Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 16th August 2021
Help, this site suddenly started talking to me, what did I press?
scarletnoir wrote: "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!"Your memories pretty much agree with what I recall from my one-time long ago reading (I do intend to read it again, but then I have a lot more reading planned than I can ever hope to carry out). I didn’t remember that Raskolnikov was ill, nor the second murder victim.
Chase thinks that Raskolnikov’s statement, “I did not kill a human being, but a principle!” is an accurate reflection of Kaczynski’s self-justification.
Others must like Sarah Ferguson- https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...Does the UK have a Danielle Steel in the making?
CCCubbon wrote: 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.I beg to disagree. I do not have to have any understanding of probability to make a judgement whether I can cross a road without being run over, or catch a ball.
The conditio sine qua non to understand and assess probabilitity is an understanding of Bayes' theorem. Which is not so easy. What is the chance you are HIV positive if your test comes back positive? Well, it depends on where you are tested. Sounds bonkers, but it is true.
Bill wrote: "Chase thinks that Raskolnikov’s statement, “I did not kill a human being, but a principle!” is an accurate reflection of Kaczynski’s self-justification."I was very surprised to read that quote, as I didn't remember anything to that effect in the book... maybe because the quotation given there is partial. This is a fuller version:
The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she’s not the point! The old woman was merely a sickness . . . I was in a hurry to step over . . . it wasn’t a human being I killed, it was a principle! So I killed the principle, but I didn’t step over, I stayed on this side . . . All I managed to do was kill. And I didn’t even manage that, as it turns out . . .
(from https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/crime/...)
I think that the fuller version changes the whole thing very significantly!
It's also quite likely that the quote as given comes from a different translation to the one I read, which may have conveyed things in other words.
As for the second murder - I'm sure that affected R.'s response to his crime.
Was he ill? He was certainly undernourished, and this quote reinforces my memory of his physical state and how it influenced his behaviour: All through these early scenes Raskolnikov is somewhat feverish. Throughout the crime, he is not himself, and his irrational acts can be accredited to his illness. Ultimately, criminal theories suggest that the criminal is often sick when the crime is committed, and this theory will be used to alleviate Raskolnikov's guilt.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literatur...
Berkley wrote(#26): But this post is too long already so I'll save that for another time.No, rather too short.
Tried to find out more about Charlotte Bronte/Esther. Didn't net anything satisfying. But at least one thing that I found interesting: a "surgical intervention" separating Esthers 1st person narrative from the 3rd person narrative:
https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essa...
JUST received my signed copy of Antonia Fraser's new bio of Caroline Norton, from John Sandoe, and have started it. I asked them to set aside a signed copy-they are so good!! I am enjoying it very much! As a teenaged feminist, I read about Mrs. Norton's struggle to gain justice for married women in the 19th century. It is nice to finally see a good biography, which includes some interesting family photos and portraits I had not yet seen, including several cartes de visite with daguerrotypes of CN herself in later life.
My favorite openings are, of course, those of "Jane Eyre" and "Rebecca", which I missed picking up on, but here follows another. In looking through my books, I found relatively few with such memorable opening paragraphs.The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford.
There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall, in front of a huge open fire of logs. Over the chimney piece plainly visible in the photograph hangs an entrenching tool, with which, in 1915, Uncle Matthew had whacked to death eight Germans one by one as they crawled out of a dugout. it is still covered with blood and hairs, an object of fascination to us as children.
The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically like an inneficient assassin, Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain- lashed hills.The night was as black as the inside of a cat It was the kind of night, you could believe,on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes likes the madness in a weasels eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked ,"When shall we three meet again?"
There was a pause.
Finally another voice said in far more ordinary tones: "Well, I can do next Tuesday."
Wyrd Sisters; Terry Pratchett.
Another immortal opening paragraph.In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, not yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
The Hobbit
JRR Tolkien
Bill wrote: "[...] so consider yourself warned"Thanks for the warning. Phew... You do know I am a wuss? Not regarding nudity, but violence.
One of the (very few) happily-anarchistic cartoonists (I think) I do get and often find funny is Gerhard Seyfried. He is apparently a friend of Gilbert Shelton and Paul Mavrides, as I just found out: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard...
He has also made some fantasy cartoons together with his partner Ziska. (Sorry, no English-language Wiki available.)
