SHAKESPEARE - ROMEO AND JULIET
"One reason I did not like this book is i do not believe in love. They claim to have a lot of love in this book. If, you are into falling in love and standing for your love this is a book for you to read."
"I am not actually a fan of Shakespeare. Not because I don’t like, adore, his works. It’s because I have no idea of it. Like, what was Les Miz about? I really don’t know."
BERGSON - INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS
"Philosophers are people who pick the obvious and easy, discuss them, and end up making them difficult and incomprehensible ... Millions have died, and thousands are still dying, because of philosophers. One lives and grows up in a quiet place, but the philosopher invents and drums into his head concepts like nationhood (contra neighborhood which is the only reality for each individual), love of country (and I'm not referring to country music), father(or mother)land. He has neighbors, but the philosopher expands the concept into countrymen and foreigners, us and them. Everyone is born with a harmless, natural sense of wonder but the philosopher messes things up with conflicting ideas about god or his absence, true and false gods, freedom and determinism, the will of god, heathens and the chosen people, truth, justice, fate and meaninglessness. All these just confuse and make men launch wars with their pointless killings and sufferings, and all the crazy things living species do when they've been discombobulated."
NABOKOV - PALE FIRE
"What was the point of that story? That life sucks? How nice to find out now, that I am trapped in it!! I guess I should not complain, since I once noted that seemed to be the theme of most of my poems, but I think I usually included something about making it better."
SENECA - THYESTES
"'Thyestes' isn't a very hopeful story."
SHAKESPEARE - JULIUS CAESAR
"what so hard about writing in modern English rather then jibberjabber"
"Shakespeare. Call me a Kulturbanause but I have zero interest or will to read anything related. The same for other 'classic' literature, once deemed good by mainstream and repeated over and over. There are exceptions but they’re rare and far between. I believe it has to do with my aversion to anything 'theatrical'. And the fact that, just because someone decided this is world literature doesn’t mean that I will follow the herd and gobble it up like a sheep ... You can follow trends or you can set trends for yourself. So don’t ask me about Shakespeare. I will laugh in your face."
"Et tu Brute? A Roman Caeser speaking French in his dying breath..."
WITTGENSTEIN - PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
"List or explain one accomplishment by him either from his early or later writings. What do they amount to in the history of anything except for uninteresting erroeneous dialogue and a few quotable (but still insignificant) quotes? Indeed I think I've just described the majority of 'philosophers'."
BENEDICT - PATTERNS OF CULTURE
"What practical good comes from 'studying' completely obvious human traits such as race, ethnicity and gender?"
NABOKOV - LOLITA
"Lolita takes us through the mind of a man who loves young girls. Yes, in that respects it could be construed as disturbing, but listen as the narrator tells us how hard he struggled against his urges.
Then came Lolita...he couldn't resist her, even though he tried. Though it was not entirely his fault, Lolita seduces our poor narrator and then leads him on a twisted adventure where she uses him for her own pleasure and gain. Lolita knows exactly what she's doing as she slowly destroys the narrator."
BAD REVIEWS OF GOOD BOOKS RETURNS, WITH A MORE STABLE SCHEDULE, IN JULY (AFTER MY EXAMS AND THESIS ARE THROUGH WITH)
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita VI
"For all its contrived hype on its sexuality, the book is not very sexual at all, nor is it exciting."
"Although it is a bit of a creepy action, the old man still portrays the desire of an young man who is trying to ask a girl out."
"Lolita somehow floats above the horrific ravages of protracted sexual abuse, unscathed. She seems to suffer little emotional trauma"
"The stupid arguments about it being art overlook that just because art can be made about something, there is always the question of whether it ought to be made. Lolita should not have been made–Art does not need it. It only illuminates baseness and perversion without also illuminating what is wonderful, charitable, revelatory and compassionate about humans."
"Sorry, but I must disagree with so many of the reviews I see here. We read this for my book club, and, universally, it was hated. Overwrought and just icky. The author tried way too hard to impress with his verbal dexterity. And, the protagonist? Unpleasant, to say the least."
"It’s a fucking rape instruction manual, however burdened with ridiculous flowery prose. Plenty of non-rapists could write such a manual. You could. I could. But Nabokov wrote it, traded on it, fucking LOVED it – so I don’t care much whether he personally raped children."
"Lolita takes us through the mind of a man who loves young girls. Yes, in that respects it could be construed as disturbing, but listen as the narrator tells us how hard he struggled against his urges.
Then came Lolita...he couldn't resist her, even though he tried. Though it was not entirely his fault, Lolita seduces our poor narrator and then leads him on a twisted adventure where she uses him for her own pleasure and gain. Lolita knows exactly what she's doing as she slowly destroys the narrator."
