“unless it’s Atlas Shrugged” HAHAHAHAHA!!!!

The linked review’s mention of Phillip K. Dick was a plus. Some parts of it though, suggest that a mention of Pierre Menard, Author the Quixote by Jorge Luis Borges would have been a salutary and relevant addition. Borges’ short story was written back in 1939. I have been a fan of Borges since the early Sixties and I think that his adherence to the short story and essay forms kept him, in some ways, from getting the recognition that he deserves.

Pierre Menard is one of the funniest short stories ever written lampooning the insular world of academics. Along with Funes, the Memorius it’s one of my favorites.

I don’t quite know how to thank you for your reply or for your mention of Funes, the Memorius. The phrase “rocked and annihilated by the current,” from that story actually let me sleep during mortar barrages.

“How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken” — wait, I thought you weren’t going to dwell more on your, ahem, personal injuries…

Outside of a dog, books are a mans’ best friend.
Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

My favorite Borges story is The Aleph.

Finished Rosin in September. I’m trying to understand Fundies, but no matter how hard I try I can’t wrap my head around that world view.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that I’m not on the faculty at Patrick Henry College.

Ayn Rand should be classified as pornography and banned for anyone under 25 or so. There is something so superficially plausible about Rand’s philosophy that adolescents are not ready to see through.

If you liked that, you should try:

Moo Jane Smiley.

Giles Goat-Boy John Barth.

Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis.

There is something so superficially plausible about Rand’s philosophy that adolescents are not ready to see through.

Ayn Rand earnestly believed her own bullshit was some sort of higher and absolute truth, and she conveys this in her writing. When you’re a writhing mass of insecurities, like many adolescents, the definitiveness of “Kool-aid” can be seductive.

??The Woman has tats?? And you want to talk about books? That’s not right. I’m trying to become a better person and this is not helping. How am I supposed to read now? I’m thinking about Sculley, in that “X-File”, when she got the tattoo. That’s it. I can’t come here anymore.

I must confess to slacking on the reading front, due to an unfortunate addiction to my Nintendo DS and the New York Times Crossword game I picked up at Costco a couple of months ago. I forget how many puzzles there are in it, but it bascally works out to almost three years’ worth of NYT crosswords. But now, thanks to this thread, I have several books to add to my Amazon wish list for ChristmasHoliday gifts. Better get through those puzzles rapidly, I think.

I like Borges as well. Also Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Amado. The style appeals to me. Unfortunately, all I have time to read these days is work related as I am updating my Anthropology of Gender course I have not taught in 5 years and have to teach this spring. Pretty interesting stuff, however. currently reading “Female Desires” and “Third Sex, Third Gender”. First deals with female same sex relationships cross culturally. The second looks at transgender statuses (individuals who are not men or women).

Digg it

Slacking, copy that. In my case it’s raw goofing off.

The election is over. The good guys won. My work here is done.

Peace out, brothers and sisters!

CV

I would also recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It is easily one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read and I’ve been an avid reader of Borges, Thomas Pynchon, Phillip K. Dick, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kem Nunn, William Burroughs, Rudolph Wurlitzer, Maxine Hong Kingston and many, many others.
Yeah, I was a Lit major. That qualifies you to learn to run a lathe to put food on the table.

I loved Tapping the Source, thought Dogs of Winter read like a lesser Robert Stone, and for some reason never finished Tijuana Straits which is laying around here somewhere.

And for the record, Jonathan Lethem is now my favorite. Fortress of Solitude is dazzling.

Breakfast of Champions (Goodbye Blue Monday)

sounds fascinating. i see that i have some book shopping to do after i kick this bronchial infection

If you like Lethem, may I recommend Gun, with Occasional Music.

Also all Borges is very very good… well, with the possible exception of the gangster stuff and all the horsie guys with knives on the Argentinian steppes. Big libraries, rearranged letters, etc. Too bad he was pro-fascist and all.

Did somebody mention Pynchon? (does that rhyme?)

I started reading Against the Day months ago and am bogged down at p. 402. Help!

After today reading Michael Lewis’ piece on Subprime, ‘The End’ , I’m now more than a little curious to find a copy of Liar’s Poker

.

