[HN Gopher] 'I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch' ___________________________________________________________________ 'I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch' Author : bookofjoe Score : 76 points Date : 2022-12-24 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com) | olvy0 wrote: | A personal tangent. In the spirit of the OP, I guess. | | I read Justine (1st book of the Alexandria Quartet) back in my | early 20s, circa 1993. | | The way I found it was utterly weird. I was helping my dad sort | out his old stuff my mom wanted him to throw away, mostly lots of | yellow late 50s early 60s notebooks from his college. And some | old English books. And Justine. My dad said he couldn't remember | where he got this book, and said somebody must have given it to | him back in the 60s, and he never read it. | | I've never heard of it or Lawrence Durrel, but I knew about | Gerald Durrel due to My Family and Other Animals which was | something that recommended for kids around the early 80s, I | guess, and I think I even read it when I was much younger. | | I assumed Justine was a dime detective or spy novel, since I knew | that's the stuff my dad likes. Or some biography. Nothing too | literary for him, thank you very much. He asked if I wanted to | read it or he'd throw it away. I looked at the blurb, which | didn't tell me much, shrugged and said ok. I was between books. | The book was a 60s printing, yellow pages, somewhat | disintegrating, but all pages were intact. | | So I read it. It was tough. But I persevered. And I liked it. | Very much. Well, the sex scenes were kinda shocking but by that | time I've read more explicit ones. | | And to my surprise I discovered that the science fiction novel | Icehenge, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I read and re-read and | re-read 7 years prior at even a more impressionable age, was very | much a tribute to Justine. At least its middle part. It even | includes a science-fiction in-universe pastiche of Cavafy's The | City. | | Icehenge and Justine remain sort of embedded in my brain. As | Cavafy's "The City" in Durrel's translation (attributed to one of | the fictitious characters in the novel itself) , which in my | opinion is the best translation. I'm able to recite it by heart | to this day, and there are days when I'm highly tempted to print | it and hang above my desk at work. But I wouldn't like the | questions. I think. | | I've wanted for 20 years now to read the rest of the Alexandrian | Quartet, but I've never gotten around to it. Swamped by school | and then by work and then by family. Maybe someday. And maybe | I'll be disappointed. | | As for His Dark Materials. I read it too, but didn't like it, | something didn't click. Except The Golden Compass which was good. | bookofjoe wrote: | Why edit the Guardian title from the original? Isn't the fact | that it's Philip Pullman being quoted that gives the quote depth | and resonance and even more meaning than its unattributed version | above? | dredmorbius wrote: | HN tends to remove authors' names from titles. See, e.g.: | <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7518157>, | <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27480495> | bookofjoe wrote: | >I also removed the author name from the title. For the most | part, we keep author names out of HN titles. It's a trick I | learned from pg for keeping the focus on content rather than | personalities. Of course there are always exceptions. --dang, | April 2, 2014 | | >Generally we remove author names from titles. --dang, June | 12, 2021 | | In this case, the content of the title gains its power from | the author. | | >Of course there are always exceptions. | | This should be one of those exceptions and Philip Pullman's | name restored to the title as originally published. | dredmorbius wrote: | FWIW, I don't necessarily _agree_ with HN practice. | | I'm simply stating what it is. | | (I'm not staff, just another member.) | bookofjoe wrote: | I hear you: I'm NOT shooting the messenger. Or dang, who | IMHO is a holy man to be able to keep HN as good as it | is. | Jun8 wrote: | > The book I discovered later in life The Master and His | Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World | by Iain McGilchrist, published in 2009. In this and his later | book, The Matter With Things, McGilchrist investigates the | extraordinary difference between the characteristic modes of | perception, cognition and response of the two hemispheres of the | brain. It's like coming across an entirely new colour. | | This book sounds interesting, brought to mind _The Origin of | Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ (https://en | .m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_...). This year | I saw this book at Half Price Books and, primed by Westworld | quickly bought and read it. It wasn't good: interesting premise | argued in a just so way without much substantive evidence. | | > The books I am currently reading ... Dick Davis's translation | of the Shahnameh | | Shahnameh had and continues to have enormous cultural influence | not just in Iran but in all neighboring cultures, perhaps akin to | the Bible in Western tradition. Davis's new translation converts | the couplets in prose, with some parts kept in poetic form, is | highly accessible and praised | (https://www.npr.org/2006/03/29/5309016/new-translation-of- | pe...). I suggest complementing the reading with miniatures of | key scenes you can find by googling or you may forego a full | translation and go with the abridged but fantastically | illustrated book by Hamid Rahmanian | (https://www.amazon.com/Shahnameh-Persian-Kings-Illustrated-S...) | uxp100 wrote: | You are not the first person I've heard say that about "The | origin of consciousness..." | | Seems like it is an influential (to culture) book with a great | title that was really never very good. | dbspin wrote: | The book is worthwhile just for its opening chapters which | outline the various perspectives on consciousness prior to | the point it had been