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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 8, 2018 19:31:01 GMT
Treasure Island (no matter how much Chesterton liked it). Three Men in a Boat. A Passage to India. The His Dark Materials trilogy. Anything by Flannery "bourgeois-bashing bore" O'Connor. Really, there's no end to the literary classics I would happily burn! Oh My! Must be rushing in hurriedly to drag them back from the fire. Haven´t read much but some of these would be the very opposite. Flannery O´Connor´s A Good Man Is Hard to Find was my best reading experience of a decade (truly so). And Three Men in a Boat is on the list for "hopefully soon". Could you please put in some Communist or Enlightenment pamphlets there instead? It will be lighter to burn and not worth its ink anyway. Happy to throw Common Sense by Thomas Paine and the Ethics of Spinoza onto the conflagration! I am afraid I regard Flannery O'Connor as a hugely inflated reputation. I bracket her with Graham Greene, both of whom seemed to believe that sin was more interesting and distinguished than humdrum virtue.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 8, 2018 19:36:55 GMT
I wonder is there an element of the literary ideal versus a more mundane and sometimes disenchanted reality in the Irish literary culture wars of the early/mid 20th centuries? Most post Independence writers tended pretty quickly to fall out of love with the official Irish cultural narrative. Life was hard for most and a brutal civil war crushed much of the revolutionary hope and vision. Certainly there were writers who articulated the traditional vision but they tend to be neglected nowadays. It is striking though how much of the literary classes become disillusioned so quickly. I do respectfully disagree Maolsheachlann about censorship which really boiled down to some busy body locating a line of what they viewed as smut and then complained so the state would stop other souls getting corrupted. Ancient Greek Penguin classic translations were banned along with the great medieval Italian work Tales of the Decameron. An argument can be made to ban pornography but literary censorship was misguided and foolish. Hibernia contra mundum ended up becoming smug and self righteous. There is an earlier Irish tradition of respect for literature even when it may not reflect society's current values. Most celtic pagan myths , laws , poetry , genealogies, annals were recorded by Christian monks who transcribed a culture that practicised customs alien to the Gospel. We would know very little about pre christian Ireland without those documents. Similarly it has been argued much of the classical latin pagan texts were recorded and preserved by Irish monks both here and in monasteries on the continent. My brain agrees with you but my heart disagrees with you. There seems to me something almost anti-gravitational about the populist insularism which reigned in Ireland for a while. It couldn't last but it was a magnificent gesture while it did. So a few good books (or lots of good books) got banned...I'm told it was very easy to get them if you wanted to.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 8, 2018 19:44:16 GMT
This is a review of Three Men in a Boat I wrote for the Audible.co.uk website. I heard it on audiobook. In retrospect, I think I was too kind.
"People who write about Three Men and a Boat tend to use words like "good humoured" and "gentle". In one way, the terms apply-- Jerome K. Jerome's little downriver world is full of trivialities and trifles, and the harsh wind of reality barely intrudes. But in another way, terms like "bad-humoured" and "rough" might apply just as well. The three men of the title spend the entire journey bickering, and when they tell each other anecdotes-- and this novel is composed more of anecdotes and digressions than plot-- their anecdotes are full of people bickering, too. Don't expect any subtle observations of character or any finely turned epigrams here. The humour is of the broadest kind, mostly variations on the theme of Sod's Law. This novel is the book-length version of a man tripping up on a banana peel.
Having said all that, it's not a bad book, and I'm sure many will enjoy it more than I did. Jerome's affection for the Thames and for boating shines through, and the English flair for inventing vivid, eccentric minor characters is on show. I'm thinking especially of the sexton who breaks into tears when he can't induce a visitor to look at any of his precious parish graves. It lacks the linguistic virtuosity of Wodehouse or the fine character-painting of Diary of a Nobody, but anybody who enjoys books of that genre has a pretty good chance of enjoying Three Men in a Boat. Tom Sharpe fans, on the other hand, should try something else.
I'm a Tom Sharpe fan, though I haven't actually read him in a long while...