I like the following large-format panel from his "Flucht aus Berlin" (1990) very much - it is both funny (if bitterly) and proved prescient of how Berlin would be affected by reunification:
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/30...
No violence, no nudity - except for naked greed.
The two ragged figures on the bottom right have just returned from an Odyssee and find themselves in a very changed city.
Machenbach wrote: "As for single opening sentences, one of my favourites is:"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.""
Ha, love this! So, after reading your quote, I just had to look up how camels feature in German literature. Here's the verdict regarding medieval sources:
On the whole, however, the narrative (and indeed comic) potential of the camel is rather neglected by German authors, for whom its function seldom extends beyond the provision of some oriental ›colour‹.
https://www.animaliter.uni-mainz.de/2...
Hmph.
Not sure aboout more recent ones!
Machenbach wrote: "And, in a similar vein, and yet also no longer in a similar vein, there's this:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…."
That's a bit uncanny - or maybe it isn't, because obvious to anyone but me? Anyway, I have also been thinking of these two quotes as similar veins for quite some time. Edit: And, in fact, yesterday thought about posting this in the same post as the quote from Great Expectations.
Just popping in after a long time – very busy, lurking but not reading a lot. A favourite opening, if only because it's the start of months or years of the best reading ever:“The music room at the Governor’s House at Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli’s C major quartet. ….”
Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "I just had to look up how camels feature in German literature."Talk of camels immediately reminds me of the advertising mascot Joe Camel.
I have no idea whether he ever made it outside the US. Controversial from the start because of its perceived appeal to children, the campaign was ended in the late 1990s.
The only literary camel I recall is the eponymous beast in Lord Berner’s The Camel, highly recommended, though not especially zoologically informative. I read it as part of Collected Tales and Fantasies of Lord Berners: Including Percy Wallingford/The Camel/Mr. Pidger/Count Omega/The Romance of a Nose/Far from the Madding War
Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "One of the (very few) happily-anarchistic cartoonists (I think) I do get and often find funny is Gerhard Seyfried."I looked over the Wikipedia page and was intrigued to discover that Germany has both a Max-und-Moritz-Preis and a Wilhelm-Busch-Preis.
Being interested in 19th century pianist-composers, I've always liked "The Virtuoso" by Busch.
Honoured to be included in the Intro. That was a nice feature of the old TLS.
Openings – I love all the ones quoted or mentioned so far. I was going to nominate Treasure Island, but on checking was surprised to find it is Chapter 3 before we get the shivers from tap, tap, tap and the Black Spot.
So instead:
“Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt. As he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century – and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest that never failed – this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:
‘ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL….’ ”
-----
Apropos Bleak Houseand the Courts of Chancery:
*** Spoiler Alert, in case there's anyone who doesn’t know the plot***
The story of Thellusson’s Case, one of the probable sources for Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, is quite interesting. It was not a case of conflicting wills but a dispute over the terms of a settlement that Thellusson created before he died in 1797, at the age of 60. He was a very rich banker and slave-owner, and he wanted his fortune to be accumulated unto the fourth generation: it was to be distributed to those of his descendants who were alive at the death of the last of his great-grandchildren who was alive at his own death – so cutting out all the intermediate generations unless they managed to live long enough. (Aside: not bad going to have great-grandchildren at age 60.) The settlement was held to be valid. Parliament had to pass a law introducing the Rule against Accumulations, which limited accumulations mainly to the life of the settlor plus 21 years, or the minority of anyone living at his death. It was feared that this one settlement alone would eventually exceed the entire national debt. That result was averted by the legal fees, which were stupendous. When a later dispute over the actual distribution was finally decided by the House of Lords (several years after the publication of Bleak House), all that was left for the heirs was approximately the amount Thellusson had put into the settlement in the first place, 60-plus years earlier. The whole of the compounded interest and profits had migrated to the pockets of the lawyers. In the book, of course, not even the original sum is left.
Openings – I love all the ones quoted or mentioned so far. I was going to nominate Treasure Island, but on checking was surprised to find it is Chapter 3 before we get the shivers from tap, tap, tap and the Black Spot.
