Every task seems like more fun than the subject I regard as the ripest of the week, Andrea, Jennifer, and The 2 Williams.
What is wrong with me? I just got up to make my 5th cup of coffee!
Did William Shakespeare drink coffee? Did William Faulkner?...
"He didn't have coffee, he didn't have vanilla, he didn't have cocoa. Imagine writing Hamlet without a cup of coffee. That's amazing."...
Faulkner drank, but not so much coffee.
"Jeezus Christ! Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one"
So, yes, the "2 Williams" are Shakespeare and Faulkner. They were in the news last night because Andrea — Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News chief Washington correspondent — tweeted something so mind-bogglingly stupid — stupid, evil, and hilarious — and Jennifer — Jennifer Rubin, the WaPo columnist — lunged horribly after Andrea's tweet. These people — Mitchell and Rubin — are supposed to be the elite, but they are not even elite enough to keep from stumbling over a high-school level literary reference or even to think of making sure — with the quickest Google — they're not making a gaffe.
Andrea saw what looked like it might be an opportunity to mock Ted Cruz.
He'd gone on Fox News and said: “The Democrats want a week of political theater raging at Donald Trump. Reminds me of Shakespeare. It’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."@SenTedCruz says #ImpeachmentTrial is like Shakespeare full of sound and fury signifying nothing. No, that’s Faulkner
Now, that's a bit restrained in its arrogance, and, of course, stupid. The Faulkner title "The Sound and the Fury" is derived from one of the most famous soliloquies in Shakespeare, which includes the longer phrase deployed by Cruz — "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Jennifer immediately galumphs in. Only 6 minutes elapse before she's got this semi-coherent tweet published:
Now that's and it says volumes about his lack of soul. That's Any Thinking Person.
The coherent part is "it says volumes about his lack of soul." And your tweet, Jennifer? What does it say volumes about you? Who the hell do you think you are to make grandiose pronouncements about somebody else's soul? And what did you intend to say about Any Thinking Person? You, the specific person, did not think too hard before belching that out.
Andrea Mitchell struggles to get herself off the hook with: "I clearly studied too much American literature and not enough Macbeth. My apologies to Sen. Cruz." That's not an apology, and it's not a good excuse. Mitchell has a degree in English literature (from the University of Pennsylvania). Stressing American literature can't explain away the mistake:
Posts
348 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 348 of 348"I'm stuck at amused incredulity that someone who works with words wouldn't even have a twinge of doubt that maybe the phrase really did come from Shakespeare, when Cruz specifically mentioned Shakespeare. It's not Mitchell's ignorance so much as her bluff, blowhard confidence in her ignorance that makes this so amusing."
I was thinking the exact same thing last night, and I Googled "the sound and the fury", which is what Mitchell was probably keying on in her memory- the novel's title. The top hit, unsurprisingly is the Wiki entry for Faulkner's novel. I think she did no deeper dive than that.
Rubin pretended for years to be a conservative with little or no evidence besides liking Mitt Romney. Nothing is below her intellect.
Marcus Bressler said...
I have never read Faulkner. Should I?
Yes.
But, only if you can get some good works to explain what the hell is going on. or you will miss so much that it will be a waste of time, and you'll wonder why all those idiots were praising him so highly.
Start with the short story "A Justice" :-)
Anent Romeo and Juliet: It always amazed me that we managed to get through the play at all w/o getting mired in Act I, scene 1, what with all its Elizabethan ribaldry ("maidenheads" and the like). It's not just explaining what all the unfamiliar words mean, and pointing out all the puns (is there anything drearier than pointing out puns?), but getting the subject matter past a classful of horny 8th-graders. Of course, for Shakespeare's own audience none of that would be a problem; quite the reverse.
There are a number of books and plays where the opening is a stumbling-block. The Scarlet Letter is one: before you even get to "the story," there's about fifty pages of intro titled "The Customs-House," and I never did make it all the way through that.
Playing the role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night is Joe Biden. The Malvolio character is a tailor-made role for China Joe, as Malvolio is a self-righteous, arrogant prig who tries to impress his mistress (boss) by dressing up in hideous clothes and is locked in a dungeon because of his mad behavior.
AM is DJT's age, so I guess they were at Penn together.
Readering: "I try not to mock people in their mid-seventies for senior moments."
For moron lefties the rewriting of history is a never ending activity and done in the hope that others are as "flexible" regarding history ad "facts" as they are.
Good catch, Churchy! Compare and contrast with his great "Obvious Child." (I did listen to a lot of S&G, so there's that, too.)
I only got truly engaged in the credentials game in college, and the farther I went and the more degrees I got, the better my grades got.
Narr
Take that, Overton!
Readering: "I try not to mock people in their mid-seventies for senior moments."
For moron lefties the rewriting of history is a never ending activity and done in the hope that others are as "flexible" regarding history ad "facts" as they are.
"One should be exposed via dramatically excerpts or one who knows how to read the Bard aloud to appreciate the language. The written text is so hard to get through that the jokes go over your head and the context is lacking. I had excellent professors at UCR and use English every day, just to keep sharp."
As I wrote above, in senior English we read Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet aloud from our desks. I found it ridiculous at the time, and was embarrassed at having to "put some emotion into what you are reading- read it like you are acting out the part!" I resisted mightily, and probably disappointed my teacher who was actually one of the best ones I ever had, though I didn't realize it until much later. When I read the entire Shakespeare canon 10 years later, I found myself often, alone obviously since I would have been too self-conscious to do it with someone watching, reading it out aloud with the emotion I couldn't supply a decade earlier, and mostly because of that teacher's admonition. It does help to read it that way.
Rubin pretended for years to be a conservative with little or no evidence besides liking Mitt Romney. Nothing is below her intellect.
I really don't care what they claim to be, I just assume by default that every journalist is a progressive/non-conservative/SJW until they actually prove otherwise. I use the same rule for anyone in the entertainment industry too. For example, Gina Carano is definitely not a progressive.
Roughcoat—
Those are poignant memories of what the Chicago high schools used to be like. I think some of the magnet schools are still good— or would be if the teachers ever again show up for work.
Not growing up in the United States, I'd never heard of Faulkner or his book until yesterday. We did study Macbeth in high school though, which made the ignorance on display even more bewildering to me. How are people that stupid?!
Readering: "I try not to mock people in their mid-seventies for senior moments."
Right up until the point they unsuccessfully try to smugly mock others, especially in a vast public arena.
Or pretend they're "mandated" and sufficiently cognitively able to direct the efforts of the United States of America (looking at you, Joe).
Ms Althouse hits the nail squarely on the head in this post.
Faulkner had the Snopes clan figured out long before they muscled their way into the fact-checking business.
That Rubin was ever the WaPo's "house conservative" frankly flummoxes me. Even before her recent renunciation of the Republican Party, she never made anything resembling a "conservative" case for anything at all. The odd thing is that the WaPo Op-Ed page has a couple of actual conservatives on it. They are all NeverTrumpers, to be sure, but they have strong and accurate conservative cases to make.
