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May. 1st, 2008
quick blast of recent reading:
May. 1st, 2008 07:15 pmBesides the Manga Shakespeare, I picked up another graphic thingy from the library - Opera Adaptations, Vol. 2 by P. Craig Russell. A mixed bag - I hated the way he interpreted "Parsifal" - he made it all about the rejections instead of the quest. The Mahler songs were depressing in any event, and graphics made them no less so. I am not familiar with "Ariane and Bluebeard" so it made no sense to me. "Pagliacci" was the last thing in the book - and it was done quite well! All the sly nastiness, all the misunderstandings that each character encourages among the others, were brought out. The characters looked just right to me.
Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists And Their Cartoons by Liza Donnelly. Reviewed on Amazon.com and as ever, please click the little Yes button.
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. I took this off the library's new-books shelf, and only later noticed that the author was a ::shudder:: French intellectual. I decided after that, that it would be best if I read it as though the author intended it to be an elaborate academic joke, done deadpan. Bayard mentions near the beginning Paul Valéry's contention that knowledge of the author is of no importance in understanding the text (a standard Deconstructionist claim) and at first Bayard seems to dismiss Valéry's claim, but then he turns around and goes further, saying, in effect, that knowledge of the text is of no importance in understanding the text! This seems to be based on two premises, neither of which seems that closely related to me, and neither of which I agree with: (1) What is important about a book is not its text, but only its relationship to all other books in the universe; as long as you know what that relationship is, you don't need to actually read the book (but if no one actually reads any of them, how the hell would we know its relationship?) and (2) As long as someone, somewhere, has read the book and found meaning in it, that's all the meaning you need to know (but if you don't read the book, how the hell would you understand whatever meaning someone else found in it?) Anyway. I'm glad I decided to read it as a joke, because otherwise this would have me starting another screeching rant about Deconstructionism.
Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists And Their Cartoons by Liza Donnelly. Reviewed on Amazon.com and as ever, please click the little Yes button.
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. I took this off the library's new-books shelf, and only later noticed that the author was a ::shudder:: French intellectual. I decided after that, that it would be best if I read it as though the author intended it to be an elaborate academic joke, done deadpan. Bayard mentions near the beginning Paul Valéry's contention that knowledge of the author is of no importance in understanding the text (a standard Deconstructionist claim) and at first Bayard seems to dismiss Valéry's claim, but then he turns around and goes further, saying, in effect, that knowledge of the text is of no importance in understanding the text! This seems to be based on two premises, neither of which seems that closely related to me, and neither of which I agree with: (1) What is important about a book is not its text, but only its relationship to all other books in the universe; as long as you know what that relationship is, you don't need to actually read the book (but if no one actually reads any of them, how the hell would we know its relationship?) and (2) As long as someone, somewhere, has read the book and found meaning in it, that's all the meaning you need to know (but if you don't read the book, how the hell would you understand whatever meaning someone else found in it?) Anyway. I'm glad I decided to read it as a joke, because otherwise this would have me starting another screeching rant about Deconstructionism.