So instead:
“Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt. As he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century – and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest that never failed – this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:
‘ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL….’ ”
-----
Apropos Bleak Houseand the Courts of Chancery:
*** Spoiler Alert, in case there's anyone who doesn’t know the plot***
The story of Thellusson’s Case, one of the probable sources for Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, is quite interesting. It was not a case of conflicting wills but a dispute over the terms of a settlement that Thellusson created before he died in 1797, at the age of 60. He was a very rich banker and slave-owner, and he wanted his fortune to be accumulated unto the fourth generation: it was to be distributed to those of his descendants who were alive at the death of the last of his great-grandchildren who was alive at his own death – so cutting out all the intermediate generations unless they managed to live long enough. (Aside: not bad going to have great-grandchildren at age 60.) The settlement was held to be valid. Parliament had to pass a law introducing the Rule against Accumulations, which limited accumulations mainly to the life of the settlor plus 21 years, or the minority of anyone living at his death. It was feared that this one settlement alone would eventually exceed the entire national debt. That result was averted by the legal fees, which were stupendous. When a later dispute over the actual distribution was finally decided by the House of Lords (several years after the publication of Bleak House), all that was left for the heirs was approximately the amount Thellusson had put into the settlement in the first place, 60-plus years earlier. The whole of the compounded interest and profits had migrated to the pockets of the lawyers. In the book, of course, not even the original sum is left.
Georg wrote: "Tried to find out more about Charlotte Bronte/Esther. Didn't net anything satisfyin..."I can't recall where I first came across the quote but, as coincidence would have it, it happens to be cited in the article you linked to (I Ctrl-F'd 'Charlotte' just to see):
Of Bleak House, Charlotte Brontë writes: “I liked the Chancery sections, but when it passes into the autobiographical form…it seems to me too often weak and twaddling; an amiable nature is caricatured, not faithfully rendered, in Miss Esther Summerson.” ...
What I find interesting about this isn't whether or not I agree with Charlotte Brontë's assessment, but the parallel with Oscar Wilde's view of Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop and the various reactions to each of these negative views of well-known Dickens characters.
Wilde's view of Nell - admittedly cast by Wilde in a self-consciously epigrammatic form that was meant to provoke - is famous, while Charlotte Brontë's of Esther isn't: at least, I'd never heard of it until a few years ago when I was reading a lot of both Dickens and Brontë.
Is this the reason so many people unthinkingly accept Wilde's dismissal of Nell (and I assume the novel itself) as sentimental twaddle, while I think most modern readers of Dickens would not agree with Charlotte Brontë's assessment of Esther Summerson if it were brought to their attention?
For me this should make us question our view of The Old Curiosity Shop and the rôle Nell; plays in it: is it reall as over-sentimental as its reputation would have it?
On the other hand, I don't dismiss Charlotte Brontë's opinion of Esther and Bleak House: it made sense for her as a woman, a novelist, and a contemporary of Dickens, just as Wilde's reaction to TOCS made sense for him - perhaps even was necessary for him, in his day, a generation or two after Dickens - but does that mean it has to make sense for us, more than a hundred years later?
Since @Berkley has omitted that well-known Wilde comment, here it is in all its glory:“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”
As usual with such comments, it made me laugh.
I don't know if 'The Old Curiosity Shop' really is over-sentimental, as I haven't read it - but that was certainly my impression of 'Oliver Twist', which we had to study at school. And why do so many Dickens books end with some rich old bugger coming to the rescue with oodles of cash (or the equivalent)? - Or maybe I'm being unfair there, not having read enough CD.
scarletnoir wrote: "And why do so many Dickens books end with some rich old bugger coming to the rescue with oodles of cash (or the equivalent)?"I can't think of any other than Oliver Twist off the top of my head ...
Those of you interested in Charlotte Bronte would find Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth an absorbing and enlightening read.
scarletnoir wrote: "Since @Berkley has omitted that well-known Wilde comment, here it is in all its glory:“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”
As usual with such comme..."
Robertson Davies, in his volume of short pieces ("One Half of Robertson Davies") takes on Wilde. Davies, who was fascinated by Victorian culture, appreciated Dickens' melodramatic side. He draws out the sheer creepiness of Quilp, the older man stalking Nell. The Little Nell type of story-- the young girl in danger, the older male relative unable to do anything effective-- made a good serial story-- and even good theater. (Davies also thought that Wilde's quip said more about Wilde's limited sensibilities than about Dickens.)
SydneyH wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "And why do so many Dickens books end with some rich old bugger coming to the rescue with oodles of cash (or the equivalent)?"I can't think of any other than Oliver Twist off t..."
