TomcatMurr's Funky Summer

i am in a dreadful funk.

I feel like everything is dispersing in a summer haze. It's impossible to concentrate when it's 36 degrees celsuis and 80% humidity, bright sunshine, and the swimming pool beckons... It's impossible to keep the vodka cold, and the herring heads are decidedly...ripening.

I have been poised, for the last month, on the verge of a big project that has been dangling in front of me like a piece of string. If it goes ahead, it will mean a big commitment in terms of thinking and reading, research and concentration. This has made me reluctant to pick up any substantial reading, in case I have to put it down unfinished.

I have abandoned my Dostoevsky project for now, and been allowed out of my Russian exile until, well, until further notice I suppose.

Since my last post, I have read:

On the Golden Porch A wonderful collection of stories by the great grand niece of Leo Tolstoy, moving, satirical and magical. highly recommended.

The Common European Framework. No touchstone for this, but you can visit the site here:

http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Linguistic/CADRE_EN.asp

I downloaded the entire document and had it printed out as a book. I hope to blog about it in the near future. I read this in preparation for said project. Poised and ready.

Point to Point Navigation Second volume of Saint Gore's memoirs, highly entertaining and provoking. I read a few of his essays from The Last Empire as well.

I am now rereading A Suitable Boy as I wanted something with lots of local colour, a gripping story, and varied and credible characters. I read it when it came out in 1994 and loved it then. I am happy to be rereading it, it still stands up: a 19th century novel set in 1950s India: thoroughly engrossing.

I am heart sick for my Russians.

And I have missed everyone's company. I have been lurking and reading, but not been able to comment.

Summertime, and my gussets are sweaty....

Attr. Ira Gershwin.

Here is a recent Gore Vidal interview with Bill Maher. Maher introduces him aptly as "the indispensible intellectual of my lifetime".

In 2 parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zxc5c9FzOY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C95x_MD9i14

Point to Point Navigation made me sad because in it Vidal speaks as if he is going to pass on very soon.

Thankfully he is still with us. I hope he will be for a long time.

Re: That big project. Best of luck!

Did you see the news that Vikram Seth is writing a sequel to A Suitable Boy, to be called A Suitable Girl? I am going to put off rereading A Suitable Boy until closer to the 2013 publication date.

Lots of luck for the big project! However, I hope you will not disappear for too long.

Thank you aluvalibri! When I'm away from library thing for any length of time, I really miss it. It's the only really intelligent and interesting conversation I get. I value the friends I have made here very much.

All my friends in Taiwan are Taiwanese, so conversation is limited by our respective vocabularies, their English, and my Chinese. LT is completely necessary if I want to talk about books, and frankly, I don't know how to talk about anything else!

Rebecca, that is good news! I can't wait to read it! Do you know anything else about it?

David, I agree. There was a distinct mood of leave taking
in the last pages of the book. However, even in his old age, GV has lost none of his barbed wit and attacks the Bush/Cheny junta, as he calls it, with vigour and accuracy.
He will be sorely missed when he is gone. Is there anyone else in America who is prepared to take on the bullshit put out by the establishment?

Thanks for the links.

Darling, I told you, the fish heads were ripening. it's the heat.

Best of luck on the Big Project! I am intrigued by the CEFR link and documents, as I am gingerly feeling my way through English tutoring here in the land of Genji. There are so many people studying English here who don't really want to speak it, read it, or use it in any meaningful way; it's so strange.

There are seemingly so many types of English! What should we be teaching? The place I'm currently working in uses simultaneously both British and US materials (all sorely out of date and boring as hell) for elementary level children. Not only are the students confused; I am sometimes confused. I've had to use online dictionaries for British/US English conversions (clothes pins/clothes pegs; baby stroller/pram; etc., and the drawings of things which IMHO beginning English learners don't really need to know, such as "anvil" and "wig" and "horse collar"--these are from the British books, but the US ones are almost as bad). It appears that CEFR would create standards centered on a unified use of English among second language learners in Europe?

I hope you can forgive this little outburst on your thread, but I am overcome by the heat and humidity which is anathema to this 'desert rat' (it's just an expression, nice kitty, don't eat the rat). I go through many gussets every day!! Not only that, but you can almost hear the mildew growing in the bathroom...I am crazy with the heat and the emanations of ripe fish heads.

But I am sane enough to be excited about your new blog----I can hardly wait!

Will you be staying in Taiwan?

oh Julia, that was hilarious! anvil, wig and horse collar? LOL What on earth were they thinking?

When I first started teaching, 20 years ago, I was teaching Pakistani immigrants to the UK, and one of my students showed me an English phrase book he had purchased in Pakistan prior to leaving for the UK, to prepare himself. It was full of phrases such as:

Kind sir, would you be so good as to clip my cigar?

I should have bought it off him as a curio.

YEs, the CEFR is a kind of framework to apply consistent standards across all languages not just European ones. The idea being that if you get B1 in German and B1 in French, your language ability will be same in both languages. This is very important in countries like Taiwan, where (language) testing is the central facet of education, but there are no universal standards. A B1 level awarded by one university may not correspond at all to a B1 level awarded by another. They basically make up the levels as they go along.

In 2005 the Taiwan Ministry of Education announced that all university leavers must leave university with a B1 level in English for the university to be eligible for government funding the following year (so obviously a central issue if money is concerned), and that this B1 level should mean the same thing across the board. They cited the CEFR as the benchmark. CEFR is used as the main benchmark in Hong Kong, Singapore and I think in official circles in Japan, as well as all over Europe. It is also used to benchmark standards for all international English language tests, notably TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS, BULATS and all UCLES/CAMBRIDGE exams. The MOE is doing their best to encourage Taiwanese English education to follow global standards, but so far the universities have been very slow to adapt.

Yes, I will be staying here indefinitely. Taiwan is my home.

Have you had a typhoon yet this year?

Dear TomcatMurr

Tis awful to be in a funk and I do think it has a lot to do with the weather...tis chilly here in Brisvegas but one can put on mits and it is very knitting and reading type weather so I am relatively cheerful.....I have been very slack regarding dear Dostoevsky...I have fallen out of the habit and been distracted by other authors ...of the Swedish and Australian variety....Stieg Larsson has proved very entertaining and I polished off the Dragon Tattoo very quickly. Now I am embroiled in Frank Moorhouse Grand Days which is entertaining being set in Geneva and the League of Nations early days. So many books to read and so little time - I saw Coco avant Chanel last week and was left feeling somewhat disappointed so I want to dig up books on Chanel. The Brisbane International Film Festival is about to launch at the end of the month and Balibo is the closing film so I want to read all about that too. I hope the funk lifts very soon. I find an exotic drink helps.

Oh Murr,

let's compare funks. I will show you mine if you show me yours. :-)

My big projects are on longterm stall.

My days of recreation and enlightenment were transformed into days of the Third Reich. I am tired, tired, tired.

Fortunately today I am alone at home. I will sleep, read, eat and then...and then... I hardly dare say it.

There may be a glimmer of hope.

