I've read many books in my time; but, of course, far more remain unread. And -- forgive me father for I have sinned -- I am continually remiss in rectifying that habit of sloth and divertissement...
At various times in my life, I've tried to turn the tide on this. I recall fondly in my early 20s, resolving one summer to "read the classics" -- which at the time turned out to be three books: Madame Bovary, by Gustav Flaubert; Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky; and The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Over the years since then, my autodidactic life has been fitful; at times investing enormous energy (as when I hired native French speakers to tutor me in French to prepare me for reading Salammbô, by the aforementioned Flaubert, which I proceeded to do, three times; or when I climbed that daunting mountain of reading the entire corpus of Shakespeare -- all his plays, the Histories, the Comedies, and the Tragedies -- and did so, again, thrice; or when one romantic collegiate day, I simply stayed up all night, and did not sleep, getting drunk on the poetry of Dante's Divine Comedy); at times letting months, even years go by unread.
The last 20 years or so has been a rather fallow period, in terms of reading the works of others (spending most of my time writing my own fiction as well as this blog, when I haven't been binge-watching Netflix shows or chatting on Paltalk...). About two years ago, I finally resolved to plow through Flaubert's Sentimental Education (using the English translation as my guide, periodically dipping into the French for reference & interest). More episodes of perpendicular learning I leave uncounted (such as, for example, the delightful diversion of discovering Stephen Crane's slender, and unappreciated, novel, The Third Violet, which was recommended to me by a parenthetical allusion made by one of my top five favorite authors, H.E. Bates; not to mention my devoration over the decades of the oeuvres of two of the remaining four -- Donald Barthelme and Kurt Vonnegut -- leaving the aforementioned Shakespeare and Flaubert reverently aside).
At any rate, on a sublime whim, I have lately embarked upon a reading of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.
Right near the very beginning, in Canto 1, my ever-attuned Modar picked up a possible reference to the perennial enemy of the West, as the narrator begins to describe a mysterious, fair maiden riding on a "lowly ass" alongside the main character (a knight), and her august lineage of a royalty of apparently former glory:
And by descent from royal lineage came
Of ancient kings and queens, that had of yore
Their scepters stretched from east to western shore,
And all the world in their subjection held;
Till that infernal fiend with foul uproar
Forwasted all their land and them expelled;
Whom to avenge she had this knight from far compelled.
18 comments:
"The Great Gatsby, by D.H. Lawrence."
"by D.H. Lawrence"?
Muke Necca
Thanks for reading. I must have had a brain fart. I corrected it. (I did read Women in Love a few years later...)
"I must have had a brain fart."
Suuuure you did. More like brain diarrhea.
You be so edumucated, you don't proof your own pablum.
Hahahahahahaha!
@Hesperado,
You're welcome. Cheers.
MukeNecca
"you don't proof your own pablum."
"pablum"?
"Hoisted by one's own petard" is seldom illustrated with clearer, and more comical, pertinence.
Having said that I must admit the "Hahahahahahaha!" is spelled correctly. Fair is fair.
MukeNecca
Yes Muke. Our friend also routinely commits the "Saying It's So Makes It So" fallacy (compounding that with the related "Adding Crude Invective Will Fortify My Claims" fallacy). When he does -- rarely -- attempt an explanation, he tends to hurt himself through his unfamiliarity with handling anything remotely complicated.
Hoisted by one's own petard, huh?
You're just stupid and don't have the slightest notion that there are British and American spellings of various nouns - both of which are considered correct:
Definition of pablum in US English:
pablum
(also pabulum)
NOUN
literary
Bland or insipid intellectual fare, entertainment, etc.; pap.
Example sentencesSynonyms
Origin
Mid 17th century (in the sense ‘food’): from Latin, from the stem of pascere ‘to feed’.
Pronunciation
pablum/ˈpabləm/
_______________
Try again, dumbass!
Dumb ass Donkey:
"Our friend also routinely commits the "Saying It's So Makes It So" fallacy..."
