Steve,
You liked the whole thing – all those follow-on novels????? Hmm. Maybe I’m
wrong then. I have the trilogy lined up to read again on some other rainy day.
Maybe I’ll try those others, which I only read once, again. Maybe I was
reading them with the wrong attitude, wrong presupposition, and too much
suspicion.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Steven G. Cameron
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2020 10:40 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On reading at a young age....
**The entire Foundation series was incredible. My children also have enjoyed
it. Over the years, tried to find and read all of Heinlein's works — never did
manage to locate all of them. All of Alfred Bester's novels and short stories,
however, have successfully been tracked down and consumed. He is truly a
marvelous sci-fi author.
TC,
/Steve Cameron, …
On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 5:41 PM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
David,
I agree with you in regard to memory. I have had occasions where I “remember”
something vividly and someone else remembers it differently. I’ll check it in
one of my journals and one or the other of us will be wrong. As often as not
it has been me.
The stuff I’m referring to was harmless, but what about military men who “lie”
about the battles they have been in? They proudly wear ribbons to which they
are not entitled. Someone finds them out, they are discredited and disgraced.
I’ve never read that any of these people believed that they had been in those
battles, but maybe they did. There would have been no point in insisting upon
it if they were given evidence that proved they were wrong. One gets no credit
for sincerely believing something that is not true.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of david ritchie
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2020 11:10 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On reading at a young age....
On Mar 10, 2020, at 8:48 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Second Foundation was published in 1953 and by that time I was in Korea.
We didn’t have a library over there, but there were a lot of books lying
around. I probably read some of those but can’t remember any titles.
Paul Fussell built a chapter’s argument around what people read in the First
World War. By contrast, when I was reading material in the archives, I noticed
that most of what I was reading reflected Lawrence’s experience: when artillery
and machine guns are trying to kill you, memory of what you are reading, doing,
eating, flies away. You recall vividly the moments of trauma; much else fades.
Memory is an odd thing.
Fussell’s argument you find when you read a subsequent book, “Doing Battle,” is
based on the contrast he felt between his own experience of the Second World
War and those of prominent literary memoirists and novelists of the First. He
is very good at perceiving and describing how much those writers made up or at
least shaped their narratives, but he entirely misses the point I just made
about memory. Which is odd, because the book is called, “The Great War and
Modern Memory.” Memory is his subject, but he takes for granted that it is a
well-defined thing. We have Modern Memory and it is ironic and blah. No, I
don’t think so. Memory is something we do not yet understand well.
I continue to tussle with Fussell's book and maybe the project I’m now embarked
upon will turn out to be a response. I think his work is important.
David Ritchie,
still following Lit-ideas guidelines in
Portland, Oregon
