(no subject)
Nov. 22nd, 2003 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaSunny Septemberish weather in the 60s, and NYC in serene weekend mode.
Tore the house apart trying to find long-neglected vols. of lit theory. Truly, there is nothing dustier than unread books. Found them 2 rows back behind a shelf of poetry and a row of books about South America. Ran many errands, went to the local Cuban place & ate mofongo for lunch (yum) and read Mikhail Bakhtin on dialogism and the carnivaleque and made notes about slash, to my own amusement.
Bought a spigot. A rather nice, upscale, overpriced one with porcelain handles. Came home and managed to chip a great whacking chunk of enamel off the sink trying to remove the old spigot. Stared at mess. Abandoned task (will acknowledge incompetence in plumbing matters and ask super to do it). Abandoned Bakhtin (having carried out my own exercise in the carnivalesque in the kitchen).
Will reread Tristram Shandy instead. ("...Right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on tracing every thing in it, as Horace says, ab Ovo. Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy; -- (I forget which) -- besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon; -- for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man's rules that ever lived...") Hee.
Because am still all broody and pissed off over a truly irritating roundtable lecture last night that I went to in the naive belief that I might learn something ("Cultural Heritage in War: Moral and Military Choices"). One speaker was utterly vile and hateful (Edward Luttwak,no surprise); one was snotty and presented a flabby and careless argument (David Rieff, who should know better), and one was wonderful (Zainab Bahrani, who was attacked ad hominem by the other two during the question period). Really, this is a staggeringly rightwing, racist country. It still surprises me. I wonder how the hell we get away with it.
Tore the house apart trying to find long-neglected vols. of lit theory. Truly, there is nothing dustier than unread books. Found them 2 rows back behind a shelf of poetry and a row of books about South America. Ran many errands, went to the local Cuban place & ate mofongo for lunch (yum) and read Mikhail Bakhtin on dialogism and the carnivaleque and made notes about slash, to my own amusement.
Bought a spigot. A rather nice, upscale, overpriced one with porcelain handles. Came home and managed to chip a great whacking chunk of enamel off the sink trying to remove the old spigot. Stared at mess. Abandoned task (will acknowledge incompetence in plumbing matters and ask super to do it). Abandoned Bakhtin (having carried out my own exercise in the carnivalesque in the kitchen).
Will reread Tristram Shandy instead. ("...Right glad I am, that I have begun the history of myself in the way I have done; and that I am able to go on tracing every thing in it, as Horace says, ab Ovo. Horace, I know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: But that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy; -- (I forget which) -- besides, if it was not so, I should beg Mr. Horace's pardon; -- for in writing what I have set about, I shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man's rules that ever lived...") Hee.
Because am still all broody and pissed off over a truly irritating roundtable lecture last night that I went to in the naive belief that I might learn something ("Cultural Heritage in War: Moral and Military Choices"). One speaker was utterly vile and hateful (Edward Luttwak,no surprise); one was snotty and presented a flabby and careless argument (David Rieff, who should know better), and one was wonderful (Zainab Bahrani, who was attacked ad hominem by the other two during the question period). Really, this is a staggeringly rightwing, racist country. It still surprises me. I wonder how the hell we get away with it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-11-23 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-23 02:42 pm (UTC)Tristram Shandy announces that he is going to tell the story of his life (beginning with the night he was conceived), but he never quite gets around to it, because he keeps digressing. You have never seen so many digressions. In fact, there are so many that it's impossible to read the book straight through; it's too frustrating.
In an attempt to get on with it, he draws failed diagrams of how the book should progress; at one point he gets fed up and decides to just stop (this is followed by a page printed to look like a marbled endpaper). At another point a favorite character dies, and he prints an all-black page, in mourning. Etc.
The 18th c prose takes some getting used to, but then it is laugh-out-loud funny and also very wise. A few pages of Shandy are a sure antidote to the obnoxiousness of contemporary life. More than a few at a time will drive you mad.