Up Front: The Classics Are Rubbish Too
300 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 8 9 10 11 12 Newer→ Last
-
Ah, the Victorian novelists propensity for silly names. Trollope was even worse.
You mean he came up with something better/worse than Pumblechook? Do tell.
-
Giovanni - quite aware of the bible/biblos etc. is, per se, the word in Europe (well, a lot of European languages) for 'book'- BUT a compendium is NOT *a book*-
Not sure about the usefulness of the distinction. However it came about, whatever its history, it still seems a unit of bookness to me. At any rate, the thread was about classics so we're probably in the clear :-)
-
Well, I suppose if we were desperate, anything written on papyrus/paper/parchment/leather/stone/wood - ur - gel?
Let alone bytes - makes a book?"The Bible" is a contested (think Vulgate for a latter challenger, Torah for an earlier one) SET of books i.e it's a compendium-
no worries either way Giovanni - welcome you & son back to Aotearoa - and - I cant yet make the bread recipe. BUT one of my mates - who is a butcher & knifemaker, is soo going to make your Nonna's recipe this weekend!
Kia ora tatou-
-
Well, I suppose if we were desperate, anything written on papyrus/paper/parchment/leather/stone/wood - ur - gel?
Let alone bytes - makes a book?Interestring question, although we did coin the word ebook for a reason, surely - recognising that ineffable thing, the unit of bookness that still makes us say to this day that the Iliad is a book, in spite of the fact that originally it was written on nothing at all, and that its unit parts are called books.
"The Bible" is a contested (think Vulgate for a latter challenger, Torah for an earlier one) SET of books i.e it's a compendium-
Hey, I'm down with the history of it all, the contested part especially, Dario Fo and his marvellous work on the apocrypha is one of those things that it'd be worth learning Italian especially for... plus my mum in her old age has discovered religion - as old folk sometimes do - and now all her presents to me are books against the church. The latest is Augias and Cacitti, Inquest on Christianity, How You Build a Religion, improbable it will be translated but cracking read thus far. Her idea of something that is good for the plane, bless her.
BUT one of my mates - who is a butcher & knifemaker, is soo going to make your Nonna's recipe this weekend!
Fantastic!!
-
I'm going to have to think about 'unit of bookness' for a while (a book to me is a story - or set of information- between covers.) We'll send photos apropos the weekend feast ASAP-
-
a book to me is a story - or set of information- between covers
Very good: a set of information between covers = the bible = a book! Glad we could reach an agreement. :-)
It's all horrible semantics of course, and if thinking of the bible as a book obfuscates the history of how all that information came to be collected between those particular covers, let's call it something else by all means.
I await feast pictures with trepidation.
-
Sorry about coming back to the Da Vinci Code, but I've just watched Episode 12 of Series C of QI, and Stephen Fry describes it thus:
It is complete loose stool water. It is arse-gravy of the worst kind.
But getting back to classics, I'm struggling to think of supposedly great books that I've detested. There are a lot of them that I've never got around to, many that I can't see myself bothering with, and some that I've struggled with and given up after a few pages (such as Finnegan's Wake, but I did the same with Ada several times but recently made the breakthrough and was richly rewarded), but not many that I've thought are pointless or hugely overrated. Perhaps Calvino's Castle of Crossed Destinies, though I probably shouldn't have chosen it for airplane reading; and Gide's The Immoralist doesn't live up to the promise of its title. It's probably lucky that I came to so-called "serious literature" after university, so I've generally only read what I've chosen to read.
-
Ah, buggrit. Having now done the requisite Googling on Wrightson, I probably should correct myself on a few points. (Still, I s'pose I didn't do too badly, given I haven't seen the books in over 25 years.)
(i) It's the Wirrun series. (NZ English rules, ok?)
(ii) The official starting point for the series isn't The Nargun and the Stars, but The Ice is Coming. (I know the main character Wirrun doesn't appear in Nargun; but I've always regarded Nargun as kind of a prequel to the others, given that the nargun feature heavily in the plot of Ice.)(iii) And one thing I didn't know, but am kinda happy about, is that the trilogy of Wirrun novels was later republished in one volume as The Song of Wirrun. -
... So, following from our comparative religion discussion above, would that now be one book or three? Or should we treat a single-volume trilogy as a trinity, so recognising both counts?
-
... So, following from our comparative religion discussion above, would that now be one book or three? Or should we treat a single-volume trilogy as a trinity, so recognising both counts?t
How many tomes can you fit on the head of a pin? As I'm not up to fretting over such things I'll go with Shakespeare in don't-worry-be-happy mode:
"Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." -- As You Like It.
-
I found all that begetting in the prequel decidedly tedious
Well, when I come to make the definitive film version, I'll be dealing with most of that by borrowing a trick from George Lucas and having big letters scrolling through space. I'll cut most of the old testament down to 3-4 paragraphs, cos no-one is interested in that old school nonsense and we all want to dive straight in to the good stuff, right?
I think the resurrection scene needs a bit of re-working as well. I'm seeing the Jesunator arising from the sea of Galilee in a wet white shirt, carrying an AK47 and screaming "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani, Motherfuckers!!!". Something for both guys and girls there, I reckon.
-
I'm seeing the Jesunator arising from the sea of Galilee in a wet white shirt, carrying an AK47 and screaming "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani, Motherfuckers!!!".
make that the dead sea, and i think you'd have a buyer in hollywood.
