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What are we reading? 6/05/2024
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Fuzzywuzz wrote: "What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon reading the very interesting comments here. At the moment I'm reading The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter and dipping into Black Phone and other stor..."
thanks fuzzywuzz...that explains what i was asking about
AB76 wrote: "Paul wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Paul wrote: "Yes cancer medicine is getting better and it is getting more powerful and less toxic year by year..."Thanks for your detailed reply - which I more or..."
Yup, exactly, until it starts to effect normal health it tends to go undetected. Add the fact that we all have many pre-cancerous lesions which remain indolent until they either circumvent the immune system or mutate into a more aggressive form.
Blood cancers only start to become pronounced when they take over the bone marrow and push out the normal immune system stem cells leading to anemia and susceptibility to infection. Other cancers like pancreatic or ovarian are worse because they are generally undetected until it's too late.
Others have initial symptoms that are easily dismissed by both the patient and the doctor. Lower back pain can mean a lot of things, only one of which is colon cancer. Likewise headaches, stiff necks, bruises, exhaustion are all signs of many things beside cancer. Our internal organs have really few ways to let us know that something is wrong and they tend to go on functioning more or less normally until a pathology takes over. Often it's a off-on situation, the healthy organs work until they don't. Liver function is very sensitive and very monitor able by blood with only a few tests, but there are not many tests for esophageal or pancreatic or bile duct function so that tumors in those areas tend to be far more advanced before they can be detected.
Paul wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Knowing the origin of the terms from the time of leeches and mustard poultices doesn't help you much nowadays. Add in the functional scientific illiteracy of most doctors outside of oncology.. if my doctor knows Latin, frankly I'm looking for a second opinion"Haha! I like it...
The response to having a BMB sample taken, I think, depends on the person wielding the syringe. I had a very experienced consultant (who had, I believe, trained most of the leukaemia specialists in Wales at that time). It was uncomfortable but certainly not painful. I was never worried by the procedure. Others whose tales were told on the CLL support website recounted very nasty experiences, either because their consultants were clumsy and inexperienced (very possibly) or because those patients were more fearful and had a low pain threshold (perhaps a contributory factor).
As for the rapidity of onset - I was told on my first visit post-diagnosis that I might never need treatment... 5 months later I had the first round of chemo. CLL is a strange beast, either developing very slowly - or as in my case, very fast. There seems to be huge variation.
I thought I would give the genre of crime/horror a go. I found one of CC's recommendations in the local library, 'The Prey' by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an Icelandic mystery. Well I have managed 55 pages, but I don't think its for me. I can feel the author ratcheting it up, as if she was an expert wielder of some 'steampunk' clockwork mechanism, behind the scenes. I find the jumping about in time a bit disconcerting. But basically I find myself shouting, 'for gods sake, get rid of all your red clothing!...' but mostly I find the characters portrayed as being quite dour, and hard to like. I rather suspect the cat, 'Puss' as having a dodgy paw in the whole proceedings! Well it hasn't grabbed me, and I don't like that feeling of dread that is being ratcheted up so I think the genre of horror is not for me at all. I don't think I have read any, unless 'Frankenstein' counts. I'm OK with technology 'threat' books. the sort of thing that Michael Crichton used to do, or SF, such as 'The Three Body problem', but the loading of the horror side is a 'pontine' too far, at least to me. I think there are quite a few here who do love a good horror story and I do find myself wondering what makes all the difference, in taste? Has anyone got any thoughts on this? I have finished Femor's 'A Time of Gifts', and it has entertained me enough to look out for the next book in the series, or indeed one of his other books.
AB76 wrote: "is there any clinical reason for why cancers develop with almost no symptoms? .."I'm no expert... Fuzzywuzz has given a few reasons. In my case, the only symptoms were fatigue (falling asleep on the sofa after work) which I put down to old age (I was 62, then) and more frequent than normal infections and bowel problems. Those symptoms could be down to any number of things... The one that got me tested was swollen glands (in the neck), leading to diagnosis. Probably, the CLL had been there for quite a while but only became noticeable with the gland swellings.
scarletnoir wrote: "“Do they do that?” Dench said in an interview with the Radio Times. “My God, it must be a pretty long trigger warning before King Lear or Titus Andronicus!”"When I started imagining a book consisting of nothing but trigger warnings, I was thinking that a re-working of Hamlet might suit the format.
