Grab the Nearest Book...

[trysail]

The Power Of Myth


"I don't believe life has a purpose. Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being."

-Joseph Campbell
The Power Of Myth
New York, 1988


An opinion essentially identical to that held by both Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken.

 

[MaiusImperium]

We are approaching the millennium, when I shall be fifty years old. For all but a few months of the past half-century, I have been emotionally enveloped in my loyal support for Manchester City and my deep and abiding scepticism for all things that derive from Manchester United. It doesn't matter if Alex Ferguson wins the European Cup with a team composed of the cream of Europe or a team composed entirely of Tellytubbies. Manchester United are as alien to me as the Cossacks riding through the shtetls of my ancestors in Eastern Europe. -

Colin Shindler - Manchester United Ruined My Life

Being a Man City fan is like being a religious martyr.

 

[Maid of Marvels]

But they did win the other day.

Did you remember to listen to "Mort"? I haven't yet, but will do later.

Trysail, you always put up the bestest quotes and some of the books I've been lucky enough to have read. Looking forward to more.

Pixie, I had a fascination with the Habsburgs when I was in my teens that I suppose continues... though I couldn't tell you exactly why. Maybe it has to do with a family who isn't nonplussed by having one of their own (Ferdinand) say: "I'm the Emperor and I want dumplings."

Keep on reading!

 

[trysail]

None But A Blockhead


"You'd be surprised, neighbors, how often the Literary Life imitates Real Life when money is on the line. Damn few people in publishing, politics or poker are in the game primarily to make friends...

I offer as a general rule of thumb this observation: newspaper people almost always will have read the book under discussion, and perhaps even other books by the same author; radio interviewers may or may not be prepared, while television folks- well, I am tempted to offer a cash prize to the person able to prove to my satisfaction that any television interviewer anywhere in America has read any book whatsoever."

-Larry L. King (no, not that "Larry King.")
None But A Blockhead
New York, 1986


Ever heard of The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas? If so, this is the author.

 

[qerasija]

We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back.

First paragraph of first chapter, Light Years by James Salter.

Salter is also the author of the only cookbook I am ever likely to buy for its value as literature.

 

[trysail]

A Guide To The Oxford English Dictionary


"While the headword section describes the headword in terms of its form (that is, how it occurs in its written and spoken forms within the language), the sense section defines its meaning or 'signification'. In OED terms, a sense is an entity that, in its simplest form, consists of a definition and a series of chronologically arranged illustrative quotations. Some words have a single, readily definable meaning, but many, particularly those which have been in existence for several centuries, have acquired new or extended meanings. A word used in a literal sense may later be applied figuratively and develop its own history, or in other cases the entire meaning or significance of the word is altered. For example, the word 'silly' first meant 'happy' or 'blessed', a 'petticoat' was originally a man's short coat, the word 'glamour' was a corruption of 'grammar' and also had an early meaning of 'magic' or 'witchcraft'. A major function of the OED is to trace the way in which such words evolved by illustrating their usage over time. Thus, for a complete understanding of a word's sense development, both the definitions and the quotations need to be read in full. Quotations also frequently illustrate the usage of variant spellings listed in the headword section, so that they support not only the senses, but the entry as a whole."

-Donna Lee Berg
A Guide To The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford, 1993


The OED is, of course, the most stupendous and wonderful dictionary in the world. It is quite readable in its own right. The monumental task of its compilation took seventy-one years, by some measures, but the great majority of the Herculean task really began in 1877 with the appointment of Sir James Murray as editor and only concluded in 1928 with the publication of the last volume of the first edition. C.T. Onions, Henry Bradley, and William Craigie must also be credited with part of the birthing process.

 

[Maid of Marvels]

Fidelity. The recognition of the supreme importance of love. Intelligence. Beauty. Sense of humour. Sincerity. An appreciation of good food. A serious interest in some art, trade or hobby. An old-fashioned and wholehearted acceptance of monogamy. Courage. Borderline obsession with receipt collecting and completely unfounded fear of calculators. Formerly Rudolph Valentino-type M (32), latterly tax evading, nervous asthmatic (47). Seeks woman not unused to hiding under the kitchen table when the doorbell rings.

******​

I scrimshawed this advert from the tusk of a walrus. Now make love to me. Pathetic man, 49.

******​

Ravish Me, Mr. Caveman. Gracile, fast-running Pleistocene female, 42 — Raquel Welch's legs, soul, fur miniskir t— seeks bestial but non-smoking Homo Erectus to drag me behind a bush. Let's see what evolves: wordless love, cranial expansion, extensive use of your primitive tool? Morphology open, but be 40's, a primal, yet stand-up, guy. No old fossils. Higher order cerebral functions unnecessary, but have enough cunning and cash flow to migrate to new habitat in Americas. Interested? Don't take a million years to write.

Some personal adverts that I thought clever.​

 

[chris2c4u]

"I'm the Emperor and I want dumplings."

It just deserved quoting again.