Quite a bit of literature on same sex relationships as well as on the phenomenon of third, fourth, etc. genders (Chuckchee have 7) that has come out in the last 15-20 years. One of the things I like about this class is that it is one where you get to “make the students’ heads explode.” Gender is so marvelously fluid and variable that you have the potential to completely shatter their preconceptions about sex, gender, and the natural order of the universe. I think it is one of the reasons I enjoy the topic.

corrupting young minds, eh, Doc?

Maybe because I live in the San Gabriel Valley and had any number of unholy associations beck during my dealer days, I preferred Pomona Queen. On the other hand, damn!, Kem Nunn, Borges, Kingsley Amis…
A feast of friends,
“Alive!” she cried.

I would like nothing better than to help you, my friend, but unfortunately I seem to be currently stuck in p. 257 of Gravity’s Rainbow.

I read that, and V, when I was 22 and unemployed.

It was easier then.

Always. It is what they pay me for.

I was trying hard not to finish my BA at the time.

This is your brain; this is your brain on work. Any questions?

I tried to finish it. Completest that I am I was unable to do so. Re-reading Mason & Dixon instead.

The Crying of Lot 49 is just stellar.

We have been talking about Emile Zola at work. His novels in the Rougon-Macquart series will scare the pants off readers. Murder, war, social unrest, art… I did not start to read these until my 20’s, and still read, and re-read them now.

Dr. Dick, a friend and peer of mine, Gerald Fogel, authored Riddles of Masculinity: Gender, Bisexuality, and Thirdness – a book that you might find appealing. Unless you’re comfortable with psychoanalytic language and the concept of intersubjective, it might be tough to chew on but up your alley nonetheless.

yes, I read that one, too. a much more manageable length.

Thanks. Might have to take a look at it. Can’t say I am really at home with psychoanalysis, however. Mostly deal with the underlying biologies of sex and sexuality and social construction of gender.

I was acquainted with Pynchon by finding V on a rack of paperbacks in a quickserve near “The Base” in South Texas. A demon or a desperate person stocked that rack because a bit later I found Rudolph Wurlitzer’s astoundingly good Nog. Read, to the point of having to tape them together, both books in the old gun tubs of the U.S.S. Lexington.

True, but sheer cubic volume seems to be what TBogg’s after. Therefore: Infinite Jest by the late and dearly lamented D. Foster Wallace. Tragic, his passing.

I hope your junk is convalescing adequately. I’ve had two vasectomies, and still need another……..but I keep stalling. Your “junk related program activity” sounds more painful, unfortunately.

I’m thinking I should do it for the story.

well, Against the Day has 1085 pages. Not bad for a rainy afternoon.

I guess everyone must have fallen asleep reading…

Or, they don’t care about French literature…

Ooops, my bad.

I read “Atlas shrugged” as a teenager,long time ago, and I took it as a Science Fiction novel. That there would actually be people who took it as a real blueprint for the economic system has to me been very laughable. But of course the all seem to belong to the ReichWing and think that Milton Friedman’s failed theories really work in the “Real World”. His theories have been the source of much of the reasons the United States are so hated in the rest of the world! I wonder just how many lives have been lost and destroyed because of those theories?

Always a voracious reader of fiction (and some literature) I became paralyzed after 9/11. I left fiction for politics, the NYT, and finally discovered FDL. The only novel I have read, and reread, at least twice, is: The Time Traveller’s Wife
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Tra…..015602943X

Love, Me (Christine)

132,196 Begich
131,382 Stevens

Pulling ahead.

-G

Woo Hoo!! Stevens is going down to defeat so he can serve time in one of those Federal Country Clubs!!

Huh. And in Atlas Shrugged the masters of the universe finally got fed up with The Little People not treating them as the Very Special People they knew themselves to be, so they took the whole world down. Hey wait a minute…

Night gang.

-G

I had friends who read Atlas Shrugged in high school. Most of them got sucked into Objectivism for at least a little while. There is something about it that appeals to the adolescent mind.

I finally got around to reading Rand when I was in gradual school and had already figured out that cooperation is the way things really happen. So I found the whole thing laughable.