I should note that the trigger warning pictured came from a Romance novel (Canadian Boyfriend - the title is at the bottom of the screen image) and that the poster speculated, "Is it because the assumption is that romance readers don’t expect anything at all unpleasant or difficult to be part of the plot?"
I'm not sure how much spoilers are an issue with Romance novels; my understanding is that happy endings are de rigueur and that the amount and explicitness of sexual content to expect is indicated by the particular imprint under which the book is published.
Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Paul wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Paul wrote: "Yes cancer medicine is getting better and it is getting more powerful and less toxic year by year..."Thanks for your detailed reply - wh..."
interesting about the pancreas/blie ducts , what makes it harder to test?
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "is there any clinical reason for why cancers develop with almost no symptoms? .."I'm no expert... Fuzzywuzz has given a few reasons. In my case, the only symptoms were fatigue (falli..."
CLL is horrible, i hope you are fully recovered?
Tam wrote: "I thought I would give the genre of crime/horror a go. I found one of CC's recommendations in the local library, 'The Prey' by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an Icelandic mystery. Well I have managed 55 page..."Hi Tam, 'Taste' in anything is of course very subjective. The horror genre is simply, imho a means of making the reader scared. Some people may not care for that; others may get a thrill out of it.
Horror takes many forms - it may by supernatural means (witches, monsters), jump scares or psychological torment. Most horror stories typically involve all three. Unfortunately, a lot of horror stories are not terribly well written with story endings that are woeful.
Despite this, I am a bit of a fan of horror - some of the better books have been We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. IT, Carrie and Pet Sematary by Stephen King are good too. Although the ending of IT was awful, King manages to make the camaraderie, fears and adventures of a group of young kids utterly believable and how most of the adults in that story are either completely oblivious, or active participants in the evil that lurks.
scarletnoir wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Who knows, maybe Boris would have been an even worse person if he hadn't done Classics at Oxford!"Now we really are entering the realms of fantasy..."
To be honest, I suspect that given his personality it had a negative effect, as Greek history is full of famous men who put their own personal success and prestige ahead of the good of the state or polis. Alcibiades, for example.
scarletnoir wrote: "Besides which the example here (and very likely others) contain spoilers! There's not much point in seeing something if you already have the surprise element removed, unless it's a classic you want to see on repeat. French TV channels are the very devil for this - yesterday, FR2 showed an excellent film was nominated for the Cannes Palme d'Or back in 2000, and the lead actor Tony Leung won the best actor prize. But... what did we get first, before the airing? A 'wise man' who came on the screen to tell us what we were about to see."
Was that In the Mood for Love? No idea what the trigger warnings would have been for but great movie. I hope Maggie Cheung won something too, because she deserved it, and director Wong Kar-Wai.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "is there any clinical reason for why cancers develop with almost no symptoms? .."I'm no expert... Fuzzywuzz has given a few reasons. In my case, the only symptoms were fatigue (falli..."
As you say about swollen glands - friend's father had them in his neck but by that time his prostate cancer ended up being fatal. Knowing about that, when another friend said her husband had a swollen gland, and had previously mentioned he got tired, my immediate reaction was "get him to the doctors now" Turned out to be Non Hodgkins Lymphoma. Was treated very quickly and has been clear for about 10 years now.
A sad tale from the Siege of Calais on the french side in May 1940, is that fate of the Mayor of Calais Andre GerschelA Socialist and Mayor since 1939, he did his best to act as liaison between the British commander Brigadier Nicholoson and General Schaal, commanding the German forces. Twice he went to and fro between the lines and ended up being detained in the citadel by a displeased Nicholson.
The real tragedy was after the city fell, Gerschel (who was of Alsatian Jewish descent) was imprisoned by the Germans within weeks, forbidden to serve as Mayor or in any public capacity. He was released, fled to Brittany and eventually made his way to Nice, in the Italian Zone
In Feb 1944 he was caught with his wife and daughter in one of the many SS raids as the Germans took over the Italian Zone and was sent to Auchwitz, where he was killed, aged 64, with his wife and daughter.
(i found all the family history online...the Calais bit was in neave's book)
Tam wrote: "I think there are quite a few here who do love a good horror story and I do find myself wondering what makes all the difference, in taste?"
