What are you currently reading?

[Brian]

Sounds recursive.

Well, I'll tell you the definition he suggests. (He, I should note, is a philosophy professor.)

"In interpersonal or cooperative relations, the asshole: (1) allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically; (2) does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; and (3) is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people.

"So, for example, the asshole is the person who habitually cuts in line. Or who frequently interrupts in a conversation. Or who weaves in and out of lanes of traffic. Or who persistently emphasizes another person's faults. Or who is extremely sensitive to perceived slights while being oblivious to his crassness with others*. An insensitive person - a mere "jerk" - might allow himself to so enjoy such "special advantages" in such interpersonal relationships. What distinguishes the asshole is the way he acts, the reasons that motivate him to act in an abusive and arrogant way. The asshole acts out of a firm sense that he is special, that the normal rules of conduct do not apply to him. He may not deliberately exploit interpersonal relations but simply remains willfully oblivious to normal expectations. Because the asshole sets himself apart from others, he feels entirely comfortable flouting accepted social conventions, almost as a way of life. Most important, he lives this way more or less out in the open. He stands unmoved when people indignantly glare or complain....Indeed, he will often himself feel indignant when questions about his conduct are raised."

*not unheard of on GMG, this

[Ken B]

Well, I'll tell you the definition he suggests. (He, I should note, is a philosophy professor.)

"In interpersonal or cooperative relations, the asshole: (1) allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically; (2) does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; and (3) is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people.

Interesting. 2 and 3 seem to overlap. But on to "recursive":
1. Calls people who cannot respond assholes by name in print. CHECK.
2. Does so under the rubric of a "public intellectual" credentialed by a PhD. CHECK.
3. No direct evidence just from what you quoted but I'd bet the house on this, as it flows naturally from the conditions I cite in 2. PROBABLY CHECK.

[Brian]

Interesting. 2 and 3 seem to overlap. But on to "recursive":
1. Calls people who cannot respond assholes by name in print. CHECK.
2. Does so under the rubric of a "public intellectual" credentialed by a PhD. CHECK.
3. No direct evidence just from what you quoted but I'd bet the house on this, as it flows naturally from the conditions I cite in 2. PROBABLY CHECK.

Aha! I see what you mean. Apparently this, too, is discussed later on in the book. There is a praise quote on the back cover saying that the author confronts the issue of how big of an asshole he is, himself.

[jlaurson]

Well congratulations Jens. When I was about 20 I waded through the first volume and was horrified by the clotted locutions. I imagine there is a certain aesthetic that finds this mode of writing to be clever,clever. But I could not stand the Russian doll-like style which makes plain things complicated.

It did not help that, assuming the writer liked Poussin, he got me off to a bad start; as I can't stand his wet, romanticised, muscleless paintings. I eventually watched the TV adaptationand enjoyed it a good deal. As to the books, even a long life is too short.

Mike

I'm just so glad I'm not the only one to think that this is NOT good writing. There are other things, too, that are a bit annoying. The overt and ostentatious name-dropping of paintings ("the banana peel on the pavement, forlorn, or rather: lost to its own account of existence, if you can call it that, as it were, struck me immediately as representing the discarded hulls of fruit in Plátanombre della Oxordista's La Fruitage de Amor Pintura, for its grays and, seagull-like spots of yellow and white notwithstanding, dark tan stripes...")
...and a few other things. That said, I find that "An Acceptance World" is much less tedious than "A Buyer's Market", style-wise!

[bhodges]

I'm just so glad I'm not the only one to think that this is NOT good writing. There are other things, too, that are a bit annoying. The overt and ostentatious name-dropping of paintings ("the banana peel on the pavement, forlorn, or rather: lost to its own account of existence, if you can call it that, as it were, struck me immediately as representing the discarded hulls of fruit in Plátanombre della Oxordista's La Fruitage de Amor Pintura, for its grays and, seagull-like spots of yellow and white notwithstanding, dark tan stripes...")
...and a few other things. That said, I find that "An Acceptance World" is much less tedious than "A Buyer's Market", style-wise!