George Will is my favorite of these, though if anyone at WaPo ever thinks to read the early books of his columns, he'll be cancelled double-quick-pronto; the article about a gay man using his Australian marriage to another man to bring the latter into the US, all by itself, would disqualify him for life. I mean, it was from the late 70s, but what does that matter? Then there's all his articles on abortion and on Down's Syndrome (Will has a DS son). &c.
Henry Olsen is also OK, and Marc Thiessen, and indeed Megan McArdle (though I agree with others here that her overtly political writing since her move to WaPo has slid disastrously downhill). And Jacob Sullum, of Reason. Any one of them could make a better case for any conservative policy than Rubin could. (Well, not any, given Sullum who on left-Libertarian issues like hard drug legalization won't be going along with the others.) But Rubin herself? It is a holy mystery.
"William of Attainder"
No, no, no. William the Attainer invaded England in 1066. But the pronunciation was different in those days. And later on, in the time of Shakespeare, the pronunciation had become that used in America in country music of the Thirties. Due to time travel. And this is why you have to study Shakespeare before you make pronouncements.
PS, You get something personal to you if you make the effort to get to be able to read Shakespeare easily and yet you also travel with a great and diverse company of readers and writers.
Shakespeare and start reading it -- histories first, b/c Richard. I'm still pretty lame on the comedies (except the couple I've played incidental music for), quite good on all the tragedies, and know Henry VI, all three parts, much better than I need to.
You might like Ethan Hawke’s book then, if you can get past his mooning about Uma.
I just picked The Hamlet out of my bookshelf and read the first chapter. First time I read it in college as a wispy bearded young man, I thought the Snopes clan were awful people, “Flem” Snopes, come on man, but reading it again through mature eyes, I am rooting for them. I guess I will finish the book now with this in mind.
"there's about fifty pages of intro titled "The Customs-House," and I never did make it all the way through that.”
There was no film, there were no movies, very few people could see plays. You had paintings and literature to describe a world that you hadn’t seen
I know, right? Just like Seven Samurai is a knock-off of Magnificent Seven, and Yojimbo is a knock-off of A Fistful of Dollars. The Japanese are so derivative!
Well, to be fair, A Fistful of Dollars is just the poor man's Last Man Standing.
Drago remember, "third time's the charm". J. Biden.
Notice how Readering has nothing on topic to contribute. Hmm...
"Roughcoat said...
That's really appalling. Your education was clearly lacking -- you have been intellectually impoverished.
I had to memorize 100 lines of Shakespeare during each of my four years of high school. I loved doing it. I can, and still do, recite the lines I memorized (usually alone, driving in my car)."
On the way to that Shakespeare store you opened up, I'll bet.
Readering: "Drago remember, "third time's the charm". J. Biden."
Its adorable that our historical ignoramus readering STILL thinks Slow Joe comes up with his own stuff.
Apparently if we tweet to each other using Shakespearian quotes we'll be as impenetrable as Navaho wind talkers. "Childe Roland to the dark tower came."
MDT, I think Will's brother, not his son (I don't even know if he has kids--I can look it up!) is the Down's . . . used to be you could say "sufferer" or "victim."
I always liked Will, despite his baseball fetish, but for all his erudition he's a fairly shallow thinker and becomes moreso with age.
Narr
"Fairly shallow" is gobs more impressive than most Swampies
Drago and Tim, that humorless?
tim in vermont: "Notice how Readering has nothing on topic to contribute. Hmm..."
The democraticals are waiting for the latest talking points from Beijing.
Beijing has been overloaded lately with their incredible policy and financial windfall from the pro-crack/pro-underage ChiCom Girl Biden Crew and telling the NBA they better keep their mouths shut about concentration camps where they force abortions and harvest body parts against the will of the people.
Precisely like our pro-post birth abortion democraticals.
But only precisely.
Anyone hear from ChiCom spy shtupping and collusion liar Swalwell today?
Readering: "Drago and Tim, that humorless?"
Summary: why cant everyone just sit back and enjoy the Maoist revolution and sellout to our ChiCom masters?
That you don't like all that "artsy-fartsy Shakespeare stuff", doesn't show that you're a "Rebel" or some sort of non-conformist. Maybe it did in 1965, but now? LOL. Intelligent people have liked the Bard of Avon for 500 years. If you don't like him, the problem isn't Shakespeare, the problem is YOU.
As for Faulkner, there's no reason to read him unless you like great writing. Some prefer Mickey Spillane or Alice Morrison. Faulkner won a Nobel Prize - but then so did Bob Dylan. Personally, I love several of Faulkner's novels and short stories, and don't care for the rest.
"Drago and Tim, that humorless?”
I have a sense of humor, let’s talk about how you worship a guy whose corruption is legendary and we are not allowed to talke about it? Since we you injected Joe Biden into this thread.
“We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”
"We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying
https://www.politico.eu/article/joe-biden-presidential-bid-family-business-history-democrats/
I am glad you think it’s funny that he is president and is putting thousands of people out of work, soon to be hundreds of thousands with his dictats or authoritarian decrees, oh, he calls them “executive orders.” That’s right.
Readering was just trying to figure out how to earn his fifty cents for derailing a thread when he is totally ignorant of the subjects being discussed. “Unity!”
Narr,
No, it was George Will's son, Jonathan. He turned up occasionally in Will's Newsweek columns, whenever the subject was Down's. Apparently (per Wiki), he's still alive.
I like Will, and have at least since high school. (I won a $30 gift certificate from my HS -- for English, yet! -- and among the three books I bought with it was Will's Statecraft as Soulcraft. A book whose very title indicates why he dislikes Trump -- Trump isn't terribly interested in "statecraft, at least he'd never in a million years call it that, and isn't interested at all in "soulcraft." But that's the way Will does write.)
Among the political commentators of the last several decades, his views probably fall closest to my own. Certainly on abortion, disabilities (including mental ones), Communism, affirmative action, border security . . .
"Yikes". N. Minaj.
You couldn't read "Sound and Fury" today in high school. The Dilsey section (she's the Compson's maid) is excruciating to read. Faulkner has her speaking in the most atrociously written black slang vernacular..."I've seed de first en de last," […] "I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin" This goes on and on and on and on.
As for Macbeth, not a very positive depiction of his wife. Maybe she is actually the hero of the story. Some feminist critics have actually argued that Goneril and Oswald are heroes in Lear.
In my Michigan high school circa 1973-1976, we read Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet as well as Crime and Punishment, David Copperfield, Tom Jones, and the Mayor of Casterbridge. The only one I truly disliked was the Mayor of Casterbridge. I've tried to read Thomas Hardy since, but life is really too short for that.
MDT-- Hands up, don't shoot! I stand corrected, on your word alone.
Narr
I'll not make a sinner of my memory
OK. This post about these two nitwits has caused me to go read once again William Faulkner's wonderful Nobel Prize speech. The peroration:
"[Man] is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
Readering: "Yikes". N. Minaj."
Safely back in your lane.
Prudent move.
Tom Jones! That's a book I haven't heard of in a while, except in another book: In Edmund Crispin's Holy Disorders, there is a character named Henry Fielding, and every time he's introduced to someone, that someone invariably says, "Not the author of Tom Jones?"