Certainly A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations don't end that way.
MK wrote: "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 ..."
The book told of settlers who tried to shelter themselves from the fire by taking refuge in abandoned mines and dry wells. I would have done the same thing in their place, and died right along with them. The desperate improvisation of the firefighters was a memorable part of the book.
Berkley wrote: "Georg wrote: "Tried to find out more about Charlotte Bronte/Esther. Didn't net anything satisfyin..."I can't recall where I first came across the quote but, as coincidence would have it, it happe..."
Good points, esp in the last paragraph. We should indeed see criticism in context.
I had never heard of CB's comment on Esther before you mentioned it.
It has been a while since I read Bleak House, and a long while since I read Jane Eyre. I had planned to re-read the first for a while anyway, so I will pair them and make up my own mind.
Lambasting Dickens for his female characters is like aiming at an open goal. Even in his time I could imagine CB's view was shared by other women.
Personally I have no real (as opposed to intellectual) problem with that. With the exception of little Dorrit. I can't stand saints. And she is about as meek and as saintly as they come. It doesn't happen often that I want to shake and shout at a fictional person. The only unsaintly act she commited was to rebuke the proposal from the warden's son (a parallel with Esther). Nevertheless I really enjoyed the book.
I haven't read The Old Curiosity Shop yet, but I do not mind Dickens' sentimentality at all. His sentimental scenes are part of the parcel, usually a small part, compared to the rest. A Christmas Carol is dripping with it, but it wouldn't work if it weren't. As for Wilde's crude quip: I rather agree with Robertson Davies (see @robert's post).
Mark Twain once said something about Jane Austen to the effect that a library without her books would make a good library compared to one with no books at all. I really like Jane Austen. And I love Mark Twain. He had his own mind and didn't care about who he might upset by voicing it. The world would be a boring place if we couldn't cross swords.
Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.
SydneyH wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "And why do so many Dickens books end with some rich old bugger coming to the rescue with oodles of cash (or the equivalent)?"I can't think of any other than Oliver Twist off t..."
'Great Expectations'? OK, the guy was a criminal, but the cash flows in, though maybe not at the end...
Edit: I am rather surprised that there isn't (apparently) a list of wealthy benefactors in Dickens somewhere online - if there is, i didn't find it. It may well be, then, that it's a theme rather less common than I thought, though it is explored in two places:
https://www.philanthropydaily.com/cha...
(quite short and lacking detail), and in an MA thesis which is in PDF format - if interested, you can search for:
'The Dickensian benefactor: Complication and
change in Oliver Twist and Bleak House
Logan Heim
Iowa State University'
It seems as if Dickens divided the poor into 'deserving' and 'undeserving', and had more interest in 'local' poor than 'distant' ones (in Africa, for example). One commentator states that this explains his popularity with conservatives. He also divides benefactors into 'successful' and unsuccessful' ones.
I am not a Dickens scholar, nor do I intend to become one... clearly, not all his books dealt with this theme of the benefactor and recipient, but then I already knew that. It is perhaps less common than I imagined. On the other hand, the subjects of wealth and poverty are very common indeed (I think). Others more committed to 'Dickens studies' may wish to take this further!
Berkley wrote: "Is this the reason so many people unthinkingly accept Wilde's dismissal of Nell (and I assume the novel itself) as sentimental twaddle, while I think most modern readers of Dickens would not agree with Charlotte Brontë's assessment of Esther Summerson if it were brought to their attention?"Bleak House was the first Dickens I read as an adult, back in the 1980s, and I had the impression then and ever since that a considerable number of "professional" readers - critics, authors, academics - considered the Esther sections, on the whole, a weakness in the novel, to be tolerated and endured in favor of the considerable achievement of the rest of the novel, though I don't recall seeing Brontë as the original source of this opinion.
Certainly, after all these years, other than the episode of Esther's illness, all the parts of the novel I remember - and there's a considerable number of these - are from the non-Esther sections.
scarletnoir wrote: "Since @Berkley has omitted that well-known Wilde comment, here it is in all its glory:“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”
As usual with such comme..."
