I think that I should stop writing this blog now. Something occurred to me this morning, the last day of September, as I looked at the compacted list of posts on the right. It's a smile! If I keep going into October and then into November and December, it's going to end up looking like Billy Idol doing his lip curling Cliff Richard impression! Oh well, we'll see.
Oh well, I saw, I did!
Billy Idol, here I come! It's a nice day for a white wedding! Well it would be, wouldn't it? All the snow and ice round here! Go nice with the big dress! Perhaps I should be marketing this? Better than the day job, ay?
Do you ever do something and fail? A little further on you try again, and fail again! Later you think, no, it will not beat me. I can do this! So you steel yourself and try again. Only this time, you will NOT fail! No, sir! Determination is readied in the trenches, waiting for the whistle, stubborness is in reserve, the crack bloody-minded assault troops are in place. This time, I WILL get to the end!
Well I am just coming to the end of Hammett's 'Maltese Falcon' (been unavailable here for ages) and have made up my mind. Next is Moby Dick! That's Melville not John Henry Bonham's drum solo. Although it can sometimes be difficult to get the end of that as well, especially the live version!
Now I first started to try to read Moby Dick when I was young. I got to about page 10! Some years later, more mature, more responsive to 19th century prose style, I was heavily into Dostoyevski at that point and you can't get much more 'dense' than him, I tried again. Got to about page 100! THIS time only the end will suffice! Only the epilogue will satisfy. And no cheating! Now I know the story, I know some of the symbolism and I know the end (as well as the beginning:). This must be enough to sustain me, surely? Surely, I can wade my way through endless descriptions of nautical activity and get to the bottom of what is one of the great American novels. (Not that that is much of an achievement given the class of the European achievements it has to compete with but nonetheless.....)
Now the edition here has 614 pages. I will be posting regular progress reports in the title to each blog from now on as to where I am at. So root for me, cheer me on as I approach page 240, offer encouragement and a cold drink as I enter the stadium at page 499, shout at the tops of your voices, scream, as I enter the final bend at page 578 and please boo and hiss me if I collapse, exhausted, at page 367. Only success will be enough now. Only victory. A gold medal. Moby Dick. Conquered! Just call me Ahab, except this will NOT consume or destroy me! I will rise, proud, unbroken and Moby will lie vanquished, forever a conquered and insignificant whale! I will win! I am a penguin!
Hell, I'm useless at everything else, leave me my small makeweights!
Came across some lovely news earlier. Tarnished a little by what's gone on before (see previous blogs about self destruction) but someone got a plum job today and nobody deserves it more, nor is better suited. MG is crowing that: "It's nice to know my initial assessment all those years ago, when the person was hiding all kinds of stuff under a bushel, wasn't wrong. Just such a shame it took so long! Partly my fault, maybe my departure should have been delayed a little longer but it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference. Too many issues!"
I think he's just pleased that something good has come out of all that pain.
Never made it past the halfway mark. Capt. Ahab was just too morbid.
ReplyDeleteI did cheat and read the end.
And though I will probably never read the book again, "Call me Ishmael" is still one of the best opening lines I've read to date. What are some of your favorites?
Opening lines?
ReplyDelete"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt."
'Die Verwandlung' by Franz Kafka
("Gregor Samsa woke one morning from a troubled sleep to find he had, in his own bed, turned into a monstrous insect." Actually it's 'vermin' not insect but vermin doesn't really work in C20 English. It's called The Metamorphosis in English usually)
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times......"
'A tale of two cities' by Charles Dickens.
"I was captured by the Fascist Militia on 13 December 1943. I was twenty four, with little wisdom, no experience and a decided tendency - encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me for the previous four years by the racial laws - to live in an unrealistic world, a world inhabited by civilised Cartesian phantoms, by sincere male and bloodless female friendships. I cultivated a moderate and abstract sense of rebellion."
'If this is a man' by Primo Levi (I don't read Italian, hence the English.)
"I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blond, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder blue sports clothes the result was satisfactory. 'Aren't you Nick Charles?' she asked."
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
And finally.......
"In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine at the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army."
'A study in scarlet' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Although the last only works once you've read all the Sherlock Holmes stories and go back to the beginning again and start all over!
Wasn't that made into a movie?
ReplyDeleteSo, what is your relation to Albert 2.0? How do you know so much, both about science and literature, and have you become more educated since you left school, or have you ever attended school, or is obtaining a degree a crock by organized humanity to steal our fun and real ability to learn?
Sorry for the inundation. Asking myself many questions while job hunting. And, I'm assuming your project is a book?
Love Doyle, Love Dickens.
ReplyDeletePrimo Levi is the icon who inspired my sudden (possibly irrational?) switch to science over literature.
I wish I could read everything ever written by him.
I was inspired by a man from Jersey! Born early in the German occupation! Instead of teaching me French, he would take me to the pub, buy me a pint of beer (or three) and discuss Camus and Satre and occasionally what I was supposed to be studying! So yes, I had a 'proper' education but scarcely, I think, an altogether conventional one.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes I have learnt more since leaving school/uni than I ever did while there but that's the wonderful thing about good teachers. They teach you to learn and then to love to learn. So you never stop! And if they're really, really good they teach you to think about what you've learnt.
So Arthur, you may be dead by now, but, nonetheless, I thank you from the bottom of what passes for my heart! Whether you will or no, you and the Elfin Queen made me what I am! A pasty faced dwarf with an ego the size of a planet! :)
No, my project is a 'spoof' newspaper! I don't have time for a book! Although there is one waiting in the wings if I can ever get a plot sorted! I have a beginning and an end but the middle? That's the tricky bit!
And yes, Kafka's been filmed and dramatised. Not seen either, the book's enough for me! Pure, unadulterated genius!
Thanks for sharing. I think I love to learn, but I may be lying to myself.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if you have even one Elfin Queen in your life, you've loved or been loved at least. Which, in my unworthy opinion, means you have lived.
Again, Thank you.
So, probably, it is possible to over-think, study too hard, try too hard to live? Maybe letting go and listening to that person who is only sometimes actually pertaining to what you "should" be learning, maybe they teach you what you should know more than the uptight structured class? Or, maybe we need both?
ReplyDeleteAs Yusuf Islam as is, and Cat Stevens as was, said, "the first cut is the deepest". :)
ReplyDeleteStructure is important but eventually after years of an imposed one they let you develop your own. Much more satisfying!
I often 'surprise' people. A 'techie' who's as much at home rooting about in SQL databases as painting birds; chatting about Sartre and Quantum Mechanics in the pub, often in the same sentence; discussing Manet's 'Olympia' while sawing wood for the new kitchen cupboard; annoying the neighbours with Chopin one minute and Black Sabbath the next.
Life's too short to get fixated!
Ho hum, early night tonight, got to go and represent some clown accused of rascist remarks tomorrow. Should be fun, I can't stand him! :)
No, I will do my best!
Obsession is my forte.
ReplyDeleteAt Last! Found it!
ReplyDeleteWhat? Your one true love? Or the Levi? :)
ReplyDelete