What are you currently reading?

[AnotherSpin]

I'm guessing you have never visited the town of Antelope, Oregon.

I guess you mean Rajneesh, Oregon?    No, I never been to this part of US.

I have a friend in Odessa who spent several years with Osho, including in Oregon. His recollections are very different from the official version of the authorities. I tend to trust someone who has his personal first-hand experience of what happened there.

[Todd]

I guess you mean Rajneesh, Oregon?

No, I mean Antelope, Oregon.  That's why I wrote Antelope, Oregon.

[Florestan]

Who depends and benefits more from whom, the people of ideas from the material world, or vice versa? 

It's a symbiosis actually, but it's curious that many "people of ideas" wish to destroy the very society that ensures the material support for both their existence and that of their ideas. 

[Florestan]

What if? How do you know?

Because claiming that Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were nobody compared to Gorki is absurdity on stilts. 

[vandermolen]

H G Wells 'The War of the Worlds'
Bizarrely set in the villages where my in-laws live near Woking!

[AnotherSpin]

It's a symbiosis actually, but it's curious that many "people of ideas" wish to destroy the very society that ensures the material support for both their existence and that of their ideas. 

History is a continuous process of destroying the old world and creating the new. Ideas come first. If you think otherwise, no problem.

[AnotherSpin]

Because claiming that Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were nobody compared to Gorki is absurdity on stilts. 

First, you didn't read the book mentioned, and you can't know. Second, each of the authors you named is unique in their own way. The same can be said about each of them. Osho believed that Gorky was one of them. Obviously, he had his own reasons for thinking so, and there is no point in arguing with it. De gustibus non est disputandum.

[Florestan]

First, you didn't read the book mentioned

What makes you believe I didn't?

each of the authors you named is unique in their own way. The same can be said about each of them. Osho believed that Gorky was one of them.

No, he believed that Gorki was the only one. Read again:

Gorky must be counted as the suprememost artist of the whole world. Particularly in The Mother he reaches to the highest peak of the art of writing. Nobody before and nobody after....

Nobody before and nobody after --- it doesn't get any clearer, and more absurd, than that. But by all means, feel free to agree with him.

[AnotherSpin]

What makes you believe I didn't?

No, he believed that Gorki was the only one. Read again:

Gorky must be counted as the suprememost artist of the whole world. Particularly in The Mother he reaches to the highest peak of the art of writing. Nobody before and nobody after....

Nobody before and nobody after --- it doesn't get any clearer, and more absurd, than that. But by all means, feel free to agree with him.

Of course, you may have read Gorky, as an adult, and not in your school's required reading programme. Maybe even in Russian.

Osho's words, which you are so excited about, mean that no one has written about what Gorky wrote in Mother. And that no one has written like Gorky either before or after him. The same can be said of a great many writers, and not necessarily the greatest. In Osho's book that I mentioned above, he talks about 168 different books by different authors. All these books are unique in Osho's opinion, and each one is unrivalled in its own sense. Nobody before and nobody after...

By the way, I'm finishing up Mother. An amazing book indeed. With every page it becomes clearer what Osho meant. I found it interesting to compare the original with two different English translations. The translations definitely do not convey Gorky's language, which is incredibly imaginative and symbolic. I wonder in which translation Osho was reading Mother. English, or one of the languages of India.

[Florestan]

Osho's words, which you are so excited about

Oh, I couldn't care less about Osho's opinions, they are hardly authoritative. I just commented on them at face value. I have no interest in pursuing the topic any further than that.

[AnotherSpin]

Oh, I couldn't care less about Osho's opinions, they are hardly authoritative. I just commented on them at face value. I have no interest in pursuing the topic any further than that.

No problem. I am just looking at information online about Gorky's publications in India. They say the novel Mother was the most popular foreign book in India in the 20th century. Apparently Osho was not the only one who liked Gorky.

[AnotherSpin]

[andolink]

Just started this yesterday - -

Albert Vigoleis Thelen: The Island of Second Sight

[Karl Henning]

My friend Peter lent me this long ago, and I'm finally reading it. It's much more interesting than my longstanding apparent neglect would suggest. @Cato should seek it at a local library.

[JBS]

Amazon has it if the library doesn't.
https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Chance-Love-American-Popular/dp/0806164352/

[SimonNZ]

Putting a couple of things aside to knock of this quickie:



Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making Of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska


and setting up yet another play of the album

[Karl Henning]

Putting a couple of things aside to knock of this quickie:



Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making Of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska


and setting up yet another play of the album

I do enjoy that album.

[Florestan]

[Artem]

Just started this yesterday - -

Albert Vigoleis Thelen: The Island of Second Sight

That's quite an undertaking. Good luck.

[andolink]

That's quite an undertaking. Good luck.

So far so good!

It's incredibly erudite, allusive ... and brilliantly witty.  I'll let you know what I think of it in a few months when I'm done.