From slighcl at wfu.edu Mon Aug 6 07:14:21 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:14:21 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels Message-ID: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> > Another "1957 Book" gets its reconsideration here. > > The arc of commentary about /On the Road/ (from remembered readings > to present encounters) sounds remarkably like the /American Scholar/ > piece on /Justine/. A select catalog of 1957 novels follows here. How well do any of /Justine/'s contemporaries hold up at 50? /Atlas Shrugged/ /The Baron in the Trees/ /Dandelion Wine/ /Doctor Zhivago/ /From Russia with Love/ /The Guns of Navarone Justine //On the Road/ /Pnin/ /The Town/ /Voss/ I will note that, in their /very /different ways, three of these novels--/Justine/, /Atlas Shrugged/, and /On the Road/--achieved and still perhaps hold an iconic status. That is, it was as important to be seen reading them as actually to have read them. The very totems of their time. > Charles > ------- > > To see this story with its related links on the The Observer site, go > to http://www.observer.co.uk > > *America's first king of the road * > Fifty years ago Jack Kerouac's dazzling novel On the Road became the > blueprint for the Beat generation and shaped America's youth culture > for decades. It influenced scores of artists, musicians and > film-makers, but how does it resonate with young people today? > Sean O'Hagan > Sunday August 05 2007 > The Observer > > > On Wednesday 5 September 1957, the New York Times published a lengthy > review of On the Road, the second novel by the 35-year-old Jack > Kerouac. The reviewer, Gilbert Millstein, called it 'the most > beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance > yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat", > and whose principal avatar he is'. > > In Minor Characters, her illuminating memoir of life among the Beat > writers, Joyce Johnson, who was with Kerouac on that day in New York, > captures the seismic resonance of that single review. She had gone > with Kerouac to buy an early edition of the newspaper from an > all-night newsstand in midtown Manhattan. In a nearby bar, she had > watched him read Millstein's article, shaking his head 'as if he > couldn't figure out why he wasn't happier than he was'. > > Afterwards, they had walked back to Johnson's apartment on the Upper > West Side where, as she memorably put it: 'Jack lay down obscure for > the last time in his life. The ringing phone woke him next morning and > he was famous.' Overnight, the Beat generation had gone overground, > and the man who did most to define it suddenly found that his book was > now defining him. It would continue to do so for the rest of his short > life, and for many decades afterwards. > > 'Challenging the complacency and prosperity of postwar America hadn't > been Kerouac's intent when he wrote his novel,' his first biographer, > Ann Charters, later wrote, 'but he had created a book that heralded a > change of consciousness in the country.' In the few years following > its publication, On the Road became a major bestseller. It also, as > Kerouac's friend and fellow Beat writer, William Burroughs, > witheringly wrote, 'sold a trillion Levi's, a million espresso coffee > machines, and also sent countless kids on the road'. Unwittingly, and > to his increasing horror, Kerouac had written a zeitgeist book, one > that would help determine the course of what would come to be known as > youth culture over the following two decades. > > 'It changed my life like it changed everyone else's,' Bob Dylan would > say many years later. Tom Waits, too, acknowledged its influence, > hymning Jack and Neal in a song, and calling the Beats 'father > figures'. At least two great American photographers were influenced by > Kerouac: Robert Frank, who became his close friend - Kerouac wrote the > introduction to The Americans - and Stephen Shore, who set out on an > American road trip in the Seventies with Kerouac's book as a guide. It > would be hard to imagine Hunter S Thompson's deranged Seventies road > novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, had On the Road not laid down > the template - likewise films such as Easy Rider, Paris, Texas, even > Thelma and Louise. > > Remarkably, On the Road was actually written in 1951 when, so the > story goes, Kerouac typed the words over three uninterrupted weeks on > to a 120ft scroll of teletype paper, fuelled by Benzedrine and strong > coffee. The novel recounts, in a breathless and impressionistic style, > his travels to and fro across America, often in the company of his > friend and prime influence, Neal Cassady, renamed Dean Moriarty in the > book. > > In the six years it took for On the Road to be published, American > culture changed dramatically: Elvis Presley altered the course of > popular music; James Dean and Marlon Brando emerged as a new breed of > brooding teenage icon; the painter Jackson Pollock came and went, his > action paintings and the intense way he lived some kind of precursor > to the 'nowness' that the Beats strived for in both art and life. > > 'The Beat literary movement came at exactly the right time,' William > Burroughs wrote later, 'and said something that millions of people all > over the world were waiting to hear... The alienation, the > restlessness, the dissatisfaction were already there waiting when > Kerouac pointed out the road.' > > Though undoubtedly ambitious, Kerouac was utterly unprepared for the > fame, notoriety and controversy that followed On the Road. He was hurt > by the many negative reviews of the book, and by the parodies of the > Beat generation that suddenly started appearing on mainstream > televison chat shows. In interviews from the time, he is palpably ill > at ease, sometimes inebriated. In the most recent biography of the > writer, Kerouac: His Life and Work, Paul Mather writes: 'The obscurity > that Kerouac by turn loved and loathed had vanished. He began drinking.' > > Twelve years later, Kerouac was dead. The physical cause was cirrhosis > of the liver, brought on by years of alcohol abuse. Many of those who > knew him intimately, though, suspected that he also died of > disillusionment. > > 'He was just so sensitive,' says Neal Cassady's widow Carolyn, who had > a long affair with Kerouac. 'Everything hurt him deeply. He had the > thin skin of the artist as well as the guilt that his Catholic > upbringing had instilled in him. In the end, he was just so depressed > about how he was being misrepresented, how his great and beautiful > book was being blamed for all the excesses of the Sixties. He just > couldn't take it.' > > Had Kerouac lived on into old age, he would have been even more > appalled at the ways in which his legacy is currently being > misrepresented. Two years ago, a range of Jack Kerouac clothing was > launched in America. Later this year, the BBC will mark the 50th > anniversary of the publication of On the Road by sending the comedian, > presenter and self-styled dandy, Russell Brand, and his Radio 2 > co-presenter, Matt Morgan, on a road trip. > > Thankfully, the anniversary will also be marked in a more reverent > manner by the book's publishers, Penguin, who on 5 September will > publish On the Road: The Original Scroll, the full, uncensored text > that Kerouac famously wrote in those three frantic weeks. The cast of > characters - Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs, the Cassadys - are no longer > hidden behind Kerouac's often wonderful pseudonyms, and that famous > opening line, 'I first met Dean not long after my wife and I had split > up,' now reads, 'I first met Neal not long after my father died.' > > Many of the sex scenes, straight and gay, removed at his publishers' > insistence, have been reinstated too, though they are tame by today's > standards. The attraction that Ginsberg felt for Neal Cassady, briefly > reciprocated, is now acknowledged in the first few pages, though in an > almost offhand manner: 'I was in the same room. I heard them across > the darkness and mused and said to myself, "Hmm, now there's something > started but don't want anything to do with it."' > > Fifty years on, the book is being turned into a Hollywood film, > scripted by Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford, and directed by Walter > Salles who made The Motorcyle Diaries, the story of Che Guevara's road > trip across South America. Kirsten Dunst will star as Carolyn Cassady. > > Nearly 40 years after his premature death, then, Kerouac lives on - > though in some odd and often contradictory ways. As is the case with > Guevara, his legacy is contested, his cultural meaning blurred. At the > Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, for instance, where the Jack > Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is housed, they will be > celebrating the 50th anniversary of On the Road with a three-day > Kerouac festival. The last remnants of the Beat generation, or at > least those fit enough to travel, will be in attendance. > > One of the organisers, Junior Burke, chair of writing at Naropa, > recently described On the Road as 'one of the truly defining works of > American fiction', comparing it to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, > but adding: 'Instead of two guys on a raft on the Mississippi, it's > two guys in a Hudson Hornet on the highways of America. I think it's > something that young people still relate to.' > > For many young people in America, though, the name Jack Kerouac means > nothing at all. In an age where youth culture is increasingly defined > by consumerism, where the road trip has been replaced by the gap year, > and where it is considered radical to be cool but not cool to be > radical, whither Jack Kerouac and his beatific vision? > > 'It struck me when I was in Thailand last year that no one is even > pretending to be beat any more,' says the young British novelist Hari > Kunzru. 'You'd quite often see white guys with dreadlocks pulling > wheelie cases down Khao San Road. The great adventure that was > travelling overland in the Sixties and Seventies has become a > middle-class ritual. The notion that you would throw yourself at the > mercy of the road, and by doing so, gain some self-knowledge or even > maturity, is long gone.' > > Carolyn Cassady, the last surviving member of Kerouac's closeknit > coterie of friends and fellow Beats, now 84 and exiled in deepest > Berkshire, is even more scathing about Noughties youth. 'It's all > about money and surface now, the clothes you wear, the things you buy, > and no one is the slightest bit ashamed of being superficial. I often > thank God that Jack and Neal did not live long enough to see what has > become of their vision'. > > When I was a teenager, though, On the Road was the bible for any > aspiring bohemian, a book that was passed on from one generation to > the next almost as a talismanic text. I was given a battered copy by > an older friend and, even before I read it, knew that it carried > within its pages some deep, abiding truth about youth, freedom and > self-determination. On the Road instilled in me a belief that, in > order to find oneself, one had to throw caution to the wind and travel > long distances with no real goal and very little money. > > A few years later, I passed the same copy on to my younger brother, > and was incensed when he passed it on to a friend who left it on a > bus. I can see the irony now but back then I felt that something > bigger than just a battered paperback had been lost. It was in this > word-of-mouth way that On the Road, even long after its initial > publication, became one of those rare novels that was often read by > people who do not read novels as a rule. It may be that this is still > the case, but I doubt it. Harry Potter is today's zeitgeist book. The > Beats and their wild adventures seem light years away. > > And yet, for all that, On the Road continues to be read. What was once > a zeitgeist book, though, and one that defined a transformative moment > in postwar culture, has become a historical artefact. It may even be > the case that today's teenagers read On the Road in much the same way > that my generation read Laurie Lee's picaresque rites-of-passage novel > As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - as a glimpse into an already > distant past when things seemed simpler. > > When I asked my 20-year-old niece, Lucy, if she had read it, she > nodded. 'I liked parts of it,' she said, 'but it seemed so > old-fashioned.' Did she connect with it in any way? 'I suppose it does > make you feel like you had missed out on something.' This, she added, > was a familiar feeling among her generation. What was that something, > though? 'Oh, some kind of meaning. It's set in a time when travelling > across America and smoking weed or whatever meant something. It was a > statement.' > > Hari Kunzru, who 'came to the book late and found it almost cringey in > its emotional gushiness,' agrees. 'I was aware of its cultural weight > in the canon of alternative literature before I read it, and even > though I never had an intense love affair with it, there was no > denying that the lives these guys lived was properly edgy in a way > that my generation's wasn't. They were transgressing in a very real > way and doing dangerous things at a time when the risks were high. To > me, the lives were often more interesting than the writing.' > > While living in New York, Kerouac met the varied bunch of characters > and fledgling writers who would later become the Beat generation, the > likes of Ginsberg, Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, who is said to have > coined the term, and, most significantly, Neal Cassady. Kerouac had > grown up in a relatively stable family. Cassady, on the other hand, > had been brought up by an alcoholic father, and sent to reform school > several times in his teens for stealing cars. > > To Ginsberg and Kerouac, Cassady was the real thing, an authentic free > spirit at a time when authenticity - of experience, expression, vision > - was all. 'Neal was an energetic and instinctively brilliant, > self-educated guy with a photographic memory,' elaborates Carolyn > Cassady. 