Rudolph II, Hapsburgite, was a fascinating chap. All that alchemy, astronomy and his cabinet of curiosities You can thank him if you like museums

 

[trysail]

Barbarian Sentiments


"China is backward economically and technologically, but in other respects the United States or Britain is backward by comparison with China, India, or Egypt. These Asian or African civilizations are far more coherent, and this is both a strength for them and a wall of resistance to industrialization and economic development along Western lines. Of course, Western industrial society has a coherence of its own, in that it rests on generally held assumptions about accomplishment and mastery as central to the meaning of our lives- about exploration and exploitability of material acquisitions, the value of knowledge, the value of work.

Let me be specific, since the issues come down to practical things. To run a factory requires workers and managers who want economic prosperity badly enough to spend a major part of their working lives doing things that are often boring, exhausting, and unpleasant. They also need, usually, the ability to read and write, to make complicated plans and analyses, to use sophisticated tools, to understand machinery and feel at home with it, and even to take pleasure in machines and in the concepts that lie behind them. A dependable supply of such workers and managers exists in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, because fathers and sons have done this kind of thing since the Industrial Revolution first emerged, during the eighteenth century, in a society whose ancient and medieval engineering and technology had already been of remarkable sophistication. One reason they have done this is that even though Western societies are now secularized, they are the product of a religious civilization that insisted that constructive work in this world pleases God, will be rewarded by God, and advances the development of a history that is understood to have begun in the void from which God summoned matter, and to end in the Day of Judgement, when all will be held accountable for how they have used their talents and dealt with their fellow man. The latter-day political secularizations of this religious conception of history have changed little that is essential to it. Progressive humanists or Marxists, rationalists or scientific optimists, we in the West still go on working, as if our immortal salvation depended upon it. Our culture is teleological- it presumes purposive development and a conclusion."

-William Pfaff
Barbarian Sentiments
New York, 1989


This piece is, of course, a little dated. It's always interesting to see just how wrong forecasters frequently are. Does anyone remember the best-selling Megatrends by John Naisbitt? If you want a good laugh, find a copy and see for yourself just how absurdly wrong Naisbitt was about just about everything. But, what the hell? He sold a ton of books to the gullible and the credulous- and laughed all the way to the bank.

William Pfaff is a very bright man whose views on foreign affairs have often been prescient- for example, he did forsee the Balkan nightmare. Who among us envisioned the astonishingly rapid emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse? Granted, there were some- but not very many.

Beware of seers and entrail readers! There are well-known rules for forecasting: forecast frequently, never include dates, and (most importantly) if you're ever right- don't EVER let anybody forget it!

 

[MelancholyBaby]

"The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment , and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the elbalmer of the world It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary. It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. By it is the universe made safe and habitable, not by science or power. Thought may work cold and intransitive in things, and find no end or untity; but the dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart gives and is the assurance that Law is sovereign over all natures; and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy."

From Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson (specifically An Address to Divinity Students)

I love the way he writes and what he says.

 

[qerasija]

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The beginning (or the end) of Finnegans Wake, James Joyce. I am damned if I know what he is talking about, but there's a wonderful ear for language here. Spelling is for those who haven't perfected the art of misspelling.

 

[trysail]

The Habsburgs, Portrait of A Dynasty


"In 1378 Charles was succeeded both as Emperor and King of Bohemia by his son Wenceslaus IV, who was so ineffective and unpopular that his half-brother Sigismund seized power, holding Wenceslaus prisoner for a time, and in due course formally succeeding him in 1411. This Sigismund, who married the Hungarian queen (or king as she had to be called according to the old Magyar custom) Mary, daughter of Louis the Great, was a formidable man, a born fighter who found himself from the beginning closely involved with affairs of religion. At the turn of the century the scandal of the papacy (there were no fewer than three popes at odds with one another) had become intolerable, and Sigismund made it his first business to put an end to it. At the same time he had thrust upon him the difficult affair of John Hus, the reforming Bohemian cleric who, inspired by Wycliffe's teachings, had become a Czech national hero. It was Sigismund who gave Hus his safe conduct to attend the Council of Constance to defend himself against the charge of heresy. And it was Sigismund who was blamed for treachery when Hus was seized and tried and burnt at Constance in 1415, a martyrdom which led to a national uprising in Bohemia and the savage Hussite war which dragged on for seventeen years, laying waste a prospering land and sowing the seeds of enduring hatred. Sigismund, ruler of Hungary by marriage, relied very much on Hungerian support in crushing his Bohemian nationalist and pre-Protestant rebels, and the consequent ill-feeling between Czech and Magyar (later augmented by other actions) has endured to this day. Sigismund also received active and vigorous support from the Habsburg Duke of Austria, Albert V. And it was as a direct consequence of this that Albert II was nominated King of the Germans and crowned as the Emperor Albert II when Sigismund died in 1437. Thereafter, save for a short interval from 1742-5, the Imperial crown was to be the perquisite of the Habsburgs until the formal dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire under pressure from Napoleon in 1806. Imperial Austria was thus founded upon the humiliation of the Czechs and had its origin in support of Catholic orthodoxy against a great reforming movement which was a precursor of the Reformation proper."

-Edward Crankshaw
The Habsburgs, Portrait of A Dynasty
New York, 1971


"There was a brooding quality about many of the Habsburgs which distinguished them from the general run of monarchs..........."