As a child, I couldn’t get enough of “monster movies”, and always scoured the weekly TV schedule to see when one was on; I didn’t distinguish between the gothic horror of Frankenstein and Dracula or SF-related films like It Came from Outer Space and Forbidden Planet. When I started reading “real books” in 7th grade, I tended toward Classic SF like Verne and Wells, and Ray Bradbury, who wrote both SF and horror. I recall that I found that the original Frankenstein was beyond me at that time.
I don’t remember exactly how I came across the name of H. P. Lovecraft, but I do recall that I formed a desire around that time to read his books and that none were available in stores or the library. I ended up sending to the publisher, Lancer Books, for two paperback collections. His SF-inflected horror stories struck the right note for me and I’ve been a fan ever since.
His nonfiction book Supernatural Horror in Literature has been a great guide to older horror fiction, which is largely what I prefer reading. I haven’t found a lot of modern horror – that is to say post-Lovecraft – to my liking; it often goes more for the gross-out or blatantly violent than the subtle and imaginative.
Speaking of HPL, my neighbor has the above bumper sticker on her car. Every time I see it I wonder if there is another author who can be evoked with a single word, not a proper noun as with the name of a fictional character or place, as “eldritch” does for Lovecraft.
AB76 wrote: "CLL is horrible, i hope you are fully recovered?"The chemo was very successful - so much so that my consultant was amazed by the BMB results. I was told at the time that there was no cure and that it could recur, but it hasn't - and TBH by now I don't expect it to. I can't say that I found the CLL itself horrible as I didn't have many symptoms; the uncertainty and wait for treatment were far worse, and the treatment itself was tough.
One thing I learnt from the online CLL forum, though - many people focus on 'beating' the CLL, as if from that point onwards they will become immortal. I've seen in my family that there are many worse things you can die of though - and death is inevitable. I never forget that.
Tam wrote: "I thought I would give the genre of crime/horror a go. I found one of CC's recommendations in the local library, 'The Prey' by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an Icelandic mystery. Well I have managed 55 page..."I have read and liked many of Sigurdardottir's books, but don't like horror - so I don't think this one is for me, either.
Berkley wrote: "Was that In the Mood for Love? No idea what the trigger warnings would have been for but great movie. I hope Maggie Cheung won something too, because she deserved it, and director Wong Kar-Wai..."It was indeed... I have to admit to only giving it half my attention (I was simultaneously watching a rugby match on my laptop!), and I wasn't happy that it was shown dubbed into French - I much prefer VO with subtitles. I'll have to see it again, properly - but it looked superb and the acting was clearly very good.
I glanced at the Wikipedia entry afterwards and was surprised to see the director compare the lead male character to James Stewart's in 'Vertigo' - not a connection I would have made.
giveusaclue wrote: "."get him to the doctors now""Good advice. My glands were up for at least six months before I eventually decided to mention them to the doctor (I was in for something else...)
Bill wrote: "I didn’t distinguish between the gothic horror of Frankenstein and Dracula or SF-related films like It Came from Outer Space and Forbidden Planet. When I started reading “real books” in 7th grade, I tended toward Classic SF like Verne and Wells."I do have some affection for classic horror movies such as the ones you mention - Forbidden Planet is thought by some to be an adaptation of 'The Tempest', and the old B&W Frankenstein is excellent. For my taste, much modern horror is simply too unpleasant and gory* - 'Carrie' comes to mind - undoubtedly effective, but rather sick-making. The same goes for SF - I do like the odd film from time to time, but not the majority. I never read much horror though - or SF after John Wyndham.
*Roger Corman, the well-known director of many horror movies, died recently. I saw a few of his productions back in the '60s - I don't think he usually took his tales too seriously - 'The Little Shop of Horrors', for example - but his Poe adaptations were genuinely scary - 'The Pit and the Pendulum' etc. I eventually decided I didn't like feeling scared, and more or less gave up on the genre!
Mod
Going to Cluny is always a pleasure, but I think I'm going to be away in September. If that changes, I'll let you know.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "CLL is horrible, i hope you are fully recovered?"The chemo was very successful - so much so that my consultant was amazed by the BMB results. I was told at the time that there was no..."
very interesting Scarlet.....
Bill wrote: "Tam wrote: "I think there are quite a few here who do love a good horror story and I do find myself wondering what makes all the difference, in taste?"As a child, I couldn’t get enough of “monst..."
