Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Virginia Woolf On Reading the Original

I found this interesting quote in Common Reader I,

“The temptation to read Pope on Addison, Macaulay on Addison, Thackeray on Addison, Johnson on Addison rather than Addison himself is to be resisted, for you will find, if you study the Tatler and the Spectator, glance at Cato, and run through the remainder of the six moderate-sized volumes, that Addison is neither Pope’s Addison nor anybody else’s Addison, but a separate, independent individual still capable of casting a clear-cut shape of himself upon the consciousness, turbulent and distracted as it is, of nineteen hundred and nineteen”.

I agree with her. It is always best to read the primary source to get a clear view of what exactly the writer is saying.

DK

Boy Eats Universe

Boy Eats Universe is a unique book. Telling the life story of a young boy, Eli,  in a dysfunctional South Brisbane  suburb it grips your attention from the first page.

Mum is in prison, Dad is gone, stepfather is a drug runner and brother doesn’t talk.

Despite the frequent drug references this book is a gritty and ultimately positive story of life outside of the norm.

This is a first novel by author, Trent Dalton, and it is loosely based on his own life.

Saturday, August 11, 2018

Opening your Mind to New Perspectives

Every now and again a book comes across your path which changes your worldview forever. Someone recommended the following book to me called, Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola. This book has revolutionised my thinking on the plant world. Human and animal life makes up less than 0.3% of the biomass on earth so as the authors say we are no more than a trace element on earth. 

While humans have 5 main senses plants have those 5 and 15 more.

This is a must read book if you want an insight into the world of plants and the way they have evolved to fit in with the environment.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Reading the First and Ultimate Pleasure

We persevere, because reading still brings information, stimulation, and solace. It is the first and the ultimate pleasure. Willard Spiegelman.

What can I say, but Yes.

I have spent close on 60 years as a reader and I will read until I die. Reading is truly the first and ultimate pleasure of my life.


Saturday, January 14, 2017

Virginia Woolf on Letter Writing

The art of letter-writing is often the art of essay-writing in disguise.

Woolf while talking about women in literature made the germane quote above about women writers. Until the 1800's it was considered unseemly for women to be writers, but letter writing was considered to be acceptable. We begin to get a glimpse of the lives of women through women's eyes emerging in their letters. While many of the letters may have been somewhat bland, they did give some insight into the lives and concerns of women in the 1700's.

In fact some of these letters were lengthy and polemic and would nowadays be considered as essays..
Woolf's own letters also reveal much of life in late Victorian and early Georgian times.

DK

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Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Samuel Johnson on the Common Reader

“… I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be generally decided all claim to poetical honours.”—Dr. Johnson , Life of Gray .

Long live the common reader. This is the quote from which Virginia Woolf took the title of her books, The Common Reader1 and The Common Reader2.

I am reading these books again and I'm refreshed with Woolf's style. No academic jargon or philosophical high flying. Just readable essays that we "commoners" can appreciate.

Ciao

DK

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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

African Writers Bypass World Literature Centres

The flow of global capital is not to be ignored, but equally interesting are the grass-roots networks linking African writers to other regional writers—in South Asia, say, or Latin America—without necessarily going through metropolitan centers such as London, Paris, or New York. This is not the centralized and hierarchical “world republic of letters” that Pascale Casanova equates with world literature. It is a very different paradigm. And those who are spearheading this kind of research are not tenured professors but unemployed graduate students, the hundreds of people who applied for the job we advertised. - Wai Chee Dimock

This quote is from a Chronicle of Higher Education article titled A Literary Scramble for Africa.

This is great news. A grass root movement that is not driven by the West. African, Caribbean, South American and Asian countries have their own vibrant literary networks that are effective for them. In the wired world London, Paris and New York have less sway - and that is an excellent thing. The West has a tendency to see other non Western cultures as back waters populated by non persons(to paraphrase Chomsky). But the "non Persons" don't care any longer what the West thinks and this is excellent for literature.

Bring on the Revolution.

DK

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