Hotel by Railroad — Richard Tuschman

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Who Sues for a Cow — Cornelis Saftleven

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Robert Creeley reads his poem “The Ballad of the Despairing Husband”

Allegory of Man’s Choice between Virtue and Vice (detail) — Frans Francken the Younger

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Entry into Jerusalem (detail) — Duccio

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Three Books

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Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault. English translation by Richard Howard. Second edition Pantheon hardback, 1965. Cover design by Pan Visual, featuring a detail from Bosch’s Christ Carrying the Cross.

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Correction by Thomas Bernhard. English translation by Sophie Wilkins. 1983 first edition trade paperback by Aventura. Cover design by Keith Sheridan featuring an illustration by Marshall Arisman. I wrote about Correction here.

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The Tanners by Robert Walser. English translation by Susan Bernofsky. Irregular-sized trade paperback by New Directions, 2009. Cover design by Erik Rieselbach.

Allegory of Man’s Choice between Virtue and Vice (detail) — Frans Francken the Younger

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To write often means remembering what never existed (Clarice Lispector)

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Cryogenics Afterlife — Julia Faber

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Fillmore Jivish (Pavement)

Allegory of Man’s Choice between Virtue and Vice (detail) — Frans Francken the Younger

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Selections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness

Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of DarknessI’ve preserved the reviewers’ original punctuation and spelling. I love Le Guin’s novel, by the way, and wrote about it here.  More one-star Amazon reviews].


 

I burned this book

I don’t have a college education

I started reading this book years ago

How they kemmer (Another word for mating)?

I find the use of made up language difficult to interpret

The Left Hand of Darkness it nothing but some sort of feminist garbage

After reading just over 100 pages of this utterly worthless book

no depth of character or feeling coming thu

I was just forced to read this book

I don’t care what her father did

I haven’t read hardly any Sci Fi

as good as a warm cup of milk

no story whatsoever

no plot

I’ve read a lot of scifi

I read couple of chapters

I was forced to read this novel

I will NOT be reading any more Sci Fi

I was a biology and psychology major in college back in the mid 70’s

I think she was trying to impress people back when she originally wrote the book

Ask youself why people keep on bringing up the fact that her father was an anthropologist?

Being an honors lit. student thu high scool and college, I am no stranger to classic lit

minor cultural concepts (language, religion, hierarchy)

there are no kemmering in a pornographic sense

I could NOT follow what was even going on

I’m still trying to read my way through

My taste is sophisticated

I love Sci Fi on TV

no excitement

I read 75%

just a description of a planet

He certainly isn’t particularly manful

Give me a setting that isn’t a prescription for Prozac waiting to happen!

the jumping from old folklore stories on the planet and the tale being told

she gives characters such crazy names that it’s hard to remember who’s who

I read up to the chapter where the main character was imprisoned, and I don’t care

Some cultures belong in a petri dish and should be treated with biocide rather than respect

a totalitarian pesthole notable only for the biological oddity of its people

Is Ursula Le Guin the worst writer in American history?

dated, cumbersome and boring

Enough said

boring

Hated it

It’s about an envoy

bizarre characters and other minor details

A good candidate for the first sci-fi book burning

The author should have gone into anthropology like her great father

Nothing but some dude wandering around curious about gender roles

This was purchased and read for a book club. Absolutely no one liked it

Simply put, this book is just a 60’s retread going through a mental exercise

It is just a silly exercise in exploring what a world without genders would be like

Is Shakespeare’s daughter a good storyteller just because her father was the greatest writer ever?

the culture she has created in this book is uninteresting, unbelieveable, and sounds like the more dismal parts of New Jersey anyway

The author waste a lot of pages on unnecessary side stories

Had NO idea what was going on throughout the entire book

The worst (psudo) ethnography I have ever read

Could NOT follow the author’s train of thought

and then they kemmered

The Magic Caterpillar — Luděk Maňásek

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Luděk Maňásek’s illustration to “The Magic Caterpillar.” From Jaroslav Tichý’s Persian Fairy Tales, Hamlyn, 1970. (English translations in the collection are by Jane Carruth).