Ah! I think I see what happened. I was inoculated against horror films when I was roughly around 7 or 8 by watching 'Forbidden Planet' on TV. It gave me terrible nightmares for a really long time. The invisible monster (the Id) was always coming to get me in the dark!... I think its a great film though, and yes 'The Tempest' is there but it is also more than that to me, encapturing psychology, and the human (and alien) condition of having very human/alien failings, and hubris, as well as warning about developing sophisticated technology, towards a very specific purpose!...
As an interesting aside I banned my son from watching it until he was at least a teenager (and I rarely banned him from watching stuff). The result is that he saw it as a teenager, and couldn't believe that I had conceived such a reaction to it. And he is now a big 'horror' fan!...
Remember the old Quatermass programmes in glorious black and white and on a massive 14" screen?
Greenfairy wrote: "Remember the old Quatermass programmes in glorious black and white and on a massive 14" screen?"I do indeed... or at least, 'Quatermass and the Pit' which I re-watched on iPlayer a year or two ago. It seemed very scary, at the time.
The Instant Enemy by Ross MacdonaldThe 14th in the Lew Archer series... this is a particularly sombre tale. A young girl has done a bunk from home with her young - but slightly older - man. Archer is hired to find her... and things spin on from there.
As always, a well written addition to the series, but a harder read than most because of the topics covered and the lack of humour - although the other books aren't exactly 'light', there is a bit of relief at times from the grim reality of a murder mystery. I think a bit of black or gallows humour helps, and indeed in real life is necessary for people to get through the most difficult times - but we don't get that in this edition. I think that was because such lightness would have seemed inappropriate given what happens...
I recall that I am extremely forgetful. I believe I am. I think I know that I am forgetful. Though I remember having forgotten, I cannot recall what it was that I forgot or what forgetting feels like. When I was a kid, my mother tried to convince me that I was forgetful by saying, "Do you remember when you forgot your own birthday?" I think I replied, "How could I?" But it was a trick question. Saying yes would have been an admission of my forgetfulness and saying no would have been an example. "The brain does what it can," I told her. If we remembered everything, we would have no language for remembering and forgetting.*I am forgetful. Several times a day, I put something down, and forget where it is. (Today - a bookmark! A pair of spectacles stayed in the car for a week, because I kept forgetting to take it inside.) So, I found that passage easy to identify with - and hilarious.
But one thing I know about the sense of humour is that it varies an awful lot - what one person finds hilarious leaves others completely unmoved. (I laughed out loud at that passage. Others will simply not be on that wavelength... so I posted it as a sample and an example.)
*It comes from Percival Everett's Dr. No, in which a university professor reflects on his researches into... nothing. ('Nothing' as a concept, that is.) Within a few pages, we get a list of terms in many languages for 'nothing', including to my pleasure the Welsh 'dim byd', though 'dim' on its own will do... the longer phrase translates as 'no world' - rather more dramatic and comprehensive than the English 'no thing'. We also get digressions on the ontological argument, riesz spaces, the original meaning of 'question begging', the Big Bang and dark matter, Heisenberg...
The author is playing with us, and with the concepts... I love that sort of thing (and am familiar with the science concepts if not the original meaning of question begging or the maths of Riesz spaces...) and it amuses me greatly. I suspect - as with the last book of his I read - 'Erasure' - passages can be skipped and the reader can get on with the narrative if so inclined (I'm only on p.18!). But you do need to enjoy having fun with words and ideas, I think. More later...
I have finished A Guardian Angel Recalls by WF Hermans and loved it, a great new translation and another masterpiece from one of the Dutch "Big Three"Sadly it seems to have picked up no traction here at all in almost two weeks, remarkable for a new translation of an interesting novel, about an interesting period. That has really suprised me.
AB76 wrote: "I have finished A Guardian Angel Recalls by WF Hermans and loved it, a great new translation and another masterpiece from one of the Dutch "Big Three"Sadly it seems to have picked up no traction..."