Oh! You mean the fallacy so clearly attempted when you stated, "I must have had a brain fart"?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Your stupidity is boundless, along with your ignorant buddy, who has no knowledge of British/American English spellings.
_________________________________
The fact is, that you didn't proof your pablum. When naming authors of works you supposedly read, one needs to get it right. Proofing solves that problem - not saying, "I must have had a brain fart", which, in your mind - makes it "so".
_____________________________________________________
You see? You dumbasses can't even get close to my knowledge and rigor with the English language and logic.
But hey! Keep trying, if you like being cut to pieces so much!
Muke Necca:
"Fair is fair".
Right. So I take it you'll be issuing a retraction, or an apology, yes?
Somehow, I think not. Intellectual rigor demands that when proven wrong, one must issue a retraction, admitting defeat and/or an apology. You stupidly thought you had a "gotcha" with regard to a supposed misspelling of "pablum". You were proven wrong, as well as your buddy, Hesp.
So will you admit it? We'll see.
In addition to indulging his two most favorite fallacies -- the "Saying It's So Makes It So" fallacy and the Argumentum Ad Insult fallacy (a step down even from the Argumentum Ad Hom) -- "Anonymous" (aka Phillip Jihadski -- see these, especially the first essay listed, for background: https://tinyurl.com/yc4hu367) is also here fixating on the "Focusing Doggedly On The Least Important Flaw" fallacy. So I didn't (in this one instance) "proof my pablum". So which is the more important charge? That I didn't "proof" it, or that it's "pablum"? The latter charge is the only important one; but PJ knows he can't articulate an argument persuasively demonstrating that. So instead he fulminates in his Anger Management failure.
Speaking of "proofing" one's "pablum". I wish I had a friend like "Marc" the tech guy at Jihad Watch, who would helpfully delete any comments of mine that might be embarrassing, like "Marc" has done many times for PJ.
@Anonymous Jihadski
"Right. So I take it you'll be issuing a retraction, or an apology, yes?"
Nope.
It's going to be one of extremely rare occasions when I won’t apologise for a glitch and feel quite good about it too.
You see I read your response to Hesperado’s reply to my polite remarking his minor and nonessential oversight and I was struck by your howling vulgarity and unhinged nastiness. Considering that the exchange was between me and Hesperado your boorish barging in made me suspect you must be either a ranting psychotic, or genuine asshole. I scanned the blog in order to determine your proper category and after seeing a few of your delirious septic rants I must confess that I’m still not able to say with absolute certainty whether you are former (ranting psychotic) or latter (genuine asshole). Therefore, I’ll play it safe and assume you are a miscegenation, or mongrel if you wish.
Now, since I believe there is something disconsonant in apologizing to someone as repulsive as yourself I, with clean conscience and quite cheerfully, advise you to bugger off.
Muke Necca
Hesperado,
"So which is the more important charge? That I didn't "proof" it, or that it's "pablum"?"
For this Jihadski schizo-boob the more important charge is the one that gives him the chance to employ his sick malignity. What a miserable jerk.
Mukenecca
OK so it wasn’t a glitch, but a most serious gaffe.
Except that it was never the point, you howling ninny, and I can’t believe you don’t see it. The point was and is that I do not apologize to screaming assholes for the damage to their sickly inflated ego caused by my lack of “intellectual rigour”.
“Proofing is proofing, and lack of it is lack of intellectual rigor” no matter how you try to spin it."
The only thing spinning here is your stupor.
Otherwise no matter how rigorous proofing you shall apply to your intellect you will always be a carrier of the intellectual rigour mortis. An intellectual amoeba.
And now, amazing dingbat, really, really bugger off.
I’m done with you, el cretino.
Mukenecca
Mukenecca, I appreciate your input; it's a welcome relief from what has often seemed to be a dreary norm here, with Jihadski popping in to take one or more shits on my blog and no one else to set him straight. I believe it has happened a couple of times when a reader or two have noticed Jihadski and responded appropriately; but very rarely. Also, in former times, I took the (perhaps wasted my) time to try to unscramble his tortured mess of ill logic and venom, but I realized it was more irksome than useful -- and, like all encounters with sophists (even uncouth ones like him), potentially interminable.