"Well played, Nabokov. Seems to me that Lolita is an excellent hoax created by a member of the literati for the literati. Nabokov effectively wrote a dreadfully boring and unnecessarily verbose 'erotic' novel, mixing in enough fancy vocabulary and literary references to prove he's a smart cookie, and that extra dash of pedophilia/'incest' to make it impossible to dislike the book without seeming dense and prudish.
Welp, guess I'm just a Puritan blockhead. In the afterword to this edition, Nabokov makes a stink about people attempting to 'interpret' the work, and also seems disgruntled with silly readers who, looking to be titillated, find themselves bored in the middle. If a book does not have a theme, an idea, even a character to think about, and it doesn't entertain, then it is utterly without point. Which seems to be the "point" of Lolita--to be without point."
"I also suspect that most people here on goodreads that actually give this book a positive rating either diddn't read it and/or did it for the same reason people buy books just to fill their bookshelfes without ever reading them (or the reason people buy 'modern art'), that is, to look sophisticated. I bet the people tought 'hey, this book is famous, it's world literature, if I don't give it a favorable rating, people will think I'm a yokel!'.
Sure, I may be wrong with that and in some cases someone honestly liked it, but still, I just can't imagine someone actually enjoyed reading that book. I just can't."
"Although it is a bit of a creepy action, the old man still portrays the desire of an young man who is trying to ask a girl out."
"Lolita somehow floats above the horrific ravages of protracted sexual abuse, unscathed. She seems to suffer little emotional trauma"
"The stupid arguments about it being art overlook that just because art can be made about something, there is always the question of whether it ought to be made. Lolita should not have been made–Art does not need it. It only illuminates baseness and perversion without also illuminating what is wonderful, charitable, revelatory and compassionate about humans."
"Sorry, but I must disagree with so many of the reviews I see here. We read this for my book club, and, universally, it was hated. Overwrought and just icky. The author tried way too hard to impress with his verbal dexterity. And, the protagonist? Unpleasant, to say the least."
"It’s a fucking rape instruction manual, however burdened with ridiculous flowery prose. Plenty of non-rapists could write such a manual. You could. I could. But Nabokov wrote it, traded on it, fucking LOVED it – so I don’t care much whether he personally raped children."
"Lolita takes us through the mind of a man who loves young girls. Yes, in that respects it could be construed as disturbing, but listen as the narrator tells us how hard he struggled against his urges.
Then came Lolita...he couldn't resist her, even though he tried. Though it was not entirely his fault, Lolita seduces our poor narrator and then leads him on a twisted adventure where she uses him for her own pleasure and gain. Lolita knows exactly what she's doing as she slowly destroys the narrator."
"Well played, Nabokov. Seems to me that Lolita is an excellent hoax created by a member of the literati for the literati. Nabokov effectively wrote a dreadfully boring and unnecessarily verbose 'erotic' novel, mixing in enough fancy vocabulary and literary references to prove he's a smart cookie, and that extra dash of pedophilia/'incest' to make it impossible to dislike the book without seeming dense and prudish.
Welp, guess I'm just a Puritan blockhead. In the afterword to this edition, Nabokov makes a stink about people attempting to 'interpret' the work, and also seems disgruntled with silly readers who, looking to be titillated, find themselves bored in the middle. If a book does not have a theme, an idea, even a character to think about, and it doesn't entertain, then it is utterly without point. Which seems to be the "point" of Lolita--to be without point."
"I also suspect that most people here on goodreads that actually give this book a positive rating either diddn't read it and/or did it for the same reason people buy books just to fill their bookshelfes without ever reading them (or the reason people buy 'modern art'), that is, to look sophisticated. I bet the people tought 'hey, this book is famous, it's world literature, if I don't give it a favorable rating, people will think I'm a yokel!'.
Sure, I may be wrong with that and in some cases someone honestly liked it, but still, I just can't imagine someone actually enjoyed reading that book. I just can't."
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Ruth Benedict - Patterns of Culture
"anthropology is worthless."
"Anthropology has become a clearinghouse for anarchists and communists without job skills."
"The work of anthropologists would mean less than nothing to you if you were suddenly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This science does no one any practical good except the practitioners who glom an easy living off academia. What practical good comes from 'studying' completely obvious human traits such as race, ethnicity and gender?"
"Anthropology has become a clearinghouse for anarchists and communists without job skills."
"The work of anthropologists would mean less than nothing to you if you were suddenly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This science does no one any practical good except the practitioners who glom an easy living off academia. What practical good comes from 'studying' completely obvious human traits such as race, ethnicity and gender?"
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