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Mike

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Mike is Currently Reading

Mike rated a book really liked it

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present

by Jacques Barzun

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progress:

(page 124 of 828)
"xi..quotations in margins "add ins" help shorten text by dispensing with "as Twain said about Joan"...choice morsels
48..Byron, Don Juan:
think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife
he would have written sonnets all his life?" — Nov 19, 2012 10:12AM

Nov 19, 2012 10:10AM

Mike rated a book really liked it

Molloy

by Samuel Beckett

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Mike said: " Motivated to read by Anecdotal Evidence article.
http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com...

FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2013
`The Heart Beats, and What a Beat'
Elberry comments on Thursday’s post with a choice selection from Beckett’s Molloy:

“And I should be sorr Motivated to read by Anecdotal Evidence article.
http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com...

FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2013
`The Heart Beats, and What a Beat'
Elberry comments on Thursday’s post with a choice selection from Beckett’s Molloy:

“And I should be sorry to give a wrong idea of my health which, if it was not exactly rude, to the extent of my bursting with it, was at bottom of an incredible robustness. For otherwise how could I have reached the enormous age I have reached. Thanks to moral qualities? Hygienic habits? Fresh air? Starvation? Lack of sleep? Solitude? Persecution? The long silent screams (dangerous to scream)? The daily longing for the earth to swallow me up? Come come. Fate is rancorous, but not to that extent.”

I thanked Elberry for his contribution and he replied:

“i feel that if you read enough Beckett, every day, you could probably cite some sterling & gruesome passage for every occasion and it would seem eerily relevant. Beckett contains all occasions and persons."

For a writer often misunderstood as a nihilist, Beckett is remarkably wise, amusing and consoling. He’s eloquent, memorable and quotable. His best work constitutes an eccentric species of wisdom literature. Seasoned readers have assembled an advisory council of such writers – Montaigne, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, and the other Sam, Johnson. Of the last, consider this passage from his review of Soame Jenyns’ A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil:

“Many of the books which now crowd the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world. Of the productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure! The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it; and how will either of those be put more in our power, by him who tells us, that we are puppets, of which some creature, not much wiser than ourselves, manages the wires!”

Beckett meets both of Johnson’s criteria for writing – enjoyment and endurance (especially as enjoyment encourages endurance, and vice versa) -- Elberry probably would concur:

“i'd forgotten how funny Molloy is. i remembered it, from 2007, as difficult but occasionally humorous. i must have adjusted to it, as it now seems joyously easy and almost permanently amusing. Compared to the sequels, it is pretty light reading.”

Read the sentences following the passage Elberry passed along:

“Look at Mammy. What rid me of her, in the end? I sometimes wonder. Perhaps they buried her alive, it wouldn’t surprise me. Ah the old bitch, a nice dose she gave me, she and her lousy unconquerable genes. Bristling with boils ever since I was a brat, a fat lot of good that ever did me. The heart beats, and what a beat. That my ureters – no, not a word on that subject.” ...more "

Jan 13, 2013 04:57PM · see review

Mike rated a book really liked it

The Dying Animal

by Philip Roth

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Mike said: "
--like-ridden girls "

Oct 04, 2012 08:31PM · see review

See all 8 books that Mike is reading…

Mike’s Quotes

“I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.”
― Eugene O'Neill

tags: optimism

1547 likes

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

tags: books, humor, reading, television

23111 likes

“The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
― William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

tags: finale-of-middlemarch, tintern-abbey

3559 likes

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

8997 likes