'But, because of his background, a lot of the more academic > Beats didn't like him, didn't trust him. Both Jack and Allen were > blown away by him, though, his restless energy, his love of life, the > way he talked, the way he lived purely for the moment.' > > Cassady epitomised the consciousness that Kerouac had christened > 'beat' as early as 1948. The word had two connotations for Kerouac: > 'beat' as in worn out by the conventions and constrictions of straight > American society; and beat as in 'beatific' - blessed, holy, > transcendent. The Beat writers had a shared vision that rejected many > of the formal values of the accepted canon, and elevated energy, flow > and engagement over reflection, refinement and detachment. In doing > so, they also reflected the dissatisfactions of America's postwar young. > > Willam Burroughs, who was older and colder than the other Beats, saw > the Beat generation as a media construct as much as an organic > flowering of a shared transgressive vision: 'Those arch-opportunists, > they know a story when they see one, and the Beat movement was a > story, and a big one.' Following the crossover sucess of On The Road, > Kerouac became the centre of that story, constantly referred to in the > press as 'king of the Beats' and 'spokesman for a generation'. And, > though he was eager for literary recognition, he was also the most > ill-suited candidate for this kind of canonisation, at least until the > similarly elusive Bob Dylan came along a decade later. Dylan, though, > managed to reinvent himself continually. Kerouac tried many times and > failed. > > In the end, Jack Kerouac outlived Neal Cassady by just over a year. > Cassady, the man who had truly defined the essence of Beat, whose > restlessness, amorality and manic energy had so inspired Kerouac to > create his freeform, rhapsodic prose, was found dead by a railway > track in Mexico in 1968. He had kept on moving, though, had even > stamped his personality on another movement, Ken Kesey's LSD-fuelled > Merry Pranksters, whose Day-Glo bus he piloted across America and had > ended up in another zeitgeist book, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid > Acid Test. > > Kerouac died in 1969 in St Petersburg, Florida. He had lived long > enough to be blamed for the excesses of the Sixties generation, for > whom he felt no empathy. According to Carolyn Cassady: 'Jack was > essentially conservative, patriotic even, but not in any heavy-handed > way. He was old-fashioned. I never once heard him swear. People who > write about him can never seem to get a hold of the consciousness of > that time, which was restless and questing, but also oddly reserved > and responsible. His intention was not freedom without responsibility, > but freedom of expression in art.' > > Which begs the inevitable question, does On the Road stand the test of > time? Is it a great work of literature? Ann Charters thinks so, > comparing it to both Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, as a novel > that 'explores the themes of personal freedom and challenges the > promise of the American dream'. Likewise the American novelist, AM > Homes, who wrote recently that 'Kerouac was the man who allowed > writers to enter the world of flow... his philosophy was about being > in the current, open to possibility, allowing creativity to move > through you, and you to be one with the process'. > > Hari Kunzru disagrees. 'On the Road is such a patchy book, like much > Beat writing, in fact. The whole heart-on-the-sleeve romanticism is > off-putting, even embarassing. Apart from some really brilliant > descriptive passages, it just does not stand up. It's become a > different book now, a historical artefact rather than a living, > breathing work of literature.' > > When I re-read On the Road recently, it did indeed seem to me to be a > different book from the one that I had so connected with as a > teenager. The gush of emotionalism was apparent, and the narrative no > longer held my attention in the same way. And yet there were moments > of great descriptive prose about America, about jazz music, about the > sheer joy of being young and alive, and about the fleeting freedom of > the open road. More surprisingly, there was an undercurrent of great > sadness and disillusionment that I had not picked up on, or chosen to > overlook, first time around. It seemed, in its final part, to be an > elegy for Kerouac and Cassady's youth, for their friendship, which > ends in a kind of betrayal, and for the fabled road of the title that > had promised so much but, in the end, delivered so little. > > Kerouac: On the record > > 1922 Born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac in Lowell, Massachusetts to > French-Canadian parents. > > 1939 Entered Columbia University on a football scholarship but dropped > out in 1941. > > 1944 Arrested for helping Lucien Carr dispose of the body of David > Kammerer, whom Carr had stabbed to death. Released on bail, put up by > girlfriend Edie Parker after he agreed to marry her. > > 1950 Published first novel The Town and the City to respectable > reviews but poor sales. > > 1951 Wrote On the Road > > 1957 Hailed as the voice of the Beat generation, after On the Road was > finally published to ecstatic reviews. > > 1960s Moved to Florida to escape media attention and care for his > mother. Wrote a series of lesser-known autobiographical novels. > > 1969 Died aged 47 from internal bleeding caused by cirrhosis of the > liver. > > They said 'Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in 1959 and it blew my > mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my language.' (Bob Dylan) > > 'That's not writing, that's typing.' (Truman Capote) > > He said 'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad > to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the > same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but > burn, burn, burn, like fabulous Roman candles exploding like spiders > across the stars.' (From On the Road) Hugh Montgomery > > Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070806/9dcb73dc/attachment.html From richardpin at eircom.net Mon Aug 6 12:23:51 2007 From: richardpin at eircom.net (Richard Pine) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 20:23:51 +0100 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <002801c7d85f$54fa48d0$10471359@rpinelaptop> I think the answer is: most of them, at least as well as Justine. ----- Original Message ----- From: slighcl To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 3:14 PM Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels Another "1957 Book" gets its reconsideration here. The arc of commentary about On the Road (from remembered readings to present encounters) sounds remarkably like the American Scholar piece on Justine. A select catalog of 1957 novels follows here. How well do any of Justine's contemporaries hold up at 50? Atlas Shrugged The Baron in the Trees Dandelion Wine Doctor Zhivago From Russia with Love The Guns of Navarone Justine On the Road Pnin The Town Voss I will note that, in their very different ways, three of these novels--Justine, Atlas Shrugged, and On the Road--achieved and still perhaps hold an iconic status. That is, it was as important to be seen reading them as actually to have read them. The very totems of their time. Charles ------- To see this story with its related links on the The Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk America's first king of the road Fifty years ago Jack Kerouac's dazzling novel On the Road became the blueprint for the Beat generation and shaped America's youth culture for decades. It influenced scores of artists, musicians and film-makers, but how does it resonate with young people today? Sean O'Hagan Sunday August 05 2007 The Observer On Wednesday 5 September 1957, the New York Times published a lengthy review of On the Road, the second novel by the 35-year-old Jack Kerouac. The reviewer, Gilbert Millstein, called it 'the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat", and whose principal avatar he is'. In Minor Characters, her illuminating memoir of life among the Beat writers, Joyce Johnson, who was with Kerouac on that day in New York, captures the seismic resonance of that single review. She had gone with Kerouac to buy an early edition of the newspaper from an all-night newsstand in midtown Manhattan. In a nearby bar, she had watched him read Millstein's article, shaking his head 'as if he couldn't figure out why he wasn't happier than he was'. Afterwards, they had walked back to Johnson's apartment on the Upper West Side where, as she memorably put it: 'Jack lay down obscure for the last time in his life. The ringing phone woke him next morning and he was famous.' Overnight, the Beat generation had gone overground, and the man who did most to define it suddenly found that his book was now defining him. It would continue to do so for the rest of his short life, and for many decades afterwards. 'Challenging the complacency and prosperity of postwar America hadn't been Kerouac's intent when he wrote his novel,' his first biographer, Ann Charters, later wrote, 'but he had created a book that heralded a change of consciousness in the country.' In the few years following its publication, On the Road became a major bestseller. It also, as Kerouac's friend and fellow Beat writer, William Burroughs, witheringly wrote, 'sold a trillion Levi's, a million espresso coffee machines, and also sent countless kids on the road'. Unwittingly, and to his increasing horror, Kerouac had written a zeitgeist book, one that would help determine the course of what would come to be known as youth culture over the following two decades. 'It changed my life like it changed everyone else's,' Bob Dylan would say many years later. Tom Waits, too, acknowledged its influence, hymning Jack and Neal in a song, and calling the Beats 'father figures'. At least two great American photographers were influenced by Kerouac: Robert Frank, who became his close friend - Kerouac wrote the introduction to The Americans - and Stephen Shore, who set out on an American road trip in the Seventies with Kerouac's book as a guide. It would be hard to imagine Hunter S Thompson's deranged Seventies road novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, had On the Road not laid down the template - likewise films such as Easy Rider, Paris, Texas, even Thelma and Louise. Remarkably, On the Road was actually written in 1951 when, so the story goes, Kerouac typed the words over three uninterrupted weeks on to a 120ft scroll of teletype paper, fuelled by Benzedrine and strong coffee. The novel recounts, in a breathless and impressionistic style, his travels to and fro across America, often in the company of his friend and prime influence, Neal Cassady, renamed Dean Moriarty in the book. In the six years it took for On the Road to be published, American culture changed dramatically: Elvis Presley altered the course of popular music; James Dean and Marlon Brando emerged as a new breed of brooding teenage icon; the painter Jackson Pollock came and went, his action paintings and the intense way he lived some kind of precursor to the 'nowness' that the Beats strived for in both art and life. 'The Beat literary movement came at exactly the right time,' William Burroughs wrote later, 'and said something that millions of people all over the world were waiting to hear... The alienation, the restlessness, the dissatisfaction were already there waiting when Kerouac pointed out the road.' Though undoubtedly ambitious, Kerouac was utterly unprepared for the fame, notoriety and controversy that followed On the Road. He was hurt by the many negative reviews of the book, and by the parodies of the Beat generation that suddenly started appearing on mainstream televison chat shows. In interviews from the time, he is palpably ill at ease, sometimes inebriated. In the most recent biography of the writer, Kerouac: His Life and Work, Paul Mather writes: 'The obscurity that Kerouac by turn loved and loathed had vanished. He began drinking.' Twelve years later, Kerouac was dead. The physical cause was cirrhosis of the liver, brought on by years of alcohol abuse. Many of those who knew him intimately, though, suspected that he also died of disillusionment. 'He was just so sensitive,' says Neal Cassady's widow Carolyn, who had a long affair with Kerouac. 'Everything hurt him deeply. He had the thin skin of the artist as well as the guilt that his Catholic upbringing had instilled in him. In the end, he was just so depressed about how he was being misrepresented, how his great and beautiful book was being blamed for all the excesses of the Sixties. He just couldn't take it.' Had Kerouac lived on into old age, he would have been even more appalled at the ways in which his legacy is currently being misrepresented. Two years ago, a range of Jack Kerouac clothing was launched in America. Later this year, the BBC will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road by sending the comedian, presenter and self-styled dandy, Russell Brand, and his Radio 2 co-presenter, Matt Morgan, on a road trip. Thankfully, the anniversary will also be marked in a more reverent manner by the book's publishers, Penguin, who on 5 September will publish On the Road: The Original Scroll, the full, uncensored text that Kerouac famously wrote in those three frantic weeks. The cast of characters - Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs, the Cassadys - are no longer hidden behind Kerouac's often wonderful pseudonyms, and that famous opening line, 'I first met Dean not long after my wife and I had split up,' now reads, 'I first met Neal not long after my father died.' Many of the sex scenes, straight and gay, removed at his publishers' insistence, have been reinstated too, though they are tame by today's standards. The attraction that Ginsberg felt for Neal Cassady, briefly reciprocated, is now acknowledged in the first few pages, though in an almost offhand manner: 'I was in the same room. I heard them across the darkness and mused and said to myself, "Hmm, now there's something started but don't want anything to do with it."' Fifty years on, the book is being turned into a Hollywood film, scripted by Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford, and directed by Walter Salles who made The Motorcyle Diaries, the story of Che Guevara's road trip across South America. Kirsten Dunst will star as Carolyn Cassady. Nearly 40 years after his premature death, then, Kerouac lives on - though in some odd and often contradictory ways. As is the case with Guevara, his legacy is contested, his cultural meaning blurred. At the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, for instance, where the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is housed, they will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of On the Road with a three-day Kerouac festival. The last remnants of the Beat generation, or at least those fit enough to travel, will be in attendance. One of the organisers, Junior Burke, chair of writing at Naropa, recently described On the Road as 'one of the truly defining works of American fiction', comparing it to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but adding: 'Instead of two guys on a raft on the Mississippi, it's two guys in a Hudson Hornet on the highways of America. I think it's something that young people still relate to.' For many young people in America, though, the name Jack Kerouac means nothing at all. In an age where youth culture is increasingly defined by consumerism, where the road trip has been replaced by the gap year, and where it is considered radical to be cool but not cool to be radical, whither Jack Kerouac and his beatific vision? 