Now, this is trash, "genre fiction," a mystery, and yet it positively requires you to know not only what Tom Jones is but roughly when it was written. The same book has a hilarious set-piece on Poe's "Raven," disquisitions on Anglican theological differences, some more on Anglican church music (Crispin, in real life Bruce Montgomery, was a composer), a pretty good rundown of the Black Mass as practiced in rural England, a fascinating ghost-story involving 18th-c witch-burnings (fictional, those, I think; I don't believe any witches were executed in the 18th c., and even in the 17th they were generally hanged, not burned), and much else. I can only assume that our standards have taken a nasty tumble.
Most novels, even very good novels, are not like that
Most novels start the boss fight somewhere between 70% and 75% through, so one knows how much more setup to wade through before getting to the good part :)
Unknown,
As for Macbeth, not a very positive depiction of his wife. Maybe she is actually the hero of the story. Some feminist critics have actually argued that Goneril and Oswald are heroes in Lear.
The best commentary on Macbeth I've ever seen is Thurber's "The Macbeth Murder Mystery." Really. As for "not a very positive depiction of his wife," why should it be? I mean, unless you're of the "Woman Good, Man Bad" persuasion, which I don't think you are. Per the story itself, it's clear enough that Lady M. is the last impetus that pushes M. into his first murder, and after that it's clear sailing . . . all the way down into the black pit.
As for Goneril, IMO her only quasi-redeeming quality is not being quite so depraved as Regan.
Set myself to read Shakespeare's plays. Found I was muttering the words under my breath, getting nowhere.
Then started attending performances at Stratford in Ontario, and other places. Got it then.
Howard said...
In honor of Wm Faulkner, everyone drink when Achilles says "Bill of Attainder"
At least you would be doing something with your mouth other than making yourself look stupid.
I am surprised you got all 5 syllables out without spontaneously combusting.
Readering writes I try not to mock people in their mid-seventies for senior moments.
Biden rests assured he is absolutely and unconditionally immune from Readering's mockery.
Which is a shame. A feeble, jejune, and insipid presidency fits hand-in-glove with feeble, jejune, and insipid mockery. It's a twofer, a laugh riot coming in and going out.
MDT--I think heretics are the ones who got burned.
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury makes great use of the Oxford Martyrs in one scene. As an old lady self-immolates rather than leave her books, she quotes Hugh Latimer's immortal line:
“We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
Shouldn't the term for Andrea and Jennifer be "Annoying Affluent White Female Liberal"- pronounced "AAAAwful"?
i think i'm going to have to read this MacBeth!
I sure thought that Macduff did the killings; but he doesn't act like a witch
“We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”
Francois Truffaut left out that famous quote in his adaptation of the novel. Well, that's the French for ya -- ya orders Beef Wellington and ya gets Chicken Marengo with a side order of frog a la mode.
The self-immolating matron who doesn't get to quote Hugh Latimer, who only smiles beatifically as the flames overwhelm her, is Bee Duffell. She had a career doing the sexually ambiguous woman thing decades before Dame Judy. She's best remembered as the crone interrogated by King Arthur and Sir Bedivere about available shrubbery -- the poor old dear pummelled mercilessly with NIGH! NIGH! and the occasional NOO!
"Do you worst," says the unblenching biddy, and gets it right between the warts.
AM to TC: No, that’s Faulkner.
AA: [That is] something so mind-bogglingly stupid — stupid, evil...
"evil" lol
AM to world: My apologies to Sen. Cruz.
AA to her readers: That's not an apology
Or, put another way...
[perceived liberal points at chairs]
AA and her defenders: lol, that's not a chair
Now, if Ted Cruz or any conservative were to utter those same words with the exact same context to Andrea Mitchell or anyone else, I can easily say, yes, Ted Cruz, sleazebucket that he is, gave an apology there. People don't have to be pure evil, I know this may be a newsflash to some of you.
[conservative points at chairs]
liberal: yes, those are chairs
conservatives: you're damn right those are chairs, you evil socialist piece of shit
Amadeus 48,
I think heretics are the ones who got burned.
Well, sure they did. Thomas Cranmer comes to mind, and many others. I remember the Hugh Latimer quotation in Fahrenheit 451, and explaining it to my (generally very well educated) husband. Protestants burned Catholics, and Catholics Protestants, all the way through the 16th c., depending on who held the throne.
But I can see no way of describing a witch that doesn't make her also a heretic.
Mikio has clearly won an imaginary argument with an imaginary group of people.
Great event! DC insider know it all crisply and bitchily schools rube from Texas. Supremely funny. So perfect.
I have a curse. I read fast and very well and I like to read challenging material. I also have a good memory.
I am frequently surprised by the ignorance of intellectuals. They seem to have read the Cliff Notes version of the Great Works, and done a shitty job of memorizing them.
I recently ran across a review of Kipling's Kim, by a highly recognized reviewer, who believed that the "Kim" of the title was half thnic Indian. He was not, he was the child of an Irish non-com and a white prostitute in India. "Kim" is short for "Kimball," the last name of his natural father.
I also read C. S. Lewis's review of "Nineteen Eighty-Four." It was a bad review; Lewis believed that Orwell had added Winston Smith's affair with Julia to the novel to satisfy the modern reader's desire for salacious content. He did not, Winston Smith's affair with Julia was at the center of Nineteen Eighty-Four because Orwell wanted the reader to know that the point of totalitarianism was to invade and control the most intimate, private parts of human existence. Smith's revolt, the crime he committed and for which he was tortured and eventually killed, was to love Julia, it was not a side show.
Jeremy Abrams: Thanks for posting your blog info. Looked at the latest posting and really liked it. Bookmarked it for future use. Also, bought the kindle Two Hour Tour of Hamlet. I suggest others here take a look, too.
Remember, that to be a "liberal" or any other variety of State-shtupper means that you are predisposed to believe stupid stuff to begin with. So one shouldn't be shocked when they reveal themselves to be pretty stupid people
Amadeus 48
Find the recording of Faulkner’s Nobel speech. You will hear the now nearly vanished deep southern accent. Sad that it not now heard no matter how deep in the country you go.
In 2015, the Univesity of Pennsylvania stopped requiring English majors to take an in-depth course on Shakespeare. then in 2016, Penn students took it upon themselves to remove a portrait of Wm. Shakespeare from the main staircase of Fisher-Bennett Hall, home to Penn’s English Department. It had been up so long, no one could remember exactly how long. Andrea Mitchell graduated from Penn in 1967, with a B.A. in English Literature. All instances prove that at Penn, English Literature is no "...more honour'd in the breach than the observance."
I think the appeal of MacBeth is its meloldrama, or it would have been to audiences in the early 17th century. Boundless ambition, murder of a king, madness, doom approaching, a walking forest, and a sword fight at the end.
One of the best Althouse posts ever - and that's saying a lot.
There's a plot turn in one of Burgess's (?) novels involving the date of one character's ancestor's burning at the stake for heresy, but I can't recall which one it was.
Maybe it was Amis pere and not AB.
Narr
Sound familiar?
Protestants burned Catholics, and Catholics Protestants, all the way through the 16th c., depending on who held the throne.
