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05-21-2011 #31
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Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
This week Philip Roth was awarded the Man International Booker prize, but one of the judges, Carmen Calil, resigned in frustration or anger for a writer she has no time for.
I have no time for Roth either, I recall the enthusiasm for Portnoy's Complaint in the 70s but wonder if it was just people who hadn't read widely thinking it was cool that a man would write 'sympathetically' about masturbation. I also tend to prefer writers who experiment with language, form and meaning and Roth just doesnt challenge me, but perhaps that is why he and simple writers like Ian McEwan are popular. I don't know if it matters if one is not American, or knows New York well, it just doesn't excite me.
By contrast, I can't forget the shock and excitement of reading The Naked Lunch, and Last Exit to Brooklyn, as I was in my late teens and new to that sort of thing.
Finally, I can't get into Thomas Pynchon either -not sure how other BMs feel about these writers.
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05-21-2011 #32
Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Stavros - if you base your judgment of Roth on Portnoy I'm not surprised you have no time for him. It was a book designed to shock and is badly dated.. I suggest you might want to try "American Pastoral" which offers - for me - an eloquent refutation of both Carmen Calil's objections and yours. I don't think "American Pastoral" is simple except on the surface in that it adheres to conventional narrative form.
And yes - those two books you single out were certainly "shocking _ - Burroughs in stepping entirely out of the narrative stream with a fantasia on sexual violence and drugs and Selby in examining a very dark underside previously scarcely looked at in contemporary American writing (City of Night - John Rechy perhaps being an exception).
Yep Pynchon is difficult. Never managed to get through any of his books, (But not that I dislike post modernism in writing. Plenty og just great French writers who are even more daringly experiemental than him.
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05-23-2011 #33
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Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
I have not read any of Roth or Selby although American Pastoral and Last Exit to Brooklyn seem very interesting. The The Queen Is Dead chapter from Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn where Georgette, a transvestite hooker, is thrown out of the family home by her brother and tries to attract the attention of a hoodlum named Vinnie at a benzedrin-driven party (Wikipedia) really gets my attention.
I have read and can highly recommend Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums and On the Road.
Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary, Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
When I read these books and I held them in my hands, it seemed as if an electric current was flowing within the pages where the authors and I connected and stayed connected throughout.
I'm also very fond of Vonnegut.
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson
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05-23-2011 #34
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Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Last Exit to Brooklyn marks the moment when the censorship of books in the UK all but collapsed. A private prosecution in 1967 declared it to be officially obscene, but in 1968 the publishers won on appeal and with it books that had either been banned or heavily censored were published. George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London had its 'naughy words', previously blanked out, restored, even though they were words like 'bugger' which is a measure of how attitudes to language have changed. In Exit, Georgette re-appears in the Strike episode where the union organiser, Harry has an affair with a friend of hers called Alberta whom he meets at a gay/ts bar called Mary's -the judge in the first trial claimed that the pernicious effect of the book might be to persuade men whose marriages were not working that they might find happiness in being homosexual, in spite of the fact that Harry gets a beating at the end of the chapter.
The Lord Chancellor, one of the UK's senior Law Lords, used to scrutinise plays before they were given a licence for performance in the UK. In 1965 John Osborne wrote a play called A Patriot for Me about a gay army officer in Vienna during the empire, which included a drag ball and which Osborne knew would be banned. The Royal Court theatre in Chelsea could only put it on by re-classifying itself as a private club -Osborne exposed the stupidity of the 'blue line' rule, but its not much of a play although I don't like Osborne so don't take my word for it.
The changes that took place in the 1960s are seen by most people as an adjustment to reality, along with the repeal of the legislation that had made homosexuality illegal, the new laws on divorce, and the legalisation of abortion -but tend to be seen by conservatives as the sins of the 'permissive sixties' which have led to a decline in national morals.
Incidentally, I am trying to recall any sex in On the Road or Kerouac's other books but I can't remember any -I knew someone years ago who had met JK and thought he was an obnoxious shit with bad breath, I also read somewhere he was a repressed homosexual -??? and so on.
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05-23-2011 #35
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Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Who do these "men" seeking happiness think they are?!
There shall be no happiness unless it has been validated by the state as an accepted form of expression otherwise you shall be classified a deviant by the moral busybodies (thank you CS Lewis).
Mexican brothels with young prostitutes, overt homosexual behaviour ring a bell?
Aren't we all obnoxious shits with a bit of halitosis from time to time.
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson
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05-23-2011 #36
Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Speak for yourself re Halitosis Dr Gonzo - so keep ya distance!
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05-24-2011 #37
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Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Mexican brothels with young prostitutes, overt homosexual behaviour ring a bell?
Sorry DrGonzo it doesnt but I realise now it must be 30 years since I read it, its in a box on the stairs I think...
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05-24-2011 #38
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Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Anyone else here go into absolute waves of emotional spasms when listening to Sibelius?
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05-24-2011 #39
Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Poe was a drunken, poor, degenerate racist, obsessed with the decay of America due to the influx of immigrants and idea of free blacks. Those are the main ideas he masks in his Gothic fiction: the decay of a society dominated by whites. His work is OK but pretty ugly if you look into in the deeper meanings.
In reality, he was a angry fellow. A poor white who saw himself as some kind of an aristocrat regardless of his poverty and addictions....but I suppose that's the kind of mind of that it takes to cobble together elaborate tales to promote hate.
Last edited by Helvis2012; 05-24-2011 at 04:57 AM.
"That's what i thought you said."
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05-24-2011 #40
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Re: Classical Music, Poetry and stuff
Anyone else here go into absolute waves of emotional spasms when listening to Sibelius?
In a word, yes! Especially Symphony No 2, and Finlandia, one of the most arousing pieces of orchestral showing off I can think of.
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