Driving through Toronto I stocked up on some traditional Czech food. As long as it did not go bad in the heat as I spent another eight hours in the car afterwards, I will enjoy. If it did go bad, I will retch for the next few days, and think longingly of herring heads.

My partner spent some time in Toronto. He says the chinatown there is fantastic and much bigger than San Francisco's. Just think of all those herring heads!

Around the corner from Toronto, in Niagara on the Lake, NOTL, greatest meal ever, at DeLucas. Great local wines, reasonably priced. Great revival of Born Yesterday.

Canada is so civilized.

On vacation, letting go of Camus and Sartre, will be reviewing Doc Smith's Skylark series. Stay tuned.

Didn't find a connection between No Exit and Gilligan's Island, but did relate No Exit to The Trial for my first post to my blog since finding LibraryThing in December.

Did you see the article by Oliver Sacks in this week's New Yorker about the herring festival in NYC last month? Or were you there? I didn't know that there is a god of herring, Clupeus. Also included in the article is a shout out to Russ and Daughters, one of my favorite NYC delis.

Clupeophilia

For Herring, Sweden at Christmas is the place to be. I didn't know herring came in so many deliciously unpalatable varieties until I spent one Christmas in Sweden. Actually, I do love herring, but . . . some of that herring was a bit dubious even for the adventurous eater, of which variety I am.

And the Dutch as well....Ah Herring, we SING your praises.....

thanks for the link doc. I am going to start a new religion (seems to be all the rage) to the God Clupeus. Liturgy will involve caterwhauling, communion will involve herring, of course....

Wilf, I have been following your conversation on your thread with Catreona, and although I have not felt able to contribute, it has been a very interesting read. Have you read Sartre's Iron in the Soul trilogy? I hope you enjoy your vacation (where are you btw?)

Andrushka, my funk is smaller than your vorpal blade, I should think. I've decided the best way to deal with a funk like this is simply to wallow in it until it passes. All things pass, thus saith Murr.

Dear Alex, BAlibo sounds really interesting. I despair of the movie industry: they seem to have given up making movies for reasoning adults. This looks like it could be good. Have you seen the Year of Living Dangerously, with Mel Gibson, also set in Indonesia? very good movie.

Davushka, shall we all emigrate to Canada, do you think?

Murrushka,

I think we all need to emigrate somewhere together.

kidsdoc - Fantastic article ! Thanks for posting this....I'm consumed by a desire to go and purchase herring instantly....not to mention aquavit.

nobooksnolife and tomcatmurr - I'm a bit out of my depth here but I thought you might be interested in an article in The Guardian this week about Malaysia abandoning a six-year experiment in using English in state schools to teach maths and science.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/10/malaysia-tefl

The experiment was designed "to produce a new generation of global communicators". The architect of the experiment, called PPSMI, Dr Mahathir put an online poll on his blog and apparently 40,000 people voted with 84% opposing the changes. Your thoughts?

Alex, thanks for this very interesting article.

Couple of things in response:

1. IMO the policy was a good one. English language is a crucial issue for developing nations, and Mahathir is right to recognise this. There is lots of evidence that using English as a medium of instruction for other subjects helps to make English learning more effective, and does not significantly effect those other subjects. THe interesting thing in this case was that they found a drop in the math and science skills. I'm sure this is attributable to the lack of skilled teachers who are able to deliver math and science education in English. Also, the policy was not given time to develop. These kind of changes need at least a generation to start to show results.

2. Fears that too early use of English will negatively impact children's ability to learn their own language is a common canard. There is absolutely no evidence to support this view; on the contrary, quite a lot of evidence which shows that multilinguistic exposure at an early age helps general literacy and intellectual development. The brain is quite capable at an early age of learning many languages and not getting them mixed up. The canard is a common one for grassroots, populist politicians to drag out. It was used about 6 years ago in Taiwan by the then-grassroots government, and as a result it is now illegal to teach English at kindergarten age!

3. Malaysia is similar to Taiwan in that both countries are marked by a very great divide between the urban middle classes who are well educated, and the rural peasantry, who still have one foot in the rice paddy. When the latter group get hold of the reins of power, disaster for everybody ensues. Singapore does not have the same demographic, being much smaller, with no rural population. Hence the greater success of their English language policy.

4. I love the way Mahathir (a totally odious and very creepy man) has backtracked and distanced himself from this policy on his blog. It was his decision to implement it initially, for reasons I agree with. They should have stuck it out, trained more teachers, and launched a public education campaign to dispel the doubts and fears of the rural population. It is after all, those guys who will again be disenfranchised by the u turn.

I will be very interested to hear what nobooksnolife has to say.

Here's a link to my piece on the Common European Framework:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/07/fragment-16709.html

I think there is pretty conclusive evidence that the earlier kids are exposed to multiple languages, the easier it is for them to pick them up.

(I am absolutely hopeless w/ speaking any foreign language. At one point, long gone, i could read French and Latin quite well. I think not having a very good sense of pitch (unlike my sibs, wife or son) makes picking up languages harder for me than it might otherwise have been. "Bobbee - you speak like an Arab" Mme Papin, French 3/4 in high school")

yes, you're quite right, bobbee sahib.

There is also rather conclusive evidence of a critical period for picking up accents. Adults can of course learn new languages, often with great ease and facility, but getting the accent absolutely right is impossible unless you pick it up during this critical period, roughly from 4 to 7. Having a sense of pitch, a sensitive ear generally, definitely helps with getting pronunciation right.

Hah, I was just teaching this tonight!

tomcat--I was puzzling over the s/he quandary in English, the need for an neutral gendered singular pronoun. Some use their in a singular sense, my wife sees no problem with the s/he construction (sends shivers up my spine).

Is there a word in foreign language that we could use? English seems to have no qualms about imports. Don't know if this is in your line or not.

I'm in St. Louis btw, heading back through Canada, to see Sunday in the Park with George.

Ta ta!

Oh I do love my tomcat and it hurts me so to see him in a funk. I have absolutely no idea what most of you are talking about, but I know it's important. It's hot here in Huntington Beach, CA. It hit 80 today, and I had to spend a lot more time in the water at the beach than I really like to this time of year. I much prefer the sand, but the sand was like scorching! So I had to go in the water and then had to reapply my suntan lotion over and over and over. I was all sticky with lotion and then sand got on my fingers and I felt so gritty! It was awful.

I can tell that people really love you here tomcat. I hope that knowledge helps you through. And I hope you're feeling much better soon and that big project comes through for you. One time I had to wait for weeks for my special-ordered coverup to come in to cover up my blemishes - and I felt so exposed in the meantime. It was awful! I guess I'm trying to say that maybe I sort of know how you feel.

XXXXOOOO
Michelle

Thank you for your kind thoughts, Michelle. I agree, suntan oil and sand are not a happy combination, especially in ones crevices and creases!

As a doctor, I am prescribing a dose of Wilson Pickett performing "Funky Broadway" live to lift your spirits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcTWxJAGQVQ

Fantastic! Is there a cheap Canadian generic or import I can get?

Hmm...I don't know about that. However, you can use the latest version of RealPlayer to download YouTube videos, for offline viewing (and listening).

