Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Slow progress on that, as I was on the last of my holidays from Friday to Monday - I managed to 'do' the Sumerians, Bablyonians and Ancient Egyptians.

Of interest to me was this:

"For the ancient Egyptian, the name was the thing; the real object we separate from its designation was identical with it... The Egyptians lived in symbolism as fishes do in water, taking it for granted, and we have to break through the assumptions of a profoundly unsymbolic culture to understand them... the ancient Egyptians show a remarkably uniform tendency to seek through religion a way of penetrating the variety of the flow of ordinary experiences so as to reach a changeless world most easily understood through the life of the dead lived there. Perhaps the pulse of the Nile is to be detected here, too; each year it swept away and made new, but its cycle was ever recurring, changeless, the embodiment of a cosmic rhythm."

Landscape and religion - the Sumerians, subject to endless disastrous floods (the Epic of Gilgamesh providing the prototype for Noah's Ark - and Adam & Eve, apparently), saw the Gods as indifferent to human suffering, at best.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
It's patchy. I'm alright with some bits. And, yes, I'm ashamed of it, but I'm ashamed about a lot of things.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The history book is receding into history already, as I eye it guiltily.

I realised last night that once I push through all the boring ancient history when they were just ploughing fields and cutting each others heads off, I'll get to some really good shit like Greece and Rome and ting.

So I'll try and keep the flame alive.

I'm reading a biography of Brian Eno. I almost want to start a thread about it on the music forum but it's all old news to you lot.

Now nursing fantasies of an alternative life where I went to art school, formed a modish band and shagged a lingerie model.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
I kind of have to tell myself from time to time that there could only ever have been one Eno, Eno himself was lucky enough to be that person, and really we should just be happy for him. He did it for all of us.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I've borrowed ulysses and don quixote to take on holiday to spain with me. i've only really got time for one at a push i think. which should i take? just flipping through ulysses is making me feel a little dizzy. don quixote looks kinda fun.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I kind of have to tell myself from time to time that there could only ever have been one Eno, Eno himself was lucky enough to be that person, and really we should just be happy for him. He did it for all of us.

I watched 'Another Green World', the Arena doc about him last night, and although he comes across as a very likeable intelligent guy, there is one bit where he's talking to Paul Morley and he's pouring tea out of a fancy tea pot and somehow it's so cringeworthy because OF COURSE he drinks tea, and drinks it out of a designer tea pot. Know what I mean?

Also, why is he wasting his talent producing Coldplay ffs

RE: Ulysses - somebody please prod me soon to make me finish it :'(
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Don Quixote is hugely enjoyable and often very funny, in a way that famously 'funny' books usually aren't.

Furthermore:

OI CORPSEY, FINISH ULYSSES YOU SLAAAAG!!!!
 

forclosure

Well-known member
I need to go back to The Rings of Saturn never finished it but i liked soaking in the text of that one bleak but it felt like sticking your head into a deep ocean

anyway i just finished reading I Was Looking for a Street by Charles Willieford more famous for his crime stuff (Miami Blues is weird & bleakly hilarious) but this is a autobio about him being a teen spending 2 years as a hobo during the Great Depression

very engrossing read probably the most interesting thing about the way he writes about his life is he does it completly without self pity or judgement
 

catalog

Well-known member
Read cockfighter (after seeing the film) and it's very enjoyable. He's definitely that old breed of writer who had a proper life.

I've now read a couple of chapters of Don Quixote and it's pretty enjoyable...
 

luka

Well-known member
In 1569, in forced exile from Castile, Cervantes moved to Rome, where he worked as chamber assistant of a cardinal. Then he enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment and continued his military life until 1575, when he was captured by Barbary pirates. After five years of captivity, he was released on payment of a ransom by his parents and the Trinitarians, a Catholic religious order, and he returned to his family in Madrid.

Don't make em like that any more!
 
Top