'It struck me when I was in Thailand last year that no one is even pretending to be beat any more,' says the young British novelist Hari Kunzru. 'You'd quite often see white guys with dreadlocks pulling wheelie cases down Khao San Road. The great adventure that was travelling overland in the Sixties and Seventies has become a middle-class ritual. The notion that you would throw yourself at the mercy of the road, and by doing so, gain some self-knowledge or even maturity, is long gone.' Carolyn Cassady, the last surviving member of Kerouac's closeknit coterie of friends and fellow Beats, now 84 and exiled in deepest Berkshire, is even more scathing about Noughties youth. 'It's all about money and surface now, the clothes you wear, the things you buy, and no one is the slightest bit ashamed of being superficial. I often thank God that Jack and Neal did not live long enough to see what has become of their vision'. When I was a teenager, though, On the Road was the bible for any aspiring bohemian, a book that was passed on from one generation to the next almost as a talismanic text. I was given a battered copy by an older friend and, even before I read it, knew that it carried within its pages some deep, abiding truth about youth, freedom and self-determination. On the Road instilled in me a belief that, in order to find oneself, one had to throw caution to the wind and travel long distances with no real goal and very little money. A few years later, I passed the same copy on to my younger brother, and was incensed when he passed it on to a friend who left it on a bus. I can see the irony now but back then I felt that something bigger than just a battered paperback had been lost. It was in this word-of-mouth way that On the Road, even long after its initial publication, became one of those rare novels that was often read by people who do not read novels as a rule. It may be that this is still the case, but I doubt it. Harry Potter is today's zeitgeist book. The Beats and their wild adventures seem light years away. And yet, for all that, On the Road continues to be read. What was once a zeitgeist book, though, and one that defined a transformative moment in postwar culture, has become a historical artefact. It may even be the case that today's teenagers read On the Road in much the same way that my generation read Laurie Lee's picaresque rites-of-passage novel As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - as a glimpse into an already distant past when things seemed simpler. When I asked my 20-year-old niece, Lucy, if she had read it, she nodded. 'I liked parts of it,' she said, 'but it seemed so old-fashioned.' Did she connect with it in any way? 'I suppose it does make you feel like you had missed out on something.' This, she added, was a familiar feeling among her generation. What was that something, though? 'Oh, some kind of meaning. It's set in a time when travelling across America and smoking weed or whatever meant something. It was a statement.' Hari Kunzru, who 'came to the book late and found it almost cringey in its emotional gushiness,' agrees. 'I was aware of its cultural weight in the canon of alternative literature before I read it, and even though I never had an intense love affair with it, there was no denying that the lives these guys lived was properly edgy in a way that my generation's wasn't. They were transgressing in a very real way and doing dangerous things at a time when the risks were high. To me, the lives were often more interesting than the writing.' While living in New York, Kerouac met the varied bunch of characters and fledgling writers who would later become the Beat generation, the likes of Ginsberg, Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, who is said to have coined the term, and, most significantly, Neal Cassady. Kerouac had grown up in a relatively stable family. Cassady, on the other hand, had been brought up by an alcoholic father, and sent to reform school several times in his teens for stealing cars. To Ginsberg and Kerouac, Cassady was the real thing, an authentic free spirit at a time when authenticity - of experience, expression, vision - was all. 'Neal was an energetic and instinctively brilliant, self-educated guy with a photographic memory,' elaborates Carolyn Cassady. 'But, because of his background, a lot of the more academic Beats didn't like him, didn't trust him. Both Jack and Allen were blown away by him, though, his restless energy, his love of life, the way he talked, the way he lived purely for the moment.' Cassady epitomised the consciousness that Kerouac had christened 'beat' as early as 1948. The word had two connotations for Kerouac: 'beat' as in worn out by the conventions and constrictions of straight American society; and beat as in 'beatific' - blessed, holy, transcendent. The Beat writers had a shared vision that rejected many of the formal values of the accepted canon, and elevated energy, flow and engagement over reflection, refinement and detachment. In doing so, they also reflected the dissatisfactions of America's postwar young. Willam Burroughs, who was older and colder than the other Beats, saw the Beat generation as a media construct as much as an organic flowering of a shared transgressive vision: 'Those arch-opportunists, they know a story when they see one, and the Beat movement was a story, and a big one.' Following the crossover sucess of On The Road, Kerouac became the centre of that story, constantly referred to in the press as 'king of the Beats' and 'spokesman for a generation'. And, though he was eager for literary recognition, he was also the most ill-suited candidate for this kind of canonisation, at least until the similarly elusive Bob Dylan came along a decade later. Dylan, though, managed to reinvent himself continually. Kerouac tried many times and failed. In the end, Jack Kerouac outlived Neal Cassady by just over a year. Cassady, the man who had truly defined the essence of Beat, whose restlessness, amorality and manic energy had so inspired Kerouac to create his freeform, rhapsodic prose, was found dead by a railway track in Mexico in 1968. He had kept on moving, though, had even stamped his personality on another movement, Ken Kesey's LSD-fuelled Merry Pranksters, whose Day-Glo bus he piloted across America and had ended up in another zeitgeist book, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Kerouac died in 1969 in St Petersburg, Florida. He had lived long enough to be blamed for the excesses of the Sixties generation, for whom he felt no empathy. According to Carolyn Cassady: 'Jack was essentially conservative, patriotic even, but not in any heavy-handed way. He was old-fashioned. I never once heard him swear. People who write about him can never seem to get a hold of the consciousness of that time, which was restless and questing, but also oddly reserved and responsible. His intention was not freedom without responsibility, but freedom of expression in art.' Which begs the inevitable question, does On the Road stand the test of time? Is it a great work of literature? Ann Charters thinks so, comparing it to both Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, as a novel that 'explores the themes of personal freedom and challenges the promise of the American dream'. Likewise the American novelist, AM Homes, who wrote recently that 'Kerouac was the man who allowed writers to enter the world of flow... his philosophy was about being in the current, open to possibility, allowing creativity to move through you, and you to be one with the process'. Hari Kunzru disagrees. 'On the Road is such a patchy book, like much Beat writing, in fact. The whole heart-on-the-sleeve romanticism is off-putting, even embarassing. Apart from some really brilliant descriptive passages, it just does not stand up. It's become a different book now, a historical artefact rather than a living, breathing work of literature.' When I re-read On the Road recently, it did indeed seem to me to be a different book from the one that I had so connected with as a teenager. The gush of emotionalism was apparent, and the narrative no longer held my attention in the same way. And yet there were moments of great descriptive prose about America, about jazz music, about the sheer joy of being young and alive, and about the fleeting freedom of the open road. More surprisingly, there was an undercurrent of great sadness and disillusionment that I had not picked up on, or chosen to overlook, first time around. It seemed, in its final part, to be an elegy for Kerouac and Cassady's youth, for their friendship, which ends in a kind of betrayal, and for the fabled road of the title that had promised so much but, in the end, delivered so little. Kerouac: On the record 1922 Born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac in Lowell, Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents. 1939 Entered Columbia University on a football scholarship but dropped out in 1941. 1944 Arrested for helping Lucien Carr dispose of the body of David Kammerer, whom Carr had stabbed to death. Released on bail, put up by girlfriend Edie Parker after he agreed to marry her. 1950 Published first novel The Town and the City to respectable reviews but poor sales. 1951 Wrote On the Road 1957 Hailed as the voice of the Beat generation, after On the Road was finally published to ecstatic reviews. 1960s Moved to Florida to escape media attention and care for his mother. Wrote a series of lesser-known autobiographical novels. 1969 Died aged 47 from internal bleeding caused by cirrhosis of the liver. They said 'Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my language.' (Bob Dylan) 'That's not writing, that's typing.' (Truman Capote) He said 'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.' (From On the Road) Hugh Montgomery Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070806/d03c7c51/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Mon Aug 6 13:09:52 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:09:52 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <002801c7d85f$54fa48d0$10471359@rpinelaptop> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <002801c7d85f$54fa48d0$10471359@rpinelaptop> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070806/74d048f0/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Mon Aug 6 14:18:28 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:18:28 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <002801c7d85f$54fa48d0$10471359@rpinelaptop> Message-ID: <46B79024.9020508@wfu.edu> On 8/6/2007 4:09 PM, william godshalk wrote: > > Among certain people, Ayn Rand was and is considered > inconsiderable (as Leslie Fiedler quipped). I know she's still > taught in certain high schools, but the students quickly > understand the foolishness of her "philosophy." > I would follow with a couple of points, both of which I think are related to our concerns with the current estimations of Durrell's /Justine/, 1957 - 2007. First, Bill, you write about the "foolishness of Rand's philosophy." I think that you mean here her "Objectivism" and the ideologies that the character John Galt comes to stand for. But I would ask--/fabulously significant aesthetic and political differences set to one side/--how is this quite common and widespread critical dismissal of Rand's writing as "foolish" so different from current dismissals of Durrell's ideas ("spirit of place," "investigations of modern love," &c) as foolish? Of course, one easy answer might be that Durrell entertained ideas for their shapes and sounds, letting them appear and then evanesce as his attention turned elsewhere. Ayn Rand was decidedly more adamant about the importance of her ideas. (Simple answer: one author understood humor and irony, while the other avoided those at all costs.) As we saw in the /American Scholar/ piece, and as I have encountered in my own conversations, in their very different ways, /Atlas Shrugged/, /On the Road/, and /Justine /are seen today as appealing to passing phases, "youthful enthusiasms" (Trueheart's phrase: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su07/quartet-trueheart.html), whether in varieties Romantic (Durrell or Kerouac) or varieties Fascist (Rand). That is, I think a common and unexamined response to /Justine/--"/oh, I remember that book from my youth; that all seems a very, very long time ago now; fancy that I ever went in for that sort of silliness/"--is different only in the specific terms of objection. I will also offer that another late-1950s writer regularly paired with Durrell (and Pasternak), Vladimir Nabokov, seems to have survived and grown in critical estimation. Strangely, I had a conversation with some other university teachers in Ghent regarding the fading of Kerouac's audience. Those three or four UK teachers said that /On the Road/ seems another world (now long lost) to their more conservative university students who live in today's world of parenta/governmentall protection and travel as consumption. I found that to be true of students in Virginia, also, the exception being a student who came to class already read in Hermann Hesse's /Siddhartha /(1922; 1951) and Pirsig's /Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance/. Small prize for guessing that the same exceptional student eagerly took up Durrell's /Prospero's Cell/ also. /Justine /also has some curious (but unclear) kinship with /Zhivago/, I think. Atmosphere and historical place so indelible as to become like a film score of a certain time and place in life. The very titles have come associative, perfume-like. *** Try this silliness for what diversion it is worth: *Literature-Map* http://www.literature-map.com/ TYPE IN -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070806/53b3e1c1/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Mon Aug 6 17:29:37 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:29:37 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Ayn and others In-Reply-To: <46B79024.9020508@wfu.edu> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <002801c7d85f$54fa48d0$10471359@rpinelaptop> <46B79024.9020508@wfu.edu> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070806/c47532a1/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Mon Aug 6 18:28:14 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:28:14 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Ayn and others In-Reply-To: References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <002801c7d85f$54fa48d0$10471359@rpinelaptop> <46B79024.9020508@wfu.edu> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070806/b2cf645d/attachment.