Another summertime classic is "All Day Music" by War, which came out in 1971. There is a live YouTube video, but it is horrible compared to the original version. As the lyrics say, it is a great song to play at a picnic or park , especially when my college roommate and I would cruise along Lakeshore Drive in New Orleans, gazing at the beautiful girls laying out in Lakeshore Park in the late '70s. Those were the days...

Hmm, maybe that's why my grades at Tulane weren't anything to write home about. I had to come back home to Philadelphia, with its decidedly less attractive young women, to be able to focus on my studies!

A song that always sums up summer for me is Elton John's Amoreena, which was used in the opening credits' of sidney lumet's Masterpiece Dog Day Afternoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYk2IaHxUeA

Taipei is like this at the end of summer, fractious and exhausted.

Wilf, in 25, what about the French leur? in fact their and they is quite standard, eg: if anyone wants to they can call me.

s/he is very clumsy I think. It's not even a word, it's just punctuation.

re 20:

Thanks, alexdaw, for posting the link about the Malaysian English crisis. I had no idea that English instruction had become such a hot political football in that country, (or in Taiwan, Murr). For that matter, I'm not conversant on the topic here in Japan, but it hasn't come up in the news recently. The study of English is more or less taken for granted here, often in the same way that learning to play the piano is taken for granted: all children wealthy enough to take lessons will do so. They will mostly dislike the lessons and eventually drop them altogether as a rite of passage into the late-teenage years. (In other words, a waste of time, money, and emotion...)

re 21:

1) Well said! I completely agree with the possibility that there was a "lack of skilled teachers who are able to deliver math and science education in English. Also, the policy was not given time to develop. These kind of changes need at least a generation to start to show results."

2) "as a result it is now illegal to teach English at kindergarten age!" OMG unbelievably stupid, even for grassroots ROC politicians.

3) I believe you're correct in noting how deeply this issue runs along urban/rural divisions. In Taiwan is it still true that urban=Nationalist (Mainlanders) and rural=Taiwanese?

4) This would seem to ring very true: "They should have stuck it out, trained more teachers, and launched a public education campaign to dispel the doubts and fears of the rural population. It is after all, those guys who will again be disenfranchised by the u turn."

I would be interested to know your thoughts on the relationship of Internet communication and the practical side of English as a lingua franca for the Internet. On one side, I lament the deterioration of English usage on the Web, yet there is an opposite argument that points towards greater accuracy of usage leading to less confusion and better communication.

My personal view is that elites will learn languages not only to communicate (in business, for example) but also to enrich their understanding of literature, etc. But the vast majority of people who are functionally literate in their native languages will ALSO need to learn enough practical English to function on the Internet. My logic springs from the premise that, in order to really learn other languages (post-childhood), one must be motivated by using the language on a practical level (i.e. your interesting new neighbor speaks Spanish, or your new lover speaks Italian, or you want to travel and teach in China, or whatever).

Looking forward to re-reading Murr's excellent post on "The Lectern" (Fragment 16709) when I have more time to read thoughtfully. I want to understand the Common European Framework... Murr, when I read your writings I am always out of my depth, but after catching my breath I'll dive in for more. It is a thrill to learn new things every day.

Julia

My daughter, not that anecdotal evidence counts, began speaking while we were living in Germany. She would speak to me in English and then turn to someone else and speak fluently in German. When we moved to England she added the trick of changing her accent to suit her speaker.

Of course she hit a later stage of development in which, upon hearing me speak German, she would look at me with an expression that said "is that the best you can manage?"

lol Teenagers, don't you love em.

Julia, thank you for your thoughts on the Malaysian situation.

The urban=Nationalist (Mainlanders) and rural=Taiwanese lines are still the same.

Regarding the use of internet ENglish, it certainly is a big motivating factor for many of my students, who use English chatrooms etc. However, I think it's easy to overestimate the impact of the internet. Although ENglish does dominate the web, there is a huge number of Chinese language sites, Japanese language sites, and Arabic sites, to mention just a few of the other global languages. One of the interesting things about computer use though is in the way Chinese is written. Young people can write in Chinese on the internet incredibly fast, but their pen and paper skills are lamentably deteriorating.

THanks for your kind words about my blog!

#9 Reminds me of my father's two favourite sentences from a French phrase book:
1. My grandmother smokes pipe tobacco.
2. The sleeping car attendant has been struck by lightning.

#36: LOL! That reminds of the classic book English As She Is Spoke, which is a horribly hilarious Portuguese-English dictionary written by two 19th century Portuguese scholars who couldn't speak English. They used a Portuguese-French dictionary and a French-English dictionary to write their book. Mark Twain had this comment about the book:

"Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect."

McSweeney's in the US recently re-released this book. A couple of typical phrases, from the section on fishing:

"Silence! there is a superb perch! Give me quick the rod, Ah! there is, it is a lamprey."

"That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing."

"Try it! I desire that you may be more happy and more skilful who acertain fisher, what have fished all day without to can take nothing."

What I want are language books that tell you what not to say - you know the phrases that make perfectly good sense if translated into English but get you in dreadful trouble if repeated elsewhere.

tomcatMurr: I'm coming late to your funky summer/summer funk. But I'm interested in the CEFR. Actually, where I'm teaching at the moment is all based on the CEFR. Is it really for all languages? I thought just European ones. I've thought about reading the document and think it's pretty great you had it printed out. One day I'll have to read it - I'm so swamped in things I have to read for my MA program that I barely have time to read anything else as is.

By the way, have you noticed that they now have URLs in other alphabets than the Roman alphabet? I was walking past a shop in my neighborhood with a web site and the address was all in Chinese characters.

A friend is visiting me from abroad; I hope to start A Suitable Boy when he leaves in a couple of weeks. It sounds even more appealing from what you have said here!

How well I remember from my earliest years of studying French never, at the end of a meal, to translate "I'm full" literally as "Je suis pleine," meaning "I'm pregnant." And later, never to take the noun, "un baiser," meaning "a kiss," and turn it into the verb, thinking it means "to kiss."

rebeccanyc,

The very examples of which I was thinking.

I'd appreciate any other "must not say" French phrases.

Lol. Rebecca, and Urania, I once pronounced Repetiez as Repetiez (without an accent acute on the first e): it means fart instead of repeat/relate. I was singing a romantic French love song at the time, the song was PArlez moi d'amour, if I remember. Oh yes, here is a clip of Juliette Greco singing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtXzVFYPkyc

Voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir, is usually off limits on first acquaintance, doc, but quite acceptable after three bottles of Chateau Neuf du Pape.

Christopher it's nice to see you again! I was wondering how you are. The CEF is actually language unspecific, which means it can apply to every language. One hopes that as the Teaching Chinese as Foreign Language industry takes off over the next few years, that they will also use CEF to benchmark the levels of their materials and exams. I do recommend that you take a close look at it: a detailed knowledge of it, especially the principles behind it, will help with your MA and will definitely be useful in the future.

