The Honeysuckle and the Bee II
Is this a book for me?
Evergeen Books 1940 edition, pp 43-44 Depressed, and meditating once more on the imbecilities of our licensing system, I passed along the road, with a garage on my left, and a glimpse of lake through the old cottages and the new cinema site on my right. Once more I was astounded at my country, and at the brewers, and at the Tory Party. It was a Conservative Government which introduced a Licensing Act which arranged that "redundant" licenses should be abolished; that brewers (and why on earth should they own inns and tie them to their own brand of beer, good or bad, paint out the old signs and scrawl the names of their ales - one is called 'Shrimp' - across the old fronts?) should surrender an old license if they wanted a new one, and that benches of "Licensing Justices" (usually and deliberately packed by the most revolting type of whining, nonconformist teetotallers ever conceived of by the author of Hudibras) should have the power of deciding what should be shut, what should be open and when - people who regard a harmless village pub as rather worse than a brothel, and immesurably worse than a factory. "The people have the power of altering things," reply the blind worshippersof what is a nominally democratic system. "The people" is but a phrase; "the people" in France or Italy would make short shrift of anyone who attempted to take away their wine in return for giving them votes, i.e., the choice between one caucus nominee and another, each frightened of offending some small minority of cranks whose blinkered minds, on one issue alone, may swing an election one way or another, incidentally and in the mad manner of the Gaderene swine flinging the country into ruinous war, or disgraceful peace, or the loss of Empire or any other minor matter simply because they cannot bear the idea of not interfering with their neighbour's private habits. They have not dared to go to the lengths that they and their insane female accomplices went in America. Try England with Prohibition and it will go back to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson and Cobbett as it did in 1914 and during the General Strike, throwing off its back all the English-hating Welsh from Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell to Oliver Cromwell (nee Williams) and the rest. But take away from the ordinary Englishman only some of his liberties, remove his landmarks only in part,and, good-tempered and patient as he is, he will merely assemble where and when he is allowed to assemble, lament the passing of the "Old Ship" or the "Burlington" at Chiswick (which dated from Agincourst, was frequented by Thames ferrymen and had probably never seen a man drunk in our day), complain the new pubs are not what the old ones were, that they are more crowded, the managers from the north are not the same as the landlords from one's own locality, and that it is abominable to have to drink quickly at ten o'clock, but that "they're all the same - the ------- politicians " - and they stand it and console themselves with memories of horses and cricket, characters long dead and campaigns long over.
Hudibras - text (from exclassics.com)
Hudibras - To the reader (exclassics) : includes biography
Hogarth - Plate IX (
Hudibras Catechized) of Twelve Large Illustrations for Samuel Butler's Hudibras
Plagiarism
Brains for sale: Hugh Levinson exposes the world of academic plagarism. BBC Radio 4 , Friday 15 April 2005. Student plagiarism made me think the website was the perfect place for passing others' ideas off as your own - for example, a weblog might not contain your own ideas at all. In the main, because linking is available, citation is done quite assiduously: non - professional thinkers adopt the protocols of the academic paper, in this sense. The weblog, being hypertextual, is geared up to citation - if you link to it you've cited it! The original source may be more than one link away.
Levinson discusses a technique used by modern students called patch writing. This is writing an essay or doing course-work by: 1. cutting and pasting a series of paragraphs from a variety of sources 2. linking the paragraphs using your own words: as few as possible presumably. It is said to be common: understandable now most essays are written on computer, and there is greater access to source material via the internet. But surely it happened in the days of manual transcription, too? I can remember, in extremis, copying out chunks from reference books or research papers, later to be reprimanded for my efforts being 'too dependent on source material'! You eventually grasp how to grasp the essentials and express your understanding concisely. I used these to get up to speed on the latest definitions and ideas: Avoiding plagiarism from Virtual Writing CenterGuidance on the avoidance of plagiarism Keele University Designed for the undergraduate, this would also be usful for the A level (high school) student. it gives a concrete example which is fool proof.Plagiarism is not cheating The Joint Information Systems CommitteeWhy we shouldn't concentrate on cheatingPlagiarism.org software to fight plagiarismcreativitypool.com forum on academic paper databasesThe great tradition of the precise, one of the vital educational and life skills, has resulted in the general insistence in writing everything 'in your own words'. And we all do so because the core tasks in becoming educated are marshalling, concision and clarity. Attribution accepted, there must be an argument for freely using other people's words in bulk if you think what is being said is being said as well as can be.
Mitchelmore on Banville on Houellebecq
Where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise: or some variation.
Banville's long essay seemed to be the way out for the person who reads more about books than books themselves. Then Steve weighs in with a further critique.