Crankshaw's knowledge of Habsburg history has never been surpassed.

 

[Maid of Marvels]

So here I am, trying not to look all fluffy while you all blow me away with snippets from books and comments about them. *runs into the back yard to bury the adverts I posted earlier*

"Finnegan's Wake" - the language indeed is reminiscent of Carroll's "Jabberwocky". I read it and have the slash marks on my wrists to prove it.

Emerson - Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature. (It's great to see you around MB)

Once again, thanks to everyone for sharing.

 

[poppy1963]

It would appear that people vary the initial "rules" here. Are we still doing Pg. 28, Sentence 10? Or is it ok to pick other pages as well?

 

[Maid of Marvels]

My fault, Poppy. I found myself wanting a bigger taste than just the one sentence so we vary what we post. The choice is yours - as is the source of the material - though I might beg for more.

 

[poppy1963]

My fault, Poppy. I found myself wanting a bigger taste than just the one sentence so we vary what we post. The choice is yours - as is the source of the material - though I might beg for more.

No this works betta for me! I'd love to just pick a book I love, open it, point to a sentence/passage and share it! See what others think of the style/content! I just didn't want to change the way things were set up being so new and all!

 

[qerasija]

12 June [1923]. The horrible spells lately, innumerable, almost without interruption. Walks, nights, days, incapable of anything but pain.

And yet. No 'and yet', no matter how anxiously and tensely you look at me; Krizanovskaya on the picture postcard in front of me.

More and more fearful as I write. It is understandable. Every word, twisted in the hands of the spirits -- this twist of the hand is their characteristic gesture -- becomes a spear turned against the speaker. Most especially a remark like this. And so ad infinitum. The only consolation would be: it happens whether you like or no. And what you like is of inifinitesimally little help. More than consolation is: You too have weapons.

From Diaries, Franz Kafka.
(Max Brod, ed.; Martin Greenberg, tr. with the cooperation of Hannah Arendt.)

 

[poppy1963]

"...On the windowsill facing the sea are an embroidered cushion and a squat glass inkwell. The librarian sits cross-legged on the cushion nibbling at his supper and after a while fetches a leather-bound notebook and a green-and-gold fountain pen from beneath a mattress on the floor and fills the pen with purple ink and perched there above the city he writes poems by candlelight, or sometimes, if the moon is round, by that old light alone. He looks up often from the page, peering down over the thicket of towers where lamps are snuffed now and then like extinguished stars..."

The Book of Flying
--Keith Miller
**********************************************************

This is my current "favorite book". It is like poetry in prose...the language and style are mesmerizing bringing images and visualizations like nothing I have experienced since my first reading of LOTR...especially the times in Lothlorien.

The author is quite a find me thinks...this being his first novel. The illustrations are his own as well.

A Review:
http://www.rambles.net/miller_flying04.html

 

[MelancholyBaby]

Thank you, Maid. It is always wonderful to see and read you as well.

 

[poppy1963]

"I don't believe life has a purpose. Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being."

-Joseph Campbell
The Power Of Myth
New York, 1988


An opinion essentially identical to that held by both Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken.

Not to go off on a philosophical meander here...but this is quite an interesting idea. I personally believe "All things have purpose." But perhaps this life is less significant than most humans seem to think...it is one bite by a pacman in time and space. I see it as more a deviation...a kind of vacation of some sort...an adventure...with as many twists and turns as the individual might conjure.

 

[trysail]

On Liberty


"But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not supressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down. Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were put down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards were put down. The Hussites were put down. Even after the era of Luther, wherever persecution was persisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire, Protestantism was rooted out; and most likely would have been so in England, had Queen Mary lived, or Queen Elizabeth had died. Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectively persecuted. No reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the Roman Empire. It spread and became predominant, because the persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and separated by long intervals of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it."

-John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
New York, 1947 (original publication, 1859)


Time and again, authors promoting freedom of expression, free markets, free enterprise, or free inquiry cite John Stuart Mill's treatise. As Mill observes, truth seekers pay a price (sometimes, the ultimate price) for their heresies. How easily we forget.

"He who tells the truth should have one foot in the stirrup."
-Armenian proverb

 

[Maid of Marvels]

For forty years my act consisted of one joke. And then she died.

Gracie: A Love Story - George Burns

This isn't the book I was waiting for - got that one the other day, but this is another I received at the same time.

By the way, set down Against the Day for the nonce, finishing up Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

 

[poppy1963]

For forty years my act consisted of one joke. And then she died.

Gracie: A Love Story - George Burns

This isn't the book I was waiting for - got that one the other day, but this is another I received at the same time.

By the way, set down Against the Day for the nonce, finishing up Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

OH...in the spring, I saw Frank Gorshin perform as George Burns doing a monologue...front row seats. It was wonderful!

 

[chris2c4u]

They relied, for this purpose, on historical scholarship and a fairly simplistic form of psychology.

Barthes A Beginner's Guide. Mireille Ribière

 

[Maid of Marvels]

peers and blinks, snatching book out of your hand

Hey! Where did you get a book with big words AND pictures from???