A Suitable Boy is unique and fabulous. It is thoroughly unmodern, in that it has no-self conscious metafictional tricks, but a wealth of story telling in exceedingly self-effacing prose. Its great achievement, similar to Tolstoy's in War and Peace, is to combine a huge epic sweep with a myriad of telling, microscopic details of the quotidian and totally believable and loveable characters, who change and develop. Nothing rings false, and the reader becomes totally involved in the story and events. It has no moments of great lyricism or beauty or incredible insight, but is nonetheless deeply moving and
true, and the details of Indian life are marvellously evocative. Seth's gift is the sustained concentration of vision and storytelling. Today I read about two women and a child sitting on a veranda watching an afternoon monsoon storm, and everything about it was perfect.

I am so excited about the news of the sequel and can hardly wait to get it.

Oh Murr,

I am thrilled by your recommendation of Suitable Boy. I LOVED his An Equal Music but have not read anything else by him yet. And when you say "unmodern, in that it has no-self conscious metafictional tricks", that is high praise for me, indeed. I am SO sick of self-referential cutesy nonsense passing for serious fiction these days. I just get tired of it and have to run to a straightforward thriller. LOL Maybe instead of Master and Margarita I will read the Seth next. But there is going to be a group discussion of MM here, and Wilf will take part, so there will be some good insights there, I trust. Perhaps MM first, and Seth later.

The wonderful thing -- well, one of the many wonderful things -- about Vikram Seth is that his books are different. My favorites (and, as I've said, one of my favorite books of all time) is A Suitable Boy, but his memoir about his great-aunt and -uncle, Two Lives, is a close second, and I also loved The Golden Gate, a novel in verse. I was not a big fan of An Equal Music, but I think perhaps I would have liked it more if I understood music better.

And like you, Murr, I can hardly wait for the sequel. But there have been other books I thought I couldn't wait for, and somehow I managed . . .

I enjoyed A Suitable Boy and will probably read it again, but I have read finer examples of Indian literature. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to the sequel. Will the treacherous Baron von Kindle, who is looking more like Big Brother everyday, find A Suitable Girl for us and if so, we he allow us to keep her and for how long?

Indian literature is of particular interest to me as well and I have read a fair bit. Do list some recommendations, urania.

Andrushka,

Didn't you read the latest news flash from the dacha? urania's attention is currently riveted on The Kindly Ones. You might consider Ghosh's The Glass Palace or anything by Ghosh (wow a pun!). I also love and have read repeatedly The Hero's Walk by Anita Rau Badami. And there's always The Mahabharata.

And of course, don't forget
A Fine Balance
Midnight's Children
Shame
A Passage to India
The God of Small Things
The Seige of Krishnapur
The Painter of Signs

Urania, which version of the Mahabarata do you recommend

So it's being a long hot summer here at the casa. The big project I mentioned earlier has fallen through, so I am at liberty once more. My funk is over.

I think it's clear at this point that I shall not be going back to Dostoevsky for a while. Probably until the autumn, or winter, after my change of abode. My funk has been useful, however, in that I have been considering the nature of my reading. It seems to me that I have three kinds of reading:

1.Reading motivated by curiosity: to deepen my understanding of something, to immerse myself in a particular writer, theme or period. I try to read carefully and responsively in this mode, and write about my reading.

2. Reading motivated by work: to keep abreast of current developments, or to provide background to a specific project

3.Reading motivated by pleasure: entertainment reading, beach or pool reading

There is considerable overlap between the three, of course, but predominantly I read in the first mode. At the moment, I am reading in the third mode. It's simply too hot to do anything else.

I have finished A Suitable Boy and hope to write something about it in the next few days. I have been inspired to reread Midnight's Children, and the two books side by side are throwing up lots of interesting ideas. I seem to have found myself in India this summer. I plan to read Shame after that, as I have become interested in Partition.

It seems to me that the history of modern India is similar to that of china and Taiwan. Both countries had an initial period of political euphoria, in which all kinds of possibilities lay dormant. then this was hijacked by a political dynasty: the Gandhis in India and Chiang Kai Shek's short-lived dynasty in Taiwan. Also, the massive potential of India has not really been fulfilled. Poverty, illiteracy and subsistence existence is still the norm for the bulk of the population 50 years after Independence. In the same way, and for many of the same reasons, I think China's much vaunted potential will remain largely unfulfilled.

Here is a clip of the legendary Taiwanese singer Jiang Hui. She is Taiwanese, not Chinese, and she sings in the Taiwanese language. I love this song because it reminds me strongly of the mountains and people of the mountains. The indigenous population of Taiwan have a marvellously rich musical heritage. They sing in the open throat style, which carries through the mists in the mountains. This is a commercial pop song, but it taps into the Taiwanese sound, hence its great popularity here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egUCTDyqjb4

Murr, I just recently heard that my daughter has finished reading Crime and Punishment for the second time. In your learned cat's opinion, is that common? Please note that she read it the first time not even a year ago.

Murr, have you read Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra? I'm not sure whether you would like it or not, but it is a remarkable portrait of modern Bombay/Mumbai through the lens of a major gangster. The author attempts a little to bring the whole of crime/Bollywood/politics/poverty/corruption, etc. into the novel and I do think he doesn't quite accomplish everything he sets out to do, but it's a fascinating book anyway. I reached a point in the middle (it's very long) where I wanted to put it down in frustration, but in the end I was impressed.

Murr,

I, too, have a fascination with India. Probably close to thirty years ago now I read and loved Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. I am not sure it would hold up for me or for you now, but at the time I was totally bowled over. It covers Partition extremely well. I also read a fair bit about Mountbatten. It is interesting that towards the end of his life, we are only discovering now, he felt that his role was a complete "cock-up" and he seemed to regret it all. Freedom at Midnight, I seem to recall, was quite good, too.

Aluvalibri, I am very concerned about this as well. IMO you should look carefully behind any doors when entering a room, do not keep large amounts of cash in the house; and if you hear your daughter muttering to herself, keep a large distance.

lol.

Actually, Dostoevsky appeals greatly to adolescents (intelligent literate ones of course). (Forgive me I cannot remember how old your daughter is). I first read Dostoevsky when I was 13 or 14 I think, The Idiot. In his lifetime he was also very popular with the young. I cannot account for this, except to say that what appealed to me most, I think, was the other-worldly setting: 19th century Russia was soooooo distant from my own circumstances, and I wanted to be there. It was the first 'adult' book I read, and there was also the cachet of reading an adult book involved as well.

I would love to know what your daughter thinks of it!

Rebecca and P, thanks for the recommendations. I will try to get hold of all the titles you mention. Books on India for some reason are quite popular here.

Well, she is 21 and, if I may say so myself, quite well read (Coetzee, Patrick White, Toni Morrison, among other things. She was reading Shakespeare at 9, when her other classmates were hardly done with chapter books.)
When I talk to her (she is away at school) I will ask her to write down what she thinks of it - other than she obviously liked it a lot, or else she would not have read it twice, I assume.
Yes, I am glad to say that she is, indeed, intelligent and literate.
:-))

Thank god for that! Yes, please ask her. I'm very interested in what she has to say. has she read any other Dostoevsky? I love a luscious Dostoevsky virgin!!!!!!

