I used to have the habit of re-reading the Karamazov in December as my
Christmas treat. I have, now, grown out of masochism, just about.
2008/9/10 Christopher C Jones <[log in to unmask]>:
> On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 05:15 -0400, Judy Prince wrote:
>
>> On that subject, naturally: Who's your favourite 19th c Russian writer?
>
> If I were to be really, really, really pushed I would have to say _The
> Brothers Karamazov_. But for no reason other then this was a book I read
> while in my first years of art school after dropping out of a university
> degree in electrical engineering, theoretical physics and pure
> mathematics which promised to occupy the next ten years of my life after
> which I would be paid big money to research and design nuclear weapons
> which would not only bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age but the entire
> USSR as well.
>
> This aside, art students being dirt poor after paying for 35mm SLR
> cameras, film, paper and other art media could only afford to buy what
> were very cheap used paperbacks left behind in second hand and used book
> stores by university lit majors who never wanted to read this material
> in the first place, let alone ever again so long as they lived. So this
> is how art school students came to read the greats of the University
> Literature Cannon and still have enough money left over to buy a bag of
> pot and a few tabs of LSD.
>
> And so I became an art school drop out. By the time I finally got around
> to finishing a BA in art school the Government took it upon themselves
> to abolish all art schools throughout the land and the following year
> when I was to graduate, this being done in a strange ceremony which made
> John Barth's _Giles Goat-Boy_ look ordinary and banal, I found myself
> not with an art school degree but a real life University Degree, this
> being the price government paid for abolishing art schools. This being
> the case and existing universities being made into black holes which
> sucked most art schools into them and other institutions being made into
> universities so that they could become made into black holes and so suck
> the left over art school bits and pieces into themselves, I found myself
> not only with an art school BA but a real university first class honours
> Post-Graduate Degree in Philosophy.
>
> So much for the 19th century, as for the 20th century, I still reckon
> Leon Trotsky makes a good read.
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
|