tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post383933596007929290..comments2024-02-28T18:29:41.120-08:00Comments on Not of General Interest: Homer nodsundinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05589384016564587214noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-37733899570266018342009-08-05T18:03:23.390-07:002009-08-05T18:03:23.390-07:00ArticulateDad, I think Atlas Shrugged (or The Foun...ArticulateDad, I think Atlas Shrugged (or The Fountainhead, which is shorter, but basically the same book) only works if you're 18. I haven't reread Grapes of Wrath in a while but am thinking that the John Ford film might be better than the novel--if you cut off the film with Tom hiking across the horizon rather than with Jane Darwell's "we're the people" speech. <br /><br />That quotation--that's Mark Twain, one of my favorites! <a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/Classic.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.twainquotes.com/Classic.html</a>undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05589384016564587214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-16505436921952767502009-08-01T11:31:29.424-07:002009-08-01T11:31:29.424-07:00Here's a couple canonical tomes I just couldn&...Here's a couple canonical tomes I just couldn't stomach (let's just toss it up as "dated"): Grapes of Wrath & Atlas Shrugged. I find the characters like cardboard cutouts, and the dialogue to be laughably stilted. I mean, Shakespeare is stylized (assumedly even for his day)... but those two are something entirely different. I forced myself to down large chunks of them (I may even have finished Grapes)... like I used to swallow those horse pills they gave me for allergies back in the 1970s, hoping that I'd be better off in the end for having gotten through it.<br /><br />I think of that old quote: "A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read." (Who said that?) There are times...ArticulateDadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08407769773596623808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-53091486231462789222009-08-01T10:08:50.961-07:002009-08-01T10:08:50.961-07:00Ink, thanks! There are some who'd argue for T...Ink, thanks! There are some who'd argue for The Ivory Fount, but is it possible that The Master had more than one clunker?<br /><br />Moria, this made me laugh: "but if BV thinks it's bad, it's probably, oh, whoever the f***, Webster, whatever." Ah, the science behind Shakespeare studies! You should write that literary biography. Thanks for letting me know that Gary Taylor can be trusted on this. <br /><br />Articulate Dad: D'oh! I meant the old-timey one, but now am seeing whole new possibilities in the title of the post. I totally agree about the eating out/eating home idea that Geeky Mom talks about, but sometimes you just have to slog through if it's a book that's supposed to be good or canonical (and let's not get started on literary criticism). The editing mistakes drive me crazy, too: I recently read a fairly recent bio of an important figure by a major scholar from Oxbridge U P--and it was filled with typos. If Oxbridge can't get it right, who can? <br /><br />Sisyphus, if you're nodding by liking supposedly second-rate stuff, so am I; there are some forgotten authors whose stuff I just plain like despite its being labeled unfashionable or second-rate. I can see why it's called that but like it anyway.undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05589384016564587214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-56636145249009477202009-08-01T05:21:29.826-07:002009-08-01T05:21:29.826-07:00Sis - Sorry: I was talking about the strangeness o...Sis - Sorry: I was talking about the strangeness of the evidence, not of the conclusions. <i>Errors</i> is early, yes. But we know this because of a record of its performance at Gray's Inn in 1594, a record of which early commentators were evidently unaware. Genre is another condition of quality: <i>Errors</i> is so heavily classicized, runs the argument, that it must have been written before Shax developed his own individual genius and gave birth to modernity. (The result of this vein of dismissal of the early, allegedly immature work, then, is an equally irritating brand of scholarship which consists in arguing, principally, "But no! It's really a very <i>good</i> play, and I shall argue for all of its very good qualities!")<br /><br />Other dating mechanisms tend from the speculative to the outrageous, on which perhaps more comment later. (I'm still a fan of Coleridge's weirdo method, which I need to revisit. Perhaps a post. After orals.) If anyone cares, Gary Taylor's textual companion to the <i>Oxford Shakespeare</i> is the definitive reference guide for these matters.moriahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12390704103460109691noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-21684390013156361012009-07-31T21:21:28.156-07:002009-07-31T21:21:28.156-07:00Wait, Errors isn't early? I'm so behind on...Wait, Errors isn't early? I'm so behind on my Shakespeareana! <br /><br />My favorite is the asterisk with long apologetic footnote explaining how Browning came to use the word "twats" as a synonym for hats in one of his poems, but that's not quite the type of asleep at the switch that you mean...<br /><br />The dudes of my time period unfortunately did not die young, many of em, which means that their writing often goes steadily downhill as the drinking catches up with 'em, that and the writing ever faster to write their way out of a debt hole. <br /><br />Now I'm trying to work on someone else who everyone else has ignored because, supposedly, his stuff is crap. ... but I _like_ it; does that mean I have terrible taste? Or that I'm nodding?Sisyphushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09880634753539329199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-43580660882946588802009-07-31T15:23:43.530-07:002009-07-31T15:23:43.530-07:00My take on eating out is that I expect a restauran...My take on eating out is that I expect a restaurant to offer food at least as good as I can cook at home. [See Geeky Mom's for <a href="http://geekymom.blogspot.com/2009/07/decline-of-cooking.html" rel="nofollow">recent discusssion</a>].<br /><br />I apply the same principle to writing. If an author can't do a decent job at writing something better than I could dash off in an afternoon (or edit the damn thing--I hate reading typos in print... isn't that someone's job?), then it ain't worth my time.<br /><br />Recently, I read "The Gum Thief" by Douglas Coupland (having seen it recommended by a blogger I value). But it was awful, just awful. And even though there was a novel within the novel, that was supposed to be cliched... I wasn't sure if it was a good parody, or simply a good excuse. [SIGH]<br /><br />Is it Homer Simpson who's nodding, or that old Greek guy?ArticulateDadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08407769773596623808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-535504752521043752009-07-31T15:03:50.412-07:002009-07-31T15:03:50.412-07:00Ooooh. One of my favorites. There is a whole cotta...Ooooh. One of my favorites. There is a whole cottage industry - a whole industry-industry, even - on the relative quality of various works/passages by Shakespeare. Sometimes I think Brian Vickers' authorship-determining algorithms are just finely tuned taste machines: if BV thinks it's good, it's authentically Shakespearean, but if BV thinks it's bad, it's probably, oh, whoever the f***, Webster, whatever. Meanwhile, t was easy for the critical establishment to accept the non-canonicity of great hunks of the <i>Henry VI</i> plays; the Middletonian bits of <i>Macbeth</i> were harder to swallow.<br /><br />Similarly used to determine timelines. For a long time, <i>Comedy of Errors</i> had to be early because it (allegedly) wasn't very good. Coleridge thought <i>The Tempest</i> was early, basically, because it was weird. <br /><br />God, I could go on and on. A whole literary biography based on critics' ideas of what constitutes relative "quality."moriahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12390704103460109691noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-14900141059240259462009-07-31T13:34:54.927-07:002009-07-31T13:34:54.927-07:00Memorable clunkers...how about What Maisie Knew by...Memorable clunkers...how about What Maisie Knew by Henry James? <br /><br />ps: very much liked your "piping hot"/placemat joke. :DInkhttp://inktopia7.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com