I have not yet read all of his novels but I really liked his works.He had a very hard life in amny ways including bringing up three tiny childre alone and he proves that smoking and drning do not always kill you in middle age!
This is an extract from “Humboldt’s Gift” in a book review on GoodReads Saul Bellow
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/637022168
Humboldt’s Gift
by Saul Bellow, Jeffrey Eugenides (Introduction)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/637022168
“Some think that sloth, one of the capital sins, means ordinary laziness,” I began. “Sticking in the mud. Sleeping at the switch. But sloth has to cover a great deal of despair. Sloth is really a busy condition, hyperactive. This activity drives off the wonderful rest or balance without which there can be no poetry or art or thought — none of the highest human functions. These slothful sinners are not able to acquiesce in their own being, as some philosophers say. They labor because rest terrifies them. The old philosophy distinguished between knowledge achieved by effort (ratio) and knowledge received (intellectus) by the listening soul that can hear the essence of things and comes to understand the marvelous. But this calls for unusual strength of soul. The more so since society claims more and more of your inner self and infects you with its restlessness. It trains you in distraction, colonizes consciousness as fast as consciousness advances. The true poise, that of contemplation or imagination, sits right on the border of sleep and dreaming. Now, Naomi, as I was lying stretched out in America, determined to resist its material interests and hoping for redemption by art, I fell into a deep snooze that lasted for year.
I have received several books now written by or about Levinas.As you guess,they are quite hard so my time is taken up reading.The most hopeful one,The Cambridge Guide,is not here yet.but I think it will be more understandable than the others to an ignorant person like myself. I am unsure what I’ve done but this is coming out very much to one side so I shall just say.Hello and continue with my studies.I like this shy lion picture.
PS.Just got the Cambridge Guide and it looks quite approachable.
This poem’s a bit cerebral but well worth reading…philosophy,art,war
English Literature: Death of the Author.
I have to write
these very thin poems
because
my hand hurts
So,
if I make them thin
they look longer
as if I’ve written
much more
than I really have.
And also
it’s easier to read
a short line
than a very long one like I sometimes write when I get that feeling
of
wanting to tell you
the whole story.
But now
this way
You have plenty of lines
To read between.
See what I mean?
It gives you more
chance to invent it yourself
which means
I talk to you and you
talk to me
even when we can’t hear.
What is a poem so thin called?
I got my linear poetic licence now.
So I’ll write
as best I can
and listen for an answer!
Linear or non-linear.
As we say
It’s the thought that counts.
A philosopher is a person who thinks
While she washes up at the sink.
She turns over her mind
And lets it unwind…..
She writes all her thoughts down in ink.
CAN YOU TELL LIES?
Some people can’t fantasise
I wonder if they can tell lies?
Reverie suits me…
I daydream at tea.
Maybe my followers are spies?
This is highly thought of by many literary journals
CAN YOU TELL LIES?
Some people can’t fantasise
I wonder if they can’t tell lies?
Reveries suits me…
I daydream at tea.
Maybe my best friends are spies?
In the USA and in the UK we find fewer people are studying the humanities.Here it is because of the economic climate.. people wish to study “useful” subjects.Literature won’t get you a job,perhaps.It only enables you to live better.Already in schools the study of Greek and Latin has almost gone.
Economics still gets students………. odd considering that economists did not forecast the recession but were up to their necks in mathematical models.Economicis not a science and cannot be.I believe it’s a branch of philosophy in a broad sense.
I admit I did not study what we called “The Arts” at University but most of my friends did.But I read poetry.I liked Auden greatly.I read all the great novels.I read Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch.I read Evelyn Waugh/I even read Nabokov…. what a writer!And I read Shakespeare Plays.
But with the much higher fees,recession and other worries,fewer students will spend three years studying the humanities.Plumbing or Carpentry are better options
I am thinking of writing some new plays.
A Fit Plumber’s Nightly Schemes
Witches astir.
Ham to let.
Sing Fear.
Make up for the Mind
A Midsummer Balls Up.
The Emptiest.
Please defreeze me,let me grow.
A man without limits
Much Ado about Hacking.
As you Recycle it.
Julius Seized the Emails.
Fool Us and Squeeze Us.
Twelfth Fright.
Hacked to Death.
The Blaming of the Guru,
Prospero Not.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-the-arts-too-elitist
http://theamericanscholar.org/the-decline-of-the-english-department/?key=55705194
Your face is map enough for me ,
Your gaze,your smile,your frown,your glee.
And if I want to know the rest
The shape your posture‘s made is best
For showing what your life is now.
A look,a gesture all this show.
Till whom you are is then disclosed
And I am in your arms enrobed.
Love vanishes when analyzed,
And thinking too
by Love’s despised
Use the means to fit the end
And then I’ll be what you intend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Shakespeare%27s_plays
Above is a link to Shakespeare’s plays
Wind in my pillows [Life in a Cabin/Tent with no door.]
Save me,I’m a waspie…. [Confused person demands help from a Bee ]
As you swipe it..[Use your card please while I watch]
As you wipe it ………[What an ass….keep it covered till later.]
As you spike it……………….[How to drug people senseful if they want you to do]
Did he take it………………[Bribes in modern life]
Did you bake it?………………… [ White lies in between the courses]
As You Fake It………………..[Is anyone honest in bed?No,thank God!So far,so bad.]
As you take it……………………[All about saving thieves from me]
As I frighten it…………………[Get rid of daddy long legs.]
As you strike it………………[ Do you think about the matches?]
Remedies for Terriers…………….. .[Dogs need psychotherapy too..]
Comedy of Worriers…………………….[Why, is there no trust is left in Society?]
Love’s Labor Costs………………. [Even love needs money now]
Measure your Leisure………[Take away the last pleasures of free time with numbers.]
