|
| I honestly regret giving my xanga the name: alsdkajdh. I still can't recall it when I want to log in and post. I need to resort to my email subscription digest for reference. It's time to change the name of my xanga, but that means I need to get rid of this xanga, and that means I need to beg everyone to resubscribe to me....
Would that be ok? (depressed sigh)
| | |
| fisticuffs on amazon.comSomeone gave a poor rating to an excellent book. It is not only an excellent book that this insipid man gave a poor rating to, but it is an excellent book by Dostoevsky. Moreover, the reviewer persisted in using words like 'penultimate', a special academic word that's probably on the English Lit GRE.
Here is the BAD review of Demons by Dostoevsky:
This book is simply horrible. No one should read it. I've now read more
or less all of this author's works and all I can say is that he didn't
have a very good command of basic narrative mechanics. For all his
celebrated genius, and it is considerable, the man just couldn't tell a
good story to save his life.So
weak are his transitions, that, for example, his narrator constantly
has to break in and say: "no one could have expected the following
denoument," or "but I need to elaborate on this minor character." That
really gets tiresome after a while. His confused plot stucture has the
very annoying effect of introducing major changes in the characters at
exactly the moment that you have forgotten all about them, viz, the
penultimate chapter that concerns the important revelation of a figure
who hasn't been mentioned for about 200 pages. The book
itself--structured so to speak around a political murder--moves like a
snail hitched to a team of other, slower snails. The murder doesn't
happen until after about 500 painful pages. The entire first part, some
200 pages, can be entirely skipped without any serious loss of
comprehension. Reactionaries like this book because it pokes fun
at forerunners of the Russian revolution. I'm sure that there were lots
of whackos involved in the whole affair and its aftermath. But all I
can see that the author does is ridicule the nihilists. Yet some very
well respected philosophers were nihilists, and, golly, the revolution
must have been about something more than just murder and mayhem.
(Wasn't Tzarist oppression at least a little part of it?) Unlike
the author's other (badly written) books like the Idiot and Crime and
Punishment, this one even lacks the sort of transcendent moments of
philosophical dialogue. These epiphanies (unlike Joyce's) take place in
dialoges and are like the revelations one gets during a seizure
(Dostovesky was an epileptic)--the conversations that Raskolnikov has
with Sophia and the Prince Myshkin are examples. Personally, I
ultimately didn't find those infrequent passages profound enough to
make it worth trodging through C & P and the Idiot, but it was a
close call. However Demons doesn't even give you those wonderful
experiences--just a straight ahead unpolished rant. The best
thing about this book is the wonderful cover that graces the Vintage
edition. It's a woodcut from Lynd Ward's God's Man. It's appropriate
because one of the many themes that gets garbled amid the novel's 714
pages is the struggle between humans and demonic ideas. If you want to
read an interesting take on a man being haunted by demons, read God's
Man by all means, and not this jumbled "classic."
There is a logical fallacy at the exposition of his tasteless review: nothing by Dostoevsky is simply horrible. Some of it is horrible, but in a delicious way that appeals to the neurotic axe murdering side of one's funny bone.
This response is smile inducing. Nothing better than an overly formal attack to spite huffity puffity stupidity.
This review says much about the reviewer and little about Dostoyevsky.
Those who understand the Russian genius might even laugh at this
reviewer, whose tirade against a novel loved by "reactionaries" is
reminiscent of Kirillov's rants.
The
book is ferociously funny from the start, and its ironies, political
barbs and hilarious insights kept me riveted throughout. Those who are
sophisticated enough to see the life force and humor in this
masterpiece will not be disappointed, and certainly will not lament the
adroit build-up to the murder. Additionally, the reviewer displays
remarkable naivite by the redundant statement: "The entire first part
... can be entirely skipped without any serious loss of comprehension."
This edition is an excellent translation into readable English.
| | |
| Karaoke and... Ohh what is this!?I spent much of my thanksgiving singing dreadfully to songs I barely know, while Masakun destroyed all competition by using his impressively versatile voice in both Japanese and English. Yes, it was a night of Karaoke at my Aunt's house, preceded by sushi, turkey, and mashed potatoes... and coffee!
Fast forward... I'm home again, browsing craigslist out of the perverse curiosity that randomly coaxes me to browse sex ads... And what do I find?! Oh! Yoandi, my fellow co-worker from two years ago (and your pathetic boyfriend), you two must be rather bored to post something so crude!
A question suddenly enters one's mind: is it creepier to post such hopes for misadventure on craigslist, or is it creepier to report that people you sorta-kinda knew once are posting such hopes for misadventure on craigslist? I messed around with him (the guy with jeans) once... in a bathroom stall, but I didn't finish because it felt so dirty! That, and Yoandi can't kiss at all. He's too brutish and stupid to kiss well. A final note of destructive negativity: his boyfriend is obese, so, therefore, he should probably post a more... accurate, picture of himself. Dammit; I realize this whole post is utterly mean, but are these not the first thoughts that enter your mind when A) you discover an unimpressive person you once knew and didn't ever like is resorting to scandelous online behavior and B) the picture of his boyfriend is something of a tremendous earth shattering lie?! Well, you'd have to be ghandi to safeguard yourself from such immediate reactions! Raw thoughts of a despoiled mind are thusly laid out, like sewage, to devour. Rah hahahaha
| | |
| My spellOne might say I'm currently suffering from an infantine spell.
I am being ignored by Brian, phone-call-wise. I called him approximately 3 times, maybe even 4 times, this past week, and he has yet to return any of my calls. This has happened before, and without fail I fall into an abyss - an abyss deep within my very poor head. But I like it, strangely enough, because, for some masochistic reason, I enjoy bickering to myself at night over, say, western philosophy; assuring myself that, in fact, such 'relationships' are inherently evil, and an efficacious way to blacken one's road to achievement; to progress! Of course, if I were completely happy; in a whirlwind of happiness, so to speak, I might never come to this realization. And so, isn't it possible to embrace an immature sadness? Despite my tendency to inflict myself with it? This question is rhetorical, and my disappointment is fleeting, just as my attachments are. I've already come to terms with his ineptitude in various ways. I've probably projected a world of ineptitude upon him.... and his soul. His essence. He is the zealous embodiment of all evil. In such, I've come to enjoy such moments of disappointment as they give birth to fanatic self aggrandizing. *makes a crazy face*
In other news. Last night I finished Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse). Good stuff. I feel as if I should continue working on War and Peace, but Plato is tempting...
Anyway, I'm sick. I must buy myself chicken soup after I brush my teeth and listen to my favorite German band: Wolfsheim (Goethes Erben is enjoyable too)
My writing has gained a terseness... Where before I believe it had a certain fluidity.
| | |
|