I read Dostoyevsky as a teenager too (C&P and The Brothers Karamazov), but when I tried C&P again a few years ago (because I was eager to read the new Pevear & Volokhonsky translation, since I loved their Tolstoy translations), I just couldn't get into it. Sorry, Murr, I have confessed to you before that I'm unable to read Dostoyevsky as an adult!

She might have read The Brothers Karamazov, but I am not sure.
I will ask her.

Love the link to Jiang Hui!
Sorry to learn of the collapse of the big project.
Today's weather map shows your Beautiful Island smack in the middle of Typhoon #8, so I hope you can keep your paws dry. My Isle of Genji remains in the suffocating caress of humidity without the catharsis of a good storm to carry the moisture away.

I have a yen to languish in the comfort of air conditioning and read A Suitable Boy, etc., but must drag out each day to earn some Yen instead.
(slinks off to the showers after that poor attempt at cleverness)

Hey I read War and Peace when I was eleven. How does that add up on the parental unit worry meter?

It just shows how smart you already were, but we knew that.
;-)

I can turn back flips on garden walls. How much smarter does one get?

Rebecca, you are in good company. Nabakov also couldn't read Dostoevsky, and wrote famously about what a mediocre writer he was. (!) Perhaps how you and Vlad think about Dostoevsky, is how I think about Mann,....

Julia, I'm glad you liked the Jiang Hui link! The typhoon is due to make landfall this weekend. About time too, as we have not had one this year, and water is becoming a concern. Pray for rain!!!!! Water rationing in Taipei in August is no joke, I'm telling you.

Urania, this is normal behaviour for a cat.

Well, the typhoon has come and gone, leaving the reservoirs nice and full, and not too much damage. I even managed to get two days off work!

I am getting lots of reading done while the storm batters the house.

Here is my review of A Suitable Boy. I am reading Midnight's Children now, and the contrast between these two different approaches to Indian history and literature couldn't be bigger.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/08/suitable-boy-vikram-seth.html

Murr, I love your review of A Suitable Boy; it makes me want to buy a copy and start reading it right away (but I think I have it at home). I'll be eagerly awaiting your review of Midnight's Children.

I'm glad to learn that LT's favorite and coolest cat survived the storm with no damage, wet fur, or severe Internet disruption!

Murrushka,

Once again, your stellar prose fills me with joy and envy. I want to write stellar prose.

Not only is it a thoughtful, interesting review -- but now it's an LT HOT REVIEW!

It is an excellent review, Murr. Bravissimo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And it couldn't be for a better book!

Thank you for all your comments! It's a pleasure to write for such a discerning and appreciative audience!

Hi Murr, I noticed you hot review. Congrats, very entertaining.

Thanks dan.

Oh dear that typhoon has done extensive damage to the south of the island. Here in the north we were largely spared the worst of its ravages. It veered south and then ground to a stop just as it made landfall, spinning stationary over the centre of the island. The south is now totally cut off from the north. Let's hope they don't declare independence.



Rain rain rain. 48 hours of it. Relentless and drilling.

Nasty storm. Dramatic photo. Over here in the Eastern Capital, we had a downpour of water warm enough to take a shower in...and a little earthquake just awhile ago to top things off.

Julia, grab a bottle, hunker down and wait for daylight!

Wonderful photo! Glad you're OK.

I empathize -- we in Florida are waiting with bated breath for the height of hurricane season -- so far it's been very quiet. Glad you missed the worst of it.

Murrushka,

Come to the dacha. With floods, come invading armies of mosquitoes and the things mosquitoes carry. I have the revivifying vodka and herring ready.

Hugs,
Marienka

Murr,

truly dreadful news today out of Taiwan and the typhoon.

You ARE OK? The part of the island with the dreadful mudslide is not near you?

#77 - i have a rather bleak bet going as to what major mosquito born disease will appear/reappear in the US. Malaria and yellow fever were both endemic through the 19th C. I picked malaria, my friend chose dengue. It's looking like he's right.

(We've had localized epidemics of mosquito borne encephalitis post wwII - ironically, i guess, in part because of suburbs and yard pride. Strormwater drainage backed up due to excessive grass clippings and provided a setting for the outbreaks). On the otherhand the drug i take for arthritis is also a major treatment/prophylactic for malaria so i guess i'm inadvertantly prepared for my bet)

Wow, that is a grim post, but I fear you're right. Every time I've been up in the mountains (Catskills, NY state) this summer, I've been eaten alive, thanks to the huge and hungry populations this summer. I've always been a magnet for mosquitos, and I don't like any of the repellents I've tried, but I guess I like them better than dengue or malaria!

Thanks to you all for your expressions of concern, both here and on my profile page.

Mercifully, The typhoon did not effect Taipei that much, and both I and my Taiwanese loved ones are all well.

It's of course a tragedy that the people always effected worse by these natural disasters are the poor, the farmers and rural folk. The mudslide happens because the mountains in these rural areas are stripped of their natural covering to make way for illegal betel nut plantations. The betel nut palm does not hold the soil, and in heavy rains, everything gets washed away. After every typhoon there is talk of the government doing something about this problem, but of course, politicians being politicians, nothing ever does get done.

Regarding mosquitoes, it's still a mystery to me how human beings cannot eradicate this species when you seem to be quite good at eradicating other species. But then, I am just a cat. Dengue fever is a common sumer hazard in Taiwan, especially in the south.

Glad you and yours are ok, Murr.

In other news, mosquitoes are being used to deliver malarial "vaccine." AP

It is a relief to see that you and your loved ones are fine, Murr.
Thanks for letting us know.

Glad to hear that you're okay...but feel sorry about the others.

Was just stopping in to check on you; glad to hear you and yours are okay. Since I have been on LT, the world has become smaller for me.

Ha! Not for you only, Lois!

I completely agree, especially these past couple of weeks.

Thank goodness your are safe. I was about to send out the Sacred Order of Welsh Terrorists to search for you.

The news said there was 100 inches (!) of rain in 48 hours, so it's good to hear you're safe, though not so good for the other part of the island.

I loved your review of A Suitable Boy. It makes me want to reread it, which I think I will soon.

As to Indian fiction may I recommend:

Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh--about the partition from the perspective of a small village near the border where Muslims live in harmony with Hindus--until trains of slaughtered people begin passing through. The edition I read had some amazing photos by Margaret Bourke-White of some of the actual events that occurred during the partition.

Confessions of a Thug by Philip Meadows Taylor--a fictionalized account of the life of a Thug (or Thugee) written by Taylor, who was some sort of British police official in India in the mid-1800's. Thugs were a sect who roamed the country murdering, robbing and looting, according to strict ritualized procedures This book has been called the first true crime book. Very interesting.

And I can second polutropos re The Raj Quartet--I reread it a few years ago, and it stands up, although it is told from the point of view of the British.

Dear tomcatMurr

So glad to hear you are well. I have just come up for air having weathered the "storm" of an 18th birthday party on Saturday night and a 16 year old's "post" formal party on Tuesday night. What was I thinking????? I finally got a breather today and read all about it in the Guardian. Have you seen the review of Susan Richards' Lost and Found in Russia? http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/11/lost-found-russia-richards

Thanks to everyone once again for your good wishes during the typhoon. Also, for the great recommendations for Indian reading. I have made a note of everything and will try to pick up these books as and when I can.

