[lit-ideas] Re: Murder by Membership
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 08:38:07 -0700 (PDT)
On phil lit we actually had a book club and it was more like a teeth pulling
club. The first book had a fair amount of interest and it kept dwindling
down until the last book when it was only Mike and me, and I'm not sure how
much of Mike's participation was due to feelings of obligation over having
suggested reading the book.
And that was in the very different, long gone 20th century. At the
time the Towers went down I was reading an Anthony Trollope novel and I could
no longer concentrate on it. I would read a page and reread it and reread
it again and what I could figure out seemed so nonsensical. I
finally gave up. I got past that, things normalized, but clearly for me
the 20th century was over. Iraq, China, climate change, peak oil,
the economy, the rearranging of superpowers are all in the 21st century, but no
literature.
I agree with Lawrence that movies are a very reasonable facsimile of great
books as well as literary in their own right. I've suggested several
movies and except for Rent that Lawrence watched, there's been no interest and
no response. Sometimes I think the antidote to this godforsaken
21st century is literature, is an escape into another time, but I can't seem to
manage it. Can't seem even to write the mini essays of phil lit days
on varied and sundry topics.
If anyone wants to suggest a movie, maybe someone can pick something and
we can watch and comment. Come to think of it, last week we saw Let There
Be Blood, fiction, supposedly loosely based on Upton Sinclair's Oil! It
was interesting in a cerebral sort of way. I remember thinking, that
sounds like Philip Glass, which means the music was obtrusive. The search
for oil was an excuse for the story it seemed.
I'm siding with Lawrence but not really complaining, just explaining.
--- On Wed, 6/4/08, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Murder by Membership
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2008, 7:36 AM
I can't help but wonder what is meant here by "the lit side of things."
Not that any of this is going on, but suppose one were to write a poem and post
it, would that qualify? Yes, a poem is literature, but it won't
necessarily spark a discussion. What can one say other than I liked it or
I didn't? Well, if one is seriously into poetry, one might see
antecedents, but that might not spark a discussion either.
Again, not that anyone is doing it, but suppose one were to follow the ancient
Phil-Lit dictum and write a mini-essay on some subject, for example, the
depletion of middle-eastern oil. Would that qualify as literature?
It might, but if a discussion resulted, it would probably be on the subject
matter and not on the literary merits of the mini-essay.
So what is meant by literature? I introduced a few matters in regard to
the Science Fiction / Fantasy genre(s); which didn't elicit a response but
perhaps SF/Fantasy isn't considered literature here on Lit-Ideas -- even though
you can probably find it taught in literature classes some place in the U.S.
and/or Canada.
So what is meant by literature? Some of us have been obtaining and
watching old (classic) movies from Netflix, and these might also be taught in
lit classes some place, but movies aren't really literature, or are they?
We would say that Elizabethan drama was literature; so why not serious movies?
So what is meant by literature? What if I were to say I read "Young
Goodman Brown" or "the Minister's black Veil" or "the Scarlet Letter" and I
think X and Y and Z about them? Surely Hawthorne is a literature figure
and his short stories and novels are literaturee, but would they spark a
discussion? Probably not. I base that on having read The Scarlet Letter
in the recent past and mentioned a thing or two about it to little response; so
what is meant by literature?
Not explaining, just complaining.
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Stone
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 2:45 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Murder by Membership
Atlas: ...So Paul, where have you been hiding? I know how time
> consuming a kid can be, but that's no excuse.
Let's see... kid, work, subsequent nervous breakdown... yeah, that
about sums up the last 13 months. To be truthful, there just isn't
anything I'm interested in talking about in this forum. I keep reading
it as always, but there's just nothing that tweaks me hard enough to
bother writing. Sorry, my priorities are just in other places. This
list is a hobby. It used to be a bigger part of my life, until more
important things came along. As the lit side of things has basically
disappeared, I've lost the ability to get 'up' for it. It's still a
nice bar to be a fly on the wall, but I'm afraid I don't have anything
to add.
not complaining, just explaining
p
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