And it looks like I was right (of course); he's afraid to touch (and defend with an argument) the more important accusation he made, that what I write is "pablum". It's much easier for him to take potshots about trite matters (like making one proofing error, something no writer has ever done in the History of Mankind, apparently) and to indulge an impotently ferocious rage.
Il n'y a pas de quoi, Hesperado. You’re most welcome.
But I think you may be partly responsible for that “dreary norm here” by engaging each and every shit emitted by that unhinged sub-intellectual twit. Look, after reading only some of his input one sees clearly the man is a mental cripple, torn between very high regard of his intellectual prowess, but also a nagging suspicion that he may not have one. And, even worse, that the latter may be apparent to others. That’s why he attacks with “ferocious rage” anyone who doesn’t agree with him. It’s not only because he feels insulted, but above all, because his suspicion of his own intellectual shoddiness has been confirmed by you and made apparent to onlookers.
And yes, you did waste your time trying to “unscramble his tortured mess of ill logic”. His psychopathic vanity makes him interpret the “unscrambling” as a personal attack. The guy is an exemplary narcissist, but at the same time quite dull and crude. You are making a mistake of using spade fencing against someone who is wielding a lavatory brush. It’s not only that you can’t win, but you shouldn’t even make winning your goal. I would simply ignore him unless I should find something exceptionally idiotic/comical and have time and the mood to make fun of him. Otherwise you spend way too much time meeting his insatiable craving for recognition of his intellectual substance by engaging him.
Cheers,
MukeNecca
Thanks MukeNecca,
I've actually been taking your advice more than not for the past year or so. If one searches through all the comments fields over the past year or so, it will be evident I ignored Jihadski more often than not. Prior to that, and more so in Jihad Watch comments fields, I wasted more time, probably a year, wrangling with him and another commenter ("Angemon") who, while not crippled with rage like him, was almost worse in his rabbit holes of sophistry I let myself get sucked into trying to refute (part of what I have called the "Rabbit Pack" of Jihad Watch regular commenters. Good times, good times...
Oh no! I just realized I put a comma after your name instead of a period; and I forgot to add a closing parenthesis to my parenthetical comment! More lapses in "proofing my pablum"! Whatever will I do...!
"Hijabski" is more like it. Another feature of his unhinged comments over at Jihad Watch were his claims (almost sounding like boasts) that he has spent, and continues to spend, much of his time in his capacity as a teacher (of what, one wonders; probably Grammar Management) in guess what -- various Muslim countries, including Turkey and apparently Saudi Arabia (where, he added, he has taught children of princes). Either he's fabricating all this, or he is a little too close to the object of his Fearless Leader's "Watch". In short, he epitomizes a contradiction I've noticed a lot in the Counter-Jihad: individuals who are all gung-ho & blustery about the problem of Islam, yet when you provoke them with actual toughness, they reveal an inner nougaty softness toward Muslims joined at the hip with accusations of the provoker of "racism" and "neo-Nazism" (both Hijabski and Angemon have done just that against me in Jihad Watch comments).
"(...probably Grammar Management)"
Grammar Management, or Used Carpets Import.
But seriously, if he really teaches children of princes then he’s getting paid by their parents. Now, how does he reconcile the islamic money with his anti-islam stance?
Now whether he’s lying or not he certainly doesn’t see anything unethical and dishonourable about it. Obviously, for P. Hijabski pecunia non olet.
I did stumble upon Angemon on the JihadWatch and I found him turgid and priggish. Rather uninteresting. Being curious about his moniker I did some googling that revealed a character from a cartoon series for the prepubescent youngsters. I though it was a weird choice of name for a grown up. It doesn’t surprise me he is someone who would scream “neo-nazi!” when unable to win a discussion.
The classic-stupid love the “neo-nazi” invective.
OK. Time for me to go to bed. It's over midnight here.
cheers,
MukeNecca
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