This is referring to stuff from last week's ETLS, but I missed the cut-off so thanks to MK and to Robert for the Mexican-American War book suggestions.
Machenbach wrote: "Bill wrote: "At any time since its publication, for instance, I could immediately identify this police sketch:description"
Wow, R. Crumb was also a police artist?"
yes, didn't last long - his renditions were so meticulously crafted, they made every one of his subjects a "person of interest", which generated no end of paperwork.
Berkley wrote: "This is referring to stuff from last week's ETLS, but I missed the cut-off so thanks to MK and to Robert for the Mexican-American War book suggestions."You're welcome.
Been a few years since I last read Bleak House but it came to mind recently when I was reading Dombey and Son for the first time, because it struck me that D&S's Edith Granger and BH's Lady Dedlock were quite similar in some ways - both in points of character and in the predicaments they are forced into. Parallel characters, variations on a pattern ... I don't know if I'd go that far, because like so many of Dickens's creations, they are so skilfully drawn that they take on a life of their own and are very much two individual (though fictional) characters. But it would be interesting to see them - and the two novels they appear in - compared in depth. Or perhaps this is already a well-established element of Dickens-criticism, for all I know.
Actually, there are similarities to a character in another Victorian novel I read recently as well: Ethel Newcome in Thackeray's The Newomes. Less striking but still undeniably present.
So part of all these parallels are because they are dealing with something about Victorian society: the marriage market, in which women of a certain class were expected to participate - basically selling their "feminine attractions" to secure a wealthy spouse - and the comparison to what was and is called prostitution in the lower classes is explicitly drawn by Dickens in D&S - but there are similarities in character as well.
BH is different in that it is dealing more with the aftermath, the marriage, the wedded relationship, etc. And yet Lady Dedlock's past does come back to haunt her - and, in one sense, really only her, one of the great tragic ironies of that novel.
Apart from all that, the other thing about BH that comes to mind right now is Charlotte Brontë's reaction to it: she didnt like Esther as a character. But this post is too long already so I'll save that for another time.
Berkley wrote: "when I was reading Dombey and Son for the first time."What did you make of Dombey and Son? I don't recall discussing it. I'm reading Martin Chuzzlewit and nearly finished.
Bill wrote: "The Unabomber – whose techniques of communicating his Luddite sensibilities were disastrous but whose insights into the perils of technology are sound – wrote in his manifesto, “Imagine a society t..."Thank you for those interesting reviews... I tend to think, when it comes to 'crazed killers', that the frustration and instinct to kill come first, and the rationalisations and justifications come afterwards - if at all. I suppose the Unabomber must have 'had his reasons', though I doubt that many would find them convincing or sane, any more than Timothy McVeigh's 'reasons' for the Oklahoma atrocity.
In passing, I was amused by this comment:
Also, his Montana cabin, portrayed as extremely isolated by city-based reporters, is seen by Montanan Chase as located in a relatively accessible area...
Now, it so happens that we have a 'place' in France - an old farmhouse - which stands alone, some 500m from the next dwelling. There must be at least a dozen houses or farms within a 1km radius; the nearest village (of around 3000 inhabitants) is 2.5km away. When our London-based friend came to visit, she commented on 'how isolated' we were... she should have known better, having been raised in a Breton village of similar size! Different perspectives, eh?
And in the stop press - we are going to run the gauntlet of COVID next month, and escape to our place for a few weeks. My (French) wife has not been 'home' for two years...
Machenbach wrote: "I'm reading The Bookseller of Florence: Vespasiano da Bisticci and the Manuscripts that Illuminated the Renaissance, which is doing a nice job 'though I rather wish it was more focused, which would also have made the book considerably less finger-cripplingly large. I wouldn't dare say the same thing of Bleak House, which isn't a word too long despite having about a gazillion of them." I think Dickens must have used all the words there are in that book except for the word 'gazllion' itself. But I suppose that would have made it a gazillion and one, which would have just been crazy.