Yes, and something changed, dramatically, in England during the 17th century. Elizabeth I kept her own kennel of bear-baiting hounds. By 1700 bear baiting was illegal in England. In 1600, Jews were banned in England, as they had been since around 1350. A few years after 1700, the first Jews were admitted to the London stock exchange.
I am more disgusted by Rubin than Mitchell, frankly.
"I think the appeal of MacBeth is its meloldrama, or it would have been to audiences in the early 17th century. Boundless ambition, murder of a king, madness, doom approaching, a walking forest, and a sword fight at the end."
I prefer Throne of Blood.
MDT: “ But I can see no way of describing a witch that doesn't make her also a heretic.”
Witches are not heretics. (The heretic would be the person denying witches exist.) A heretic teaches a false version of church doctrine. Technically to be a heretic in the eyes of the Church you had to be baptized. This is why rabbis were not called heretics but Jan Hus was.
A witch had not erroneous doctrine but dealings with devils which conferred upon her magical powers.
The Malleus Maleficarum is worth reading.
This is why a question mark can be helpful. No that's Faulkner? Is much easier to explain away as in Andrea thinks the impeachment evokes Faulkner and the southern gothic themes of his novels including TSATF, a more contemporary application and as relevant as,if not more so, than the hubris depicted in Macbeth.
Hubris, now that is something Andrea should be able to discuss with some authority. Perhaps not as much authority as she displayed in offering the Senator her unfortunate correction. Hopefully there has been some lesson learned here.
“ I am more disgusted by Rubin than Mitchell, frankly.”
So am I, but that was true before this incident! It’s much easier to tag AM though.
Now is the winter of our discontent..., what i had to memorize in school.
Lewis Wetzel and others might find A. C. Grayling's The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind interesting.
Narr
Thank God I live in a secular age
Michael—Thanks! I found a recording of Faulkner reading speech.
Americana.
Ken B.,
Thanks. I am still having difficulty imagining a doctrinally-pure person engaging in devil-worship, but I do get the distinction between those who ought to be Christians straying vs. those who were unbaptized. Catholicism and Protestantism, at least in Europe and the Anglosphere, have given up on heresy as a prosecutable offense, but Islam has not. Though technically what they're prosecuting is apostasy rather than heresy.
The Malleus Maleficarum is worth reading.
I believe it. (That you're right, I mean; not the contents of the book.) That's another thing that turns up in Crispin's Holy Disorders, btw.
Narr
I prefer Nabokov to her, myself
English class would be much more popular with boys if they taught Nabakov instead of Dickinson.
Nabakov wrote the equvilent of geographic maps you have to picture. In Lolita, Humbert is always on the move, and his travels plot the story much more accurately than the state of his relationship with Lolita do. Ditto for Nabakov's other novels. The story changes with the physical place of the action.
Dickinson went nowhere. Nabakov started in Russia, found exile (and poverty) in Germany and France after the Revolution, was exiled again to the United States, then finished his years in Switzerland.
I can't remember the last time Althouse wrote one of these enjoyable takedown.
The sign of a great take down is one that you enjoy.
Reminds me of the Alinsky rule: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
Not too much fun, though. Link
“Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle..."
Who knew that Gordo Cooper was quoting Latimer when he demanded they proceed with the launch of his Mercury/Atlas-D spacecraft. But Ridley was Chuck Yeager's engineer buddy.
Lolita is the greatest Half-read novel in history. Nababov used to joke that it got more early returns to the library than any other. Lots of people lose interest when they realize there's no detailed sex scenes. Drat!
Lolita is a book about a pervert. It also has a lot of sophisticated word play and humor. Much of joke is Humbert Humbert being an unreliable narrator and smiling at the difference between the obvious truth and his descriptions. I wouldn't teach that to boys.
If want to teach a book to boys, go with Micky Spillane.
I think Lolita deserves a much closer look by critics. Its subject matter is verboten, these days, but the legend of Lolita has overtaken what is in the written word. Lolita, herself, is not much, just a typical twelve year old American girl. Humbert's obsession with Lolita is the heart of the novel, not Lolita herself. Humbert starts his affair with Lolita's mother as the kind of man that women feel a natural attraction to, tall, straight backed, muscular, brutally handsome. At the novel's end, not three years later, Humbert describes himself as prematurely old, stooped, bald, and nearly toothless. His obsession with Lolita has both aged Humbert and driven him mad. At the end, Humbert is brought face to face with the fact that Lolita is utterly ordinary. She is pregnant and married to a very ordinary working guy. She barely remembers Humbert's passionate love making, she thinks it is just a funny thing that Humbert used to do to her. She wants money, but is not really clever enough to black mail Humbert for it. Humbert is just her old, eccentric step father, and she, at sixteen, is pregnant and married to a blue collar guy, and she lives in a junky house on the poor side of town. She is about as happy and well adjusted as can be expected for any girl of her age, in her position. Humbert means nothing to her.
Smith's revolt, the crime he committed and for which he was tortured and eventually killed, was to love Julia, it was not a side show.
Winston Smith wasn't killed at the end of 1984.
Whatever can be said about Nabokov's fiction (and I've read reams) his "Speak, Memory" is one of the great books of the 20th c. IMO.
A Faulkner-loving friend recently read "Ada" and loved it. Go figure.
Narr
No, not Ada as in OK
And at the end Lolita dies.
Narr
He wasn't a happy-ending guy
Blogger rcocean said...
. . .
Lots of people lose interest when they realize there's no detailed sex scenes. Drat!
Nabakov is devilish, and more clever than his critics. In Lolita, he made Lolita twelve years old, not thirteen, so she could not be accurately described as a teenager. Nabakov would describe the beauty of Lolita, and his passion for her, in beautiful, quotable prose, and then include a few lines of revolting obscenity so that it was impossible to fully quote his best work without including the obscenities. For this comment I started to include an example, but left it out because I thought it to crude and rawfully sexual for Althouse blog.
Roughcoat wrote:
"Winston Smith wasn't killed at the end of 1984."
The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners
and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little.
The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with
the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention
as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He
was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white
as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating
everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling
of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for
bullet was entering his brain.
When I was in high school (65-69) we read a lot of Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, King Lear, Sonnets I rather enjoyed it. Read some more in college my sophomore year, I think The Tempest and Twelfth Night.
I really developed a greater interest in Shakespeare several years ago by streaming a series of shows on PBS from BBC, "Shakespeare Uncovered." These were not performances - though some specific scenes were shown, filmed at the new Globe Theater in London - but programs about a specific work with the narrator being a well-known actor who has some association with the play. I particularly enjoyed Henry IV/V with Jeremy Irons; Richard III with Derek Jacobi; and Hamlet with David Tennant. Worth checking out if you have an interest.
I also carry the complete works of Shakespeare in my iBooks, free copy produced by the Gutenberg Project.
I have never read much Faulkner. The only thing I can remember from high school is the short story "A Rose for Emily" which seemed to be something that just about everyone read at the time. I think in my sophomore year we were allowed to select a novel from a list to read and write a report on. I think "The Sound and the Fury" was one but I picked "A Farewell to Arms" by Hemingway.