I read Dickens at university, starting with Our Mutual Friend and working backwards-not a bad strategy if you want to avoid sentimentality and Little Nell. His later women characters are more interesting. I couldn't face Pickwick and haven't read it since I don't like early Victorian humor. I remember second hand bookshops in England being full of gently decaying dusty copies of Surtees (Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities) and his imitators, which I looked through and I understand they are worth a lot now, but I couldn't abide them. I was also put off by an early BBC dramatization of Great Expectations to say nothing of the movie with Jean Simmons. Estella was an immensely irritating little bitch -at age 11 or 12, I was probably just too young to appreciate the characters, but Miss Havisham? Where does this weirdness come from? Both these dramatizations scared me and put me off Dickens for life.
Sandya wrote: "but Miss Havisham? Where does this weirdness come from?"Thought to be based on an actual Australian woman. (I know this thanks to Peter Maxwell Davies' Miss Donnithorne's Maggot.)
Bill wrote: "Some funny book covers in this Twitter thread. For some reason, this one particularly amused me:"
Oh dear!
Bill wrote: "Some funny book covers in this Twitter thread. For some reason, this one particularly amused me:"
OMG....
Bill wrote: "Sandya wrote: "but Miss Havisham? Where does this weirdness come from?"Thought to be based on an actual Australian woman. (I know this thanks to Peter Maxwell Davies' Miss Donnithorne's Maggot.)"
Interesting. "Poor Joanna" does the same thing in The Country of the Pointed Firs, except she moulders away living alone on an empty island off the Maine coast for 30 years. Nutty. Catch me behaving like that over some deadbeat guy.
Georg wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Georg wrote: "Tried to find out more about Charlotte Bronte/Esther. Didn't net anything satisfyin..."I can't recall where I first came across the quote but, as coincidence would h..."
Hamlet is the character that got on my nerves. Four hours of shilly shallying about(view spoiler) 😀
Georg wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Georg wrote: "Tried to find out more about Charlotte Bronte/Esther. Didn't net anything satisfyin..."I can't recall where I first came across the quote but, as coincidence would h..."
I think another interesting aspect of Charlotte Brontë's view of Esther Summerson in Bleak House is the specific nature of the charge: "an amiable nature is caricatured, not faithfully rendered" - because I seem to recall reading that this was much the same criticism that CB made against her own character Polly in Villette,at least after Polly had reached young adutlhood (as opposed to the small child she is in the earlier scenes of that novel).
I'll have to look for the quote later to confirm, but from this perspective it would appear that CB found characters of this kind difficult in some sense, both as a reader and as a writer.
giveusaclue wrote: "Georg wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Georg wrote: "Tried to find out more about Charlotte Bronte/Esther. Didn't net anything satisfyin..."I can't recall where I first came across the quote but, as coinc..."
Re Hamlet:
I agree with you-tedious isn't the word. Never having had a problem making decisions, I have no patience for him.
Berkley wrote: "Georg wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Georg wrote: "Tried to find out more about Charlotte Bronte/Esther. Didn't net anything satisfyin..."I can't recall where I first came across the quote but, as coinc..."
I noticed that - briefly - and then forgot to think about it :-(. You are right, it is the most interesting part of the comment. I did not think Esther was a "caricature". The question (that was never asked of her): how would CB have written that "amiable character" as opposed to Dickens?
Haven't read Villette. And I wonder why she would disparage one of her own characters.
Maybe I should make the pair a trio by adding Villette...
Georg wrote: "I noticed that - briefly - and then forgot to think about it :-(. You are right, it is the most interesting part of the comment. I did not think Esther was a "caricature". The question (that was never asked of her): how would CB have written that "amiable character" as opposed to Dickens?
Haven't read Villette. And I wonder why she would disparage one of her own characters.
Maybe I should make the pair a trio by adding Villette.."
Yes, personally, I think she was too hard both on herself and on Dickens, but I'll look for the quote I'm thinking of to see if it sheds more light on the question.
Another thing is, she and I believe the other Brontës were great admirers of Thackeray - so I wonder if that led her to be a little extra-critical of his great rival Dickens (the contest was much more even in their own time than it is to us today, when Thackeray is (unfairly, I think) remembered for a single novel while Dickens is considered a genius (and rightly so, I should add)). Or it could simply mean that she was less in tune with Dickens's entire approach to writing than we might expect from a contemporary.
Bill wrote: "Sandya wrote: "but Miss Havisham? Where does this weirdness come from?"Thought to be based on an actual Australian woman. (I know this thanks to Peter Maxwell Davies' Miss Donnithorne's Maggot.)"
DOH!!!