That paragraph you cited is terrible. This is just a personal thing, but I get highly annoyed by a blizzard of commas, creating sentences that are inordinately tedious to read. A writer I know -- who is generally excellent at his craft -- now and then drops positively Brucknerian sentences, with too many clauses balancing precariously on exquisite use of commas, semicolons, and the occasional dash. He sometimes makes it work, but the effect is far too delicate to be appreciated by most readers.

My feeling: if you have to read a paragraph more than once to grasp it, that's once too many.

(That said, your descriptions of the Powell are somewhat tempting.)

--Bruce

[Jo498]

There is nothing wrong with long sentences per se. As almost everything in art it mainly depends if one can pull it off. There are great authors who use long sentences for a kind of breathless intensity (in German one of the most famous examples is the early romantic Heinrich von Kleist). Or for elaborate detailed descriptions (e.g. Thomas Mann although I think he is overdoing it sometimes).
But the example from Powell is indeed horrible, not only or mainly because of the sheer length.

[zamyrabyrd]

That was one of the books which I didn't bother reading (for the most part) when my class was covering it.
Later, I picked up the Norton Critical Edition at the UVa bookstore, and I couldn't put it down.  I just love that book inordinately.

There is something Dickensian in the approach - psychological depth, sophisticated literary constructions and sense of humor, too. Or maybe they are general features of mid-19th century English literature.

I think Melville tried to convey in words (a partial reason for the extra padding of esoteric information about whales), the vastness of the sea and the monumental creatures that inhabit it. Something similar to Sibelius in depicting expanses of Arctic tundra in musical notes.

[knight66]

Bruce, I think you are fevered after all these loooong films you have been watching. If you want a multi volume saga set in the past, then try John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. Not so much read now, but he did win the Nobel Literature Prize. It starts in Victorian times and: how many authors in 1906 would start their book with the most buttoned up of characters ruminating while he sits on the toilet?

I know that I am certainly guilty of writing overlong sentences. Also of overusing punctuation, especially the Oxford comma and this....

I now usually go back over what I write and divide the sentences down. I still let flurries of typos through.

Mike

[ritter]

...
I know that I am certainly guilty of writing overlong sentences. Also of overusing punctuation, especially the Oxford comma and this....

I now usually go back over what I write and divide the sentences down. I still let flurries of typos through.

Mike

Ah, the Oxford comma! The horror, the horror... 

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with suordinate sentences and the whole lot.

And then there's the problem of pargarpohs. I think Adorno, for instance, really went too far in this respect

And yes, that paragrapph by Powell is really something. I read the first tome, and stopped there. Why read an English imitation of Proust, when you can have the real thing? 

[zamyrabyrd]

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with subordinate sentences and the whole lot.

I don't think that in English it is a matter of length of sentences but using too many loaded words that gets tiresome. Maybe in scientific writing in which the readers are expected to know the meanings it is not such a problem. In a sentence where there are short, terse words, a compound one stands out and can have a nice effect. Mixing too many descriptive words is a mistake.
When I proofread my own writing, I try to get rid of clauses where participles can do the job just as well.

[jlaurson]

Ah, the Oxford comma! The horror, the horror... 

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with suordinate sentences and the whole lot.

And then there's the problem of pargarpohs. I think Adorno, for instance, really went too far in this respect

And yes, that paragrapph by Powell is really something. I read the first tome, and stopped there. Why read an English imitation of Proust, when you can have the real thing? 

I'll read the Mahler book(s) of Adorno, yet, but he's a terrible writer for all that I am concerned, along there with a whole slew of German philosophers who knew how to hide behind tedious language to aggrandize their thoughts, whether they were mediocre or not. No one questioned them, because by the time you got to the heart of the meaning in the center of a labyrinthian sentence, you no longer had the power to question the veracity of it. Hegel, Heidegger... all deliberately bad writing. Kant bad, but not deliberate, I would think. Good writers among German philosophers are all the more rare for the language lending itself to length, but they exist -- most prominently Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both geniuses at how to use the language.

