tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post8584919927890339891..comments2024-03-29T14:45:32.326+13:00Comments on The Imaginary Museum: Der BauDr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-63546685088668653332019-11-27T20:58:27.753+13:002019-11-27T20:58:27.753+13:00I'm just starting to read a book about Freud a...I'm just starting to read a book about Freud and the Post-Freudians which is useful to me as I know little really of them. Of course I know more than someone might some decades ago and indeed see him (and others of his ilk) in a different light. I did read Freud's 'Civilisation and its Discontents' as it is the title of a poem by John Ashbery. I found it rather depressing.(Ashbery ploughs on though with his pretty random but witty, and somehow profound, lines...). For it all to be just a mass of the 'material'? To have no meaning? [Apart from anything else where then is any categorical imperative now? Whose to say Hitler was wrong? It is all chance....But then of course comes Existentialism etc)...and I think the line 'All that useless love' is in a poem near the poem called 'Civilisation and its Discontents'. Frazer I must read. And in many cases, these are read like fascinating stories or beautiful poetry. And in some cases that is what they are. But, I refuse to start collecting ALL of Fraser, the smallish edition I got from the Moa Hunter in Ponsonby Rd ca. 1999 is enough for me!! [I have heard how huge it is, or is it, now I think...Ruskin, or both? Probably Ruskin]...please don't post about Ruskin or Frazer Jack (this year at least!) the homework you have given me is already too stressful for this old codger! Books are my terrible but fascinated affliction...<br /><br />Re this I like to read both 'current' books and old ones...Even ones I know have stuff in them that are dubious and 'dated', and so on...Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-44097816454852327822019-11-26T06:53:56.344+13:002019-11-26T06:53:56.344+13:00I take your point, Richard, about the comparative ...I take your point, Richard, about the comparative unimportance of being 'up to date' - it's certainly not a reason to neglect great 'scientific' works of the past. It <i>does</i> mean that one has to read them in a slightly different way, however. I still think that the crucial distinction Fraser makes between religious and magical thinking at the beginning of the <i>Golden Bough</i>, for instance, is a very valuable one. As are many of Freud's insights about human nature.<br /><br />Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-29062797615516607342019-11-26T00:13:29.808+13:002019-11-26T00:13:29.808+13:00That's interesting re Murdoch and Canetti. I r...That's interesting re Murdoch and Canetti. I read all kinds of books, e.g. at the moment I am working through my own on the shelf and I take notes from them and I LIKE that some are outmoded. But I also get more recent books. At the moment I am in the area generally of sociology, psych, history etc etc although I also get various library books. So the Golden Bough or Canetti's Crowds would just be fuel to my fire. More data. Indeed and affair should be pleasurable. It seems Murdoch had quite a few. Bayley's book on his meeting her etc, as far as I have read it is engrossing, more than I expected.<br /><br />I got the shorter version of The Golden Bough (of course as Eliot notes it in The Waste Land). I didn't get past the first page of my book as at the time I couldn't find Turner's painting of the Golden Bough (at the time). Another book on the to do list. Canetti also but I will try to keep my editions of his work safe!<br /><br />For me nothing is out of date.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-59224876445635147482019-11-24T10:25:35.381+13:002019-11-24T10:25:35.381+13:00Yes, it's terrifying how much all these people...Yes, it's terrifying how much all these people sacrificed to this rather absurd and outmoded work of pseudo-sociology! Canetti must have had quite a presence.<br /><br />I don't know if I'd put *The Golden Bough* with those others, though. Out-of-date, yes, but immensely influential on the burgeoning subject of comparative mythology (and still a rivetting read!).Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-47342770611981799792019-11-24T09:08:14.654+13:002019-11-24T09:08:14.654+13:00Crowds and Power has a considerable reputation, bu...<i>Crowds and Power</i> has a considerable reputation, but it's like<i> The Golden Bough</i> or <i> The White Goddess</i>, a kind of self-invented mythology.<br />Murdoch and Canetti had an affair: the interesting thing is that neither of them seemed to get any pleasure from it at all, which surely is the whole purpose of having an affair!Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-34401377618645695942019-11-20T22:15:46.437+13:002019-11-20T22:15:46.437+13:00Interesting. I started reading a kind of bio of he...Interesting. I started reading a kind of bio of her by Bayley which reads very well. I by the way compare my reading lists to my mother's list which she typed out. Of Murdoch 15 novels and 1 book of stories. I myself read Bruno's Dream' as a teenager and when she was reading it 'The Message to the Planet' which didn't work very well for me but she liked it as well as 'A Word Child', 'The Black Prince' and 'Under the Net'. But not 'The Book and the Brotherhood' which I have...Perhaps Murdock got involved in the making of that book. From what I see and hear so far 'Crowds and Power' has a considerable reputation. My theory of the intensly staring and endless Kafka is that he always had some tuberculosis, which infection (it can affect different parts of the body), seems to cause fever and a kind of over intensity or even near madness of the mind as with Thomas Wolfe who even wrote that he had written 10,000 books or it might have been more, and in one 900 page book I read he repeated a meeting with an uncle (it remained an amazing book (this error has been blamed on his editor but it has a curious effect)...and the whole reason for the making of the Spire in Golding's book of that name was a corrupt old priest sent mad by tuberculosis of the spine (or something). There have been other examples....But in K's case some great stories and novels. Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-78301379369110111202019-11-19T08:02:34.418+13:002019-11-19T08:02:34.418+13:00Yes, I do think there's something intrinsic to...Yes, I do think there's something intrinsic to the subject of that book which allies it to trouble somehow - apparently, after his move to London, Canetti had a kind of harem of followers, all dedicated to his greatness, trying to make things easier for the master as he compiled his chef d'oeuvre. That great work was not <i>Auto da Fe</i>, however, but his sociological text <i>Crowds and Power</i>. Apparently this odd set-up was the inspiration for Iris Murdoch's late novel <i>The Book and the Brotherhood</i> ...Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-3782066896463224182019-11-18T21:04:56.040+13:002019-11-18T21:04:56.040+13:00Re that story by Kafka, it is one that fascinated ...Re that story by Kafka, it is one that fascinated me a lot. I wrote a poem based on it, I think I have it somewhere. But it is a great image of paranoia and I suppose defensiveness....I wonder if you are the dragon in Beowulf? <br /><br />Murray became antagonistic to the book, perhaps somehow the book did communicate to him, and defended itself by seeming to be more and more abhorrent to anyone who takes a copy? But I think the crime is not the lifting but the not finishing...although, of that, myself, sadly, many books only half read or dipped into here and there.<br /><br />I don't want to see more tech, but near you Jack there was a shop, second hand books, where the woman owner had a three dimensional map (I know you have a book map and all books are collated) of her shop showing where things were. That, with a kind of locating system, a kind of GPS system showing where all books were, regardless of any being moved: had been an idea I had in the 90s after getting lost in the Auckland University Library...or disorientated. But no matter what system, all systems are fallible. <br /><br />I keep "losing" books, and buying books I already have and so on...<br /><br />Perhaps the book's subject meant it was destined to be stolen? Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-1411179939402069692019-11-16T12:25:50.593+13:002019-11-16T12:25:50.593+13:00Dear Jack - I did actually once steal a copy of Au...Dear Jack - I did actually once steal a copy of Auto da Fe - but it was not your one. When we moved into I Amethyst Avenue Pearl Beach in 1995, the landlady left some of her books behind, including the Canetti. I began to read it but it took so long to get through I still hadn't finished when she evicted us and we had to move on - so I took it with me. Unfortunately, however, I never did manage to read it; and, over the years, developed such an animus towards it that in the end I ditched it somewhere, still with the bookmark in place somewhere near the end. It was a Picador, with a cover image showing a man with three books on his head, and a chessboard, with two pieces, a Queen and a pawn, on the cover of the top volume. Monstrous. Martin Edmondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15703987223264531057noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-84615521545766557452019-11-16T08:03:53.990+13:002019-11-16T08:03:53.990+13:00It may not all be there, but the book is worth rea...It may not all be there, but the book is worth reading and shelving: an Awful Warning of mis-shelving books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OzjjG8tS7HIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Incredible+Adventures+of+Professor+Branestawm%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8jMaZ8-zlAhWFiFwKHTDAAyoQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Incredible%20Adventures%20of%20Professor%20Branestawm%22&f=falseRoger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-16830247364949296212019-11-15T08:44:56.897+13:002019-11-15T08:44:56.897+13:00You know, you could well be right there. I guess t...You know, you could well be right there. I guess that's the point of the bookmap - so it's possible to tell if a book's been mislaid or is actually missing ...Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-80888732182883005222019-11-15T08:38:31.934+13:002019-11-15T08:38:31.934+13:00Someone - even you, perhaps - could just have put ...Someone - even you, perhaps - could just have put it back in the wrong place, of course.Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.com