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Tue Aug 7 05:38:45 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 14:38:45 +0200 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> I can't help making a parallel between a phrase in the article: "It's all about money and surface now, the clothes you wear, the things you buy, and no one is the slightest bit ashamed of being superficial". and one in the post: " it was as important to be seen reading them as actually to have read them". Surely little has changed??? Marc slighcl wrote: >> Another "1957 Book" gets its reconsideration here. >> >> The arc of commentary about On the Road (from remembered readings to >> present encounters) sounds remarkably like the American Scholar piece >> on Justine. > > > A select catalog of 1957 novels follows here. How well do any of > Justine's contemporaries hold up at 50? > > Atlas Shrugged > The Baron in the Trees > Dandelion Wine > Doctor Zhivago > From Russia with Love > The Guns of Navarone > Justine > On the Road > Pnin > The Town > Voss > > I will note that, in their very different ways, three of these > novels--Justine, Atlas Shrugged, and On the Road--achieved and still > perhaps hold an iconic status. That is, it was as important to be seen > reading them as actually to have read them. The very totems of their time. > >> Charles >> ------- >> >> To see this story with its related links on the The Observer site, go >> to http://www.observer.co.uk >> >> America's first king of the road >> Fifty years ago Jack Kerouac's dazzling novel On the Road became the >> blueprint for the Beat generation and shaped America's youth culture >> for decades. It influenced scores of artists, musicians and >> film-makers, but how does it resonate with young people today? >> Sean O'Hagan >> Sunday August 05 2007 >> The Observer >> >> >> On Wednesday 5 September 1957, the New York Times published a lengthy >> review of On the Road, the second novel by the 35-year-old Jack >> Kerouac. The reviewer, Gilbert Millstein, called it 'the most >> beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance >> yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as "beat", >> and whose principal avatar he is'. >> >> In Minor Characters, her illuminating memoir of life among the Beat >> writers, Joyce Johnson, who was with Kerouac on that day in New York, >> captures the seismic resonance of that single review. She had gone >> with Kerouac to buy an early edition of the newspaper from an >> all-night newsstand in midtown Manhattan. In a nearby bar, she had >> watched him read Millstein's article, shaking his head 'as if he >> couldn't figure out why he wasn't happier than he was'. >> >> Afterwards, they had walked back to Johnson's apartment on the Upper >> West Side where, as she memorably put it: 'Jack lay down obscure for >> the last time in his life. The ringing phone woke him next morning and >> he was famous.' Overnight, the Beat generation had gone overground, >> and the man who did most to define it suddenly found that his book was >> now defining him. It would continue to do so for the rest of his short >> life, and for many decades afterwards. >> >> 'Challenging the complacency and prosperity of postwar America hadn't >> been Kerouac's intent when he wrote his novel,' his first biographer, >> Ann Charters, later wrote, 'but he had created a book that heralded a >> change of consciousness in the country.' In the few years following >> its publication, On the Road became a major bestseller. It also, as >> Kerouac's friend and fellow Beat writer, William Burroughs, >> witheringly wrote, 'sold a trillion Levi's, a million espresso coffee >> machines, and also sent countless kids on the road'. Unwittingly, and >> to his increasing horror, Kerouac had written a zeitgeist book, one >> that would help determine the course of what would come to be known as >> youth culture over the following two decades. >> >> 'It changed my life like it changed everyone else's,' Bob Dylan would >> say many years later. Tom Waits, too, acknowledged its influence, >> hymning Jack and Neal in a song, and calling the Beats 'father >> figures'. At least two great American photographers were influenced by >> Kerouac: Robert Frank, who became his close friend - Kerouac wrote the >> introduction to The Americans - and Stephen Shore, who set out on an >> American road trip in the Seventies with Kerouac's book as a guide. It >> would be hard to imagine Hunter S Thompson's deranged Seventies road >> novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, had On the Road not laid down >> the template - likewise films such as Easy Rider, Paris, Texas, even >> Thelma and Louise. >> >> Remarkably, On the Road was actually written in 1951 when, so the >> story goes, Kerouac typed the words over three uninterrupted weeks on >> to a 120ft scroll of teletype paper, fuelled by Benzedrine and strong >> coffee. The novel recounts, in a breathless and impressionistic style, >> his travels to and fro across America, often in the company of his >> friend and prime influence, Neal Cassady, renamed Dean Moriarty in the >> book. >> >> In the six years it took for On the Road to be published, American >> culture changed dramatically: Elvis Presley altered the course of >> popular music; James Dean and Marlon Brando emerged as a new breed of >> brooding teenage icon; the painter Jackson Pollock came and went, his >> action paintings and the intense way he lived some kind of precursor >> to the 'nowness' that the Beats strived for in both art and life. >> >> 'The Beat literary movement came at exactly the right time,' William >> Burroughs wrote later, 'and said something that millions of people all >> over the world were waiting to hear... The alienation, the >> restlessness, the dissatisfaction were already there waiting when >> Kerouac pointed out the road.' >> >> Though undoubtedly ambitious, Kerouac was utterly unprepared for the >> fame, notoriety and controversy that followed On the Road. He was hurt >> by the many negative reviews of the book, and by the parodies of the >> Beat generation that suddenly started appearing on mainstream >> televison chat shows. In interviews from the time, he is palpably ill >> at ease, sometimes inebriated. In the most recent biography of the >> writer, Kerouac: His Life and Work, Paul Mather writes: 'The obscurity >> that Kerouac by turn loved and loathed had vanished. He began drinking.' >> >> Twelve years later, Kerouac was dead. The physical cause was cirrhosis >> of the liver, brought on by years of alcohol abuse. Many of those who >> knew him intimately, though, suspected that he also died of >> disillusionment. >> >> 'He was just so sensitive,' says Neal Cassady's widow Carolyn, who had >> a long affair with Kerouac. 'Everything hurt him deeply. He had the >> thin skin of the artist as well as the guilt that his Catholic >> upbringing had instilled in him. In the end, he was just so depressed >> about how he was being misrepresented, how his great and beautiful >> book was being blamed for all the excesses of the Sixties. He just >> couldn't take it.' >> >> Had Kerouac lived on into old age, he would have been even more >> appalled at the ways in which his legacy is currently being >> misrepresented. Two years ago, a range of Jack Kerouac clothing was >> launched in America. Later this year, the BBC will mark the 50th >> anniversary of the publication of On the Road by sending the comedian, >> presenter and self-styled dandy, Russell Brand, and his Radio 2 >> co-presenter, Matt Morgan, on a road trip. >> >> Thankfully, the anniversary will also be marked in a more reverent >> manner by the book's publishers, Penguin, who on 5 September will >> publish On the Road: The Original Scroll, the full, uncensored text >> that Kerouac famously wrote in those three frantic weeks. The cast of >> characters - Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs, the Cassadys - are no longer >> hidden behind Kerouac's often wonderful pseudonyms, and that famous >> opening line, 'I first met Dean not long after my wife and I had split >> up,' now reads, 'I first met Neal not long after my father died.' >> >> Many of the sex scenes, straight and gay, removed at his publishers' >> insistence, have been reinstated too, though they are tame by today's >> standards. The attraction that Ginsberg felt for Neal Cassady, briefly >> reciprocated, is now acknowledged in the first few pages, though in an >> almost offhand manner: 'I was in the same room. I heard them across >> the darkness and mused and said to myself, "Hmm, now there's something >> started but don't want anything to do with it."' >> >> Fifty years on, the book is being turned into a Hollywood film, >> scripted by Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford, and directed by Walter >> Salles who made The Motorcyle Diaries, the story of Che Guevara's road >> trip across South America. Kirsten Dunst will star as Carolyn Cassady. >> >> Nearly 40 years after his premature death, then, Kerouac lives on - >> though in some odd and often contradictory ways. As is the case with >> Guevara, his legacy is contested, his cultural meaning blurred. At the >> Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, for instance, where the Jack >> Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is housed, they will be >> celebrating the 50th anniversary of On the Road with a three-day >> Kerouac festival. The last remnants of the Beat generation, or at >> least those fit enough to travel, will be in attendance. >> >> One of the organisers, Junior Burke, chair of writing at Naropa, >> recently described On the Road as 'one of the truly defining works of >> American fiction', comparing it to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, >> but adding: 'Instead of two guys on a raft on the Mississippi, it's >> two guys in a Hudson Hornet on the highways of America. I think it's >> something that young people still relate to.' >> >> For many young people in America, though, the name Jack Kerouac means >> nothing at all. In an age where youth culture is increasingly defined >> by consumerism, where the road trip has been replaced by the gap year, >> and where it is considered radical to be cool but not cool to be >> radical, whither Jack Kerouac and his beatific vision? >> >> 'It struck me when I was in Thailand last year that no one is even >> pretending to be beat any more,' says the young British novelist Hari >> Kunzru. 'You'd quite often see white guys with dreadlocks pulling >> wheelie cases down Khao San Road. The great adventure that was >> travelling overland in the Sixties and Seventies has become a >> middle-class ritual. The notion that you would throw yourself at the >> mercy of the road, and by doing so, gain some self-knowledge or even >> maturity, is long gone.' >> >> Carolyn Cassady, the last surviving member of Kerouac's closeknit >> coterie of friends and fellow Beats, now 84 and exiled in deepest >> Berkshire, is even more scathing about Noughties youth. 'It's all >> about money and surface now, the clothes you wear, the things you buy, >> and no one is the slightest bit ashamed of being superficial. I often >> thank God that Jack and Neal did not live long enough to see what has >> become of their vision'. >> >> When I was a teenager, though, On the Road was the bible for any >> aspiring bohemian, a book that was passed on from one generation to >> the next almost as a talismanic text. I was given a battered copy by >> an older friend and, even before I read it, knew that it carried >> within its pages some deep, abiding truth about youth, freedom and >> self-determination. On the Road instilled in me a belief that, in >> order to find oneself, one had to throw caution to the wind and travel >> long distances with no real goal and very little money. >> >> A few years later, I passed the same copy on to my younger brother, >> and was incensed when he passed it on to a friend who left it on a >> bus. I can see the irony now but back then I felt that something >> bigger than just a battered paperback had been lost. It was in this >> word-of-mouth way that On the Road, even long after its initial >> publication, became one of those rare novels that was often read by >> people who do not read novels as a rule. It may be that this is still >> the case, but I doubt it. Harry Potter is today's zeitgeist book. The >> Beats and their wild adventures seem light years away. >> >> And yet, for all that, On the Road continues to be read. What was once >> a zeitgeist book, though, and one that defined a transformative moment >> in postwar culture, has become a historical artefact. It may even be >> the case that today's teenagers read On the Road in much the same way >> that my generation read Laurie Lee's picaresque rites-of-passage novel >> As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - as a glimpse into an already >> distant past when things seemed simpler. >> >> When I asked my 20-year-old niece, Lucy, if she had read it, she >> nodded. 'I liked parts of it,' she said, 'but it seemed so >> old-fashioned.' Did she connect with it in any way? 