I have completed Midnight's Children and put up my review here:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/08/midnights-children-salman-rushdie.html

I enjoyed MC immensely: I think it's a stunning achievement. I was amazed, delighted, shocked, disgusted, amused, gobsmacked and so on. But I was never moved in the same way that I was with A Suitable Boy. Rushdie is a clever writer, capable of stunning prose, and knows what he is doing on an intellectual level, but he seems to lack the wisdom and humanity of the truly great.

I have almost completed Shame, which I read right after MC to get a slightly wider perspective on Salman Rushdie. Shame is a bit of a let down. It's full of the kind of tricks that make MC such a rollicking read, but without the central character of Salem Sinai to humanise it, it's a very cold read. All the characters are extremely unpleasant, and one is left with a very nasty impression of Islam and Pakistan. Everyone and everything in it seems to be so wholly awful.

I will be glad to get out of that neck of the woods and return to Russia. I still have two weeks to fill with reading until the Master and Margarita group read in the Salon gets under way. I intend to read The Namesake which Polutropos sent me some months ago, see if I can clear away some of the TBR pile.

I'm with you, Murr; I loved Midnight's Children but was highly disappointed with Shame, which I read in that same order. I have to remember that I do want to read The Satanic Verses in the very near future.

I will savor your full review later, over a glass of vodka.

ETA: I'm wrong; it was Fury that I read and didn't like, not Shame, which I haven't read yet...

Similar experience here, tomcatMurr. Absolutely loved Midnight's Children, but couldn't really get into The Enchantress of Florence or The Moor's Last Sigh. They both had their moments, but they weren't the complete package that Midnight's Children was. I have The Satanic Verses on my bookshelf, but frankly I'm rather hesitant to give it a go.

I'm doing an Indian theme read up until my trip to Mumbai in December, and I'd like to read more Vikram Seth or try some other authors.

Hola Murr. I read your review of Midnight's Children after finding it in the Hot Reviews. I even clicked over to your blog, something which I rarely do (follow links off LT, that is). I will admit that I only read taking up where the LT review began and downwards. But still wonderful review. India and magic realism. I've added it to the TRB list.

Thanks Chrine!

Doc and Christopher: I had a similar experience years ago reading Rushdie the first time. I think, as far as I can remember, it was after Satanic Verses (which I remember hating) that I stopped following Rushdie's career. I don't think he ever managed to recapture the imaginative density of MC. MC was definitely worth the reread, though.

I've only read The Satanic Verses, which I didn't like either. A friend who is a Rushdie fan has recommended I read Midnight's Children. Your excellent review has convinced me to add MC to my tbr list as well. Thanks.

I've always thought Rushdie was overrated. I do love A Suitable Boy. I hope Baron von K. gives me A Suitable Girl when it comes out.

I gave up pretty quickly on the satanic verses. i started, and have enjoyed, what i've read of Midnight's Children - but i've managed to misplace the book somewhere in a rather small house - so haven't gotten past the first 100 pages. But when i find it....

I read parts of The Satanic Verses over 10 years ago as part of an Islamic studies course, but have never bothered to go back and re-read the whole thing again. I found it interesting, I guess, to see how Rushdie played with the story of Muhammad, but it seems that most of the attention this book gets is due to the fact that a fatwa was issued calling for his death because of the book, rather than the book's quality itself. Despite my initial bad experience with Rushdie, I have been intrigued by Midnight's Children for several years now and hope to get around to it one of these days.

tomcat Murr I continue to be in awe of your prowess when it comes to writing. Oh to have been able to write my English assignments in this fashion when at Uni. I feel like a bear of very little brain when I read your stuff but I always persevere and always come away much enlightened. Thank you for sharing as always. Funnily enough my sister-in-law or SIL as we call each other lent me The Moor's Last Sigh recently but I couldn't get into it. Perhaps Midnight's Children is the one for me.....

Being a contrarian always, I must weigh in with partially contrary experience.

I read Rushdie's Fury, Ground Beneath Her Feet and Moor's Last Sigh. I enjoyed all three immensely. The reason my contrariness is only partial is that when a year ago I started Midnight's Children I gave up after about 20 pages, but it was, I think, because my mind was elsewhere, dealing with a crisis of some sort. So the problem, I am sure, was me and not Rushdie. I have not yet even attempted Satanic Verses.

Rushdie is a first-rate second-rater. Nothing to be ashamed of, and certainly nothing to pooh-pooh. He has it in him to do first-rate work, but so far he's lacked the light-touch. And what Wyndham Lewis called the temperature of the duelist.

I found there was a light touch to Midnight's children -- especially to the stories of SS's childhood. Other bits, especially the ending were more forced to me. There was a tremendous sense of possibility with the childhood stuff, even as things begin to go wrong. The overall framework of the book seemed clumsy to me in comparison. I'm not sure whether it is the booker of bookers for that framework or for the lightness of some of that writing - I think people are very fond of writing that captures childhood like that and its realms of possibility and I hope its for that writing.

Light-touch? What is it? Here's one example of someone who possesses the thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRI0S6f3_Mg&NR=1

here's another light touch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ9qWpa2rIg

Thanks to everyone for the Rushdie debate, and for your responses to my review! Seems like Rushdie is as controversial as ever.

I have been killing time this week with my reading, waiting to start M&M. I read:

The Man in the High Castle my first foray into SF for about 25 years. I read some A.E.Van Vogt, and the ubiquitous Dune saga in my teens, but have not read any SF since. This was an interesting and quick read. Less SF than counterfactual fiction: the story is about a world in which Germany and Japan have won WW2. Apart from this interesting premise, what I found particularly interesting about this book, was the way the discourse changed to reflect the thoughts of the characters, and how these thoughts were effected by the language the characters are thinking in. The Japanese characters thought in a kind of noun driven language in which particles, verb tenses, any kind of grammatical inflections were totally absent, as if Japanese had been translated word for word into English. Interesting and clever technique.

I also read Doctor Copernicus, which puzzled and ultimately disappointed me. I read The Untouchable last year, and was impressed by it, and I picked up this volume in a second hand shop here. Banville's evocation of the late medieval world seems to consist in emphasising how boys were readily available for sex, consenting or otherwise. Mildly titillating, but not very convincing. There was no plague, for one thing, and in 1500 the plague must have been at the front of everyone's mind. The discourse was wildly erratic, veering between a kind of cod medieval grammar ( I needs must do ...) and a wholly modern vocabulary and armoury of metaphor and simile. All the villains were described with exactly the same kind of physiognomy, and characters came and went for no apparent reason. I know next to nothing of Copernicus's theory (apart from the basic, you know, I'm not a flat- earther like the Pope....) but I came away knowing less, and what's worse, caring even less. Banville tends to overwrite, and his historical imagination is not very good, frankly, which is ironic for a writer who has made a name for himself writing historical fiction. For a more convincing picture of the medieval world and mind, go to Dorothy Dunnett.