This reminds me: never, never, ever, under any circumstances except pain of death, use "I critiqued it", or, "It was critiqued by....". Please, I beg, plead, implore you. It is an uglyism of monumental proportions and completely unnecessary. Though I have never seen
this erstwhile young man {I don't know is he?} using this vile American usage, he somehow brought it to mind with his critique of Banville: such is the mystery of the cerebral cortex.
Steve, like me, has not read Houellebecq, but writes well on him. I guess we all have to read one Houellebecq, but which? The answer is there in Banville/Mitchelmore.
Michael Harrington 1928 - 1989
A crumpled Pelican paper back full of off-cut strips of light blue, top quality 'Conqueror' paper. Each strip with a person, place, thing, concept, or a short quote; and always a page number: all written in soft pencil. Anyone walking in here would know the books I concentrated on by the number of bookmarks in each one. The problem - or not - for me is the paper tufts draws attention back to these few books. Michael Harrington's Accidental Century is a book that gets dipped into more frequently because the bookmarks stand out like road signs!
It was not so much his arguments, though I still go along with many - treat it as a historical document if nothing else - but the way he drew me, by quite detailed exegesis, to a variety of works that I might not have gone straight to. Now, many years later, having read quite a few of the books he mentions, checking some of these favourite passages - for example on Mann - is a stimulus to re-read the books themselves, or perhaps try others not read.
I have no detailed idea why - except from the previous suggestion of a writing exercise involving the biography of a famous writer {first or third person}, while trying not to crib directly from the character of Adrian Leverkuhn - but now there is a strong desire to start Dr. Faustus again after 30 years, with a strong determination to finish it for the first time.
Doctor Faustus is a book I couldn't get into in the big reading phase in my late 20s. Now I can see it's going to be important for me both as a novel, per se, and in helping me develop writing skills. Though one can never be sure of anything in this life, it feels as if there might be a straight run on several others of Mann too, since they are there on the shelves: patient, pleading, yellowing, crumbling.
The blurb for The Accidental Century {written in 1966} says:
One clear theme underlies all the bewildering changes in western society this century - the technological revolution. Out tools are now transforming our way of life; yet in this man-made age we have no real control over their use.
In this controversial book the author of The Other America argues that this 'accidental revolution' has undermined traditional ideologies and systems of belief. With the growth of the monopoly corporation, free competition has destroyed itself; and the socialist ideal has been corrupted by compromise with the welfare state. The contempory crisis, in which neither religion nor humanism can command widespread faith, is implicit in the works of such writers as Mann, Orwell, Malreaux, Sartre, and Camus. Now, Michael Harrington argues, the prospect of a cybernated and automated future presents us with a stark choice: either build a new democratic and socialist world by controlling our rampant technology; or to suffer an avoidable fate - the tyranny of the machine.
The last chapter, 9, titled A Hope: here he lays out his final analysis. It would not be a crime for someone trying to work out if it was worth reading, cover to cover, to run quickly through this, first. You will be drawn to the index, with its surfit of references to literary authors, which draws you into great chunks of the book. Before you know it your want to go back to the beginning to run through this what might seem rather old-fashioned business of decadence and see if it fits your world.
It is a good book for a science student wanting a guide wider reading. You will be able to overcome accusations of sciolism with this book! Trust me: they'll never know.
It occured to me while looking through a few modern OS maps to find a mountain mention on a post card that just arrived, a book such as The Accidental Century is like one of those 1950s maps which lie unloved in secondhand bookshops, stuffed into a large carboard box. I buy them, knowing they will not serve me as well as the modern equivalents. But there is a pleasure to be had running over the old roads - the topographical contours will be the same - in order to be taken back in one's mind to the time when there were of use.
Refs.
Michael harrington : a bibliography from MBEAW.
A resources page for MBEAW, under title voices of reason, covers quite a lot of writers.
Down the bottom of this Jesse Jackson Jnr. site {not links} is a set of front pages of all Harrington's books {presumably U.S. editions}.Conversation with an Atheist -- Michael Harrington on Religion and Socialism
All that is solid melts into the air, The Experience of Modernity, By Marshall Berman
Only small mention of Harrington: serependipitous find, but interesting read about another book.
Why should I grieve now? A Zen story {
chapter 3} : mentions the words 'the accidental century". No Harrington, but obviously referring to the book. Need a zen quote? Check out the Irishman 'joke'.
Deja lu
Refs. for something in preparation:
Hitler's forgotten Library: The Man, his Books, and his Search for God Secrets of Hitler's forgotten library Scotman commentary Don't let the Nazis occupy your mind original source : Sunday Times (London) December 15, 2002, Sunday What a swell party it was. . . for him Scots Historian Niall Ferguson reviews autobiography, Interesting Times: A Twentieth century Life by Eric Hobsbawm
The Age of the Essay
Writing, Briefly
by Paul Graham