I've put it on To Be Bought on site list on my phone, but it's likely to be a stretch before it crosses my sight
Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I have finished A Guardian Angel Recalls by WF Hermans and loved it, a great new translation and another masterpiece from one of the Dutch "Big Three"Sadly it seems to have picked up..."
good to hear that Paul, Pushkin Press have done great work over the last 5 years, worth checking their website out
Meet the new friend in the garden. Herbert! A stork, and a companion for Albert, the fish eagle, though I think Herbert is going to live in the front garden. And a rather expensive book. It has been a rather expensive lunch out, at Stowe, all round. https://i.postimg.cc/gcy5Wqd3/IMG-156...'Inner Vision' - An Exploration of Art and the Brain' by Semir Zeki, a Professor of Neurobiology at UCL...
Does anyone here know of him? I should add here that I am interested in finding out something about how the brain works in terms of reaction to, and appraising art/colour/shape/line/meaning etc.
It was a while ago that I read The Prey and references to horror confused me for I didn’t recall it as such, just a clever crime book……..I don’t read horror stories. Maybe some CJ Tudor books tend that way a little - the last one I read The Drift , which I enjoyed - it’s another icy book - had only a suggestion at the end which is typical for this author.
It’s been a lovely warm day here and I sat out in the garden for a while. This convalescence is something of a drag and concentration for too long becomes difficult but I am cooking again. Tough getting old.
CCCubbon wrote: "It was a while ago that I read The Prey and references to horror confused me for I didn’t recall it as such, just a clever crime book…….."Good to hear from you CC. I hope you are doing well. This is my impression from the 55 or so pages, that it is focussed around something dark, that happened long in the past, which involved a missing (dead?) young girl, and some kind of supernatural events happening, and that the current enfolding of the story involves people dying in strange and somewhat odd, but linked, supernatural (?) circumstances. More of a ghost story with menaces? I'm not well up on the genre, so these are not informed comments from me, merely what I have found in the early part of the book...
Mod
I wouldn't have described it as horror either. There are supernatural elements.
Gpfr wrote: "I wouldn't have described it as horror either. There are supernatural elements."I guess once a novel introduces the supernatural as an element, I would no longer consider it a crime novel. "Horror" is often used to cover stories that feature ghosts or supernatural elements without being particularly "horrifying". I might classify them as "fantasy", which is where I placed, for instance, Lincoln in the Bardo.
Tam wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "It was a while ago that I read The Prey and references to horror confused me for I didn’t recall it as such, just a clever crime book…….."Good to hear from you CC. I hope you are..."
I think that I have an aversion to books that don't have an element of hope in them. So far, there doesn't seem to be a even a thread of hopefulness in the book, just a long drawn out mystery with quite a few potential victims?... Anyway it is not due back to the library for awhile, so I could change my mind if given a bit more indication over this factor. Otherwise I'm looking forward to finding out more about the brain, and how it perceives art, which I find more interesting at the moment...
Gpfr wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: " The Prey and references to horror ..."I wouldn't have described it as horror either. There are supernatural elements."
Do let me know if you happen to be in Paris when I'm going to be there (17th Sep.) and we can find a way to connect up, perhaps? I haven't seen the Cluny since its refurbishment so that will be new for me.
I couldn't read very much of Stephen Breyer's article in the latest NYRB before giving up on it. It's ridiculous to pretend that the rulings of the current Supreme Court are based on anything but partisan political ideology or sectarian religious dogma. Attempts to claim otherwise are just shoring up the corruption of the justice system.
Bill wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I wouldn't have described it as horror either. There are supernatural elements."I guess once a novel introduces the supernatural as an element, I would no longer consider it a crime ..."
I didn't get very far with 'Lincoln in the Bardo'. I still don't know why. Perhaps it's a mood thing. You have to be in an empathetic mood for some books. The National Trust place that we visited today has opened up, and now enlarged, its bookshop in its cafe premises. I'm sure that the majority of people who donate books to it are in their 60's or 70's as it seems full of a lot of the books that I read as a teenager, such as John Fowles books. Most of which I'm not that keen on revisiting at all.
They also are not that cheap, but we have found a place to donate the surplus from the free exchange books that 'him-in doors' runs in our village church, as the turn over is very slow in the church, and Stowe seems keen to have the more interesting ones, and has a much larger pool of visitors... I checked, they are not interested in Dan Brown and 'shades of grey' type things though, which we seem to have quite a lot of, alas.
Though I should add that we sometimes we get some interesting sounding odd-ball possible gems. The last one I brought home was a travel book, with photos, in glorious technicolour, of a trip through the Himalayas, by a French adventurer, in the 70's, by 'hovercraft'!...