Not Powell is cranking up the esoteric, to which I am particularly allergic. He really is making it effin' difficult for me to continue with the series. But I have the books, so plow-on I must.

I don't think that in English it is a matter of length of sentences but using too many loaded words that gets tiresome. Maybe in scientific writing in which the readers are expected to know the meanings it is not such a problem. In a sentence where there are short, terse words, a compound one stands out and can have a nice effect. Mixing too many descriptive words is a mistake.
When I proofread my own writing, I try to get rid of clauses where participles can do the job just as well.

A beautiful English sentence, however long or short, comes into being when one word necessarily leads to the next; when one sentence necessarily leads to the next. And, as Bruce points out, if any sentence needs to be read only once and, further, only *feels* like it needed to be read once... as there are some sentences we don't actually re-read but, half-way into the next sentence, wonder if we might not better have read them again. Those are also rubbish.

The reason why I cannot credit Wodehouse to have been genuine when he wrote flatteringly to Powell, is that Wodehouse knew better than perhaps anyone how to make one sentence or phrase follow the next. His writing is almost an antithesis to Powell's.

[aligreto]

I still recall my teachers (and even my dad) insisting on a sort of rule of thumb: "sentences in English should be much shorter than in Spanish". I still regard the English language as one that benefits form short, terse sentences, while writers in French, German, Italian or Spanish can get away with much longer constructions, studded with suordinate sentences and the whole lot.

I think that I recall reading that Hemingway was a ferocious editor of his own work and operated on the basis that if a word did not add value then leave it out.

[Karl Henning]

Well, I have just finished If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground by Lewis Grizzard (does not rhyme with blizzard).  A nice courtroom scene near the end, too.  With that title, the anticipation ran throughout the book as to just where outside of The Peachtree State he was a-goin' to wind up.  And now I've found out.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Finally getting around to Moby Dick, appreciate it better now than when I was in high school.

I am coincidentally reading it, too. Heavy reading at times, certainly, but it has its merits. My favorite chapter so far is the chapter 41, which describes how Ahab lost his leg and became mad. Very convincing psychological description going on there. I find it remarkable how ahead of his time Melville seemed to be when concerning african americans, native americans etc. Certainly there is a bit of exaggerated stereotyping concerning Tashtego, Daggoo and Queequeg but they are all described as sympathetic characters.

[zamyrabyrd]

I am coincidentally reading it, too. Heavy reading at times, certainly, but it has its merits. My favorite chapter so far is the chapter 41, which describes how Ahab lost his leg and became mad. Very convincing psychological description going on there. I find it remarkable how ahead of his time Melville seemed to be when concerning african americans, native americans etc. Certainly there is a bit of exaggerated stereotyping concerning Tashtego, Daggoo and Queequeg but they are all described as sympathetic characters.

Oh great, I am on Chapter 61, won't give you any spoilers though. I bought the book on the cheap a couple years ago and it meanwhile retreated to the back of my double shelved library. I was desperate for something to read recently and found it by chance. Happy surprise!

[Karl Henning]

Oh great, I am on Chapter 61, won't give you any spoilers though. I bought the book on the cheap a couple years ago and it meanwhile retreated to the back of my double shelved library. I was desperate for something to read recently and found it by chance. Happy surprise!

(Again:) Excellent! 

[knight66]

Ah, the Oxford comma! The horror, the horror... 

And yes, that paragrapph by Powell is really something. I read the first tome, and stopped there. Why read an English imitation of Proust, when you can have the real thing? 

Haha, very good, the words 'nail' and 'head' come to mind.

Mike

[Ken B]

An old locked room murder mystery

[asin]1601870612[/asin]

[zamyrabyrd]

Apparently there is a Star Trek derivation of the Moby Dick saga (more than one reference):
Check out 4:59 (original "mortar" was changed to "cannon")

https://www.youtube.com/v/btxMWZeO88Y

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

[zamyrabyrd]

Does anyone remember the "Moby Grape" jokes back then?

Q: "What's purple and huge and swims in the ocean?"
A: "Moby Grape."