I read this morning that Swiss mathematicians have calculated pi to 6.8 trillion figures, the supercomputer taking 108 days 9 hours to accomplish, some might argue that that level of accuracy had no meaning and 3.14 close enough for the majority of calculations. I wonder how many letters make up the text in a long book, certainly not 6.8 tr I imagine.I think that I would agree somewhat although they contend that such calculations might be relevant to other models. One does rather marvel that this irrational goes on and on for so long.
Can anyone else remember trying to find the end of pi when first learning about it? I can just as I had to try out such as Fermat's theorem for myself (now proved by Andrew Wiles). Must have been a stroppy kid.
CCCubbon wrote: "I read this morning that Swiss mathematicians have calculated pi to 6.8 trillion figures, the supercomputer taking 108 days 9 hours to accomplish, some might argue that that level of accuracy had no meaning and 3.14 close enough for the majority of calculations."We were taught to use pi = 22/7 whenever possible, which is even closer than 3.14, I think... I also taught this to my pupils, though it's my impression that later on, with the advent of electronic calculators, such devices were abandoned... Casio Fx19, anyone?
sure, just me automatically going to the decimal. I suspect that there are many who do not appreciate irrational numbers, maybe actually working out decimal places gives one a better understanding. Remember making students work out their own sine and cosine tables using a circle, protractor and ruler........
Sorry for the bug bites Anne! If it's any consolation, while reading this latest book at my in-laws, I was eaten alive by tiger mosquitos. Little bastards.The book I had been reading was Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys,
which I looked to as a nice change of pace, but was largely disappointing. It seems to function as a companion piece to the far more successfully crafted American Gods. One day Neil woke up in his jacuzzi bath and realized he'd undersold the African god diaspora in his earlier novel and decided to remedy it.
Following the sons of Anansi, the spider god, and the chaos that ensues upon their father's death, the book seemed to be constructeed around a few good set pieces and held together by determination but not inspiration. It started off with very little pace or compulsion and instead fueled its motor with corny humor that veregd into glibness far too often.
I think Gaiman blew most of his good ideas on American Gods, and was coasting downhill on an empty tank with Anansi Boys. It seemed like a book that was pushed out to press without any re-writes, without any rumination.
So, it was fine but mostly unnecessary.
Now I'm onto Alfredo Bioy Casares' The Invention of Morel
Now for a review of a recently completed book - one of two slow ones (the third was quick).One to Count Cadence was James Crumley's first book, and started life as his Master's thesis at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. As might be expected from a first novel, it is far from perfect; whereas there are some brilliant sections and/or chapters (which are all long, BTW - needing on average some 45min reading time), other parts work less well. He chose to ignore advice from his editors: When I finished my first novel (One to Count Cadence) they wanted to cut 160 pages out of it. You know, that’s just not right. I won that one.
https://contrappassomag.wordpress.com...
Well, yes and no - he may have avoided the cuts, but it would have been better for a bit of pruning, even if not 160 pages' worth. There is one terrible chapter about his warrior forbears in Germany - I have no idea why he included that - and one section meant to represent a breakdown, which was embarrassing, though only a couple of pages long. In general, what worked against the novel was both its length, and the repetitive nature of the first three-quarters, which deals with an Army Communications group in the Philippines. There is a great deal of excessive drinking, whoring and general misbehaviour, as well as the actual work. Looking at the reviews on Amazon, I see that some readers abandoned the book, and I was tempted to do so at one point, though I'm glad that I didn't.
The main characters are Sergeant Jacob 'Slag' Krummel - a self-styled 'warrior' - and Private Joe Morning - an idealist, possibly leaning towards a version of pacifism. There is an underlying, unresolved homoerotic theme to their love-hate relationship - one scene in which Krummel punishes Morning by making him dig holes and then fill them in was reminiscent in some ways of a scene in Britten's 'Billy Budd'... though both (especially Krummel) appear in most ways to be heterosexual. There is an interesting debate between the two regarding war and pacifism - I don't suppose a philosopher would score it highly, but some excellent point are made on both sides.
