Picked up any good reads at the bookstore?

[lala]

His economic wisdom. I tried to envision a world where Yord Was Right. Hence the first line, where a young chap bursts into a room to announce, excitedly, that there's some blokes selling black market bread for just $40 a loaf.

Oh, and I also have to credit him with the inspiration for the best scene, where a young chap and chappette lie in a field (Sorry, Yord, not a nettle strewn verandah) and ponder the absence of contrails in the sky above them.

My next book will be about a humourless thingy who lives in Squamish and has no friends.

[mids]

Sarah Waters.

[lala]

Then I'll right a book called The Wit And Wisdom Of Mids, Including A List Of His Sexual Conquests. Shouldn't take long, or threaten many trees.

[Deleted]

How about that immensely thick tome entitled "The Self-Importance of LaLa"?

[mids]

Jun 15, 2010 9:12:00 GMT lala said:

Then I'll right a book called The Wit And Wisdom Of Mids, Including A List Of His Sexual Conquests. Shouldn't take long, or threaten many trees.

Has it fallen over under the weight of my magnificence?

[mids]

Seriously, Sarah Waters- brilliant writer. Huge lesbian too.

[lala]

Jun 15, 2010 9:18:29 GMT mids said:

Has it fallen over under the weight of my magnificence?

The publishers rejected it. They said the market for dirty limericks is pretty much dead. I tried to fashion a sonnet out of you're desperate one handed romp with last month's Fiesta, but couldn't find a suitable rhyme for 'incurable droop.'

[Scooby Do]

I tried to fashion a sonnet out of you're desperate one handed romp with last month's Fiesta, but couldn't find a suitable rhyme for 'incurable droop.'




Oh dear, our resident grammatical expert is making basic mistakes.

[lala]

I was distracted. I couldn't decide whether I should use Fiesta or Playboy in my comment. So I googled them both to see which one was the best. Then the wife walked in, and I had to explain to her that I was doing research.

[Scooby Do]

The Wife??

Oh dear, oh dear.

[yord]

durable whoop


uninsurable group

[lala]

Jun 15, 2010 18:09:55 GMT Scooby Do said:

The Wife??

Oh dear, oh dear.

I don't understand why a popular idiomatic phrase should cause you such upset.

Anyway, back to the pressing business of lala's guide to Nostromo:

LINE 11: The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera.

A long, but comparatively minor line. Obviously, the use of Spanish helps establish the setting of the novel. Conrad, interestingly, had only ever been to South America once, and then only breifly, making his creation of a whole fictitious nation with a long and bloody history quite remarkable.

I would say the most interesting thing about this novel is the difference it creates - when placed in context with the following sentences - between those who have lived in a place since time immemorial, and those who have colonized it. In Conrad's rather conservative world view, the former are very much one with their environment - the Indians he mentions scrape a living by harvesting sugar cane, in a hand to mouth way. The colonisers - who we will come to know very well over the next 500 pagers - have much grander ideas, and a much more terrible impact.

The reference to 'tame' Indians is interesting. Conrad has been accused, variously, of everything from condescension through paternalism to racism in his attitude towards natives - Chinua Achebe has made a career out of making rather spurious accusations of racism against Conrad over his portrayal of Africans in Heart of Darkness. Here, I suggest, the description of the Indians as 'tame' - linking them with animals - is ironic, and needs to be considered in the context of Conrad's dyspeptic view of colonization and the 'advancement' of civilization - again, something we'll be talking about a lot over the following 500 pages.

[Scooby Do]

THE Wife, is insulting to many women. Try refering to her as "My wife" (Yours of course, not mine,)

[lala]

Ooooh, hark at Germaine Greer in the corner. "The wife" is a perfectly common colloquial expression suggesting bemused tolerance on behalf of the speaker. Given my obviously ironic intent, you'd have to be a particularly prissy idiot looking for offense to make an issue of it. That's you, that is.

[clarity]

At the weekend, a friend gave me The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I'm one third the way through it already and loving it. Very sad that the Swedish author didn't live to see his books published. It's a great summer read and will read the next 2 in the trilogy. Good job there's a family tree included as I get mixed up with all those Swedish names.

[mango]

Jun 16, 2010 18:10:15 GMT Scooby Do said:

THE Wife, is insulting to many women. Try refering to her as "My wife" (Yours of course, not mine,)

Oh hell yes ! I'd have dreams of battering both of his heads with both sides of my steak hammer if anybody I knew was ever sloppy enough to refer to me as that

I've had those dreams before - so I know

[mango]

I told you before lala the kiwi milk-maid - far too good for the likes of you

[mistressdao]

I've just downloaded The Time Travellers Wife, audio book ( on special offer only a £5.00)

[lala]

Hmmmm. So I suggested that I was composing poetry about Mids's fondness of pornography and was hitting on porn sites in the name of 'research,' only to be caught by my wife - none of which is actually true, need I point out? - and tweedledumb and tweedledumber seem to take umbrage with my use of the term 'the wife' in this fictitious, self mocking and totally silly fancy? f**k, some people need to lighten up.

Meanwhile, far more importantly, here is ...

LINE 12: Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search.

For adventurers we should read colonialists, of course. The tale of the gringos that Conrad is about to recount stands as a miniature for the whole novel - so those struggling with the text could, in theory, give up in a couple of paragraphs time. The supreme moral of the story is daringly revealed in these first lines, though as it is presented as a trivial anecdote, it is easy not notice its importance the first time you read the novel.

[feral]

I'm reading" McCarthy's Bar " at the moment.

Excellent book that has me laughing out loud at parts of it