The key to reading Nabakov is that he was neither bourgeois or working class. Nabakov was not Hemingway, or Fitzgerald, or Drieser, or Jack London. He was born a Russian aristocrat and he died a Russian aristocrat. In exile,in the '20s, he earned a degree in literature from Oxford (I believe his thesis was a translation of "Alice in Wonderland" from English to Russian), but Nabakov seemed embarrassed at the Oxford connection. He thought of Oxford as a finishing school for shop keepers.
Interesting fellow. An American original, though he would probably dispute the idea that he was American at all.
Speaking of “Bill of Attainder” and similar comments, in law school I had a young corporations Professor in her first year teaching who once confessed that she’d read signs on Campus saying “Bill Posters will be prosecuted” and she felt sorry for Mr. Posters.
She may have been kidding...
Roughcoat,
Winston Smith wasn't killed at the end of 1984.
I literally will not get to the end of 1984 (again) until a few hours from now -- Mark Steyn has been doling it out in 33 episodes over the past month-plus, and tonight is the last -- but a recurring item in the book is that once you've confessed all your sins (and more -- cf. how long it takes Smith to realize that he needs not just to "betray" Julia, but to will her to be devoured by rats instead of himself!), once you're pure and released, one day someone will come up behind you and shoot you in the back of the head. I can't remember now whether that actually happens, only that the last words of the book are "He loved Big Brother."
AlbertAnonymous,
I was just re-reading Stephen King's The Stand (dystopia-of-the-week), and there's a scene where a dude called the Trashcan Man is introduced to another named Ace High at breakfast, and asks "Mr. High" to pass the sugar.
If Orwell had lived another twenty years, I think that he would have become Catholic. He believes in an absolute truth, yet he despairs of humanity to create it. Catholoicism would seem to be a refuge. Anglicism wouldn't do, it was too involved with politics. Protestantism wouldn't do, either, since it depended on revelation.
I was best friends with this kid who lived across the street from my grand dad's. He was sometimes wild. He mentioned in passing that his dad use to be faulkner's secretary for a year which was cool except like who's faulkner. Whatever. Kid's dad was a DR. and a couple years before had been teaching me and this other boy scout how to field dress a broken leg. He kept saying how it needed to be tighter and I'm thinking not saying Doc we're 11 it's not getting any tighter. Finally learned about Faulkner. Course, I hear the name I start worrying somebody's gonna need their broken leg field dressed.
Mikio has clearly won an imaginary argument with an imaginary group of people.
The same commenter earlier..
Yet again, we are being patronized by our inferiors.
Your own ugly comment there exemplifies exactly what I said. You're all so utterly unselfaware. You have no idea. And this whole thread is a stench-filled sty filled with similarly clueless condescension, including Althouse's projecting blog post that started it, and of course is on track to exceed 300 comments. You're all wallowing and rolling around in it and having a grand old time.
I can only hope a rare fellow lib or two saw my post and enjoyed it or at least got it. Less likely but still hopeful is that the same mirror-held-up-to-conservatives post triggered some synaptic recognition of the facts and truth presented.
It's difficult, though, to get through without a large dollop of massaged messaging.
Which I didn't do here. And I don't care. Too much work. More fun to blow to smithereens conservative arrogance and delusion than try to convince more gently. (Hey, speaking of "sonly," gently never occurred to me in the way of a gent, if indeed that's the lineage.)
Louis Wetzel:
You quote the penultimate paragraph. Winston is"sitting in a blissful dream," really a drunken stupor, and imagines his execution.
Then, "He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, verything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
He's alive at the end, a completely broken man.
Nabokov certainly claimed that America was his country*, whether he claimed to be an American himself or not (which I think he did, anyway).
Narr
*To a French journalist during the Vietnam War, IIRC
Nabokov was a very literary writer, a writer's writer like Bellow and Naipul. He was a brilliant stylist, I acknowledge that. But not my cup of tea.
Well, I am only 62, pushing 63 pretty hard, and I can assure you I had Shakespeare in High School (my HR English teacher was the Drama coach as well), and again in English Lit in college, despite my Engineering degree. I also own the complete works and have read pretty much all of them, as they are great reads. Faulkner on the other hand, I never managed to wade through. They were without exception boring, pretentious, and utterly unable to hold my interest....and I read almost anything.
Again, I think it is clear that Winston's "execution" is in the nature of a drunken reverie. Leaving alive was actually the crueler fate.
"leaving HIM alive"
Mikio,
You're all wallowing and rolling around in it and having a grand old time.
You don't think Mitchell and Rubin were "wallowing and rolling around it and having a grand old time"? They thought they'd caught Cruz saying something stupid, and they all went "Gotcha!" and paraded their obviously superior intelligence, which was nothing of the kind. I mean, that Ted (ne Rafael) Cruz, he's just a Texas hick. (A Texas hick who has argued nine cases before SCOTUS, but what evs.) Whereas Andrea here has an English Lit degree from UPenn!
It is exactly like the time Sarah Palin said "We're gonna party like it's 1773!," and the Twitterati berated her for not knowing that American independence came in 1776, you dumbass, not realizing that she was talking about the Boston Tea Party -- you know, because she was speaking for the 21st c. TEA Party.
This is what gets people riled, you know. It's not knowing things that aren't true so much as assuming that no one could conceivably know more than you do. In the instant case we have not only Mitchell and Rubin but a couple dozen of the blue-checked elite saying that what is obviously from Macbeth is actually Faulkner. Cruz said Shakespeare, so Shakespeare is the wrong answer, just because it was his.
Which means that the blue-checked personages are -- if you'll pardon the expression -- all dumb as rocks. Is asking them to verify the simplest facts before Tweeting garbage like this too much to ask? Or does using Google (or Bing, or DuckDuckGo) signify to them somehow that maybe they aren't as smart as they think they are? B/c I'd say that's true.
Also, re "Kim," I thought his mother an Irish domestic, not a prostitute, a member of a British colonel's household. I may be wrong about that.
Come on, I did not finish Lolita. Did they really "Do it"?
Humbert refers specifically to a "sick-making" act which earned Lo little extras, and which I took as a reference to fellatio, but as noted the sex itself is mostly oblique and implied.
Narr
Close reader
Andrea Mitchell is repellent in so many ways.
I'm afraid it "says volumes about my soul" how much I'm enjoying Ann tearing Andrea and Jennifer new ones, but, hell, I'm just going to enjoy it.
@Althouse: You said "my junior year high school English class memorized that particular Shakespeare speech ["Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"]. I don't think my English class did that, but: When I was in the 7th grade, my school drama club put on Macbeth. I was cast as the second Witch (it was an all-boys school; even Lady Macbeth was played by a boy). For some reason, I memorized the "Tomorrow" speech and still remember it to this day, 64 years later. I wasn't sure of any of the Second Witch's lines until I looked them up recently ("By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes" -- Do you know the Ray Bradbury novel of that name or the Jason Robards movie? Hardly anybody does). But I just checked my recollection of the Macbeth speech, and I could take it on the road. (By the way, I also read "The Sound and the Fury" in High School -- didn't much like it.)
I mention this not because I want to boast about my weird bit of accidental memorization, but because I cannot understand someone in Andrea Mitchell's position publishing her dig at Cruz without checking. Do "they" think nobody checks their homework?