I attempted to read The Namesake but after 20 pages or so, realised that this is the kind of writing that is best found in the kind of magazines that have been abandoned in doctors' waiting rooms. Disposable prose.

I am now reading David Foster Wallace's essay: A Supposedly Fun thing I'll never do again and enjoying it immensely. My first read of DFW, and so far not disappointing.

#105 - couldn't agree more about The Namesake - except I read the whole darn book.

A feathery touch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as9K3iXY_dg&feature=related

Thanks for the music.

You mentioned light-touch first if I may say so Poor-ious. i do find that writing about saleem's childhood to be that way - I do not find the novel overall to have it. Are you assuming I need to be shown what lightness of touch is?

I can't do the basketball trick but I can catch a football on the back of my neck.

Na, Tony your touch is plenty light. This is sort of what I mean:

ADAM'S CURSE

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said: 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

Better go down upon your marrow bones
and scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyr's call the world.'

And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied: 'To be born a woman is to know -
Although they do not talk of it at school -
That we must labor to be beautiful.'

I said: 'It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much laboring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

William Butler Yeats 1902

Yeats' touch would get lighter and lighter as the years rolled on. As light as Teddy Wilson, maybe lighter.

A beautiful reply, thank you. That reminds me in the end that:

The ancient rose has a name, we hold only empty names.

But I would add that we may invest them with as much meaning as anyone ever could, or ever will.

Yeats has happy memories for me.

Where there's no meaning the people perish.

Hamlet warns the players to eschew the ham-fist:

http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_003.html

SHAKESPEARE'S FAVORITES

Shakespeare, like Rich II, talked of wills and famously left his second-best bed to his wife. He left no advice, however, rightly believing that it's a dramatist's business to ask questions and not provide answers. His characters speak their own thoughts and not his, but perhaps we get closest to him when we hear the voices of those he loved the most. They were not the kings and queens or even the princes, the great heroes and heroines, the giants with a fatal flaw or the star-crossed lovers, who had, he said, a great deal in common with poets and lunatics. No, the characters he loved were the men and women of common sense, clear heads, loyal, stoical, able to see through the mists of self-delusion and deceit out of which great tragedies come.
They don't have starring roles, but they are the best friends of the heroes or heroines and if only they were listened to much trouble might be avoided. One such character, clearly loved by the author, is Kent, true to King Lear as he lives through his master's reign from arrogance to madness and gentle resignation. 'I do profess to be no less than I seem;' says Kent in his creed. To 'serve him truly that will put me in trust; to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgement; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish.'
Another embodiment of the loyal and truthful man of common sense is , of course, Horatio, of whom Hamlet said:

. . . thou hast been
As one , in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks . . .
Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

After which Hamlet, thinking he has expressed himself too emotionally to be the stoical character he so much admires, says, 'Someting too much of this . . . ' Perhaps our problem today is that we have too many Hamlets and not enough Horatios.
Kent, Horatio, the favored character turns up again and again in more complex forms as, for instance, Enobarbus in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA or the more cynical Lennox in MACBETH. When Owen Glendower, the Welsh wizard says 'I can call spirits from the vasty deep' and Hotspur (played wonderfully by Tim Pigott-Smith in the BBC version) replies 'Why so can I , or so can any man;/ But will they come when you do call for them?' the dashing young hero becomes one with the common-sensible enemy of pomposity and pretension . Emilia, Iago's clear-sighted wife, can berate the murderously jealous Othello, 'O gull! O dolt! As ignorant as dirt!' and express the common sense of the audience, cutting the heroic , poetic, easily deceived Moor of Venice down to size so that we can be allowed to feel some sympathy for him at the end of the play. There is a great deal of this straight-talking spirit in Rosalind, and Juliet's loquacious and boring old nurse has more good sense in her little finger than the Franciscan confessor Friar Laurence has, with his dotty plans calculated to cause a tragedy, in his entire body.
This stoical character, who can survey the vagaries of the world with a smile of tolerant amusement, until some mindless horror makes him or her call out, 'O dolt! As ignorant as dirt!', comes close to that adopted by Michel,Lord of Montaigne, another writer with a tower, his shelves crammed with books and his walls covered with quotations from Greek and Roman philosophers. He did his best to incorporate the stoical attributes of the great past civilizations into the Christianity of the Renaissance and to discover ' a sane and decent manner of life'. John Florio, who translated Montaigne, was undoubtedly a friend of Shakespeare and there is, in the British Museum, a copy of Florio's Montaigne with Shakespeare's name, some say in his handwriting, written in it. Whether the ESSAYS influenced the later plays, or confirmed Shakespeare's feeling for his favorite characters, the views of the glovemaker's son from Stratford and the heir to the country round the vineyards of Chateau Eyquem echo each other, and add their valuable bequests to succeeding generations.
Montaigne wrote little about the afterlife but he was concerned to reconcile the humanist to the process of dying. 'I want death to find me,' he wrote, 'planting my cabbages - caring little for it and even less about the imperfections of my garden.'

from John Mortimer's, WHERE THERE'S A WILL: Thoughts on the Good Life.

This is a book I will keep close to me for the rest of my days.

… nor the cruel fifth Procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate…As the last words of The Master and Margarita arrive, the resolution forms within me to return to my Russian exile forthwith. Fyodor Mihailovich beckons from the bookshelves, and I can hear the steppes calling in my dreams as winter approaches.

Before I read another Dostoevsky, however, I need to get four books finished that I have been dipping in and out of all year as background material: The Icon and the Axe, Russian Thought, Russian Literature and Belinsky, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov Selected Criticism. This is part of my devotion to the Doctrine of Completism. I am now a cat on a mission.

I am halfway through Billington now. It’s a slow, dense read. He makes Orlando Figes look like a tabloid journalist I can’t believe they were writing about the same country. I’m at the transition from the Father and Sons debate during the 60s going into the Popularisers of the 70s, up to the year 1863 in my study of Dostoevsky’s life and work, and of course it dawns on me that the mature Dostoevsky is a Popularizer par example. That sends me off to Russian Thought to read about the Popularizers. He mentions Chadaev, so I’m dipping back into The Icon and the Axe, and Russian Literature to recall what he was all about. A reference is made to Belinsky, and I realise I need to get a real handle on Belinsky's social criticism. It sounds tedious, but he begins his Thoughts and Notes on Russian Literature: Whatever our literature may be, it has far greater significance for us than may appear; in it, and it alone, is contained the whole of our intellectual life, and all the poetry of our life... and something resonates deep within me. (Pushkin and Lermontov are meanwhle beckoning from the TBR pile you didn’t do us very thoroughly). My target is Notes from Underground 1864, but I remember reading somewhere that a key influence on this book was Chernyashevsky’s What is to be done? So I get that down off the shelf and flick through the introduction to that at this point I’m beginning to feel breathless and I think my palms are itching can it be? I take a break to read a quick Akhmatova poem

Your lynx-eyes, Asia,

Spy on my discontent;

they lure into the light
my buried self,

something the silence spawned,

no more to be endured

than the noon sun in Termez.

