tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post6831990499495736327..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: The Sense of an Ending and its great charms - time, apocalypse, crisisAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-45021868792774011492018-10-15T06:12:10.698-05:002018-10-15T06:12:10.698-05:00Exactly! It's because I love the later Kermod...Exactly! It's because I love the later Kermode so much that I'm feeling so bitter and betrayed. (N.b.: exaggeration for effect.) If I'd been told "These are some occasionally insightful lectures he delivered before he got his act together and became the Kermode we all know and love," fine -- I probably wouldn't have read them, but I wouldn't have been disappointed. But to have them placed on a level with <i>Mimesis</i>... Blurbs, man! Can't trust 'em! Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-75035519404181971392018-10-14T21:16:52.314-05:002018-10-14T21:16:52.314-05:00Kermode does a little better arguing with Harold R...Kermode does a little better arguing with Harold Rosenberg, although that has the time-capsule quality. He needs someone claiming that the lowercase i really matters a lot, that would help his argument. The examples on their own are useless.<br /><br />I had a hard time seeing the line between <i>The Sense of an Ending</i> and the much later Kermode I have read, reviews and Shakespeare stuff, which I remember as clear and well-argued.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-41420348825256280572018-10-12T16:47:15.420-05:002018-10-12T16:47:15.420-05:00I've been slogging my way depressedly through ...I've been slogging my way depressedly through this book because I respect Kermode so much (and hell, if you could read it twice I can read it once, dammit), but this pair of passages from p. 119 make me want to throw the book at the wall (and think less of Kermode). On a quote from Emmett Williams:<br /><br />(The <i>i</i>, it should be noted, is lowercase. This is an index of much triviality in <i>avant-garde</i> writing. What is it? A pathetic gesture towards a longed-for illiteracy? If so it is a traditional modernism. A rejection of the uppercase egotism of the <i>salauds</i>? It might be worth a thesis.)<br /><br />And on one from Allen Ginsberg:<br />'Blakeansatanic' is a non-invention of the same order as lower-case <i>i</i>.<br /><br />He sounds like a cross between Andy Rooney and Old Man Yells at Clouds, and Kermode was only in his mid-forties then. For shame.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-89876900559880629142018-10-08T22:57:51.074-05:002018-10-08T22:57:51.074-05:00Half to two-thirds of Wuthering Expectations, is j...Half to two-thirds of Wuthering Expectations, is just my fortuitous stumbling across stuff like this.<br /><br />Great fun.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-89408032555790483842018-10-08T21:01:20.185-05:002018-10-08T21:01:20.185-05:00And later in The Devils (II:3:4):
[Stavrogin:] In...And later in <i>The Devils</i> (II:3:4):<br /><br />[Stavrogin:] In this world nothing comes to an end.<br />[Dasha:] Here there will be an end.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-60593837111010090002018-10-05T20:33:10.346-05:002018-10-05T20:33:10.346-05:00I just got to this in my reading of The Devils (th...I just got to this in my reading of <i>The Devils</i> (the speaker is the elder Verkhovensky, in I:1:2):<br /><br /><i>Normally in this world things come to nothing, but here there will be an end, definitely, definitely!</i><br /><br />I love it when my reading chimes with my other reading.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-76758974576259782972018-10-05T15:58:48.155-05:002018-10-05T15:58:48.155-05:00I asked that question several times. References, ...I asked that question several times. References, puns, non-English words.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-65624214316349275892018-10-05T15:43:26.196-05:002018-10-05T15:43:26.196-05:00Also, you only get to use an "imminent/immane...Also, you only get to use an "imminent/immanent" pun once per book, and he's done so three times now (I'm only on p. 30). And how do you make that work in a spoken lecture, anyway?Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-58219670094869508742018-10-05T15:31:42.482-05:002018-10-05T15:31:42.482-05:00Some sections are like opening a time capsule.Some sections are like opening a time capsule.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-12122276877622302552018-10-05T15:24:56.185-05:002018-10-05T15:24:56.185-05:00I've gotten to the part where he's going o...I've gotten to the part where he's going on about Robbe-Grillet, and it strikes me that one reason Auerbach & Co. come off better is that they're not dealing with contemporary literature. Robbe-Grillet was hot stuff in the mid-'60s, but I don't know how many people read him, or even think about him, today, and his "novels which most of us would agree ... to be at least very good" was surely an absurd overstatement even in 1965 unless "us" is defined in so mandarin a way as to render it meaningless -- lots of well-read people couldn't stand Robbe-Grillet even back then -- and it sounds fatuous now. Better to stick to the Bible and Augustine!Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-42399835514435542712018-10-05T09:36:33.246-05:002018-10-05T09:36:33.246-05:00No, not unfair. I am wandering in another directi...No, not unfair. I am wandering in another direction. One interesting things about comics is that the story is fragmented into a huge number of endings, of little books, within the big "book," and even the most diehard fans are often missing pieces of the big story. It is an unusual way to construct fiction. I wonder if there are other ongoing serials as old. These are good topics for <i>The Sense of a Comic Book Ending</i>.<br /><br />Lord knows I am happy enough when books end. But for some readers, ends are frustrating rather than charming.<br /><br />I can make a pretty good list of high-prestige contemporary apocalyptic writers, but it is just one particular line of literature, isn't it? Maybe a pretty narrow one.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-91143055029865856292018-10-05T08:12:20.140-05:002018-10-05T08:12:20.140-05:00I am not sure that books do have to end, exactly. ...<i>I am not sure that books do have to end, exactly. There are readers who clearly find it more of a nuisance that books end, readers for whom the endless fantasy or detective series is the ideal. The story of Superman has been published continuously for eighty years, and is not ending anytime soon.</i><br /><br />But in fact books do have to end. The annoyance of some readers at the fact is neither here nor there, and the regular production of <i>Superman</i> comics is even less here or there. A book is a book, whether it has sequels or not, and there is a last page, unless it is still being written, in which case it is not yet a book. I hate to be Mister Obvious, but it seems to me you're being unfair to Kermode here.<br /><br />I'm still on the apocalypse part, and reading on with some bemusement, since I'm not nearly as interested in the apocalypse as he is -- I mean, it's an interesting concept that has been important to some writers, but he seems to me to be greatly exaggerating its importance to literature in general. But perhaps he's laying the groundwork for a line of thought I will come to appreciate later. In any case, it's always enjoyable to witness a fine and well-stocked mind testing itself against life and literature.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.com