written. Some of which have been | obfuscated in summary since. | wpietri wrote: | Yeah, I think it's an excellent book of exploration and | speculation. Whether his hypotheses are _true_ is an | entirely different question, but one that doesn 't interest | me very much for that book. | pge wrote: | In saying that about Middlemarch, he may also be alluding to | Virginia Woolf's famous comment that the book was "one of the few | English novels written for grown-up people." | williamscales wrote: | Yes, this quote is included in the article | walnutclosefarm wrote: | > The books I could never read again: Lawrence Durrell's | Alexandria Quartet ... found the mixture altogether too rich | | That's pretty rich in itself, coming from the author of "His Dark | Materials," which whether you like it or not, is so | metaphorically and allegorically over-rich with respect to the | author's obvious angst and disdain for Catholicism specifically, | and organized Christianity generally, as to be ... well, almost | un-rereadable by any thoughtful person. | antiterra wrote: | I mean, have you read Durrell's Alexandra Quartet? It | definitely has a sort of melodramatic angst to it akin to the | tone of Twilight. I like it regardless, but I definitely can | understand the his opinion. | moomin wrote: | I'm more concerned about the fact the three books barely hang | together into a single narrative than that he's determined to | ape CSLewis in the opposite direction. | | (For the record, I consider Lewis the better writer, but grief | the "Simple Christianity" can get a bit much at times.) | samsari wrote: | I also found His Dark Materials a lot harder to read the second | time, when I was in my 20s, compared to the first time I read | it in my teens. That said, I have to admit he's grown up a lot | further since then; his new series, The Book of Dust, which is | set 12 years earlier is a lot more mature in its themes. | CatWChainsaw wrote: | I don't think the entire Book of Dust trilogy will be in the | past. La Belle Sauvage is, but The Secret Commonwealth | followed an older Lyra to the steppes. | dang wrote: | Ok, but please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. | It just ruins threads. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | walnutclosefarm wrote: | Fair enough, but I wasn't commenting in any way on religion, | but on the over-wrought quality of Pullman's allegory. At | least, that was my intent. Apologies to all if I missed fire. | gjm11 wrote: | For what it's worth, I'm a curmudgeonly atheist who found | that HDM steadily decreased in quality over the course of | the three books as it ramped up the anti-religious | emphasis. It's definitely not the case that the only people | who find it annoying are those who feel that their own | religion is being attacked. | walnutclosefarm wrote: | Me too! | simonh wrote: | I'm genuinely troubled by the implied suggestion that | thoughtful people should avoid, or be put off by works they | either disagree with or find uncomfortable, or might dislike | for any reason. Anything can be read and analysed by a | thoughtful person. | | I visited a relative in hospital recently and found myself | listening to the audio of a super-trashy TV show a patient in | the next bed was watching. It was fascinating. The acting was | wooden and stilted as though being read out from the page, the | dialogue was so direct and explicit it was painful "You know | why I hate him so much, because he cheated me out of my | inheritance!". It was almost Mexican soap opera level. And yet | it was captivating, because I found myself wondering about the | business model that produces such material, who the audience | is, what it's like to be an actor on a drama like that. Even if | something is terrible, there's so much to analyse to discover | why it's terrible, and why some people might like it anyway. | taylorius wrote: | That was a bit of a switcheroo. Starting off exhorting us to | not dismiss creative works just because they might seem | lowbrow, and then revealing that the "entertainment value" | you got from a soap opera was to try to imagine how anyone | could profitably produce such rubbish! :-D | simonh wrote: | I'm not in any way struggling to imagine it, and I'm not at | all dismissing it, that's not what I mean at all. There is | no switch. Clearly people do produce content like that and | it has a ready audience. I have no problem with that, it | gave me a newfound appreciation for the dynamics that make | such material successful and its economics. | stevenwoo wrote: | You cut out the rest of the sentence which I think is important | "but I shall never disparage anything I once loved, because the | love was real." I actually had trouble reading the His Dark | Materials trilogy because I was so unfamiliar with some of the | details of Roman Catholicism until some people helped me with | it but it's no different to me than almost any other | fantasy/science fiction where the religious stuff comes to the | fore ala A Canticle for Leibowitz or the Dune series. I had | more issues where there are several points in the His Dark | Material trilogy where in lieu of showing or plot actions | illustrating something there are long exposition dumps that are | disguised as overheard conversation which felt like a crutch. | indigochill wrote: | > other fantasy/science fiction where the religious stuff | comes to the fore ala A Canticle for Leibowitz or the Dune | series | | My feeling is HDM is to Dune what Eragon is to Lord of the | Rings. The former in these comparisons don't apply much | imagination to their real-world influences. | | The latter in these comparisons are still clearly inspired by | real-world themes and tropes, but they're more imaginative in | how they combine and diverge from their inspirations, | probably owing to a richer depth of experiences and | influences that the respective authors had been exposed to. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > My feeling is HDM is to Dune what Eragon is to Lord of | the Rings. | | This is an interesting comparison. I have not read Eragon, | but I have read reviews that say it's a transparent | reskinning of _Star Wars_. Assuming that 's true, the form | of an analogy between Eragon and Lord of the Rings would be | Eragon : Lord of the Rings :: Star Wars : The Sword of | Shannara | | But that's one of those somewhat-malformed analogies where | the relationships cross the :: instead of mirroring each | other to either side of it. Like "Shakespeare : Tolstoy :: | Romeo and Juliet : War and Peace"; there isn't actually a | relationship between Shakespeare and Tolstoy, but if you | have three of the elements, you can force the fourth. | joe__f wrote: | I have read HDM a number of times, as a child and as an adult. | As an adult I noticed the points you're making and had to read | around them a little. I still love the books and have learnt | many things from reading them. | setgree wrote: | I consider myself a thoughtful person and I enjoyed reading HDM | as recently as 2020 ;) There is no need to broadly insult | everyone who likes a book. Each to her own. | | Having said that, I felt 'the golden compass' holds up much | better than the sequels -- better character development, less | didactic, amazing word building. | | (Edited to avoid potential spoilers) | thaumasiotes wrote: | > amazing word building | | There are some misfires. And though I assume you meant to say | "world building", the word building is a particular weak | point. He decided that, in an alternate history where the | word for electricity derived from the Arabic word for amber | rather than the Greek one, it was perfectly plausible for the | modern form of an original "anbar" to be "anbar". That can't | happen. | | If you want to see a series of novels with strong word | building, check out Katharine Kerr's Deverry series. ;D | jgrahamc wrote: | I didn't feel that she was devoted to him. She was someone | experiencing a first love, she'd been through a lot, she was | losing the ability to read the alethiometer, and Will had the | knife. | [deleted] | imajoredinecon wrote: | Dunno what I'd think if I reread them now, but when I was 8 I | (1) devoured the whole trilogy for the characters/worldbuilding | and (2) didn't notice the religious metaphor. Seems like this | might be the way to evaluate a kids' book? | thaumasiotes wrote: | > (2) didn't notice the religious metaphor. | | There are processions of angels bearing the corpse of a dead | god. It's not so much a religious metaphor as an out-and-out | religious story. What's not to notice? | SalmoShalazar wrote: | Impressive ego that you consider yourself the archetypal | "thoughtful person" and can determine what all other | "thoughtful" people will or will not enjoy. | dang wrote: | Please don't take threads further into flamewar. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | walnutclosefarm wrote: | Thanks. I like my ego too. | | Seriously, though, I agree, the phrasing I used was a little | over-wrought itself. My apologies. My point really was that | if Pullman believes that Durrell's book was "too rich" to be | re-read by him, he should understand that the limitations in | Durrell's work that lead him to that conclusion are over- | present in his own His Dark Materials. | sdwr wrote: | I feel validated for loving mcgilchrist's master+emissary now. | Haven't read HDM in a looong time now, but it was formative for | me, especially the bittersweet ending. The symbols and talismans | captivated me. | | Looking back, it's still masterful how it hangs together. As YA | fiction, it has to be about blossoming sexuality. Monkey as id, | relationship with animal as childhood-level affection, catholic | repression in the first book (literally locking the animals | away), then fighting god, overthrowing the authority figure to | move into a mature understanding of love. The knife and universes | as a metaphor for decision-making and branching lives (literally | named Will). | | Plus the ending dovetails wonderfully into the actual lived | experience of the author, who spent all that time building a | fantasy and has to let it go. | | And I love the concept of the aliens in the last book, that use | coconuts as wheels and travel on natural highways. | daxfohl wrote: | Middlemarch is also my favorite classic novel. So many good | observations there. One of my favorite quotes, "But we all know | the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity | increases directly as the square of the distance." (I was in | Kyrgyzstan at the time). I definitely fall into that category, | but a bit intentionally less so than before reading this. | P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: | I'm trying to understand what that quote means. | | Is it that they feed themselves first and only give what they | don't need and that amount grows as their own income/wealth | grows? | thatjoeoverthr wrote: | It describes someone who is generous giving to institutions | acting elsewhere but miserly to those directly around them. | jimmytidey wrote: | I don't know the book, but I assume the criticism is that a | rich person can give money to alleviate suffering, but by the | same token their wealth means they will not have to | experience the suffering intimately. The richer they are, the | more money they can give, and, also, the more remote the | suffering. | daxfohl wrote: | I interpret it as meaning someone who goes way out of their | way to feed hungry people on other continents but won't spare | a penny for someone at their doorstep. Admittedly that could | be way off. | wolverine876 wrote: | Yes, the person on our doorstep is 'lazy', 'dirty', | threatening, etc. For that person, we call the police or | have laws passed to criminalize them. | daxfohl wrote: | So mathematically the relationship is actually cubic, of | `d` minus a constant. | uvesten wrote: | https://archive.ph/miSbe | | Argh. | wpietri wrote: | "I shall never disparage anything I once loved, because the love | was real." | | That's some good advice. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-24 23:00 UTC)