-
<blockquote>I think the resurrection scene needs a bit of re-working as well. I'm seeing the Jesunator arising from the sea of Galilee in a wet white shirt, carrying an AK47 and screaming "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani, Motherfuckers!!!".</blockquote>
Infinitely preferable to Mel Gibson's essay in Jesus torture porn. I've sat through some awesomely nasty films, but The Passion of the Christ is the only film that (really literally) had me puking in the lobby. It's so relentlessly sadistic, I just don't want to know what gets Gibson off.
-
I liked this quotation from the beginning of chapter 2 of the God Delusion:
Winston Churchill's son Randolph somehow contrived to remain ignorant of scripture until Evelyn Waugh and a brother officer, in a vain attempt to keep Churchill quiet when they were posted together during the war, bet him he couldn't read the entire Bible in a fortnight: 'Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud "I say I bet you didn't know this came in the
Bible ..." or merely slapping his side & chortling "God, isn't God a shit!"' -
It's so relentlessly sadistic, I just don't want to know what gets Gibson off.
That's peculiar, coming from a Catholic - I know it's been said before, but the whole thing is built on a very robust dose of sadomasochism, starting from the decision to represent Jesus on the cross instead of well, in any other moment of his life or afterlife, really. And not for nothing, I grew up with the stuff so I don't really notice, but when we were in Italy and trawling through churches and museums my seven year old found it all rather puzzling and endlessly fascinating.
"See, this is Santa Lucia. Lucia, like your sister".
"And why is she carrying her eyes on a tray?"The always wonderfully homoerotic Saint Sebastian was a big favourite. And at the Duomo in Milan they have this big old statue of Saint Cristopher, naked, a cape casually flung over his shoulders. Except he's not naked, he's flayed, and it's not a cape, it's his own freaking skin. Good times!
-
heh. john safran has a great rant in his "versus god" show where he accused catholics of attending churches that look like a marilyn manson video.
i laughed. a lot.
-
I think the resurrection scene needs a bit of re-working as well.
Roger Dirom The Producers:
Of course that whole second act has to be rewritten. Theyre losing the war? Excuse me? Its too downbeat!
and
"[singing] I see a line of beautiful girls dressed as stormtroopers each one a gem. With leather boots and whips on their hips. Its risque, dare I say, S&M! I see German soldiers dancing through France played by chorus boys in very tight pants. And wait theres more! THEY WIN THE WAR! And the dances they do will be daring and new. Turn turn kick turn, turn turn kick turn, one two three kick turn! Keep it sassy, keep it classy, keep it..."
-
dammit, Roger De Bris, from The Producers
-
That's peculiar, coming from a Catholic - I know it's been said before, but the whole thing is built on a very robust dose of sadomasochism, starting from the decision to represent Jesus on the cross instead of well, in any other moment of his life or afterlife, really.
Have you seen it, Giovanni? NO matter what Gibson claims, that film moves beyond scriptual fidelity into somewhere else that freaks me out. I don't know about Mel and the evangelicals who turned TPoTC into a massive hit, but my faith contains Easter Sunday as well as Good Friday. A gospel of love, and joy, and hope, and healing, and redemption. Dante's Paradisio as well as his Inferno, if you will.
-
NO matter what Gibson claims, that film moves beyond scriptual fidelity into somewhere else that freaks me out. I don't know about Mel and the evangelicals who turned TPoTC into a massive hit, but my faith contains Easter Sunday as well as Good Friday.
Scriptural fidelity is a very thorny (ops) subject, see upthread - the gospels were brought to you centuries after the fact by the same canny philologists who tried to sell us the donation of Constantine. Still, you're right, I haven't seen the film, I can assure you that I never will, but it's called the passion of the Christ, fair warning. And again, without having seen it, I very much doubt it would have oversold the whole concept of being nailed alive to a large piece of wood.
-
I very much doubt it would have oversold the whole concept of being nailed alive to a large piece of wood.
A doctor acquaintance told me that if Jesus really lost that much blood, he wouldn't have made it to the crucifixon before he died of blood loss and shock.
And in the end, you don't believe what I do. Hell, Richard Dawkins thinks I'm a high functioning psychotic who suffers from an inexplicably respectable form of psychopathy responsible for all the ills of the world. And that's fine.
-
Dante's Paradisio as well as his Inferno, if you will.
Somehow I think that the movie of the Divine Comedy will include Purgatory and Paradise only as an epilogue.
-
A doctor acquaintance told me that if Jesus really lost that much blood, he wouldn't have made it to the crucifixon before he died of blood loss and shock.
If it's stark realism you're looking for, I have the sneaking suspicion that James Caviezel won't be cast again as a Palestinian any time soon.
And I'm not knocking your faith at all, no Dawkins I, but if you're interested in the contemporary accounts of Jesus and his last days, then really you have to look at the apocrypha as well, it's all I meant.
-
And I'm not knocking your faith at all,
Sorry for being a little spiky on that subject. Don't think I'm the only Christian out there who gets a tad over-sensitive after endlessly being lumped in with Mel Gibson, Brian The Bish and the theo-con wing of the Republican Party.
-
Don't think I'm the only Christian out there who gets a tad over-sensitive after endlessly being lumped in with Mel Gibson, Brian The Bish and the theo-con wing of the Republican Party.
Sorry, no, allow me to backpedal, insofar as I don't think that happens nearly enough. I think it's appaling how the Catholic church in particular has got away in recent decades with concealing and sanitising its proud (and oh so recent - collusion with the Nazis, anyone?) history of sadism, brutality, antisemitism and torture. If Gibson's fine work can serve as a reminder, I think it's a good thing.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.