Shakespeare is great, he can make an audience cry by repeating the same word three times. I read lots of Shakespeare in HS but was saved in college by the CLEP tests.
Michelle Dulak Thomson
You don't think Mitchell and Rubin were "wallowing and rolling around it and having a grand old time"?
Sure, for what, about an hour? Then Andrea Mitchell (I don't know about Ruben) gave what could only be a deeply embarrassed apology in front of everyone an hour and a half later going by the timestamps of her tweets I just checked. And I bet you she will check from now on to avoid such humiliation again. Once bitten, twice shy. Lesson learned. Don'tcha think?
Tellingly you don't refer to her embarrassed apology. The word "apology" isn't even in your post. Althouse denied its existence/sincerity altogether which doesn't even make sense objectively, but it created subjective cognitive dissonance, so naturally it had to be dispensed with. Dissonance gone, yay!
So who's being small and petty here? And hypocritically condescending. "Oh, how could aaaanybody be so stuuuupid as to not know Faaaaulkner got that from Shaaaaakespeare?" guffaw snort chortle hack... hack hack hack snortchortle cough pause.. wipe tear.. blow nose repeat
Well, I didn't know it. I'm less educated and well-read than you all. But to make up for it, you all clearly show less logic, less honesty, more hypocrisy, and less humanity. But, you had your fun. You kicked Andrea Mitchell while she was down and ignored her apology. Because you're all so desperate to grasp at anything to feel superior about, given the inescapable guilt and odiousness of Trump and the majority of the GOP during this impeachment trial, which you all can't even watch because it's too painfully true what the Dems are saying and showing.
So this was a much-craved distraction for you all, like a lone piece of beef fondue to subsist on.
"Mikio has clearly won an imaginary argument with an imaginary group of people"
An imaginary argument, sure. But not, however, a coherent one.
"Mikio has clearly won an imaginary argument with an imaginary group of people"
An imaginary argument, sure. But not, however, a coherent one.
Two empty claims that amount to two kids telling me, "Nuh-uhh!" Be an adult. Show your work. Otherwise, that's all your little remark amounts to. "Nuh-uhh!"
The great thing about this...inauspicious...demonstration of intellect is, it's two-for-one. The insufferably arrogant Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC's version of a doyenne, and Jennifer Rubin, racked with hatred for conservatives, even as she claims to be one. Mitchell's alleged apology was basically "sorry not sorry"; she can't be bothered to say, "oops, my bad." Rubin is a shell of a human. Full stop.
Observing comeuppance is sweet. The ability to sneer at our "betters" is a far more saccharine pleasure.
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Mikio,
I’d agree that politics corrupts the appreciation of poetry and literature, but also that ideology corrupts a proper understanding of politics (what politics can do). Everyone becomes more stupid.
Jen Rubin is made to choose between her presumed interests as a woman and as a (W)oman, as a feminist, and as some kind of conservative or ‘conservative’ political commentator. She doesn’t appear successful.
Andrea Mitchell, in order to score political points, inserted herself into a debate by making a painfully obvious, and possibly honest, mistake (The Sound & The Fury). This deservedly undermined any literary authority she might claim in the matter.
Perhaps in identifying as a (W)oman as opposed to a (M)an (the logic of which embedded within secular humanism itself), and in taking a more radical and ideological view of politics via feminism, such actors are contributing to a lowered public understanding of poetry, literature and politics.
As an example of ideas corrupting politics, and thus other human endeavors, I don’t think one can even speak nor write freely without internal fear, censure and punishment at The NY Times these days.
You’d think reading widely would offer more insight into the human condition.
Alas, no.
Mikio is new here, right? Why else would he think we give a shit about his take on Mitchell? Mitchell did something stupid, trying to dunk on Cruz and was called out on it. She apologized? Do you absolve all conservatives of wrongdoing if they apologize? If so, I'm gonna run down to Trump's today and tell him before it is too late.
THEOLDMAN
Prediction: Trump will continue to live at Mar-A-Lago and in liberals' heads for a long time. Case in point, Acosta yesterday.
Mitchell is a quite haughty.
Wasn't Bill of Attainder a 10th Century Saxon king?
Curious George said...
I'm a few years younger than you at 63, so maybe that's it, but I can assure you I never had to read Macbeth (or any Shakespeare) in Junior High, High School, or College. If you asked me to recite any Shakespeare, I would say "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo" and honestly I had to look it up to get it right.
2/11/21, 9:52 AM
Pretty much the same here. Class of 1969. There was no Shakespeare in junior high. In high school we read Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet. There was no Macbeth. No Hamlet either. I wish there had been. I read them later on my own just because I thought it was something an educated person should do.
I started on "The Sound and the Fury" as an adult but never got past the first 50 pages. It would have been better if there had been a teacher to explain. I couldn't get into it.
Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Me again. I wish you could edit posts. I just remembered we read Othello in high school. So Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet and Othello. No Hamlet, no Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth on how the Democrats won the election: "What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?"
That's why you always need to read Shakespeare in the original Klingon!
Thanks Ann. You skewered two of my least favorite people, well deserved and well executed.
I remember a segment years ago (maybe even decades ago) on the show Katie Couric used to host. It featured Hugh Grant and he was asked a question he didn't want to answer and referred to "loose lips sink ships". Katie had never heard that quote before and Hugh Grant had to explain it to her. I guess Katie majored in pre war American History.
I was stunned at that time and guess it stuck in my mind. Nothing changes
Kudos for the DELICIOUS take down!
(That was all me, by the way.)
Let me just mention that I will never forgive the teacher who made me read Faulkner in high school. What worthless, tedious, incoherent DRECK. I didn't know Faulkner was a drunkard, but that certainly helps to explain it.
-jcr
I look forward to the day in the near future when Mitchel asks someone she's interviewing a snotty "when did you stop beating your wife" type of question, and gets a response of "that question is full of sound and fury".
-jcr
Mikio,
Sure, for what, about an hour? Then Andrea Mitchell (I don't know about Rubin) gave what could only be a deeply embarrassed apology in front of everyone an hour and a half later going by the timestamps of her tweets I just checked. And I bet you she will check from now on to avoid such humiliation again. Once bitten, twice shy. Lesson learned. Don'tcha think?
I think that her apology (which was "deeply embarrassed" only if every time anyone says "I apologize" s/he communicates deep embarrassment) was the absolute bare minimum. Which is good, b/c she might easily have done what many other Twitterati have done in this situation, namely wipe their entire Twitter account clean and not say anything. I'll give her props for that, sure.
Tellingly you don't refer to her embarrassed apology. The word "apology" isn't even in your post. Althouse denied its existence/sincerity altogether which doesn't even make sense objectively, but it created subjective cognitive dissonance, so naturally it had to be dispensed with. Dissonance gone, yay!
If this is true, it ought also to be true for every Republican who has ever apologized for a similar misstep. Actually, I can't think of any Republicans who have mocked their opponents for not knowing basic historical facts that later turned out to be . . . non-factual, but certainly Republicans have made lots of factual errors and apologized for them. Do you cut them the same slack? Nooooo?