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Post by Séamus on Dec 9, 2018 1:35:33 GMT
Treasure Island (no matter how much Chesterton liked it). Three Men in a Boat. A Passage to India. The His Dark Materials trilogy. Anything by Flannery "bourgeois-bashing bore" O'Connor. Really, there's no end to the literary classics I would happily burn! I'm sure you wouldn't really ban them. I wouldn't have classified the Philip Pullman's as classics any more than Dan Brown or Jackie Collins- they're really just something that were fashionable for a time. From memory Hollywood couldn't even manage to make a full movie series, so little was the interest in the first one, which, oddly, was one of the first roles taken by Nicole Kidman after her reconversion to the Church.(I may add as another Australian connection that the film version of Passage to India obtained Perth-born Judy Davis an Oscar-nomination, not that that means much, but I wonder was it the only time for someone born in West. Aus.?) Compare Pullman to the perennial interest in Tolkien or Narnia. Granted the film versions of Narnia have struggled, Prince Caspian could be called a flop, but I heard that The Silver Chair has been/is being filmed, proving the intergenerational interest there. Which reminds me-(going back to soviet Russia)I can recall seeing on tv years ago a joint Russian-American production of a traditional Russian tale, Elizabeth Taylor played four different parts in it and one of the boys from The Brady Bunch starred in it also. It would have been 70s-produced, not exactly the very height of the Cold War, but quite an effort for those times nevertheless. If I'm not mistaken, Shirley Temple did an earlier black-and-white version of the same Russian folk-tale (but probably no Russians in her time).
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Post by Séamus on Dec 9, 2018 2:49:17 GMT
Treasure Island (no matter how much Chesterton liked it). Three Men in a Boat. A Passage to India. The His Dark Materials trilogy. Anything by Flannery "bourgeois-bashing bore" O'Connor. Really, there's no end to the literary classics I would happily burn! I'm sure you wouldn't really ban them. I wouldn't have classified the Philip Pullman's as classics any more than Dan Brown or Jackie Collins- they're really just something that were fashionable for a time. From memory Hollywood couldn't even manage to make a full movie series, so little was the interest in the first one, which, oddly, was one of the first roles taken by Nicole Kidman after her reconversion to the Church.(I may add as another Australian connection that the film version of Passage to India obtained Perth-born Judy Davis an Oscar-nomination, not that that means much, but I wonder was it the only time for someone born in West. Aus.?) Compare Pullman to the perennial interest in Tolkien or Narnia. Granted the film versions of Narnia have struggled, Prince Caspian could be called a flop, but I heard that The Silver Chair has been/is being filmed, proving the intergenerational interest there. Which reminds me-(going back to soviet Russia)I can recall seeing on tv years ago a joint Russian-American production of a traditional Russian tale, Elizabeth Taylor played four different parts in it and one of the boys from The Brady Bunch starred in it also. It would have been 70s-produced, not exactly the very height of the Cold War, but quite an effort for those times nevertheless. If I'm not mistaken, Shirley Temple did an earlier black-and-white version of the same Russian folk-tale (but probably no Russians in her time). Addendum- It was called THE BLUE BIRD, the Russian-filmed version was released in 1976, Temple in 1940. It may or may not be an old folk-story as I thought, reference mentioned that it was written by a Belgian writer and first performed as a play in Russia soon after
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 9, 2018 11:28:14 GMT
Treasure Island (no matter how much Chesterton liked it). Three Men in a Boat. A Passage to India. The His Dark Materials trilogy. Anything by Flannery "bourgeois-bashing bore" O'Connor. Really, there's no end to the literary classics I would happily burn! I'm sure you wouldn't really ban them. I wouldn't have classified the Philip Pullman's as classics any more than Dan Brown or Jackie Collins- they're really just something that were fashionable for a time. From memory Hollywood couldn't even manage to make a full movie series, so little was the interest in the first one, which, oddly, was one of the first roles taken by Nicole Kidman after her reconversion to the Church.(I may add as another Australian connection that the film version of Passage to India obtained Perth-born Judy Davis an Oscar-nomination, not that that means much, but I wonder was it the only time for someone born in West. Aus.?) Compare Pullman to the perennial interest in Tolkien or Narnia. Granted the film versions of Narnia have struggled, Prince Caspian could be called a flop, but I heard that The Silver Chair has been/is being filmed, proving the intergenerational interest there. Which reminds me-(going back to soviet Russia)I can recall seeing on tv years ago a joint Russian-American production of a traditional Russian tale, Elizabeth Taylor played four different parts in it and one of the boys from The Brady Bunch starred in it also. It would have been 70s-produced, not exactly the very height of the Cold War, but quite an effort for those times nevertheless. If I'm not mistaken, Shirley Temple did an earlier black-and-white version of the same Russian folk-tale (but probably no Russians in her time). I didn't say I'd ban them. I said I'd burn them! I like Ray Bradbury's quotation (well, it's attributed to him, anyway): "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." Although I would hardly call either a crime, even in a loose sense.