The book picks up several notches when the action moves to Vietnam, and the battle scene had the same feel as descriptions from Michael Herr's 'Dispatches' - both awful, horrible - and exhilarating. This section is the best in the book, but is all too short... the wounded soldiers are evacuated back to the Philippines again, and the story comes to a rather far-fetched end.
I'm glad I left this early book until last, as it may have put me off reading his other PI novels; as it was, the fact that I'd enjoyed those allowed me to plough through the weaker sections of this early work until we reached some excellent stuff.
Machenbach wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Casio Fx19, anyone?"I mainly used my calculator to write 'BOOBIES'. Are you saying it had other functions too?"
Since the pupils were allowed to use them, it became necessary to show them how to do it properly... you would not believe how often I heard the comment: "It must be right - the calculator says so!"
When sixth form pupils calculate the charge-to-mass ratio of an electron and come up with an answer which a bit of mental arithmetic and approximation tells you (the teacher) that they are out by a factor of several billion billion... you know you have a problem!
Machenbach wrote: "Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "Another Dickens favourite is the opening of Great Expectations, with the boy making sense from the shape of the letters and stones - both..."And, in a similar vein..."
I like that 'camel' quote!
I must admit that I did not recognise the Joyce, having read (and - yes - enjoyed) it maybe 50 years ago (more than 40, for sure).
I don't wish to offend anyone here, but I have to admit that the opening that still brings a smile to my face whenever I think of it is this one:
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.”
Hi MachIt’s odd really for a man of letters like yourself to be thrown by letters used in an abstract way simply to stand for the bits that we don’t know.
My guess would be that you missed out on when or how they were introduced and were forever thinking of them as demons with special powers instead of simple stand-ins. Bet you don’t bother about musical notes standing for sounds.
Machenbach wrote: "the 'voice' is fantastic"I agree 100% - you either love that voice (I do) or you don't get on with it...
scarletnoir wrote: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap...Can't check, but that cries The Catcher in the Rye" (?)
Georg wrote: "Can't check, but that cries The Catcher in the Rye" (?)Got it in one! A pretty memorable opening, I think.
scarletnoir wrote: "Bill wrote: "The Unabomber – whose techniques of communicating his Luddite sensibilities were disastrous but whose insights into the perils of technology are sound – wrote in his manifesto, “Imagin..."I hope you both have a wonderful time.
A few thoughts on the comments here today:A few years ago I visited Lake Orta in N. Italy and got eaten alive by mozzies. On my return a neighbour recommended the Incognito range from Holland and Barrett - soaps, roll on deterrents. So far do good, so I would recommend it;
Regarding logarithms, Algebra, etc., more than once in the past I have wondered how often 99% of the population ever use those after leaving school, unless they become engineers, draughtsmen, mathematicians....
Do come back and correct me folks. Although I do find my times tables, and how to to work out percentages useful pretty regularly.
scarletnoir wrote: "I tend to think, when it comes to 'crazed killers', that the frustration and instinct to kill come first, and the rationalisations and justifications come afterwards - if at all."Do you think that’s the impression Crime and Punishment is intended to convey? I read it way back in high school and don’t recall what, if any, interpretation I had of it.
Dostoyevsky gets a number of mention’s in Chase’s book, including several chapter epigraphs. The Brothers Karamazov was one of the books in Kaczynski’s cabin at the time of his arrest.
I think one would not go far wrong in taking reading suggestions from the Unabomber. At the time of his arrest, it was mentioned in the press that The Secret Agent was one of his favorite books. That caused me to read it and I have to say it’s an outstanding novel. (I’ve since come to believe that any novel with a character named “the Professor” is likely to appeal to me.)
From Chases’ book, here’s a list of titles found in the bomber’s cabin, a list that represents only a fraction of the books he owned:
I’ve recently read the NYRB edition of Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society and my advice would be: don’t bother with that one.
Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I tend to think, when it comes to 'crazed killers', that the frustration and instinct to kill come first, and the rationalisations and justifications come afterwards - if at all..."Good to see Jacques Ellul in there, the french protestant philosopher
Robert wrote: "Um, is this really the 2012 link?"About now 2012 is looking good!
MK wrote: "Robert wrote: "Um, is this really the 2012 link?"About now 2012 is looking good!"
https://www.cbsnews.com/media/2012s-t...
Berkley wrote: "This is referring to stuff from last week's ETLS, but I missed the cut-off so thanks to MK and to Robert for the Mexican-American War book suggestions."Here's another (or I don't know when to stop!) . Apropos of our 'burning season' here in the West, I listened to The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America The Buffalo Soldiers played a role in that fire season. This means I know have to add a history of them to my endless list.
There isn't any doubt that Timothy Egan (native Washingtonian) is on the side of the environmentalists. It is also so plain to see that some rich people are NEVER satisfied. (I'm grinding my teeth here.)
But if you are interested in how the US Forest Service came to be and the complications of forest 'management', plus real heroism--this is a great read/listen.
So it's a 2fer here - Buffalo Soldiers and the Big Burn.
AB76 wrote: "Good to see Jacques Ellul in there, the french protestant philosopher"Ellul gets mentioned a lot in Chase’s book; evidently Kaczynski wrote to him and, after his arrest, claimed, “when I read the book (The Technological Society) … for the first time, I was delighted, because I thought, ‘Here is someone who is saying what I have already been thinking.’” Though Chase goes on to claim “The manifesto ignored – in fact, rejected – much of what Ellul wrote.” (the author’s italics).
giveusaclue wrote: "I hope you both have a wonderful time."Thank you! As for your points in the next post:
I studied Physics at uni. and later taught it (and maths), so all that stuff was pretty useful to me... but I agree that most of the population would not find those subjects relevant.
As for stinging insects - I attract them and have a strong reaction, so your tip may prove useful... when heading to 'stinging country', I tend to plan visits for periods when the bugs are dormant.
Machenbach wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "Since the pupils were allowed to use them, it became necessary to show them how to do it properly... you would not believe how often I heard the comment: "It ..."scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "I read this morning that Swiss mathematicians have calculated pi to 6.8 trillion figures, the supercomputer taking 108 days 9 hours to accomplish, some might argue that that level ..."
Since I am old, I am also 'old school' when it comes to money; that is, I get my week's supply (the needed amount has increased again recently) from the ATM. When I buy groceries, I sometimes add enough change so I receive only paper back. This can be difficult especially for younger cashiers who aren't sure why I do this. The looks can be precious.
The chasm has to be that I grew up BC (before calculators) and they are AC (after calculators) people.
Bill wrote: "Do you think that’s the impression Crime and Punishment is intended to convey? I read it way back in high school and don’t recall what, if any, interpretation I had of it."No, not at all - I wasn't thinking of that book when I wrote the comment, but of the real life examples mentioned.
If anyone wants to know my thoughts on that book (which I have read multiple times - good - but not for ages - bad) these are my memories of my thoughts, with SPOILERS!
Raskolnikov needed money, but that is not the reason he kills - see
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/crime-a...
He is, on the other hand, deeply ashamed of his inability to complete his studies... his mother and sister believe that he will be their saviour, and will succeed and lift them out of poverty. This is a significant pressure on him.
Raskolnikov thought in a confused way that he was (or could become) a 'superman' (note: this preceded Nietzsche's thoughts on the matter) - killing the old woman would prove his superiority... so there is a sort of philosophical justification for murdering the 'bug' in order to save his studies and his family. This theory preceded the act, and wasn't used to justify it retrospectively - indeed, R. came to see the error of his ways - too late.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literatur...
But - an important point, I think - Raskolnikov is physically unwell - he is certainly undernourished at the very least - which does nothing for clarity of thought. In this weakened state, a few coincidences lead him to think that he is more or less destined to kill the moneylender, and he does so... but...