'I suppose it does >> make you feel like you had missed out on something.' This, she added, >> was a familiar feeling among her generation. What was that something, >> though? 'Oh, some kind of meaning. It's set in a time when travelling >> across America and smoking weed or whatever meant something. It was a >> statement.' >> >> Hari Kunzru, who 'came to the book late and found it almost cringey in >> its emotional gushiness,' agrees. 'I was aware of its cultural weight >> in the canon of alternative literature before I read it, and even >> though I never had an intense love affair with it, there was no >> denying that the lives these guys lived was properly edgy in a way >> that my generation's wasn't. They were transgressing in a very real >> way and doing dangerous things at a time when the risks were high. To >> me, the lives were often more interesting than the writing.' >> >> While living in New York, Kerouac met the varied bunch of characters >> and fledgling writers who would later become the Beat generation, the >> likes of Ginsberg, Burroughs, John Clellon Holmes, who is said to have >> coined the term, and, most significantly, Neal Cassady. Kerouac had >> grown up in a relatively stable family. Cassady, on the other hand, >> had been brought up by an alcoholic father, and sent to reform school >> several times in his teens for stealing cars. >> >> To Ginsberg and Kerouac, Cassady was the real thing, an authentic free >> spirit at a time when authenticity - of experience, expression, vision >> - was all. 'Neal was an energetic and instinctively brilliant, >> self-educated guy with a photographic memory,' elaborates Carolyn >> Cassady. 'But, because of his background, a lot of the more academic >> Beats didn't like him, didn't trust him. Both Jack and Allen were >> blown away by him, though, his restless energy, his love of life, the >> way he talked, the way he lived purely for the moment.' >> >> Cassady epitomised the consciousness that Kerouac had christened >> 'beat' as early as 1948. The word had two connotations for Kerouac: >> 'beat' as in worn out by the conventions and constrictions of straight >> American society; and beat as in 'beatific' - blessed, holy, >> transcendent. The Beat writers had a shared vision that rejected many >> of the formal values of the accepted canon, and elevated energy, flow >> and engagement over reflection, refinement and detachment. In doing >> so, they also reflected the dissatisfactions of America's postwar young. >> >> Willam Burroughs, who was older and colder than the other Beats, saw >> the Beat generation as a media construct as much as an organic >> flowering of a shared transgressive vision: 'Those arch-opportunists, >> they know a story when they see one, and the Beat movement was a >> story, and a big one.' Following the crossover sucess of On The Road, >> Kerouac became the centre of that story, constantly referred to in the >> press as 'king of the Beats' and 'spokesman for a generation'. And, >> though he was eager for literary recognition, he was also the most >> ill-suited candidate for this kind of canonisation, at least until the >> similarly elusive Bob Dylan came along a decade later. Dylan, though, >> managed to reinvent himself continually. Kerouac tried many times and >> failed. >> >> In the end, Jack Kerouac outlived Neal Cassady by just over a year. >> Cassady, the man who had truly defined the essence of Beat, whose >> restlessness, amorality and manic energy had so inspired Kerouac to >> create his freeform, rhapsodic prose, was found dead by a railway >> track in Mexico in 1968. He had kept on moving, though, had even >> stamped his personality on another movement, Ken Kesey's LSD-fuelled >> Merry Pranksters, whose Day-Glo bus he piloted across America and had >> ended up in another zeitgeist book, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid >> Acid Test. >> >> Kerouac died in 1969 in St Petersburg, Florida. He had lived long >> enough to be blamed for the excesses of the Sixties generation, for >> whom he felt no empathy. According to Carolyn Cassady: 'Jack was >> essentially conservative, patriotic even, but not in any heavy-handed >> way. He was old-fashioned. I never once heard him swear. People who >> write about him can never seem to get a hold of the consciousness of >> that time, which was restless and questing, but also oddly reserved >> and responsible. His intention was not freedom without responsibility, >> but freedom of expression in art.' >> >> Which begs the inevitable question, does On the Road stand the test of >> time? Is it a great work of literature? Ann Charters thinks so, >> comparing it to both Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, as a novel >> that 'explores the themes of personal freedom and challenges the >> promise of the American dream'. Likewise the American novelist, AM >> Homes, who wrote recently that 'Kerouac was the man who allowed >> writers to enter the world of flow... his philosophy was about being >> in the current, open to possibility, allowing creativity to move >> through you, and you to be one with the process'. >> >> Hari Kunzru disagrees. 'On the Road is such a patchy book, like much >> Beat writing, in fact. The whole heart-on-the-sleeve romanticism is >> off-putting, even embarassing. Apart from some really brilliant >> descriptive passages, it just does not stand up. It's become a >> different book now, a historical artefact rather than a living, >> breathing work of literature.' >> >> When I re-read On the Road recently, it did indeed seem to me to be a >> different book from the one that I had so connected with as a >> teenager. The gush of emotionalism was apparent, and the narrative no >> longer held my attention in the same way. And yet there were moments >> of great descriptive prose about America, about jazz music, about the >> sheer joy of being young and alive, and about the fleeting freedom of >> the open road. More surprisingly, there was an undercurrent of great >> sadness and disillusionment that I had not picked up on, or chosen to >> overlook, first time around. It seemed, in its final part, to be an >> elegy for Kerouac and Cassady's youth, for their friendship, which >> ends in a kind of betrayal, and for the fabled road of the title that >> had promised so much but, in the end, delivered so little. >> >> Kerouac: On the record >> >> 1922 Born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac in Lowell, Massachusetts to >> French-Canadian parents. >> >> 1939 Entered Columbia University on a football scholarship but dropped >> out in 1941. >> >> 1944 Arrested for helping Lucien Carr dispose of the body of David >> Kammerer, whom Carr had stabbed to death. Released on bail, put up by >> girlfriend Edie Parker after he agreed to marry her. >> >> 1950 Published first novel The Town and the City to respectable >> reviews but poor sales. >> >> 1951 Wrote On the Road >> >> 1957 Hailed as the voice of the Beat generation, after On the Road was >> finally published to ecstatic reviews. >> >> 1960s Moved to Florida to escape media attention and care for his >> mother. Wrote a series of lesser-known autobiographical novels. >> >> 1969 Died aged 47 from internal bleeding caused by cirrhosis of the >> liver. >> >> They said 'Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in 1959 and it blew my >> mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my language.' (Bob Dylan) >> >> 'That's not writing, that's typing.' (Truman Capote) >> >> He said 'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad >> to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the >> same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but >> burn, burn, burn, like fabulous Roman candles exploding like spiders >> across the stars.' (From On the Road) Hugh Montgomery >> >> Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited > > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From slighcl at wfu.edu Tue Aug 7 06:17:03 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:17:03 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> On 8/7/2007 8:38 AM, Marc Piel wrote: > > Surely little has changed??? In some ways, yes; in some ways, no. One significant change: The very idea that a young person would use a _book _as a self-conscious emblem of difference or of belonging has changed. That is, in a certain moment, merely to be seen reading Durrell's /Justine /or Kerouac's /On the Road/ or Ginsberg's /Howl /(or Camus, Sartre, &c. &c.) would allow others to recognize that a certain sort of book makes for a certain sort of person. For example, consider how book signify in the following lyrics, written by one of the poets of my home state: I first ran into Stoney. . . it was a bar downtown; Was Richmond, Virginia. . . we were bumming around, Suitcase to suitcase. . . we started him talking, Finding out about the things we've shared in the miles we've been. He had *a gray pillowcase full of books by Durrell,* And he had this old concertina, all beat up and she played like hell, Until you got him started singing those Gospel songs, Well, he drank all night for nothing, he told his stories till dawn. Just with that one gloss, we feel we know quite a bit about that friendly-looking stranger walking up to the bar. A man of mystery, adventure, travel, and stories. (Some on the list will know even more!) Or consider the way books and authors stand out in the following late 1950s Paris scene penned by Cort?zar: Surrounded by boys in baggy sweaters and delightfully funky girls in the smoke of the caf?s-cr?me of Saint-Germain-des-Pr?s who read *Durrell, Beauvoir, Duras, Douassot, Queneau, Sarraute*, here I am a Frenchified Argentinian (horror of horrors), already beyond the adolescent vogue, the cool, with an /Etous-vous fous/? of Ren? Crevel anachronistically in my hands, with the whole body of surrealism in my memory, with the mark of Antonin Artaud in my pelvis, with the Ionisations of Edgard Var?se in my ears, with Picasso in my eyes (but I seem to be a Mondrian, at least that's what I've been told). In America, at least, I think that young people no longer have that degree of interest or ability to use "/that Book/" as a sign of recognition. Even at university, I think, the iPods &c. have replaced the Significant Well-Thumbed Paper-Back. Times change. I exaggerate quite a bit. I spoke last semester with a student who surprised me greatly when she said that Hardy and Dostoevsky were her private, personal readings of choice. She was earnest; I could understand her sincerity because she said these books only made her all the more lonely around her peer-group, who do everything but read. I was surprised because I rarely get the sense, even from very good English majors, that passionate reading is cultivated and fostered by youth individually or communally. Although it perhaps happened in the past and no doubt happens still in small select groups in small select locales (Burlington, Boulder, Berkeley, Portland, Madison, Austin, Charlottesville, Union Square Park, &c.), I have difficulty imagining most young Americans getting together to drink away the night and discuss books in the way that I have experienced that. No doubt they never really did. Cf. Oedipa Maas in Pynchon's /Lot 49/. Yet it could perhaps happen online in web communities that breakdown the distances between readers. Thus the ILDS listserv. Now in London &c., it may be different. But I think that Londoners on the train do not pick up their paperbacks or papers in order to be seen. Rather that reading is a protective screening from the general press. If only the Tube had enough elbow space these days to hold a paperback for reading. I will look forward to the anecdotes. Charles -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070807/12fe6f79/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Tue Aug 7 08:31:44 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:31:44 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070807/075915fa/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Tue Aug 7 08:38:24 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:38:24 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <88.D8.15506.FC198B64@gwout2> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070807/cc04eafd/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Tue Aug 7 09:19:43 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 10:19:43 -0600 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46B89B9F.2050300@gmail.com> Hello all, As I think I may have recounted here, last year when I was teaching the _Quartet_ in one of my courses, I sat down on the bus next to a young woman what was finishing the last very pages of _Clea_. I assumed from the book that she was a student I (shamefully) didn't recognize, but that wasn't the case. We have a nice chat, though I didn't interrupt her reading in those last pages. She read them because her mother said they were "great books." Sadly, it was the Penguin edition... Oddly, my actual senior English students seemed to have trouble getting through the book that their peer in Biology read for fun. I did, admittedly, have them reading the _Quartet_ right after Lessing's _The Golden Notebook_, so exhaustion may have played a role. Humm. That said, reading a book for the act of being seen reading it is certainly a passing phenomenon. Yet, we do have critics recounting exactly this experience with Durrell (anecdotes from Said and Eagleton that have been posted here, as well as Charlie's comments on Stoney, & co.). The last time I had major comments while reading on the bus, it was back when I was at UBC on a 2 hour commute from the Fraser Valley -- everyone noticed (and made some silly comment on) _Clarissa_ and _The Avignon Quintet_. I first read _Jude the Obscure_ on the same bus. The iPod (which I like) is the antithesis of this -- it is a private experience without a dustjacket. I can listen to an audio book, but my fellow commuters have no idea if I'm listening to the Arkangel Shakespeare recordings or a new boyband. I personally regret the diminution of conversations on public transit that I've noticed since we all switched from books & papers to something with earphones. How are those anecdotes, Charles? Best, James slighcl wrote: > On 8/7/2007 8:38 AM, Marc Piel wrote: >> Surely little has changed??? > In some ways, yes; in some ways, no. > > One significant change: The very idea that a young person would use a > _book _as a