Seated Woman with Green Stockings — Egon Schiele

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Melancholia (detail) — Albrecht Dürer

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St. Patrick and the Druid, an episode from Finnegans Wake (with explication from Joseph Campbell)

On pages 611-613 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, St. Patrick meets the archdruid Balkelly:

Tunc. Bymeby, bullocky vampas tappany bobs topside joss pidgin fella Balkelly, archdruid of islish chinchinjoss in the his heptachromatic sevenhued septicoloured roranyellgreenlindigan mantle finish he show along the his mister guest Patholic with alb belongahim the whose throat hum with of sametime all the his cassock groaner fellas of greysfriaryfamily he fast all time what time all him monkafellas with Same Patholic, quoniam, speeching, yeh not speeching noh man liberty is, he drink up words, scilicet, tomorrow till recover will not, all too many much illusiones through photoprismic velamina of hueful panepiphanal world spectacurum of Lord Joss, the of which zoantholitic furniture, from mineral through vegetal to animal, not appear to full up to-gether fallen man than under but one photoreflection of the several iridals gradationes of solar light, that one which that part of it (furnit of heupanepi world) had shown itself (part of fur of huepanwor) unable to absorbere, whereas for numpa one pura —— duxed seer in seventh degree of wisdom of Entis–Onton he savvy inside true inwardness of reality, the Ding hvad in idself id est, all objects (of panepiwor) allside showed themselves in trues coloribus resplendent with sextuple gloria of light actually re-tained, untisintus, inside them (obs of epiwo). Rumnant Patholic, stareotypopticus, no catch all that preachybook, utpiam, tomorrow recover thing even is not, bymeby vampsybobsy tap — panasbullocks topside joss pidginfella Bilkilly–Belkelly say pat — fella, ontesantes, twotime hemhaltshealing, with other words verbigratiagrading from murmurulentous till stridulocelerious in a hunghoranghoangoly tsinglontseng while his comprehen-durient, with diminishing claractinism, augumentationed himself in caloripeia to vision so throughsighty, you anxioust melan-cholic, High Thats Hight Uberking Leary his fiery grassbelong- head all show colour of sorrelwood herbgreen, again, nigger- blonker, of the his essixcoloured holmgrewnworsteds costume the his fellow saffron pettikilt look same hue of boiled spinasses,other thing, voluntary mutismuser, he not compyhandy the his golden twobreasttorc look justsamelike curlicabbis, moreafter, to pace negativisticists, verdant readyrainroof belongahim Exuber High Ober King Leary very dead, what he wish to say, spit of superexuberabundancy plenty laurel leaves, after that com-mander bulopent eyes of Most Highest Ardreetsar King same thing like thyme choppy upon parsley, alongsidethat, if please-sir, nos displace tauttung, sowlofabishospastored, enamel Indian gem in maledictive fingerfondler of High High Siresultan Em-peror all same like one fellow olive lentil, onthelongsidethat, by undesendas, kirikirikiring, violaceous warwon contusiones of facebuts of Highup Big Cockywocky Sublissimime Autocrat, for that with pure hueglut intensely saturated one, tinged uniformly, allaroundside upinandoutdown, very like you seecut chowchow of plentymuch sennacassia Hump cumps Ebblybally! Sukkot?

Punc. Bigseer, refrects the petty padre, whackling it out, a tumble to take, tripeness to call thing and to call if say is good while, you pore shiroskuro blackinwhitepaddynger, by thiswis aposterioprismically apatstrophied and paralogically periparo-lysed, celestial from principalest of Iro’s Irismans ruinboon pot before, (for beingtime monkblinkers timeblinged completamen-tarily murkblankered in their neutrolysis between the possible viriditude of the sager and the probable eruberuption of the saint), as My tappropinquish to Me wipenmeselps gnosegates a handcaughtscheaf of synthetic shammyrag to hims hers, seeming-such four three two agreement cause heart to be might, saving to Balenoarch (he kneeleths), to Great Balenoarch (he kneeleths down) to Greatest Great Balenoarch (he kneeleths down quite-somely), the sound salse sympol in a weedwayedwold of the firethere the sun in his halo cast. Onmen.

That was thing, bygotter, the thing, bogcotton, the very thing, begad! Even to uptoputty Bilkilly–Belkelly-Balkally. Who was for shouting down the shatton on the lamp of Jeeshees. Sweating on to stonker and throw his seven. As he shuck his thumping fore features apt the hoyhop of His Ards.

Thud.

Good safe firelamp! hailed the heliots. Goldselforelump! Halled they. Awed. Where thereon the skyfold high, trampa-trampatramp. Adie. Per ye comdoom doominoom noonstroom. Yeasome priestomes. Fullyhum toowhoom.

 

Continue reading “St. Patrick and the Druid, an episode from Finnegans Wake (with explication from Joseph Campbell)”

Nude — Zinaida Serebriakova

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