The 20th Century

[version]

Bartleby is pretty bad though.

 

[Corpsey]

Benito Cereno and Billy Budd are both pretty fantastic IMO

Can't remember if I've read Bartleby. I recall it being somewhat Kafkaesque

 

[catalog]

That isn't true of Tolstoy's "Hajid Murat", though. Or "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".

i read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" a few years ago, on the recommendation of someone i work with, but can't remember much of it at all. i do quite wanna read war and peace, but doubt i will get round to it anytime soon.

 

[thirdform]

I wrote a rambling post about the beatles for the request a list thread but might as well post it here:


was just thinking about this the other day. I used to completely subscribe to this view because I a) found their music annoying ever since I was a kid and b) read the legendary piero scaruffi rant about how they paled in comparison to more obscure 60s bands and completely converted to that opinion as a teenager. but lately I’ve found it increasingly difficult to stick with the “beatles are way overrated” contrarian viewpoint.

what gets me is how their music serves as a point of confluence for so many huge currents of 20th century music and culture. even if you think the revolutionariness of the 60s is overrated, it’s hard to imagine one music act being so in-the-center-of-things ever again. I mean I know this isn’t new information to anyone here but they were at the forefront of all of the following:

-the rise of popular music / pop culture (they are the best selling, most widely known music artists of all time and it’s not even close)
-popular music that acknowledged the developments of modernism / the avant garde (they were the archetypal heartthrob boy band and they took influence from some of the most "out there" music ever made. stockhausen himself, later completely unimpressed with mr. electronic super genius richard james, even called them the bridge between serious music and pop music )
-studio-based music rather than live performance music (granted this could apply to a lot of artists from that period)
-the rise of the album as a Serious Artistic Statement rather than as a secondary format for teen dance music
-the rise of psychedelia / the counterculture

This is where I agree with Gus actually. You're almost looking at them from a pure modernistic innovators sense. It's great if you are analysing classical composition but not pop music. Motown and Atlantic had better logistics at deploying pop hits. They just did. Maybe they are not historically overrated, but Neither is J.D Sallinger, and I think he's a stinking pile of horse dung. To me, musically they are intolerable at what they do, a half hearted compromise. Either go pure pop or pure freakout. The Beatles were the braindance of their day, if I really wanted to piss you off

 

[mvuent]

This is where I agree with Gus actually. You're almost looking at them from a pure modernistic innovators sense. It's great if you are analysing classical composition but not pop music. Motown and Atlantic had better logistics at deploying pop hits. They just did. Maybe they are not historically overrated, but Neither is J.D Sallinger, and I think he's a stinking pile of horse dung. To me, musically they are intolerable at what they do, a half hearted compromise. Either go pure pop or pure freakout. The Beatles were the braindance of their day, if I really wanted to piss you off

haha no not at all! the comparison with idm has occurred to me before. personally i'm not that into critical darling art pop for the same reason as you. that post wasn't an announcement that i'm a huge beatles fan.

that said, the way they end the white album with "revolution 9" followed by "good night" is amazing. the latter becomes almost funny... but above all haunting. it's like some night cap and slippers wearing old fashioned english person going to sleep in a bed that's been placed in the middle of a huge, newly formed crater. there are some moments where their position as a weather vane for larger historical trends actually does feed back into and enhance the listening experience.

 

[woops]

There's that little snippet "Can you take me back?" too. Is that just before revolution 9?

 

[IdleRich]

Classic mistake with the big guns is to read their short works. They're all shit compared to the doorstops. Heed bolano. Go for moby dick, fuck Bartleby

Isn't Bartley seen as one of the all time greatest short stories?

 

[woops]

Isn't Bartley seen as one of the all time greatest short stories?

Yes it is and I've read both that and Moby Dick

 

[catalog]

I've read bartelby as well and moby dick is miles better. In my HUMBLE opinion.

 

[IdleRich]

I tried so many times to spell that correctly but autocorrect was simply not having it

 

[woops]

Bartleby the Scrivener

 

[sus]

Yeah people seem to love Bartleby cuz it anticipated a lot of modernist concerns and stylistic choices, but that book has no soul. It's as empty as its protagonist. Good but so sanitized and hygienic there's no life there.

 

[sus]

From the Robert Anton Wilson list DannyL posted in the 'big books' thread.

"Nobody has really entered the 20th century if they haven’t digested Ulysses. And if they haven’t entered the 20th century, they’re going to fall pretty far behind pretty soon, as we enter the 21st. There’s a guy I correspond with occasionally who spends all his time fighting with Fundamentalists over Darwin. He’s living in the 19th century; nothing in the 20th century has affected him yet. He’s carrying on the brave battles of Thomas Henry Huxley a hundred years later. I know some people who are back in the 18th century – Burkian conservatives, trying to apply Burke’s principles to modern times. I sometimes do that myself – try to apply some of Burke’s principles. But not all of them! I don’t think he’s written in stone either. At any rate, everyone should read Ulysses to get into the 20th century."

Big Books

How do you feel about them? Do you see them lurking on the shelf and sigh or are you regularly tearing through 'em? Classic mistake with the big guns is to read their short works. They're all shit compared to the doorstops. Heed bolano. Go for moby dick, fuck Bartleby “Without turning, the...

www.dissensus.com

What do you think it does to "haze" the reader into the 20th C?

 

[luka]

i doubt it. i think he probably meant it. but we dont live in the 20th century any more and now you will have to read Prynne

 

[luka]

probaby but actually what he says there he stole directly from mcluhan

 

[Clinamenic]

It’s that metanarrative-bound thinking that projects it’s own conceptual framework upon its world. I think it’s a profound framework, to be clear, but not everyone may have a use for it.

 

[luka]

eh

 

[Clinamenic]

But maybe that’s a suboptimal arrangement. Maybe if more bureaucratics were versed in these things, we’d have a more gnostically sound society.

 

[luka]

I mean Joyce is still going over Aristotle in the book.

eh

 

[Clinamenic]

eh

That everyone needs to reckon with our development into and beyond modernism, and that a lack of understanding here is tantamount to being “behind” the times.