I really liked this article that provided me so many valuable information.
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Taylor.
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Your area of focus is a lot different than what Fogel writes about. I heard give a formal Fogel talk about his book and it was difficult to grasp. I should just say that it’s pretty inaccessible for starters, and moreso without a clinical frame of reference. Material like this, from a biologic or more psychologic approach reminds me of those posters that look like tv static that supposedly contain a complex image. No matter how much you stare at it and will yourself to see it, it seems futile until inexplicably something shifts in your mind and suddenly the 3-D T.Rex jumps out at you.

Pernicious gateway drug to Republicanism, that A.S.

alaska update up at the mothership

Like I said just another piece of “Science Fiction”. Of course I was reading lots and lots of SciFi and so naturally I just filed it as just another possible outlook and what could be in the future. That some took it to heart to boost their inflated egos is way too funny and illustrates just how they are NOT true thinkers and their need and reliance on outside sources to justify their actions and feeling of grandeur!

Hi Suz!! How ya doing??

Yeah, I found the whole collection of ideas pretty repulsive. I read a lot of SF too, but never really thought of it as SF. But I could also see how I could have found some of Rand’s ideas seductive when I was 16. I saw my son starting to read I-forget-which Rand novel (wasn’t Atlas) when he was a junior in HS. I told him he could read it, but had to discuss what Rand was talking about with me.

Sarah is upstairs.

“And for the record, Jonathan Lethem is now my favorite. Fortress of Solitude is dazzling.”

“Fortress of Solitude” is pretty incredible. Lethem has an amazing ability to make you feel like you’re right there in scene with the characters, as well as feeling like you really know the characters. He knows his music, too. A thoroughly enjoyable read. I also liked “Motherless Brooklyn”, though I didn’t think he achieved the same level of excellence as in “FoS.” Another book that came close is “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak.

Someone up top suggested Gun With Occasional Music which is very clever and nowadays doesn’t seem like the kind of thing he would have written. I guess whimsical comes to mind. It took me a long tome to read FoS because I kept going back and re-reading passages that were so good.

BTW Ed Norton is trying to make Motherless Brooklyn into a movie.

LOVE the Atlas Shrugged joke.

The book has its moments, but it’s only for impressionable teenagers. I’ve met some people who read that when they were young, and it got inside their heads and stayed there. It’s like religious dogma. It’s hard to shake when you expose yourself to it as a young person. Not saying it should be banned, just ignored.

I find Curious George books more authentic than Rand’s works.

Wow!

I’m glad I woke up and can’t get back to sleep.

Thanks for the post, tbogg. I’m always looking for something new and Belano looks interesting as does Chandra.

I actually know a family whose son is attending Patrick Henry. When I found out where he was going I made a joke that at least it wasn’t Regents…talk about an awkward silence. I hadn’t been aware prior to this of how intensely these people were attached to their beliefs. Scary.

I have an idea. Why don’t we bail out the banks, with the stipulation that each CEO has to move to a small town in the Colorado mountains and stay there?

This idea is full of win. as the kids say these days. Can they take the auto execs with them?

I know of only one person who converted to Rand as an adult. Needless to say, she was only physically an adult. But she was one of these Cons who thought that the evil brown people were holding her back and making her poor.

This is exactly why the Randroids are doing a big push to get it taught in public schools.

Ah, a book thread that mentions Borges…. I’ve always been partial to Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius, but I’ve read pretty much everything the guy wrote. I have to disagree about this

with the possible exception of the gangster stuff and all the horsie guys with knives on the Argentinian steppes

You have to know a little bit of Argentinian Lit to get reversals he does in those stories.

I will also second Juan Cole’s recommendation of Gentlemen of the Road.

Wait, mrs tbogg has tats? I’ll be right back…….
…..
…..

Now then. May I recommend “The Arms of Krupp” during the convalescence?
Almost a thousand pages, but simply fascinating; it’s about the rise of Germany’s preeminent armorer of the 19th and 20th centuries.

*What is reading, but silent conversation. ~ Walter Savage Landor

“….unless it’s Atlas Shrugged” – Tbogg.