"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
I find Don Quixote somewhat of a slog. Maybe something gets lost in translation, but Cervantes seemed to like to hammer the joke (he can't let Quixote's antics speak for themselves, but has to add "such was the effect his damnable books had upon him" each time). The funniest chapters are the ambiguous ones, like the priest and the barber's literary criticism that's compared to burning people at the stake, or Don Quixote freeing criminals because he thinks "galley slave" is too harsh a penalty (and then they pelt their savior with rocks). Though I'm not sure how much was Cervantes's intent and how much is values dissonance. But the variations on Don Quixote being a public menace get old (He tilts at windmills! He attacks sheep! He jousts an innocent traveler! He steals a barber's basin! - I think it's no accident that only the first has become proberbial.) And the picaresque structure doesn't compel binge reading like an advancing plot does.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Sooo I took a break and quickly read Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Goethe's Faust.
Marlowe was a great poet (being instrumental in the creation of blank verse) and an economical storyteller. He tells the tale in perhaps a tenth the length Goethe takes, even with lame comic scenes (this was one of his schticks - my copy of Tamburlane rather hilarious notes that the first printed edition admitted to cutting the "unworthy" comic relief). But then, Goethe's is a completely different story, sharing only the basic deal with the devil and a couple of supporting characters (Helen of Troy, Charles V).
What a story it is, too. I don't know why Part 1 is more popular. Gretchen is interesting enough, but "Boy meets girl, boy has sex with girl, boy gets distracted at a Witch's Sabbath while she goes through pregnancy, kills their baby and goes to prison for it" isn't exactly as relatable for most people as Part 2, which speaks so profoundly to the modern human condition. For heaven's sake (or hell's), Faust embodies the modern state: paper money, vast industrial projects, and then there are his last words in life:
Quickly settled in those hills’ embrace, Piled high by a brave, industrious race. And in the centre here, a Paradise, Whose boundaries hold back the raging tide, And though it gnaws to enter in by force, The common urge unites to halt its course. Yes, I’ve surrendered to this thought’s insistence, The last word Wisdom ever has to say: He only earns his Freedom and Existence, Who’s forced to win them freshly every day. Childhood, manhood, age’s vigorous years, Surrounded by dangers, they’ll spend here. I wish to gaze again on such a land, Free earth: where a free race, in freedom, stand. Then, to the Moment I’d dare say: ‘Stay a while! You are so lovely!’ Through aeons, then, never to fade away This path of mine through all that’s earthly. – Anticipating, here, its deep enjoyment, Now I savour it, that highest moment.
... it remains only to debate if his description of a utopia of free men is liberal or socialist.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Part 2 is twice as long and, honestly, kinda rambles on in many places.
That's true. One wonders why Goethe chose to write it as a drama rather than an epic if he was going t make it that long. I know closet drama was a recogized genre and so the structural limitations of drama were moot, but still.
And I just mean that the way he forgets about her for months is so specific that I never felt it generalized as a metaphor for real-life relationships. Clearly many have disagreed!
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
I just got a fancy slipcased art book titled THE VATICAN: ALL THE PAINTINGS.
Part 2 is twice as long and, honestly, kinda rambles on in many places.
That's true. One wonders why Goethe chose to write it as a drama rather than an epic if he was going t make it that long. I know closet drama was a recogized genre and so the structural limitations of drama were moot, but still.
And I just mean that the way he forgets about her for months is so specific that I never felt it generalized as a metaphor for real-life relationships. Clearly many have disagreed!
I think that it's because Goethe was trying to pick apart, lampoon, subvert and (in the real, hardcore, Derrida-might-actually-approve sense) deconstruct as many ideas about modern drama as he could all at once, to the point that the play kind of goes into La-La-Land after a while just to keep the digressions in continuity.
I have got compendiums of stories by Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, and Fritz Leiber on my kindle because I'm less likely to abandon short stories halfway through than I am books, at least on my kindle and I am on a sci-fi pulp bend.
I should also re-read some of Ray Bradbury's short fiction some time. I don't like his novels much, but he was a great short story writer.
ive been reading for my degree, the stuff i would class as good shit is:
elizabeth costello by jm coetzee where an old ass australian writer woman travels around being confused and old and comparing various things/people to nazis in academic arenas and continually owning herself, but in a clever way.
eric stenbock who wrote some gothic stories and like half of them are just composed of medieval-style llists of monsters made from increasingly absurd combinations of animals. also he was gay as hell. good shit.
the trial by Kafkaesque Writer Franz Kafka, you know who he is.
party going by Henry Green where a lot of upper class people bitch about each other for 200 pages and nothing happens except everyone is terrible. art is truth
katherine mansfield and dh lawrence some cool ass short story people from the early 20th c
the lonely londoners by sam selvon which is about some jamaican men in 1950s london having sex with lots of women
for pleasure ive been reading Sean Borodale and Don Paterson who are some excellent contemporary british poets and Paterson deserves a special mention for including multiple shoutouts to boards of canada in a single poem
i'm behind with my reading for uni again... i'm supposed to be re-reading The Big Sleep at the moment, but somehow it's a lot slower going now that i know what happens
i read the spy that came in from the cold. i couldn't think straight for a day. sad book
pirx the pilot i found randomly at a store and was fucking great. sci-fi with a realistic depiction of technology, in that you have to hit it
oh what else. oh i tried some mieville. city and the city. awesome, just what i needed at the time. but i hear his other stuff is weirder and the endings are also kinda letdowns. think i'll try embassytown sometime next.
i used to read a lot faster than i do. such is life i guess. i'm all old and crankly now.
