From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #109 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Sunday, May 14 2000 Volume 02 : Number 109 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/dancing ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/yokofactor ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: o/lathe ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 20:51:10 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/dancing I don't want to attempt a point-by-point reply through Donald's and Dori's of the 8th; I've been spending too much time trying to boil down a response into something readable as it is. So without the posts in front of me (but with having just re-read them) - Dori - Alas, it is not a given that women do stupid things too. Far too many people of _both_ sexes assume that their sex is free of error. If you respond to the torture scenes as you say, that's certainly a start. All I can say is that's not the impression I got from anything you wrote earlier. Donald - Although you say otherwise, I wonder if you have connfused the "intellectual/emotional" line with the "literary/nonliterary" one. The examples you give of "nonliterary" responses which don't short-circuit other reactions are what I'd call emotional ones. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the "nonliterary" responses are by definition those that short-circuit (doesn't anyone believe in the Maslovian hierarchy around here?) - although this can be bypassed and overcome. When one says, as I've heard people say of, for instance, the schlockier type of romance novels, "I hate this - but I love it somehow," that's a good sign of the "nonliterary" visceral response coming in. A good example which you did give would be those guys who don't like _Buffy_ but watch it for SMG's physique. This is a subset of emotional response, which may be why it was confusing. Remember that what I was calling "nonliterary" responses is what Lewis calls "castlebuilding". I didn't use his term, because I didn't want to explain it, but I should have phrased myself differently. Rule of thumb: if it _feeds your fantasies_, it's castlebuilding. You go on to say that whether something falls in this category is in the eye of the beholder. Indeed. That literary value should be judged by the kind of reaction it produces in the eyes of beholders is Lewis's main argument. It is when that kind of reaction is the only (or just about the only) positive response that something gets that he passes judgment on it. This is not to say that something can't be written for the purpose of generating that response - and if it succeeds in doing so, that's despicable behavior on the part of the writer, a very close thing to (and possibly the same as, though I'd have to think about that) the kind of blunt manipulation of the audience's emotions that is so often decried. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 02:40:54 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/yokofactor On Tue, 9 May 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > Another chapter in the "why didn't" sweepstakes: Why didn't Buffy tell > Riley the =whole= truth? Yes, sensitive subject, wouldn't ever talk to > Faith, etc. etc. But it sure caused trouble that she didn't. Why was Riley so surprised that Buffy and Angel's relationship was sexual? > Most interesting lines: Following up on what I thought was the previous episode's funniest exchange (Adam: "Scout's honor" Spike: "You were a Scout?" Adam: [pause] "Bits of me, yes"), my favorite line was in the opening scene, where Spike shows that he's taking to calling Adam "Mr. Bits". ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 02:49:22 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: o/lathe On Wed, 10 May 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > Todd: Thanks for passing on the info about =The Lathe of Heaven=: > that's really great news. I saw the film when it was first broadcast > (and I think once more a few years later), and liked it very much; > in fact I think it's one of the better science fiction movies of the > post-=Star Wars= era (=Blade Runner= and =Brazil= are two more). Ditto: thanks, Todd. I have been fortunate in having seen the film twice since the original broadcast (and a good thing, too, as I saw the original broadcast on a black & white tv set, which rather put a dent in the effectiveness of the "colorless" scene). This was a film whose faithfulness to the novel outweighed its own creativity, and one made on an extremely cheap budget which showed, but it was nevertheless a striking achievement and worth reviving. > That being said, =The Lathe of Heaven= is not a favorite of mine > among Le Guin's books; for me it's never really gotten over the > burden of being the first book she published after =The Left Hand of > Darkness= Technically it wasn't: _Tombs of Atuan_ came between them, but that doesn't invalidate your point. I had a hard time coming to grips with _Lathe_ originally, because it was, and remained for a long time, her only novel set in the fields we know, but probably by the time the (remarkably similar, btw) "New Atlantis" came out, it suddenly clicked for me, and it's been one of my favorites of hers ever since. Frankly, I think it's worn better than LHD, but I know I have odd tastes. > But compared, as I said, with =The Left Hand of Darkness= or =A > Wizard of Earthsea= (one of the great post-Tolkien fantasies) or > =The Dispossessed= or the much-maligned =Always Coming Home=, =The > Lathe of Heaven= comes off as a minor novel. All of the others in that paragraph are also favorites of mine, and compared to them I'd describe _Lathe_ as perhaps less pretentious (using the term neutrally) and more unassuming, but not minor in achievement. My other favorite Le Guin that I'd describe similarly is _The Beginning Place_, a book that, if it's less unjustly maligned than ACH, is only because it's unjustly ignored altogether. _Lathe_ is the book, incidentally, which includes what may be Le Guin's most oft-quoted lines: "Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone. It has to be made, like bread." It occurs to me to compare Haber's attempts to remake the world despite the interference of George's subconscious to Stanley's attempts in _Bedazzled_ to remake his world despite the interference of the Devil - who, like George, is nevertheless the necessary tool for doing this at all - and who, if I recall correctly, is also called George. Gayle mentions "the Le Guin/Ishi connection". Le Guin never knew Ishi, of course, as he died years before her birth, but she did know a number of her father's other Indian informants, including some who became family friends. What with the recent fuss over the "return" of Ishi's brain, there's been a lot of latter-day second-guessing of Alfred Kroeber's relationship with Ishi, most of it highly ignorant. (For instance, the statement that Ishi lived in a museum doesn't mean he slept in a diorama: the museum had living quarters, and Ishi had his own apartment there. He was happy to be there, too, near all the artifacts he could use to demonstrate his way of life, which is what he most wanted to do now that he'd given up on actually living it.) Le Guin and, even more, her brother Karl have been very active in defending their father. ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #109 *****************************