So who's being small and petty here? And hypocritically condescending. "Oh, how could aaaanybody be so stuuuupid as to not know Faaaaulkner got that from Shaaaaakespeare?" guffaw snort chortle hack... hack hack hack snortchortle cough pause.. wipe tear.. blow nose repeat
You're missing the point, Mikio. This was a woman -- an English Lit major from an Ivy League university, ferChrissakes -- who saw some hick Senator make, as she thought, a stupid mistake in her own field, and jeered at him for it. Am I not allowed to jeer a little at her for doing that? Is it not to be the slightest bit funny that she was not only spiteful and petty but also wrong? Am I not to wonder whether her degree was in fact worth what she paid for it?
For the record, I do not have a degree -- in English or anything else -- from an Ivy League university. I went to a state school (OK, UC/Berkeley is a very good state school) and studied mechanical engineering and then musicology. I have had exactly zero college English classes, b/c I AP'd out of the requirement.
And, please, stop talking about "you all." I speak only for myself here. You have no earthly clue what I watch, and frankly I'm not inclined to tell you. And I don't call it "kicking someone when she's down"; I believe the term of art is actually "punching upward."
YanceyWard : I read all of Shakespeare later just for my own entertainment. I was shocked at the number of literary references I noted as I read- references that sailed right over my head before then.
Which provokes me to link Bernard Levin’s piece :
https://betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/we-cant-help-but-quote-the-bard/
I think this is originally from one of his columns from the (London) Times, the print version of which kicks off by mentioning some celeb saying Shakespeare is full of cliches.
Tim Maguire : It's easy to laugh at mistakes made by the people who did the hard of work of discovering the truths that allow us to recognize their mistakes and laugh at them.
Or as Newton himself put it :
"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants"
which was not original to Newton. Illustrating that it's perfectly OK to use a neat phrase that somebody else thought up, without attributing it. As the Bernard Levin piece shows, most of us go round quoting Shakespeare without realising it.
Just want to add, Mikio, that so far as I know, very few of the people commenting here have had any sort of collegiate concentration in English. What we have in common, I think, is that we all were good HS students, and we all like to read. I am sorry that you don't have that pleasure, though perhaps you make up for it in your superior "humanity." But don't denounce us, please, for knowing things.
I said somewhere above that I've never read a Faulkner novel in my life. I have enough "humanity" to regret that, and indeed to rectify it. And if/when I do, I pledge not to use my knowledge to kick a Senator of the opposite party (technically, they're all opposite parties, seeing as how I'm a registered independent, but I voted for Trump, twice). Or anyone else.
Mr Wibble : Once you understand that he was writing to entertain, and that his plays are a reflection of his time and place, they become a lot more approachable. Romeo and Juliet is a lot more interesting once you read it as a thinly veiled mockery of English society of the time.
He was writing to entertain a wide audience, so his plays contain a mixture of elements which appeal to different folk. A bit like the movies in the forties and fifties. It's entertainment for the common man, but woven in there there are in-jokes and clever allusions that not all the audience will have got.
I recall studying R&J in school, and we all - in a boy's school - thought it was pretty wet stuff until we eventually worked out what :
"I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,
By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,
By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh
And the demesnes that there adjacent lie"
meant. At which point we perked up quite a lot.
I suspect Shakespeare's audience didn't have to look up "demesne" and got the joke on the night.
If Andrea Mitchell was a sympathetic character I'd have a teaspoonful of sympathy. Twitter is not a medium which encourages reflection, and it's easy enough to blurt out something silly on the spur of the moment. If you've heard of Faulkner's novel, then it wouldn't be hard to leap in without remembering that its title is an allusion to Shakespeare. The Faulkner synapse is interfering with the Shakespeare synapse.
But contra Althouse, I think to be an "icky prig" you probably have to get your officious correction right. If you get it wrong you're more of a shoot-youself-in-the-footer. For which there isn't a snappy noun. Maybe we should coin "Mrs Greenspan" for that.
“ Idiot, Faulkner wrote The Hamlet, not Shakespeare!”
I thought it was Francis Bacon.
I can easily imagine Rubin or Mitchell uttering "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." But I don't want to imagine where their hands may have been before.
Some airhead TV celebrity spends 15 seconds on a misguided tweet and we get a 400 word blog post and 330 responses from the peanut gallery.
This is indicative of something wrong with our "culture", though I can't put it into words. First world problems? Too much time on our hands? Some wierd obsession with the minutia of the day?
Mikio said...
"Mikio has clearly won an imaginary argument with an imaginary group of people"
An imaginary argument, sure. But not, however, a coherent one.
Two empty claims that amount to two kids telling me, "Nuh-uhh!" Be an adult. Show your work. Otherwise, that's all your little remark amounts to. "Nuh-uhh!"
You have to make an intelligible argument, Mikio, before we can respond to it.
You didn't, so some kind person put in the effort to point that out to you.
Since you have no interest in making an intelligible argument (because there's no intelligible argument to make that could defend Andrea or Jennifer), you declined the challenge.
For which I'm mocking you
I'm guessing schools quit teaching Shakespeare around the early 1990's. No need for impressionable teens to understand that being known as the 'Lady Macbeth of the White House" wasn't actually complimentary.
As a computer science major, I had to do some research to figure out what all the excitement was about. It's all pretty funny. I think the Andrea/Jennifer tweets pretty much justified the Ted's quote.
Talked to a guy who does a lot of Shakespeare on stage I was wondering about whether it were possible to find out the percentage of the gate at the old Globe came from the groundlings. IOW, were the proponents of high culture down with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker?
He didn't know, likely nobody does. But he said there was some pretty low physical humor in original directing.
I wonder if some of the impression The Bard makes is that the lead characters are always doing received Brit theater pronunciation, which is considered super high class in the US.
Reading the first part of R&J, if you don't see a bunch of young guys ramping for a fight, you've never been a young guy. Presumably, many of his audience had been.
See Cornwell, "Fools And Mortals", a story of intrigue in London, most of whose characters are Shakespeare and his company, along with lots of action in the theater scene of the time. And Turtledove, "Ruled Britannia"
Found a lot in R&J tutoring a Nepali refugee in his high school English.
At Stratford, in Ontario, there was a student's performance. Somebody asked how the actors got into their characters. The late Nicholas Pennell said you 'read it and read it and read it."
Talked to a guy who does a lot of Shakespeare on stage I was wondering about whether it were possible to find out the percentage of the gate at the old Globe came from the groundlings. IOW, were the proponents of high culture down with the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker?
He didn't know, likely nobody does. But he said there was some pretty low physical humor in original directing.
I wonder if some of the impression The Bard makes is that the lead characters are always doing received Brit theater pronunciation, which is considered super high class in the US.
Reading the first part of R&J, if you don't see a bunch of young guys ramping for a fight, you've never been a young guy. Presumably, many of his audience had been.
See Cornwell, "Fools And Mortals", a story of intrigue in London, most of whose characters are Shakespeare and his company, along with lots of action in the theater scene of the time. And Turtledove, "Ruled Britannia"
Found a lot in R&J tutoring a Nepali refugee in his high school English.
At Stratford, in Ontario, there was a student's performance. Somebody asked how the actors got into their characters. The late Nicholas Pennell said you 'read it and read it and read it."
"Even Nitschke ripped off the Bard."