Pre-memory floods the mind

like molten lava on the sands ...

as if I were drinking my own tears

from the cupped palms of a stranger's hands.

...and reflect on my own experience of the Epicanthic Fold as an English cat at large in Formosa. Back to Billington. I see a line from Belinsky, through Chernashevsky through Dostoevsky. In passing I learn that when the St Petersburg Academy opened under Catherine the Great, there was a Chair of Allegory, while under Nicholas 1st philosophy was a banned subject throughout the empire seems Bulgakov’s magical realism was present throughout Russian history not just under the whimsical Stalin.

I remember that I need to read Hegel to really get to grips with the generation of the 40s where Dostoevsky came from, so I dip into this and realise that Hegel needs an understanding of Kantian phenomenology and it takes me five minutes to type that word to understand Dostoevsky’s notion of the self, which is my main area of interest, seeing how this can tie in to my field of linguistics, and the resurgent interest in the once discredited Worf-Sapir Hypothesis, and recent neurobiology, not to mention Theravada I need to take a valium and go lie down and watch some TV. It’s all too much.

Msr Murr

Glad to see that you are about to return to your rightful course through life.

As you may suspect, my knowledge of the Russian 19th century literary and intellectual scene is disgracefully thin (although I have made small steps to rectify this). However,I will try to keep up.

#114 - wow man...sorry, that's my first response, and I can't come with anything better. With all this going on in your head, I'm really looking forward to your take on Notes from the Underground - you're going to force me to re-read it.

Thanks Zeno and Dan for your continued interest. It will help to relieve those long winter nights of exile.

>113 Porius:,

Here's the true story behind the second best bed behest. The second best bed was the one on which S and A made wild and adventurous love . . . before he went to London and discovered he was gay. The first best bed was stiff, imposing, and though expensive, quite uncomfortable. Additionally, Queen Elizabeth slept in this bed. Mrs. S. and QE did not get along. Remember, QE had at least an inch of make-up on her face when she died and she smelled really bad. Mrs. S or AH as most call her threatened WS with eternal damnation if he left her the first best bed. WS, rightly scared, complied because hell hath no fury like a woman whose wishes have been ignored.

Mary, thanks for clarifying that mystery.

Murr,

you continue to astound me. What you are describing in #114 above just takes my breath away.

True scholarship, done with love and passion. I admire and envy you. I once was like that, too. And now age, fatigue and short attention span have killed my ability to research and think and pursue like that.

I am thrilled by your project. I will watch from afar, in awe.

118: There's nothing in the Sonnets that suggests that Shake-speare had anything more than admiration for the haughty young man.
Sonnet 20 is specific, it seems to me, about this issue:

A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals mens eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing;
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.

I had to look up epicanthic fold.

A fold of skin of the upper eyelid that partially covers the inner corner of the eye. Also called epicanthus, palpebronasal fold.

You quest is noble. I admire your passion and dedication.

In which bed did Willie Hughes sleep I wonder?

TCM
Was reading Colin Wilson's OUTSIDER last night and I was thinking it was a book right up your alley. He has tackled in his long and illustrious career many of the things you mention in # 114. No Kant without Leibnitz, etc. etc. I'm not sure how he feels about William S Hart eyes, and all of that - his eyes are heavy-lidded come to think of it, maybe to protect him from the cold blasts of the critics, or from their garish light.
Just a couple of thoughts as a funky summer closes out here in the west.

Poor, I did read that years ago. Is it worth a reread you think? Maybe I should read it again now I know a bit more about Russia? Whaddya fink?

Davushka, The Epicanthic Fold (AKA the Asian Eye) is my symbol for the overall cultural differences between East and West with which I am confronted on a daily basis. The Chinese see the world through the Epicanthic Fold (fold as in flock or herd, as in return to the fold, a place of refuge and safety as well as obscured vision), and it's quite different. I hope to give this title to my major work (now in development): a study of the Chinese mind, combined with Murr's adventures in Formosa. When I finish my Russian exile.

P, you are very kind. I seem to be motivated by an ever widening and ever deepening sense of curiosity, which keeps me going. The more I learn, the more I know I need to learn.

Urania, please can you supply me diapers or at least change my litter tray if you are going to make me laugh like that.

I think so. Wilson has devoted countless hours to the problem of consciousness. I can think of few who have done more to push back the comforts and all things that stand in the way of understanding. The OUTSIDER is where he began. A remarkable book for one so young. I've read a great many of his books on all subjects. I've been reading him with pleasure and profit for almost 40 years now. It was through Wilson that I was introduced to the works of John Cowper Powys. It is from Powys' novel PORIUS that I take my nickname. He was also an insightful student of Dostoyevsky. Powys was ever in pursuit of all or nothing, and in the end, it seems, he chose, nothing. The pursuit is still on with me. If only because it's so much pfun.

Murr,

I have behind me as I type this a line by Einstein, "I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious." That very much echoes your "I seem to be motivated by an ever widening and ever deepening sense of curiosity, which keeps me going. The more I learn, the more I know I need to learn."

I am also passionately curious. I also have your ever deepening curiosity. But I lack the energy to keep going at a high level for an appropriate length of time. I am amazed that with your busy teaching schedule and writing projects, you have it.

Once again, hats off!

(I am compiling an ever growing pile of translations and some of my own fiction. I will, I MUST get those done, before I leave this vale of tears.)

i know SFish stuff isn't yr general cup of oolong, but for some modern takes on many of the topics you investigate via reading, Richard Powers the gold bug variations and galatea 2.2 might be enjoyable. The former, esp. if coding/codons/consciousness / Bach and books/libraries mashed rather cleverly together in a well written novel appeals.

In an ambitious, but not completely successful attempt, to meld a theory of consciousness with a "academic mystery", Dan Lloyd's Radiant Cool: a novel theory of consciousness is a book i found fascinating, though many others found it just pretentious (which it is!). Contains both a shortish novel and longish essay both dealing with consciousness/the nature of narrative form/phenomenology and neural networks. whee!
http://www.trincoll.edu/~dlloyd/ for Lloyd's web page. I'm not sure how many novels get published by MIT press, but i doubt many.

Certainly knocks Philip Kerr's a philosophical investigation which attempts something similar in a British police procedural/mystery into a cocked hat(whatever that means!). A detective attempts to track down a serial killer who justifies himself w/, duh, Wittgenstein in a noirish near future. What do i know...Kirkus reviews -"comparing detective work to philosophical inquiry and raising questions about knowledge, proof, and reality in unnervingly dramatic contexts. Kerr doesn't stint on either the technical or the philosophical side of his futuristic landscape: the result is the bleakest, brainiest thriller to come along in years. (Kirkus Reviews)" NOW THIS is a pretentious book that's not very interesting, though i did finish it last week.

Bob, Dan Lloyd's website looks very interesting. The conjunction of neuroscience, linguistics, musicology and lit/phil is very attractive, and just what I'm looking for. Thank you!

Thanks to everyone for contributing to the conversation.

This thread is now closed. Please go here for more herring and vodka and high jinks:

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