Merchant of Pennies………..[I prefer pounds, but each to their own]
Sorry Lives of the Censored……………[USA boobs again]
Midsummer Blights Schemes…………[Too many leaves fell off the trees for devilment]
Julius Breather……………… [A break from antiquity at last’
Much Ado about Washing………….[.Confessions of Dirty Married Men]
Taming of the Brew [ How to make tea in a pot and live to drink it]
The Tempest missed………………. [Lucky me]
Elves Night…………….. [No.not again.Elves are too small or I am a giant]
Too gentle women may moan for her [].Oh,dear.Highly Sensitive Women
Hinters fail…………………… [Some folk like me just never get it.Tell us straight.]
I never knew you loved me till you were gone with the wind……[I sinned.]
Blind to men’s charms and hence not in their arms…………..[and other alarms]
Ring here…………………..[Helpline for numb actors.]
The Bride and Seven others……….{polygamy or bigamy.Is it polite?]
A Gossamer Flight of Day Dreams…………..[Spiders for Britain]
Kings Sneer [Always an error]
Richard Who Dared………..[Wars of the Poseurs]
MacDeath [Stay off burgers]
MacClef [Musical Version with real instruments]
Sing Dear [Love for the well aged]
King Veered [How Eddie lost the throne for lurv]
A Stranger’s Plan
Disparate remedies
The Refracted Glass Teacher
The Fly Passed Me.
The Excluded and Elaborated Mysteries of the Hellishly used Fields
Far from the Maddeningly Empowered
The Wriggler by the Heels
A Group of Ennobled Charms
The Hand of Othello’s Lurcher Bit Me on a Train
Lewd Beyond Cure.
Poetry Abjured
A Dysphorialic Mission,
The Striving Breathed Not
Life’s Titted Tyrannies
The Heir was Passing Water at the Bridge
A Mere Interlude ng by Our Foibles
Oxford Booksperms impregnate a Library and Whore!
A Pair of True Lies.
Poems Of The Lost And The Hesitant
The Poor Fruit Of The Ill Covered Tease.
The Return of the Narrative,
The Nomadic Adventures of a Milk Pail
Selected Short Whores
Selected Borings of Jonah‘s Party
The Taut Chores of the Bawdy
The Crooked And Wearing Tales Of Romulus the Tardy
Stories which Bitch and Bark
Stories of Old Western Sex
Tales come out of Old Puzzles
The Three Dogs in the Manger and other disaffected animals
The Trumpeted stranger.
The Strumpet and Robert’s Voluntary Maiden Overtures
Two on the Blower.[Two for the Price .of a Bone]
Hatch Flu under a Shower…Get Disability Now
True Essences of Males who love Whores
The Uncharted Tarts of Old Anglia
Under the Screaming Tree.Who will Lie with Me?
Under the Green We Feel Free to Wee.
The Well-Reloved Woman
Free Sex Poems and Other Terser Verse
Free Sexy Males Now
The Withered Farm
The Withered Charms
The Grubs Slanders
The Illustrated Writings Of Thomas Bawdy In Hose And Worse.
Blessings from the Charming Visages
Sylvia Plath – Online Articles and Texts.
This has a long list of all you can find on line.I am looking for a review by Joyce Carol Oates.This is a very good resource for literature students and like minded people.
iUniverse: How To Correctly Use Ellipses and Exclamation Points.
This is just one post from a very useful blog on Writing,Grammar,Terminology,Publishing etc.
Why are there so many books on happiness and yet less actual happiness?I like this piece by Amy Bloom in the NYT.I find reading reviews makes me happy.Men make me happy of they are humorous.Women do because they converse well.And peace and quiet make me happy.
I’m so happy
Not to be a baby in a nappy.
I feel so blue
When I miss you
I don’t want a lover.
Too much bother.
I like to be alone
Just me and my comb.
Shakespeare was a poet
I know it
And I am not
I quite forgot
As I felt gay
All of today
I’ll be sad
Or maybe mad
as rotation
is the human situation
OMG!
http://www.salon.com/2004/11/29/plath_therapist/
I know that psychoanalysts are not meant to tell patients what to do.So I was surprised this one did.. like telling her to get a divorce.Now I discover she had not even undergone her own analysis.
Make sure your therapist is trained if you need one
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch
I came upon this by chance
It seemed a good idea at the time.But the timing was wrong.Shakespeare was my boyfriend’s friend.To be honest he was a cat.So to preserve my modesty I slept with the cat and not the boyfriend.Just another natural disaster in every day life.
Still,a cat has eyes unlike a flea which is what I sleep with now;I know only because it bites me in the night!Possibly it was from the cat and became a multitude like my sins .which are mainly of omission.A few are cultivated and the rest grew like weeds.I feel such shame when I think of my life,sleeping with everything but a human being. Intimacy with moths does not contribute to literature or any other human undertaking and yet it saved a man from torment loving a woman with such a strange personality.So that is good.I also wrote a few plays
A midsummer night’s scream.
Julius seized me.
Richard the Blurred
King Fear
MacDuff,the pudding
Hamrent
Hamerous
Hams of old England.
Nymphs and Leopards.
Liebscreamsche
Nietzsche’s word was my father.
Who won the Bore?
England’s screaming peasants blend
Death ,where is thy King?
Foreigner’a rile us.
Boldlock the beloved
I made a few dollars selling myself to an owl.Beyond that my life is herstory.
Can I get bail?I hope the judge is lenient
“I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.”
― Francine Prose, Reading Like a : A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
This book is fascinating whether or not you are writer
Apparently reading high brow novels increases your empathy and understanding of others more than reading chick lit or nonfiction does.
Please click on “novels”above
ShimonZ’s book likes in modern literature.. a useful collection of books here
How my heart sings 