I was unaware of the famous Packer's linebacker ripping off Shakespeare, but then I don't live in Wisconsin.
Sorry, just had to say it. No harm meant.
In high school, we had Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade, Julius Caesar in 10th, Macbeth in 11th, and Hamlet senior year. One of my favorite moments junior year was when we read the apparitions' prophecies, and one of the class asked, "But how can Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane Hill?"
Our teacher, a short, barrel-chested former Marine, whipped around and exclaimed, "Parcel post!" After the laughter died down, someone said, "You had that one ready." He replied, "For 10 years until someone finally asked the question."
"I had excellent professors at UCR..."
As did I Mike. I remember Dr. Harris' Shakespeare class fondly and History professors who were interested in debating different opinions about how and why things happened. Sadly I suspect those days of honest inquiry and the joy of learning are no more, even at our alma mater.
You guys have helped me recover a memory of reading Julius Caesar but I have no idea what grade it was. That's two-- Macbeth and JC.
Karl Marx was a big Shakespeare fan and apparently had lots of it memorized. But familiarity with the Bard was much more widespread in Germany than in France, and probably still is.
Narr
Which would also apply to Nietzsche
Just about a month shy of being three years younger than Althouse, graduating *FROM* high school in 1971 (the transitive use of "graduate" really sets me off; makes no sense whatsoever). It was over fifty years ago, but I'm pretty sure we read probably three Shakespeares at my (Jesuit) high school in Chicago. Don't remember clearly which ones but, if I had to guess, would say probably Romeo & Juliet, maybe Richard II(!) or perhaps Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. Probably not MacBeth.
Took one Shakespeare course while at a college, um, near Boston, but it was the comedies. Read the rest on my own.
Although I'm at least vaguely aware of all of them, there's a good chunk of Shakespeare I've never read or seen. Except for Richard II and III and Henry V, probably pretty much all of the histories. Otherwise, except for a few of the oddities (e.g., A Winter's Tale, Titus Andronicus, Merry Wives of Windsor), I've probably read pretty much all.
Don't remember when I first read the Scottish Play. Also don't recall ever making a conscious effort to memorize it, but I can recite the passage under discussion here (starting with "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" and ending with "signifying nothing") "by heart," I hope mostly correctly. It's long been my favorite Shakespeare passage (not counting the much shorter one from the same play: "Who'd have thought the old man had so much blood in him!").
A bit more of a struggle after all these years, but I can also recite at least parts of a couple of other soliloquies from Hamlet. To Be or Not to Be, of course. Also the much more interesting "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"
Have never read any Faulkner novels. In high school, we did read the very Gothic short story "A Rose for Emily."
--gpm
FWIW, "Much Ado about Nothing" is probably my favorite of the comedies, with two excellent video productions. First, the TV production in the 1970s with Sam Waterston. Then the more recent Kenneth Branagh version.
--gpm
Michelle Dulak Thomson
(Pardon the delay. But okay, I can give this a go now...)
I think that her apology (which was "deeply embarrassed" only if every time anyone says "I apologize" s/he communicates deep embarrassment) was the absolute bare minimum.
So let me see if I understand this. With "I apologize, someone told me you were pregnant," and "I apologize, but dude, you have got to take a shower," the first apologizer is deeply embarrassed, but the second apologizer isn't. So, hmm. How convenient for your above claim! Since one exception is all it takes to spoil "only if every time..." that means Mitchell's apology can't rise above the bare minimum to "deeply embarrassed." Ta-da! Oh, but wait. Does that apply to the first apologizer too? He/she can't be deeply embarrassed either, right? Or does your rule only apply to Andrea Mitchell? Or only liberals?
Have you always had that rule about apologies or did you just make it up for Andrea Mitchell? I suspect the latter. And it's not just illogical, it absurdly flattens human emotions and the variety of apologies. So unless you rethink and correct that, this is futile.
Two more lines stand out as scorchingly wrong:
1. But don't denounce us, please, for knowing things.
2. And, please, stop talking about "you all." I speak only for myself here.
Of course you're speaking for yourself, but most of the things I was talking about pertained to a group of people including you. You can understand how that's important, right? That it's more than just about you? That's why I needed to say "you all" – it was to clarify that and avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding.
You see, an unfortunate part of the English language is that the word “you” can refer to either the singular or the plural -- i.e., one person or two or more. Usually it’s not a problem, but sometimes it can be.
So I said, "you all" in various places to make it clear I was referring to more than just you, Michelle. I was referring to you, Althouse, and a good many conservatives in this thread. Understand? If this little English lesson sounds condescending, then you shouldn't have expressed such a basic misunderstanding of my saying "you all" in places.
Also, I absolutely did NOT denounce anyone for knowing things. Could you be more insulting?! Let’s take another look at what I said:
"I'm less educated and well-read than you all. But to make up for it, you all clearly show less logic, less honesty, more hypocrisy, and less humanity."
What part of to make up for it do you not understand? I’m calling being educated and well-read two good things I was admitting to having less of than you all. I was NOT denouncing you or anyone "for knowing things." That is so stupid!
Besides, you've got it exactly backwards. Trump supporters are the anti-intellectuals who hate “liberal elites” for being intellectuals. (Logic alert: I’m not referring to all Trump supporters there.)
So there again is that desperate conservative need to make shit up in order to feel superior to liberals. It's not enough for me to have admitted to being less-educated and well-read, you have to add that I'm bitter and hateful about it and anti-intellectual so you can tell yourself I'm even further below you.
You're projecting negativity. It's what conservatives do.
So, now that you hopefully understand that I, a liberal, paid you all a compliment of being more educated and well-read than me – in service to my argument, of course, not just to be nice – how about this…
Let's see if you can do like I did. I challenge you to pay an intellect-related compliment to any group of liberals. Doesn’t have to include me. You can balance it with criticisms, too, of course, like I did.
I bet you can't do it without sarcasm.
Greg The Class Traitor
You have to make an intelligible argument, Mikio, before we can respond to it.
You didn't, so some kind person put in the effort to point that out to you.
Since you have no interest in making an intelligible argument (because there's no intelligible argument to make that could defend Andrea or Jennifer), you declined the challenge.
For which I'm mocking you
Well, then you all are maybe not as smart as you fancy yourselves. Here's the first part of my first post:
AM to TC: No, that’s Faulkner.
AA: [That is] something so mind-bogglingly stupid — stupid, evil...
"evil" lol.
You see those pairs of capital letters? Those are initials of names. Not just any names! They're the names of the relevant people in this thread's topic!
AM is Andrea Mitchell
TC is Ted Cruz
AA is Ann Althouse
Now you see those words following each colon? You know what a colon is, don't you? It's this punctuation mark here --> :
Well, the words after each colon represent the words AM (Andrea Mitchell) said to TC (Ted Cruz) in what's known as a Tweet. Did you read Althouse's blog post at the top of this page? You really need to. Well, I hope that's enough to get you started. Tell me the next part you're having trouble with and I'll get back to you. Okay, bye now!
My bad!
"Well, the words after THE FIRST colon represent the words AM (Andrea Mitchell) said to TC (Ted Cruz)."
I need my coffee, lol.
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