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Post by cato on Dec 9, 2018 19:20:35 GMT
It couldn't last but it was a magnificent gesture while it did. So a few good books (or lots of good books) got banned...I'm told it was very easy to get them if you wanted to.[/quote]
So what was the point of banning them if you could get them anyway under the counter?
We weren't unique in practising literary censorship but we did take it to ridiculous extremes.Interestingly the Irish version of the bawdy Midnight Court was never banned. Neither was Ullyses (in English) . I wonder is there an Irish version?
Flannery O Connor is a wonderful writer and a truculent humorous Thomist. Greene was positively Augustinian in his exploration of sin and guilt. What's not to love?
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Post by cato on Dec 9, 2018 19:24:54 GMT
.[/quote]I didn't say I'd ban them. I said I'd burn them!
I like Ray Bradbury's quotation (well, it's attributed to him, anyway): "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." Although I would hardly call either a crime, even in a loose sense.[/quote]
Book burning contributes to global warming. Case closed.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 9, 2018 19:26:34 GMT
So what was the point of banning them if you could get them anyway under the counter? Flannery O Connor is a wonderful writer and a truculent humorous Thomist. Greene was positively Augustinian in his exploration of sin and guilt. What's not to love? The gesture! The assertion of difference from less puritanical countries. Doubtless I just don't "get" O'Connor and Greene. I seem to be alone in my dislike of them. I have read very little of either, but the impression I get from both is that it's better to be a tortured and interesting sinner than a dull respectable person, and that Christianity bears no relation to commonplace morality.
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Post by cato on Dec 9, 2018 22:06:13 GMT
So what was the point of banning them if you could get them anyway under the counter? Flannery O Connor is a wonderful writer and a truculent humorous Thomist. Greene was positively Augustinian in his exploration of sin and guilt. What's not to love? The gesture! The assertion of difference from less puritanical countries. Doubtless I just don't "get" O'Connor and Greene. I seem to be alone in my dislike of them. I have read very little of either, but the impression I get from both is that it's better to be a tortured and interesting sinner than a dull respectable person, and that Christianity bears no relation to commonplace morality. I think it might be a worthwhile exercise to compare the various censorship regimes of the 20th century. Almost every country banned literature of some kind. Dictatorships of right and left banned books but democracies like the USA and the UK banned books too. D H Lawerence was banned and as late as the 1980s the Thatcher government banned Spycatcher on National security grounds. On O Connor and Greene I do identify more with the tortured sinner theme. Maolsheachlann you are too good for this vale of tears.....
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 9, 2018 22:09:15 GMT
The gesture! The assertion of difference from less puritanical countries. Doubtless I just don't "get" O'Connor and Greene. I seem to be alone in my dislike of them. I have read very little of either, but the impression I get from both is that it's better to be a tortured and interesting sinner than a dull respectable person, and that Christianity bears no relation to commonplace morality. I think it might be a worthwhile exercise to compare the various censorship regimes of the 20th century. Almost every country banned literature of some kind. Dictatorships of right and left banned books but democracies like the USA and the UK banned books too. D H Lawerence was banned and as late as the 1980s the Thatcher government banned Spycatcher on National security grounds. On O Connor and Greene I do identify more with the tortured sinner theme. Maolsheachlann you are too good for this vale of tears..... "Gleann seo na ndeor", as I put it every day in my Irish language rosary...
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Post by Tomas on Dec 14, 2018 14:16:15 GMT
I think it might be a worthwhile exercise to compare the various censorship regimes of the 20th century. Almost every country banned literature of some kind. Dictatorships of right and left banned books but democracies like the USA and the UK banned books too. D H Lawerence was banned and as late as the 1980s the Thatcher government banned Spycatcher on National security grounds. On O Connor and Greene I do identify more with the tortured sinner theme. Maolsheachlann you are too good for this vale of tears..... "Gleann seo na ndeor", as I put it every day in my Irish language rosary... I remember old O´Malley Slow in stick-walk down the alley But forgot in mind too dizzy Who met Kelly? When? and Lizzie? How Greene was my Valley
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