I remember travelling across the Channel in a hovercraft in the 70's. It was very bumpy...
Mod
I guess you didn't see my earlier post. I think I'll be away in September, but it's not 100% sure. I'll let you know if I'm going to be here.
Mod
Oh, me too! It was really horrible. On a ferry you can at least go outside on deck, but of course that's not possible with a hovercraft. And on another occasion we had to wait for hours because the sea was too rough.
Gpfr wrote: "Tam wrote: "Do let me know if you happen to be in Paris ..."I guess you didn't see my earlier post. I think I'll be away in September, but it's not 100% sure. I'll let you know if I'm going to be..."
I did see it, I just meant that if your plans changed, and you did happen to be around I would be happy to meet up...
Tam wrote: "'Inner Vision' - An Exploration of Art and the Brain' by Semir Zeki, a Professor of Neurobiology at UCL...Does anyone here know of him? I should add here that I am interested in finding out something about how the brain works in terms of reaction to, and appraising art/colour/shape/line/meaning etc."
I'm kind of interested in aesthetics, but can't say that I've read much in the field. I think that my problem is that, as soon as I start reading about the subject, I come across the claim that the essential foundational work on the subject was done by Kant; and I just can't see myself reading Kant, so I tend to drop the matter.
What fascinates me is the idea of taste and how it varies both by individual, but also over time. At one time many admired Bouguereau and few admired Monet; but now the proportions are reversed. Why did so many who were well-versed in 16th century art once accept Van Meegeren's forgeries as genuine Vermeers, while today almost everybody would agree there's little similarity?
Bill wrote: "I couldn't read very much of Stephen Breyer's article in the latest NYRB before giving up on it. It's ridiculous to pretend that the rulings of the current Supreme Court are based ..."i'm with you there Bill, when i get to Breyers article i will read it with trepidation. I'm still confused that in a common law system based on precedent we have managed to arrive at these "originalist" guff. Its like if the UK Supreme Court started quoting Magna Carta or some anti-catholic sub clause of 1688, in literal terms as something to debate and then used that to re-introduce some elements, knocking down laws passed in the last 60 years
Its like Alito has been waiting all his life for a nice ultra-conservative situation, so that the Supreme Court becomes the Supreme Court of Rural and Republican America. Clarence Thomas should never have been a justice, neither should Kavanaugh and Barrett was the nail in the coffin for progressive belief in the SC
Tam wrote: "Bill wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I wouldn't have described it as horror either. There are supernatural elements."I guess once a novel introduces the supernatural as an element, I would no longer conside..."
i have had some real luck on random charity bookstalls browses in unusual spots
In a lovely salisbury church, i found a small pile of hardbacks, one of which was a Paul Tillich theology book, which i read and loved, another one was in a health centre i visited for an x-ray, where i found St Exuperys "Flight to Arras"
Bill wrote: "Tam wrote: "'Inner Vision' - An Exploration of Art and the Brain' by Semir Zeki, a Professor of Neurobiology at UCL...Does anyone here know of him? I should add here that I am interested in findi..."
That's a rather different question to the one that I'm interested in at the moment. I just want to know more about how the brain connects to art. I don't think anyone should read stuff, at length, unless they are interested, once you get to adulthood, but there are plenty of easy ways these days, to get a good assessment of what an author is about, without reading all of their writings. Schooling of children is different. But what I can say, having studied 'Art History' for a while, is that as an academic subject it has on the whole, historically, been rather conservative in nature. But it is changing, though the changes are a mixed bag. Modern art history has a large element of reclaiming 'forgotten' artists, i.e. women, black people and ethnic minorities, which I have no problem with, as they have been unfairly passed over, but it is also expanding the remit of what constitutes art, and much of what we would have thought of as craft is being reclassified. It's the borderlands that are contentious. And this is the area that I am most interested in, the borderlands, but for all sorts of reasons, for me.
But historically there is a difficulty here, which I think might indirectly answer, a bit, your question. On my art history course we visited the 'Imperial War Museum' in London. My course leader (female) was very keen to show us the few paintings then that had actually been done by women, as she was a big fan of rewriting a lot of history of art in women's favour. Well what I saw, from an admittedly small pool of paintings there, was that the women's paintings were all about showing the technical capacity of being able to handle oil paints (these were WW-I era paintings). Which they did quite well.
