Post by Ellinore on Jul 6, 2002 23:19:37 GMT -5
Rutherford, umm. *writes this down*
I did just find a biography of Eamon DeValera and another one of Mick Collins; those should keep me busy until I can get to a bookshop and scope Rutherford out -- I mean look into reading this London book. How far back does it go? Nevermind, I'll look it up.
My dear friend is a Miltonist; she's the one who introduced me to Philip Pullman. She's writing an essay now on the use of gender words in Paradise Lost. It's so easy for modern, undereducated women to dismiss Milton as yet another guy who had no respect, but my friend is finding that in point of fact, Milton never meant to set up masculine as strong and feminine as weak; he has masculine and unmasculine, and femininity gets a whole separate spectrum of strengths and weaknesses. Fascinating stuff. But I digress.
Camus - La Peste
A little quintapartite structural action and some rich characterisation provide the frame for this story of a town quarantined during a plague. (This was part of my science binge, yes *winks*.) A journalist must resolve his desire to escape; a doctor must deal with the high mortality rate and his feelings of helplessness. An old man counts beans as though nothing were happening. Camus was of course trained as an existentialist, and haven't we all read La Nausee and felt nearly driven to drink, whether the stein dimensionally warps before us or not? But it is a quirk of Camus that where old Johnny Sartre looked down the long dark tunnel of industrialisation and the first world war and saw only the cold freedom of being at liberty to walk through the valley of the shadow, Albert was able to write about the joy of persevering. Never effusively, never charmingly. Just the facts, sir. It is to be admired.
I did just find a biography of Eamon DeValera and another one of Mick Collins; those should keep me busy until I can get to a bookshop and scope Rutherford out -- I mean look into reading this London book. How far back does it go? Nevermind, I'll look it up.
My dear friend is a Miltonist; she's the one who introduced me to Philip Pullman. She's writing an essay now on the use of gender words in Paradise Lost. It's so easy for modern, undereducated women to dismiss Milton as yet another guy who had no respect, but my friend is finding that in point of fact, Milton never meant to set up masculine as strong and feminine as weak; he has masculine and unmasculine, and femininity gets a whole separate spectrum of strengths and weaknesses. Fascinating stuff. But I digress.
Camus - La Peste
A little quintapartite structural action and some rich characterisation provide the frame for this story of a town quarantined during a plague. (This was part of my science binge, yes *winks*.) A journalist must resolve his desire to escape; a doctor must deal with the high mortality rate and his feelings of helplessness. An old man counts beans as though nothing were happening. Camus was of course trained as an existentialist, and haven't we all read La Nausee and felt nearly driven to drink, whether the stein dimensionally warps before us or not? But it is a quirk of Camus that where old Johnny Sartre looked down the long dark tunnel of industrialisation and the first world war and saw only the cold freedom of being at liberty to walk through the valley of the shadow, Albert was able to write about the joy of persevering. Never effusively, never charmingly. Just the facts, sir. It is to be admired.