@ Bill: Thanks for mentioning Wilhelm Busch, a precursor to cartoons, you might say. I would say (off my head) they started, properly, with Lionel Feininger (love his Wee Willy Winkie).Combining smoking (without camel - don't recall this in Camel advertising here, which was all about, erm, manliness) and Wilhelm Busch:
https://www.quagga-illustrations.de/w...
This was a fun saying in my family when we children had reconvalescenced from something.
("Drei Wochen war der Frosch so krank,
jetzt raucht er wieder, Gott sei dank!")
(Rough translation:
"Three weeks of illness had the frog
Smoking again now, thank God!")
We would make it three days, not three weeks. And none of us smoked. Well, my brother later, and I tried it once, but bleurgh.
Regarding Hamlet getting on one's nerves: I once saw a production (https://www.schaubuehne.de/en/product..., also staged in London in December 2011) in which he was played as a teenage-like, somewhat spoiled brat. To good effect, and well reconcilable with Shakespeare's play, in my view.
Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "don't recall this in Camel advertising here, which was all about, erm, manliness"Well, there were those who said that Joe Camel resembled a penis.
Not convinced? Have another glance at Joe, featured in aggressively marketed display ads for The Hard Pack and, most recently, for a new R. J. Reynolds product, Camel Wides, "a thicker cigarette made to appeal to young men." His long straight snout bulges above two pouchy folds as he stares insouciantly out at the viewer, a lighted cigarette hanging from his lips. Look again. Any schoolchild can recognize this ribald caricature; only adults need to have it pointed out. Behold the Emperor's new nose.Note, I got a message when I tried to use an embedded link, so here's the site:
The nose is the commonest of phallic fetishes. Freud's oddball friend Wilhelm Fliess developed a whole sexual psychology based on the supposed existence of a "nasal reflex neurosis" directly connected to the genitals. More persuasively, from the ass-headed Bottom of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to "Tristram Shandy" to "Cyrano de Bergerac" to "Pinocchio," the outsized or elongated nose has been a sign throughout popular literature of erection, of thinly veiled phallic boasting and of sexual anxiety, growing pains and sexual desire. (Bottom's name -- a pun on the weaver's "bottom" or thread spool -- is another good example of displacement upward from below.)
http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2017...
Apologies for getting Zola's name wrong. Do please tell me in the future if you spot mistakes like this!
Paul wrote: "The book I had been reading was Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman which I looked to as a nice change of pace, but was largely disappointing...."
Oh no, I'd hoped for better from this. Will push it down my list. (And delighted to hear that the insects have been at you too.)
Oh no, I'd hoped for better from this. Will push it down my list. (And delighted to hear that the insects have been at you too.)
Machenbach wrote: ""'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."...."
It's a brilliant first sentence. Shame that the book is unreadable. (I tried three times.)
It's a brilliant first sentence. Shame that the book is unreadable. (I tried three times.)
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Just popping in after a long time – very busy, lurking but not reading a lot. ..."
Good to see you.
Good to see you.
I agree with all the opening examples cited here, even Persuasion. (The book, after all, doesn't tank on the first page. I concede that much.)
I've enjoyed reading Dashiell Hammett's "The Continental Op," a collection of 1920s short stories. The unnamed Op (that is, an operative for the Continental Detective Agency) is a fat, fortyish guy, who gets all sorts of assignments, in the American West and in Tijuana, Mexico. In Tijuana, he looks for a missing husband, who's living with an American bar girl:"The next two days were pretty much like the first one. Ashcraft and I were together twenty-four hours each of the days, and usually the girl was with us, and the only time we weren't drinking was when we were sleeping off what we had been drinking. We spent most of those three days in either the adobe house or the Golden Horseshoe, but we found time to take in most of the other joints in town now and then. I had only a hazy idea of some of the things that went on around me, though I don't think I missed anything entirely."
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Books mentioned in this topic
Night Boat to Tangier (other topics)The Long Arm of the Law: Classic Police Stories (other topics)
Drowned Lives (other topics)
The Invention of Morel (other topics)
The Artificial Silk Girl (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Carlos María Domínguez (other topics)Carlos María Domínguez (other topics)
Janwillem van de Wetering (other topics)
Angela Carter (other topics)
Lion Feuchtwanger (other topics)
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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 ra..."
Ha, I thought that was multiplication and division!! Or times and gusinters!