The other sister arrives unexpectedly, and he kills her as well, despite liking her. This (I think) leads to his feelings of guilt and need for atonement.
None of this adds up to a 'crazed killer' using 'retrospective justifications'. It shows a confused young man, who wishes to save his family, and who has some badly thought out philosophical theories about the relative worth of human lives. He isn't well, and goes on to regret his actions.
(If any of this is inaccurate, apologies - it's ages since I read it.)
I do like it, though, that he confesses and wishes to atone. None of this "It wasn't me - I'm not like that" rubbish we hear all too often nowadays.
I have often wondered if the murder would have happened had R. been well fed and in good health (I think not), or if, being as he was, he would have felt the same degree of guilt had he not also murdered the second sister (probably not, but who knows). Great books leave us with many unanswered questions.
giveusaclue wrote: "A few thoughts on the comments here today:A few years ago I visited Lake Orta in N. Italy and got eaten alive by mozzies. On my return a neighbour recommended the Incognito range from Holland and..."
I think people use algebra without knowing they do so, or not consciously say. Whenever you have an unknown, something that you need to work out you will apply algebraic rules in order to solve the problem even if you don’t write down a single x or y. Think of adapting a recipe, buying a smaller/ larger quantity of something, measurement of all kind…. algebra is about logic, solving problems.
It’s rather like probability which even if has never been learned in a formal way plays an important part in all our lives, giving us the expertise to know when to cross the busy road, make judgments, catch a ball, drive a car through traffic a myriad of everyday situations.
We are all brilliant mathematicians.
AB76 wrote: Good to see Jacques Ellul in there, the french protestant philosopherWhat exactly do you mean by "good"?
That he knew a relatively obscure philosopher?
Or that he was influenced by Elluls philosophy?
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Books mentioned in this topic
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The Artificial Silk Girl (other topics)
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Carlos María Domínguez (other topics)Carlos María Domínguez (other topics)
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Lion Feuchtwanger (other topics)
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I hope our American friends are surviving the temperatures there, and that any of you who had an interest in the annual UK mad dance of the August exam results have come through relatively unscathed.
Half way through August now and, right on schedule, my itchy feet syndrome kicked in. One minute I'm happily reading The Iliad and the next I'm looking at a map of Greece and, before you know it, I'm reading Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece by Patrick Leigh Fermor. It's been a couple of years since I've read Leigh Fermor and I'd forgotten his particular brand of magic. Not that I stayed in Greece with Leigh Fermor for very long. What really derailed my reading Iliad project this week was @Paul's review of Lolly Willowes. It suddenly became imperative to drop everything else and reread STW's masterpiece instead. And, wow. Even better the second time. A deeply satisfying, mesmeric read. Mind you, I'm not as ecstatically happy as you might think. As any right-thinking person knows, Lolly Willowes is a book that must be read outdoors. So there I was, on my lounger with my hurricane lamp, reading late into the night. And was eaten alive by insects. Paul, I'm sending you the bill for the antihistamine products.
Anyone else suffering from itchy feet or staycation blues might be interested in the TV series Write Around the World with Richard E Grant. Grant visits bits of southern Europe and rhapsodises about books that were inspired by their landscapes and cultures. It's a charming summer piece. Sadly, available only to UK residents. (This series was brought to my attention by my mother when she expressed surprise at the turn that Hugh Grant's ageing process had taken.) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09n...
A couple of recommendations from the last thread:
@Russell is working his way through Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart
cycle and has reached L'Œuvre (in English, The Masterpiece):
And @Sandya makes a convincing case for The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories:
On the reverse side, @Oggie and @Andy have been reading from the Booker longlist and, between them, they have so far been underwhelmed by The Promise, The Fortune Men, and A Passage North. Do tell us if you have an alternative opinion to offer!
And finally, when @Georg mentioned that Bleak House is her desert island book it reminded me just how much I love the opening to that book. It's stupendous and I'm going to copy it below. But it also got me thinking: do other readers here have any particular openings to books that they love with a passion?