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Post by patricklondon on Aug 11, 2009 17:34:49 GMT
I had parts of the oeuvre as a set text at university. I have a nice edition of the whole thing sitting on my shelves as my retirement project..... When I was in Paris in April, I was at an exhibition showing "Proust Lu", by Veronique Aubouy, who is filming the whole thing in readings of two-minute segments by as many people as she can persuade to take part. She thinks it will keep her busy till 2050. www.veroniqueaubouy.fr/expo.html
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2009 17:41:44 GMT
That is a truly excellent project. Is there any way to keep some of us alive until then?
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Post by patricklondon on Aug 11, 2009 17:59:59 GMT
Since I should be 102, it might be a fitting end, if the last reader were me...
des époques si distantes, entre lesquelles tant de jours sont venus se placer - dans le Temps [cough] [thud].
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Post by lola on Aug 11, 2009 22:20:39 GMT
To be on the safe side, Patrick, try to get your turn a little earlier.
I want to read one of the spicy passages, if they'd allow a wretched accent.
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Post by traveler63 on Aug 12, 2009 1:27:26 GMT
Tried to do it, but my head hit the table. Seriously, I have read many of the classics, but this was not for me.
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Post by lola on Aug 12, 2009 1:48:46 GMT
Proust: I got most of the way through the first book, in English, thinking it was great stuff, then gradually lost interest. A few years later a new translation came out, making me think that if I'd had the superior translation I would surely have stuck with it.
I tried to read Moby Dick a few times was unable to get into it. A few weeks ago I started it, thought it was wonderful and didn't think I'd seen any of it before. By the time the Pequod shoved off from Nantucket, though, I haven't wanted to read more.
It feels like another doomed quest and a lot of uphill work; the narrator has already told us that dear Queequeg is going to lose the number of his mess. It's like when we started to watch Fitzcarraldo the other night, and when they started getting ready to push that steamboat over the mountain it was too much futile effort.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2009 21:26:02 GMT
Oh, I was quite enthralled by Moby Dick.
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Post by lola on Aug 12, 2009 23:34:21 GMT
I'm trying again. Maybe it won't be TOO sad when Queequeg dies.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2009 3:32:27 GMT
But Kerouac ~~ Moby Dick is historical fiction! ;D
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2009 4:28:00 GMT
Not at all. It was contemporary when it was written. Historical fiction is when you write about those days now and lard on the prissy details.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2009 4:32:12 GMT
Prithee, sirrah -- whatever do you mean?!
Like that?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2009 4:36:09 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2009 4:40:13 GMT
*snork* Whose heads are those grafted on the better bods on the book?
Were you aware that in the library biz, those types of tomes are called "bodice rippers"?
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Post by nic on Aug 13, 2009 5:46:57 GMT
Prithee, sirrah -- whatever do you mean?! Like that? Sort of. Take a gander at, say, anything Jeff Shaara has written, or the civil war books of Newt Gingrich.
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 13, 2009 7:29:56 GMT
Newt G. wrote books? The Newt G.?
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Post by nic on Aug 13, 2009 9:10:23 GMT
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Post by hwinpp on Aug 13, 2009 9:50:03 GMT
Thanks, Nic. It is the ex house speaker.
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Post by lola on Aug 14, 2009 16:42:28 GMT
Gems I recently encountered in Moby Dick:
(about an African harpooner) "There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress."
"That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man."
I love this kind of thing, yet the book's drive is based on a subject that doesn't speak to me: revenge. So it's slow going. I can never really care whether Ahab gets Moby Dick.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2009 16:58:02 GMT
I don't think anybody cares if he gets Moby Dick. It's like Waiting for Godot or The Desert of the Tartars.
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Post by lola on Aug 14, 2009 19:27:03 GMT
Oh, okay. Good. Takes some of the pressure off.
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