i think the next fiction i'll read is probably there was a country
im now reading a book of 16th century icelandic folktales which is teaching me not to go fishing if you try to resurrect long-dead bishops. hope this advice helps you also. thanks
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
It seems I haven't posted here in a while. For history, I've read the surviving books of Livy, Appian's Civil Wars, Tacitus, and Gibbon. I'm now reading Plutarch's Lives with Beholderess, having just finished Alcibiades. It's hard to tell if that man was a "noble Greek" or a complete monster... and that's just when he was sober. My favorite part, which first appears in Thucydides, is that, on the eve of Athens' war on Syracuse, friends of democracy who suspected Alcibiades of conspiring to set up an oligarchy got him sentenced to death for celebrating mock Eleusian Mysteries. This led him to spending the rest of the Pelopponesian War in exile, returning triumphantly with a navy of proletarian rowers who didn't like the new Sparta-backed oligarchy.
im now reading a book of 16th century icelandic folktales which is teaching me not to go fishing if you try to resurrect long-dead bishops. hope this advice helps you also. thanks
also you can win fights by vomiting into people's faces so hard they can't breathe
im now reading a book of 16th century icelandic folktales which is teaching me not to go fishing if you try to resurrect long-dead bishops. hope this advice helps you also. thanks
Yes, the Greco-Roman and later Renaissance notion of the virtuoso has little to do with morality so much as it does with cunning, great deeds, a reasonable sense of one's place in the world and adherence to a consistent code of conduct. The last does not mean that you need be a kind person, but not a hypocrite.
^^ I have read very, very little Maturin, but what I have read (and what I have read about him) certainly bodes well. Not quite Gothic but definitely the kings of the "irony is a bitch" school: Honore de Balzac and Guy de Maupassant. Also, Vathek is supposed to be rather good.
of all the predictions the book made, I wonder how no one seemed to catch on to the idea that you can apparently impose suspended animation to someone through hypnosis
Comments
And Lovecraft tends to be more melancholic than scary to me too.
Sooo I took a break and quickly read Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and Goethe's Faust.
Marlowe was a great poet (being instrumental in the creation of blank verse) and an economical storyteller. He tells the tale in perhaps a tenth the length Goethe takes, even with lame comic scenes (this was one of his schticks - my copy of Tamburlane rather hilarious notes that the first printed edition admitted to cutting the "unworthy" comic relief). But then, Goethe's is a completely different story, sharing only the basic deal with the devil and a couple of supporting characters (Helen of Troy, Charles V).
What a story it is, too. I don't know why Part 1 is more popular. Gretchen is interesting enough, but "Boy meets girl, boy has sex with girl, boy gets distracted at a Witch's Sabbath while she goes through pregnancy, kills their baby and goes to prison for it" isn't exactly as relatable for most people as Part 2, which speaks so profoundly to the modern human condition. For heaven's sake (or hell's), Faust embodies the modern state: paper money, vast industrial projects, and then there are his last words in life:
Quickly settled in those hills’ embrace,
Piled high by a brave, industrious race.
And in the centre here, a Paradise,
Whose boundaries hold back the raging tide,
And though it gnaws to enter in by force,
The common urge unites to halt its course.
Yes, I’ve surrendered to this thought’s insistence,
The last word Wisdom ever has to say:
He only earns his Freedom and Existence,
Who’s forced to win them freshly every day.
Childhood, manhood, age’s vigorous years,
Surrounded by dangers, they’ll spend here.
I wish to gaze again on such a land,
Free earth: where a free race, in freedom, stand.
Then, to the Moment I’d dare say:
‘Stay a while! You are so lovely!’
Through aeons, then, never to fade away
This path of mine through all that’s earthly. –
Anticipating, here, its deep enjoyment,
Now I savour it, that highest moment.
... it remains only to debate if his description of a utopia of free men is liberal or socialist.
And how is "boy meets girl, etc." not supposed to be relatable? It's only the most overused plot ever.
That's true. One wonders why Goethe chose to write it as a drama rather than an epic if he was going t make it that long. I know closet drama was a recogized genre and so the structural limitations of drama were moot, but still.
And I just mean that the way he forgets about her for months is so specific that I never felt it generalized as a metaphor for real-life relationships. Clearly many have disagreed!
that's a lot of paintings.
but it's nothing if not entertaining
pirx the pilot i found randomly at a store and was fucking great. sci-fi with a realistic depiction of technology, in that you have to hit it
oh what else. oh i tried some mieville. city and the city. awesome, just what i needed at the time. but i hear his other stuff is weirder and the endings are also kinda letdowns. think i'll try embassytown sometime next.
i used to read a lot faster than i do. such is life i guess. i'm all old and crankly now.
i think the next fiction i'll read is probably there was a country
It seems I haven't posted here in a while. For history, I've read the surviving books of Livy, Appian's Civil Wars, Tacitus, and Gibbon. I'm now reading Plutarch's Lives with Beholderess, having just finished Alcibiades. It's hard to tell if that man was a "noble Greek" or a complete monster... and that's just when he was sober. My favorite part, which first appears in Thucydides, is that, on the eve of Athens' war on Syracuse, friends of democracy who suspected Alcibiades of conspiring to set up an oligarchy got him sentenced to death for celebrating mock Eleusian Mysteries. This led him to spending the rest of the Pelopponesian War in exile, returning triumphantly with a navy of proletarian rowers who didn't like the new Sparta-backed oligarchy.
name pls
It's a series of biographies of fictional far-right authors in North and South America. Some of them are sad, some are creepy, and some are hilarious.
I'd recommend it.
Anyway, I have one chapter left in Catch-22. This book started out really funny but in the final hundred pages or so it got surprisingly brutal.
(The other Jane)
after Frankenstein and Poe's short stories it was a severe disappointment
doesn't really speak to the quality ofc
anyway I'm now reading The Master and Margarita
it's been, uh, weird so far