self-conscious emblem of difference or of belonging has > changed. > > That is, in a certain moment, merely to be seen reading Durrell's > /Justine /or Kerouac's /On the Road/ or Ginsberg's /Howl /(or Camus, > Sartre, &c. &c.) would allow others to recognize that a certain sort > of book makes for a certain sort of person. > > For example, consider how book signify in the following lyrics, > written by one of the poets of my home state: > > I first ran into Stoney. . . it was a bar downtown; > Was Richmond, Virginia. . . we were bumming around, > Suitcase to suitcase. . . we started him talking, > Finding out about the things we've shared in the miles we've been. > > He had *a gray pillowcase full of books by Durrell,* > And he had this old concertina, all beat up and she played like hell, > Until you got him started singing those Gospel songs, > Well, he drank all night for nothing, he told his stories till dawn. > > Just with that one gloss, we feel we know quite a bit about that > friendly-looking stranger walking up to the bar. A man of mystery, > adventure, travel, and stories. (Some on the list will know even more!) > > Or consider the way books and authors stand out in the following late > 1950s Paris scene penned by Cort?zar: > > Surrounded by boys in baggy sweaters and delightfully funky girls > in the smoke of the caf?s-cr?me of Saint-Germain-des-Pr?s who read > *Durrell, Beauvoir, Duras, Douassot, Queneau, Sarraute*, here I am > a Frenchified Argentinian (horror of horrors), already beyond the > adolescent vogue, the cool, with an /Etous-vous fous/? of Ren? > Crevel anachronistically in my hands, with the whole body of > surrealism in my memory, with the mark of Antonin Artaud in my > pelvis, with the Ionisations of Edgard Var?se in my ears, with > Picasso in my eyes (but I seem to be a Mondrian, at least that's > what I've been told). > > In America, at least, I think that young people no longer have that > degree of interest or ability to use "/that Book/" as a sign of > recognition. Even at university, I think, the iPods &c. have replaced > the Significant Well-Thumbed Paper-Back. Times change. > > I exaggerate quite a bit. I spoke last semester with a student who > surprised me greatly when she said that Hardy and Dostoevsky were her > private, personal readings of choice. She was earnest; I could > understand her sincerity because she said these books only made her > all the more lonely around her peer-group, who do everything but > read. I was surprised because I rarely get the sense, even from very > good English majors, that passionate reading is cultivated and > fostered by youth individually or communally. Although it perhaps > happened in the past and no doubt happens still in small select groups > in small select locales (Burlington, Boulder, Berkeley, Portland, > Madison, Austin, Charlottesville, Union Square Park, &c.), I have > difficulty imagining most young Americans getting together to drink > away the night and discuss books in the way that I have experienced > that. No doubt they never really did. Cf. Oedipa Maas in Pynchon's > /Lot 49/. > > Yet it could perhaps happen online in web communities that breakdown > the distances between readers. Thus the ILDS listserv. > > Now in London &c., it may be different. But I think that Londoners on > the train do not pick up their paperbacks or papers in order to be > seen. Rather that reading is a protective screening from the general > press. If only the Tube had enough elbow space these days to hold a > paperback for reading. > > I will look forward to the anecdotes. > > Charles > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From slighcl at wfu.edu Tue Aug 7 09:28:02 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:28:02 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <46B89B9F.2050300@gmail.com> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> <46B89B9F.2050300@gmail.com> Message-ID: <46B89D92.5030903@wfu.edu> On 8/7/2007 12:19 PM, James Gifford wrote: > Hello all, > > As I think I may have recounted here, last year when I was teaching the > _Quartet_ in one of my courses, I sat down on the bus next to a young > woman what was finishing the last very pages of _Clea_. I assumed from > the book that she was a student I (shamefully) didn't recognize, but > that wasn't the case. We have a nice chat, though I didn't interrupt > her reading in those last pages. She read them because her mother said > they were "great books." Sadly, it was the Penguin edition... > I personally regret the > diminution of conversations on public transit that I've noticed since we > all switched from books & papers to something with earphones. > > How are those anecdotes, Charles? Yes--perfect--I think that this illustrates my sense that reading is a highly erotic act. I can recall a moment following a Greek history class in which someone noted my passion for Herodotus. A moment of wonder, to say the least. Stay on the bus, Jamie! Charles -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** From slighcl at wfu.edu Tue Aug 7 09:31:25 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:31:25 -0400 Subject: [ilds] 1957 novels In-Reply-To: <88.D8.15506.FC198B64@gwout2> References: <46B72CBD.5060903@wfu.edu> <46B867D5.8060200@interdesign.fr> <46B870CF.6000801@wfu.edu> <88.D8.15506.FC198B64@gwout2> Message-ID: <46B89E5D.60706@wfu.edu> On 8/7/2007 11:38 AM, william godshalk wrote: > Let us recall Kundera's comments on reading in The Unbearable > Lightness of Being. Tereza sees reading as a sign of membership in > a club, and Tomas is a reader -- her kind of guy. Yes--I think that I was in every way thinking of reading as an erotic act--or at least a form of attention or mindfulness that this particular reader always engages in a highly-eroticized fashion. Thus my continual return to Durrell and to these lines from Durrell's poetry: > 'There are sides of the self > One can seldom show. They live on and on > In an emergency of anguish always, > Waiting for parents in another.' Poetry and reading are in every way for me about attraction, desire, longing, memory, and absence. All of this explains why I might like "The Tree of Idleness." I recall here Darley ending his lecture on the old Poet and looking up to see Justine there waiting to acquire him. And the conversation that followed as they devoured Italy. Although there are major aesthetic differences--and of course recognizing that Durrell declared his disinterest in the Beats (/Durrell-Miller Letters/ 330+)--this takes me back to my original query. I think that both 1957 novels--/On the Road/ and /Justine/--once were seen by their readers as signs of special membership. (Signifying the Cabal?) /Is the "cultic" aspect of these books also a drawback/? Charles -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070807/147a4614/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Tue Aug 7 10:38:09 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 11:38:09 -0600 Subject: [ilds] Conference Seminar Message-ID: <46B8AE01.5010406@gmail.com> Hello all, I'm not sure how many Durrellians are heading to the Modernist Studies Association conference in November, but Thomas Davis and I have organized a seminar that might appeal to those with Durrell-related interests. You can sign up for the seminar on a first-come first-served basis -- I'd love to see some familiar faces! The description and web links are below here. Their early registration deadline is August 15th, and in my experience the seminars always fill up on the early registration deadline, though they are rarely full. It has been an excellent conference in my experience, and several ILDS members all had fun a few years ago when it came to Vancouver. Best, James ----------------- MSA 9: Geographies of Visual and Literary Culture November 1-4 http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/conferences/msa9/ *SEMINAR:* Locations of Late Modernism * Leaders: Thomas S. Davis tdavis at nd.edu and James Gifford gifford at uvic.ca * Contrary to the general sense of the 1930s as a protracted expiration of the cosmopolitan modernisms of the preceding decades, this seminar recovers the lost geographies of modernist productions developing between 1930-1960. We seek papers that examine late modernist formal innovations alongside their geographical and political conditions of possibility, investigate material distribution networks, and, finally, re-conceptualize the period through the terra incognita of the second generation of modernists. Topics may include but are not limited to: * International Surrealism (Gascoyne, Agar, Jennings, Read, Brandt, Davies) * Spanish Civil War (Auden, Picasso, Weil, Townsend Warner, Malraux, Orwell) * Philhellenic and Levantine Modernisms (Seferis, Valaoritis, H.D., Durrell) * North Africa (Waugh, Douglas, Mahfouz) * Rural and Non-Urban Modernisms * Travel Writing (West, MacNeice, Leiris, Miller, Sackville-West, Dos Passos) http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford/msa/ From dtart at bigpond.net.au Wed Aug 8 01:09:16 2007 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 18:09:16 +1000 Subject: [ilds] Books and Image Message-ID: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> While we seem to have strayed somewhat from Bitter Lemons, which I am going through again when time permits in my chocker block ongoing scenario as teacher manager of an obscure Australian Steiner School, I am drawn to the idea of books as fashion statements or cultural appendages - or indeed as chic magnets as My sons like to pronounce in their more vulgar moods. yes, well do I remeber my university days wandering the campus with a copy of Dylan Thomas in my coat pocket, or sitting in aesthetic pose in the bar, gold tipped cigarette poised, self consciously reading the complete works of Oscar Wilde, or hunkered down in the smoking section of the library, hand-made cigarette between clenched teeth perusing the pages of Leacock, Durrell, Kafka, or sitting with friends under the shady flame trees discussing Donne, Shakespeare Rabelaise. was it sexy? was it self conscious? were we being enormous wankers? Yes! Was it fun? You bet! Did the girls go for it? Well, not the sporto types or the Northside Bimbos, but yep, there were the lit chics. turn back the clock guys. David Denise Tart & David Green 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 +61 2 9564 6165 0412 707 625 dtart at bigpond.net.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070808/c526f023/attachment.html From sumantranag at gmail.com Wed Aug 8 02:22:55 2007 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 14:52:55 +0530 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 5, Issue 4 References: Message-ID: <004901c7d99d$b6ce6160$0501a8c0@intel> I found the discussion on this issue fascinating, and have reproduced below, a few scattered lines from them for reference! 1. During the 1960s, the Alexandria Quartet and also the books of the Beat Generation created genuine interest among us - I mean students in Delhi University, and perhaps in St. Stephen's College in particular - when I was a student there. It was not so much a case of wanting to be seen reading these books. Some of my contemporaries were perhaps more influenced by the Beat writers than by Durrell. I believe Ginsberg visited Delhi then - it made no great furore but one person I knew, went and visited him at the Birla Mandir, a prominent Indian temple in Delhi with modest residential accommodation. I remember the poem "Howl" as a memorable experience of Beat writing at that time. 2. I can also see what Hari Kunzru is trying to say. A journey no longer has the kind of personal significance for the spirit that it once had. My wife and I both returned to Europe after many years, in 2005 and again in 2007 (a few months ago) on holidays: we witnessed, and happily enjoyed, the well laid out tourism facilities in Europe. 3. Oram Pamuk's "huzuun", a special form of communal melanchloy seen by him as a pervasive underlying mood in Istanbul in his book on the city ("Istanbul: Memories of a City") may not be as pervasive now as it may have been a few decades ago. Dereliction - the constant sight for Pamuk - is not what greets your eyes during a cruise on the Bosphorus today - the "Yalis" or houses on the shores of the Bosphorus are more remarkable for their gleaming exteriors! Travelling has become easy and pleasureable and more affordable for thousands of people, and history and the arts need not be excluded from these travels except through choice! This is what is derided as "mass tourism" I suppose, but.... these are the features of the contemporary world which fix the books of the 1960s: books which captivated us - and will hold us because we read them at an impressionable age - but cannot have the same gripping hold on the present generation of readers, young or old. Sumantra ...................................................................................................................... I think that both 1957 novels--/On the Road/ and /Justine/--once were seen by their readers as signs of special membership. (Signifying the Cabal?) /Is the "cultic" aspect of these books also a drawback/? ..................... Even at university, I think, the iPods &c. have replaced the Significant Well-Thumbed Paper-Back. Times change. Charles .......................... Atmosphere and historical place so indelible as to become like a film score of a certain time and place in life. The very titles have come associative, perfume-like. .................................. Hari Kunzru: '.....The great adventure that was travelling overland in the Sixties and Seventies has become a middle-class ritual. The notion that you would throw yourself at the mercy of the road, and by doing so, gain some self-knowledge or even maturity, is long gone.' From slighcl at wfu.edu Wed Aug 8 06:06:35 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:06:35 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Books and Image and Duigan's "Flirting" In-Reply-To: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> References: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Message-ID: <46B9BFDB.7080101@wfu.edu> On 8/8/2007 4:09 AM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote: > While we seem to have strayed somewhat from Bitter Lemons, which I > am going through again when time permits in my chocker block > ongoing scenario as teacher manager of an obscure Australian > Steiner School, I am drawn to the idea of books as fashion > statements or cultural appendages - or indeed as chic magnets as > My sons like to pronounce in their more vulgar moods. Thanks for recalling /Bitter Lemons/, a book which at least four of us have been stalking on the e-auction sites while everyone else on the list and in the world is bunkered down with their copies of /Harry Potter/. Take us back to Durrell's book, David. Where would you have us start? Good luck with the teaching. Teaching, Australia, the romance of books: Have you ever seen Duigan's /Flirting/? (I cannot imagine that you have not, given its AFI awards and frequent appearance on the lists.) When you describe the following I immediately follow with my memories of Noah Taylor's character, Danny Embling, the Sartre-reading outsider at the boarding school in New South Wales: > > > yes, well do I remeber my university days wandering the > campus with a copy of Dylan Thomas in my coat pocket, or > sitting in aesthetic pose in the bar, gold tipped > cigarette poised, self consciously reading the complete > works of Oscar Wilde, or hunkered down in the smoking > section of the library, hand-made cigarette between > clenched teeth perusing the pages of Leacock, Durrell, > Kafka, or sitting with friends under the shady flame trees > discussing Donne, Shakespeare Rabelaise. > > I thought spot-on Duigan's use of Durrell's /Justine/, a paper-covered copy of which sits beside the cosmetics and ashtray while Thandi Newton smokes at her mirror. The whole Danny Embling-Thandiwe Adjewa romance has the flavor of the kind of literate romance (wonderfully naive /and /knowing) that we are talking about. Everyone should watch the film before the close of summer. Flirting (1991) http://colsearch.nfsa.afc.gov.au/nfsa/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;group=;groupequals=;holdingType=;page=0;parentid=;query=Number%3A316583;querytype=;rec=0;resCount=10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flirting_(film) /The Year My Voice Broke/ (1986) is also tops. Thanks for the memories, David. Charles -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070808/c2c94249/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Wed Aug 8 07:08:18 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:08:18 -0400 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 5, Issue 4 In-Reply-To: <004901c7d99d$b6ce6160$0501a8c0@intel> References: <004901c7d99d$b6ce6160$0501a8c0@intel> Message-ID: <46B9CE52.1020803@wfu.edu> On 8/8/2007 5:22 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote: > I found the discussion on this issue fascinating, and have reproduced below, > a few scattered lines from them for reference! > > 1. During the 1960s, the Alexandria Quartet and also the books of the Beat > Generation created genuine interest among us - I mean students in Delhi > University, and perhaps in St. Stephen's College in particular - when I was > a student there. It was not so much a case of wanting to be seen reading > these books. Some of my contemporaries were perhaps more influenced by the > Beat writers than by Durrell. I believe Ginsberg visited Delhi then - it > made no great furore but one person I knew, went and visited him at the > Birla Mandir, a prominent Indian temple in Delhi with modest residential > accommodation. I remember the poem "Howl" as a memorable experience of Beat > writing at that time. This anecdote restores perspective for me, Sumantra, and I thank you. My remarks about the falling off of reading in public spaces have their special time and place. I write from the Southeastern United States in 2007, amazed at the lengths that undergrad students of all majors and types will go to to avoid reading books which can be positively recreational, in the fullest sense. Dear. I sound like Matt Arnold. It is good to recall that reading Durrell's /Quartet /&c. will express different interests and stand for different things in different places and times. Charles -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070808/8a4557e7/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Wed Aug 8 10:24:35 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:24:35 -0400 Subject: [ilds] turn back the hands of time In-Reply-To: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> References: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070808/54999b49/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Thu Aug 9 06:16:44 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:16:44 -0400 Subject: [ilds] fat and florid novels Message-ID: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> See below for another nod-and-shrink acknowledgment of Durrell. It really is a curious pattern to trace. Query: What is wrong with "fat and florid" novels? Second Query: Must young writers really write to the norm and to the standard of "lean and chaste"? Surely we readers are more catholic in taste than that. Perhaps our Northern Ministry can provide us with additional information. Charles *** http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-08-08-new-voices_N.htm > *New voices: Kevin Patterson* > By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY > Here's the scoop on /Consumption/ author Kevin Patterson: > > *The book* > > .*/Consumption/*(Doubleday/Talese, $25) > > .*What it's about:* A debut novel about the clash of cultures in the > Canadian Arctic featuring an Inuit woman who had tuberculosis as a > child and a doctor from New York who is out to escape his past. > > .*Why it's notable:* Critics raved when it was first published in > Canada last year, noting Patterson's firsthand experiences as a doctor > in the Arctic. > > .*Memorable line:* "Storms are sex. They exist alongside and are > indifferent to words and description and dissection." > > *The author* > > .*Quick bio:* Patterson, 42, grew up in Manitoba and attended medical > school under the sponsorship of the Canadian Army. > > .*Quote:* "Medicine and writing are natural companions. ... They both > revolve around narrative --- interpreting and teasing apart stories." > > .*Fun fact:* Patterson lived on his boat until he sailed into > Salt-spring Island, "a firred and rocky outcrop" between Vancouver and > the Canadian mainland he now calls home. > > .*Literary influences:* "Mark Helprin and *Lawrence Durrell*, both of > whom write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes > to the power of fiction when I was in my 20s." > > .*Next up:* /Becalm/, a sequel to his 1999 travel memoir, /The Water > in Between/, about sailing from British Columbia to Tahiti. > -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070809/032716d6/attachment.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Aug 9 07:17:07 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:17:07 +0200 Subject: [ilds] fat and florid novels In-Reply-To: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> References: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46BB21E3.5000200@interdesign.fr> Too many people think that becoming mature is leaving behind childhood, enthusiasm, spontaniety, passion; they are wrong, so what other reactions can you expect. Live is beautiful when it burns like a fire. When you burn slow saving fuel, it is not worth living and then you miss (don't understand) everything. Marc slighcl wrote: > See below for another nod-and-shrink acknowledgment of Durrell. It > really is a curious pattern to trace. > > Query: What is wrong with "fat and florid" novels? > > Second Query: Must young writers really write to the norm and to the > standard of "lean and chaste"? > > Surely we readers are more catholic in taste than that. > > Perhaps our Northern Ministry can provide us with additional information. > > Charles > > *** > > http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-08-08-new-voices_N.htm > >> New voices: Kevin Patterson >> By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY >> Here's the scoop on Consumption author Kevin Patterson: >> >> The book >> >> ?Consumption(Doubleday/Talese, $25) >> >> ?What it's about: A debut novel about the clash of cultures in the >> Canadian Arctic featuring an Inuit woman who had tuberculosis as a >> child and a doctor from New York who is out to escape his past. >> >> ?Why it's notable: Critics raved when it was first published in Canada >> last year, noting Patterson's firsthand experiences as a doctor in the >> Arctic. >> >> ?Memorable line: "Storms are sex. They exist alongside and are >> indifferent to words and description and dissection." >> >> The author >> >> ?Quick bio: Patterson, 42, grew up in Manitoba and attended medical >> school under the sponsorship of the Canadian Army. >> >> ?Quote: "Medicine and writing are natural companions. ? They both >> revolve around narrative ? interpreting and teasing apart stories." >> >> ?Fun fact: Patterson lived on his boat until he sailed into >> Salt-spring Island, "a firred and rocky outcrop" between Vancouver and >> the Canadian mainland he now calls home. >> >> ?Literary influences: "Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom >> write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to >> the power of fiction when I was in my 20s." >> >> ?Next up: Becalm, a sequel to his 1999 travel memoir, The Water in >> Between, about sailing from British Columbia to Tahiti. >> > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From gifford at uvic.ca Thu Aug 9 10:38:26 2007 From: gifford at uvic.ca (James Gifford) Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 11:38:26 -0600 Subject: [ilds] fat and florid novels In-Reply-To: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> References: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <2bfc74100708091038s2ea868e6h35cad1f9cc64b2cf@mail.gmail.com> Kevin uses references to Durrell repeatedly in his first travel book, _The Water In Between_ -- should be cheap to pick up, and it's a good read. Real nice writing and perfect for a summer afternoon. The sequel sounds promising. I jotted down the Durrell references & allusions somewhere. And, for those of you who came to Victoria, if you took the ferry from Vancouver, you were practically in shouting distance... There's something of a minor following for Durrell among Canadian authors, for some reason, and allusions, references, or epigrams pop up more than one would expect. There's something to be written about that. I suspect there's a smattering of Mordecai Richler's _Solomon Gusky Was Here_ in Patterson's latest book too, but that's just a hunch. Richler smacks of Durrell several times too: try _Cocksure_ along side _Revolt of Aphrodite_. Cheers, James a.k.a. Northern Ministry On 09/08/07, slighcl wrote: > See below for another nod-and-shrink acknowledgment of Durrell. It really > is a curious pattern to trace. > > Query: What is wrong with "fat and florid" novels? > > Second Query: Must young writers really write to the norm and to the > standard of "lean and chaste"? > > Surely we readers are more catholic in taste than that. > > Perhaps our Northern Ministry can provide us with additional information. > > Charles > > *** > > http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-08-08-new-voices_N.htm > > New voices: Kevin Patterson > By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY > Here's the scoop on Consumption author Kevin Patterson: > > The book > > ?Consumption(Doubleday/Talese, $25) > > ?What it's about: A debut novel about the clash of cultures in the Canadian > Arctic featuring an Inuit woman who had tuberculosis as a child and a doctor > from New York who is out to escape his past. > > ?Why it's notable: Critics raved when it was first published in Canada last > year, noting Patterson's firsthand experiences as a doctor in the Arctic. > > ?Memorable line: "Storms are sex. They exist alongside and are indifferent > to words and description and dissection." > > The author > > ?Quick bio: Patterson, 42, grew up in Manitoba and attended medical school > under the sponsorship of the Canadian Army. > > ?Quote: "Medicine and writing are natural companions. ? They both revolve > around narrative ? interpreting and teasing apart stories." > > ?Fun fact: Patterson lived on his boat until he sailed into Salt-spring > Island, "a firred and rocky outcrop" between Vancouver and the Canadian > mainland he now calls home. > > ?Literary influences: "Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write > fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of > fiction when I was in my 20s." From godshawl at email.uc.edu Thu Aug 9 11:22:31 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:22:31 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Helprin and Durrell? In-Reply-To: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> References: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <13.C6.17579.84B5BB64@gwout1> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070809/d6d3e226/attachment.html From albigensian at hotmail.com Thu Aug 9 12:24:50 2007 From: albigensian at hotmail.com (Pamela Francis) Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:24:50 -0500 Subject: [ilds] Helprin and Durrell? In-Reply-To: <13.C6.17579.84B5BB64@gwout1> Message-ID: No...i'm certainly not seeing the connection, though I truly loved Winter's Tale--but it was certainly more in the genre of magical realism than anything LD wrote. And Helprin's politics make LD look downright Leftist...As for "fat" novels--I don't really find any of LD's that lengthy--by the time you get rid of all the white spaces in the Quintet, it's actually quite short.hope all are well--pamela >From: william godshalk >Reply-To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca >To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca >Subject: [ilds] Helprin and Durrell? >Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:22:31 -0400 > > > > >?Literary influences: >"Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom write fat >and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to the power of >fiction when I was in my 20s." > >How are (or should I write were?) Mark and Larry alike? They are >(or were) physically small; they are/were politically conservative. I >assume that Kevin must see the AQ as one long novel, not four relatively >short ones. In any case, I very rarely, if ever, think of Durrekk and >Helprin as comparable prose writers. Perhaps someone will convince me >that I should. > > >Bill > > >*************************************** >W. L. >Godshalk * >Department of >English * >University of >Cincinnati Stellar disorder * >Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * >513-281-5927 >*************************************** > > >_______________________________________________ >ILDS mailing list >ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From godshawl at email.uc.edu Thu Aug 9 13:41:13 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:41:13 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Helprin and Durrell? In-Reply-To: <13.C6.17579.84B5BB64@gwout1> References: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> <13.C6.17579.84B5BB64@gwout1> Message-ID: One more thing about Helprin, he believes that lemmings commit mass suicide. I did try to convince him otherwise, but I think to no avail. Bill *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From sumantranag at gmail.com Thu Aug 9 23:03:02 2007 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:33:02 +0530 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 5, Issue 5 References: Message-ID: <008501c7db14$202960c0$0501a8c0@intel> Charles, Since my memories have struck a chord, I thought I would complete the thread of recollection - as briefly as possible - with my experience at Jesus College, Cambridge University, England, where I went to study science in 1967 from St.Stephen's College, Delhi. Very shortly after my arrival at Cambridge, I was in the bar one evening at Jesus College, after a meeting of the Literary Society of the College and I was holding forth on the evocative quality of Lawrence Durrell's writing. In our company in the bar, was an undergraduate student of English Literature, whose name I don't recall - but who, unknown to me, may well be a well-known figure today! He was a lot more dismissive of Durrell's writing. I still remember his mentioning Steinbeck as one of the writers who had already displayed some of the qualities of powerful writing which had impressed me in Durrell. Beside me was a prominent Irish graduate research fellow of English Literature from Jesus College, whom I later got to know, and who had attended our poetry reading session at the just concluded meeting of the Literary Society. He was enthusiastic in his support of my arguments about Lawrence Durrell. I later found that he had visited Alexandria, but in his own words, had found the city "terrible". So, here - in the College where incidentally, Terry Eagleton was then teaching English - were two quite different reactions to Lawrence Durrell, expressed by two very scholarly young students of English Literature! I later spoke about Lawrence Durrell and the Alexandria Quartet to many of my undergraduate friends in College, among whom were students of the English Tripos. But I found no particular enthusiasm for his writing, and in the general atmosphere of England and Cambridge in the late 1960s - so different from what I had imagined! - I felt that the romanticism of Durrell at least, was out of place. So much for now! Sumantra ---------------------------------- Message: 4 Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:08:18 -0400 From: slighcl Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 5, Issue 4 On 8/8/2007 5:22 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote.......: 1. During the 1960s, the Alexandria Quartet and also the books of the Beat Generation created genuine interest among us - I mean students in Delhi University, and perhaps in St. Stephen's College in particular - when I was a student there........ This anecdote restores perspective for me, Sumantra, and I thank you. My remarks about the falling off of reading in public spaces have their special time and place. I write from the Southeastern United States in 2007, amazed at the lengths that undergrad students of all majors and types will go to to avoid reading books which can be positively recreational, in the fullest sense. Dear. I sound like Matt Arnold. It is good to recall that reading Durrell's /Quartet /&c. will express different interests and stand for different things in different places and times. Charles From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Fri Aug 10 03:53:14 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:53:14 +0200 Subject: [ilds] fat and florid novels In-Reply-To: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> References: <46BB13BC.8090009@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46BC439A.7080405@interdesign.fr> slighcl wrote: > See below for another nod-and-shrink acknowledgment of Durrell. It > really is a curious pattern to trace. > > Query: What is wrong with "fat and florid" novels? > > Second Query: Must young writers really write to the norm and to the > standard of "lean and chaste"? > > Surely we readers are more catholic in taste than that. > > Perhaps our Northern Ministry can provide us with additional information. > > Charles > > *** > > http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-08-08-new-voices_N.htm > >> New voices: Kevin Patterson >> By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY >> Here's the scoop on Consumption author Kevin Patterson: >> >> The book >> >> ?Consumption(Doubleday/Talese, $25) >> >> ?What it's about: A debut novel about the clash of cultures in the >> Canadian Arctic featuring an Inuit woman who had tuberculosis as a >> child and a doctor from New York who is out to escape his past. >> >> ?Why it's notable: Critics raved when it was first published in Canada >> last year, noting Patterson's firsthand experiences as a doctor in the >> Arctic. >> >> ?Memorable line: "Storms are sex. They exist alongside and are >> indifferent to words and description and dissection." >> >> The author >> >> ?Quick bio: Patterson, 42, grew up in Manitoba and attended medical >> school under the sponsorship of the Canadian Army. >> >> ?Quote: "Medicine and writing are natural companions. ? They both >> revolve around narrative ? interpreting and teasing apart stories." >> >> ?Fun fact: Patterson lived on his boat until he sailed into >> Salt-spring Island, "a firred and rocky outcrop" between Vancouver and >> the Canadian mainland he now calls home. >> >> ?Literary influences: "Mark Helprin and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom >> write fat and florid novels that appall me now but opened my eyes to >> the power of fiction when I was in my 20s." >> >> ?Next up: Becalm, a sequel to his 1999 travel memoir, The Water in >> Between, about sailing from British Columbia to Tahiti. >> > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Fri Aug 10 03:53:56 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:53:56 +0200 Subject: [ilds] Some od the group might find this interesting... Message-ID: <46BC43C4.5070902@interdesign.fr> http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_week.shtml From dtart at bigpond.net.au Fri Aug 10 21:27:59 2007 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:27:59 +1000 Subject: [ilds] The Nature of Terrorism References: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> <46B9BFDB.7080101@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <00eb01c7dbcf$ffd411f0$ab94bc7c@MumandDad> Take us back to Durrell's book, David. Where would you have us start? Richard Pine, I think, said that Durrell was very wise. Indeed. The following extract from Bitter Lemons on the nature of terrorism should, perhaps, be compulsory reading for American, British and Australian security organisations - CIA, MI5 or 6, ASIO in our case. "one needs about a month to catch the particular flavour of terrorism which is made up of quite intangible fears - feet running down a road at midnight, a silent man in a white shirt standing at a street corner holding a bicycle too small for him, a parked car with no lights, a factory door ajar, the flick of a torch in a field. terrorism infects the normal transactions of life. The horror of deliberate murder, or ambush or grenade, is at least purging - the pity and the terror are in them, and the conciseness of actions which can be met. But the evil genius of terrorism is suspicion- the man who stops and asks for a light, a cart with a broken axle signalling for help, a forrester standing alone among trees, three youths walking back to a village after sundown, a sheperd shouting something indistinctly heard by moonlight, the sudden pealing of a doorbell in the night. The slender chain of trust upon which all human relations are based is broken - and this the terrorist knows and sharpens his claws precisely here: for is primary object is not battle. It is to bring upon the community in general a reprisal for his wrongs, in the hope that the fury and resentment roused by punishment meted out to the innocent will gradually swell the ranks of those from whom he will draw further recruits." To use an Australian expression "How good is this?!" when we read the measured examples of Durrell's own experience, we can imagine, quite easliy, the American Grunt in Bagdad trying, probably not very well, to deal with this stuff and if it gets too tricky, well there is always huge amounts of firepower. we have soldiers in East Timor coping with the same stuff and they are, by all accounts very professional, and yet, some months ago several notorious local thugs walked out of gaol because 'everything seemed normal'. If we consider the precison of Durrell's images - ones I feel he observed or heard - how luck were the British to have the wise Durrell as an advisor to the Cyprus admin. How well could George Bush's administration do with him now? (Mind you I don't think Durrell's penchant for the juice of the vine would go down too well) David Green -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070811/fafbdc82/attachment.html From dtart at bigpond.net.au Fri Aug 10 21:41:56 2007 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:41:56 +1000 Subject: [ilds] Books and Image and Duigan's "Flirting" References: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> <46B9BFDB.7080101@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <00f501c7dbd1$f2ac3b90$ab94bc7c@MumandDad> Good luck with the teaching. Teaching, Australia, the romance of books: Have you ever seen Duigan's Flirting? (I cannot imagine that you have not, given its AFI awards and frequent appearance on the lists.) When you describe the following I immediately follow with my memories of Noah Taylor's character, Danny Embling, the Sartre-reading outsider at the boarding school in New South Wales: Charles, the Year my Voice broke I know, but Flirting I do not - however it is on my list now. I thought spot-on Duigan's use of Durrell's Justine, a paper-covered copy of which sits beside the cosmetics and ashtray while Thandi Newton smokes at her mirror. The whole Danny Embling-Thandiwe Adjewa romance has the flavor of the kind of literate romance (wonderfully naive and knowing) that we are talking about. Everyone should watch the film before the close of summer. Yes, and let us not forget that Brett Whitely's painting "Justine" is up for auction this month: another fine example of a Durrell novel in a lit chic, funky modernist pose: the paperback edition perched between the pendulous breasts and great sprawling voluptuous arse of Whitely's girlfirnd on Bondi Beach: sexy, sexy, sexy! And if you don't believe me, then you should see all the Japanese business men/tourists you go down to Bondi Beach in the Summer and get their pictures taken next to great, strapping, curvy, Aussie girls who are taller than they are: Steak and eggs from the cradle up, my dears. DG Flirting (1991) http://colsearch.nfsa.afc.gov.au/nfsa/search/display/display.w3p;adv=yes;group=;groupequals=;holdingType=;page=0;parentid=;query=Number%3A316583;querytype=;rec=0;resCount=10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flirting_(film) The Year My Voice Broke (1986) is also tops. Thanks for the memories, David. Charles -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070811/a7f73c4f/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Aug 11 11:26:05 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:26:05 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The Nature of Terrorism In-Reply-To: <00eb01c7dbcf$ffd411f0$ab94bc7c@MumandDad> References: <000001c7d994$b60dbf90$0202a8c0@MumandDad> <46B9BFDB.7080101@wfu.edu> <00eb01c7dbcf$ffd411f0$ab94bc7c@MumandDad> Message-ID: <46BDFF3D.5000702@wfu.edu> > Indeed. The following extract from Bitter Lemons on the nature of > terrorism should, perhaps, be compulsory reading for American, British > and Australian security organisations - CIA, MI5 or 6, ASIO in our case. > > /"one needs about a month to catch the particular flavour of terrorism > which is made up of quite intangible fears - feet running down a road > at midnight, a silent man in a white shirt standing at a street corner > holding a bicycle too small for him, a parked car with no lights, a > factory door ajar, the flick of a torch in a field. terrorism infects > the normal transactions of life. The horror of deliberate murder, or > ambush or grenade, is at least purging - the pity and the terror are > in them, and the conciseness of actions which can be met. But the evil > genius of terrorism is suspicion- the man who stops and asks for a > light, a cart with a broken axle signalling for help, a forrester > standing alone among trees, three youths walking back to a village > after sundown, a sheperd shouting something indistinctly heard by > moonlight, the sudden pealing of a doorbell in the night. The slender > chain of trust upon which all human relations are based is broken - > and this the terrorist knows and sharpens his claws precisely here: > for is primary object is not battle. It is to bring upon the community > in general a reprisal for his wrongs, in the hope that the fury and > resentment roused by punishment meted out to the innocent will > gradually swell the ranks of those from whom he will draw further > recruits."/ > // > /To use an Australian expression "How good is this?!"/ I will offer that this is very good prose, indeed, David. Like a small stash of snapshots suddenly found, each image calls into being storylines that go far beyond the immediate frame. Thanks for highlighting it. I will let others with greater insights take on the politics. Crossing the Cumberland Plateau, headed for Carbondale-- Charles -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070811/b9f7c8cb/attachment.html