But one woman artist painting, of the interior of an armaments factory, was as flat, emotionally dead, and as uninteresting as the exterior of a 'chocolate box'. And the few others were not much better. She was so busy showing off the conventionally 'respected' technique skills, of proper oil painting, that there seemed to be no room for any emotional engagement in the contentious, and contemporary issues of her own times. So maybe that's the difference, whether you have the confidence, and the skills, to put your own self, as an artist into the picture, and do things differently... Art, and art criticism, is mostly judged from an historical perspective, and there seems to be always quite a long catch-up period before the 'modern' gets recognised. And quite often the modern stuff, from whatever era, does not get sufficiently recognised, in order to make a substantial difference, and so there is a weeding out period, where a lot of artists fail. Sometimes a few of them do very well though, long after they have died!...
Apologies for the length of this, but you did ask the question...
Tam wrote: "But what I can say, having studied 'Art History' for a while, is that as an academic subject it has on the whole, historically, been rather conservative in nature."I’ve read quite a bit of standard art history, at least up through the 1970s, and I know what I’m supposed to like. My
I wonder if we would agree about those WWI era paintings you mention: I tend to admire mastery of the craft of painting and I can accept it as an end in itself. In more than one case on visiting a museum, I’ve lingered over a work by Fragonard while my companion (a different person each time) asked, more or less, “What’s the big deal?” On the other hand, I can skip the Rothkos: they do nothing for me and to my eyes display nothing of craft.
Bill wrote: "Tam wrote: "But what I can say, having studied 'Art History' for a while, is that as an academic subject it has on the whole, historically, been rather conservative in nature."I’ve read quite a b..."
I do agree with you, art appreciation is a very personal thing, and what excites or just interests another is a very individual thing. I thought I was more questioning my particular teacher, of those times, as to why she was trying to re-evaluate them, as they were sort of worthy of note, as in at least they were some of the very few women who made it into art school, in those particular times, but that didn't make them, to me, into great artists, on that basis alone. I am a lot more of a fan of the 'Impressionists' than you are, it seems, but not all of them, only some. But that is my personal taste.
I guess it explains why my favourite art eras, to study, are 'Modernism' and medieval illuminated manuscripts, especially marginalia. There is a lot that is up for thought, and debate, of all kinds. I also very much like prehistoric cave paintings as well, which have a surprising amount in common with 'Modernism', in some ways, at least to me. I don't think that there is a 'right' answer. I'm also a fan of some of the most traditionally revered painters, throughout history... "And so it goes"...
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Books mentioned in this topic
Lincoln in the Bardo (other topics)Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain (other topics)
Dr. No (other topics)
The Instant Enemy (other topics)
Frankenstein (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Stephen Breyer (other topics)Stephen Breyer (other topics)
Norman Podhoretz (other topics)
Seeing this posted on bluesky, I imagined a novel that consists of nothing but a 200 page Content Warning."
FFS!
Dame Judi Dench said this recently about so-called 'trigger warnings':
“Do they do that?” Dench said in an interview with the Radio Times. “My God, it must be a pretty long trigger warning before King Lear or Titus Andronicus!”
The Oscar-winning actor, 89, added: “I can see why they exist, but if you’re that sensitive, don’t go to the theatre, because you could be very shocked. Where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way?”
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/a...
I understand the need for warnings about things like flashing lights - which can, I think, trigger epileptic fits - but surely if anyone has particular sensitivities, it's their responsibility to check whether a particular play or film will upset them. Unless the content may include something which will fairly predictably put audience members at risk, then it's a case of "let the buyer beware" as far as I'm concerned.
Besides which the example here (and very likely others) contain spoilers! There's not much point in seeing something if you already have the surprise element removed, unless it's a classic you want to see on repeat. French TV channels are the very devil for this - yesterday, FR2 showed an excellent film was nominated for the Cannes Palme d'Or back in 2000, and the lead actor Tony Leung won the best actor prize. But... what did we get first, before the airing? A 'wise man' who came on the screen to tell us what we were about to see...
This nonsense has been going on for ever, it seems - and certainly was already par for the course for any semi-serious films when I lived in France in the 1980s. So if in France, and you want to avoid spoilers - use the mute button, as we did!