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ive read a few batman comics in my time, all great

aynrandroolz wrote:

FEOS wrote:

^insecurity

Good luck with that.

rofl. if i'm insecure, what does that make you... the guy that picks up classics he knows he won't like just so he can say he has read them, and talk on the internet of his "broad and varied tastes in the arts"? posturing grunt.

I didn't know I wouldn't like it when I picked it up. How on earth can you come to that conclusion?

Oh, nvm. It was just another opportunity for you to wave your e-penis. I hope this is all helping you with your issues. You're such an intellectual badass...and we don't even have to point it out or ask you. You just tell us. So much easier that way.

it's funny cause cybargs makes these 'troll' posts in public threads, but then when he loses d&st arguments with me he PM's me faculty links to his 'professors' so i can be impressed with their own assorted ba's and ma's and phd's. so i can 'back down' from humiliating him in whatever d&st argument he is currently foundering in and be positively fuckin' AWED at the fact one of his professors did 1-year of study at cambridge. something that clearly impressed him enough to remember his faculty bookmark. but then he'll mock me when i'm about to start 3-4 years at the same deal? rofl. what a fucking donk. you joke on insecurity and try to ridicule me in public posting, but then you're so insecure and so eager to impress in private that you actually link me to your professors' web profiles. you pretty much defeat yourself. stop posting.

go pop my professor an email

WHOAH LOOK AT ALL THESE BA'S AND MA'S AND PHD'S






feos i thought you said you knew what aestheticism was? i thought you said you 'got it'? now you're saying "how am i supposed to know what to expect before i read it?" what - you went into a bookstore without the knowledge that oscar wilde was the high watermark of aestheticism? who doesn't immediately know what style and image is invoked by the singular sight of oscar wilde? what were you expecting from the uk's most famous flamboyantly gay artiste? a rugged and gruff tom clancy affair? evidently your 'wide-reading' in culture is just as aimless and misdirected as my very first post pointed out-- something you strenuously denied then. but now you tell me 'you didn't know'. hmm. so was my original post correct or incorrect? you've turned my disjunctive proposition into a conjunctive one in a slippery attempt to evade my very simple point. confusing ploy, old boy.

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-30 05:25:46)

aynrandroolz wrote:

[...] AWED at the fact one of his professors did 1-year of study at cambridge. something that clearly impressed him enough to remember his faculty bookmark. but then he'll mock me when i'm about to start 3-4 years at the same deal?

Not to get too far off topic (just a quick question I don't feel requires a PM as a few others might be interested in the answer), but you were accepted to Oxford's DLitt for 2013? I imagine substantial funding as well, then? At which college? Conrats man, that's awesome.

the quality of the footnotes was probably dictated by the quality of the book/publisher you bought it from. of course there are vastly different publishers with vastly different editors and intro-writers aimed at vastly different audiences. if you bought a mass-market 'bringing classics to the everyman' edition, then yes the footnotes will be quite standard. are you trying to imply that because the footnotes were from a wilde scholar that it is university-level scholarly writing in your edition? lol. that's almost as funny as that time jay said he had harvard-level english on wrap because he got an A in his pog-college elective assignment. buy a university press collection of essays/criticism on wilde if you want a scholarly edition that will engage your higher intellect. complaining that the $7 penguin classics book doesn't have a long disquisition on dandy phenomenology is to rather miss the point. pretty hilarious that you're exhibiting a sense of smugness over 'getting' the simple explanatory notes attached to a mass-audience classic.

but yeah, congrats, you picked up a book that marvellously executes several narrative techniques, perfectly in suiting with its overall theme and aesthetic, and then criticised the narrative style. this doesn't make you a 'discerning' reader, as much as you clearly fancy it. it makes you someone who picked up an aestheticist text without knowing entirely what that premise involves. an aestheticist text with only a standard omniscient third-person narrator would be missing about 70% of the dramatic thrust and juice of an inter-subjectival psychological exploration. again... it's like you 'knew what you were expecting' but then also disliked that very-same obvious thing at the same time. a little paradoxical. do let us know next time at length when you dislike a book for fulfilling its overt objectives. what's next on your everyman's classics bucket-list? proust? remember to give us a 250 word critique on his 'flowery' writing!

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-09-30 11:59:38)

marvellously executes several narrative techniques

Who gives a crap really? Its like saying an artist really nailed the brush strokes, never mind the actual picture.

FEOS wrote:

I just didn't like an aspect of the book. I know why Wilde did it. I know what he was trying to do. I just didn't care for it. I think it would have made the story better had he approached some aspects of the text in a different way. It is irrelevant to my assessment that so many others think it's awesome. It doesn't make me less of a reader because of it...I just didn't go all doe-eyed, saying, "Ohhh...I'm reading Wilde, and EVERYONE thinks he's the BEST aestheticist, so I have to just LOVE all aspects of his work or else I'm a knuckle-dragging idiot!"

I tend to think for myself...probably something I picked up when I was getting one of those "lesser" bachelor's and master's degrees. Good thing I didn't spend all that money so I could think just like everyone else all the time and then talk down to those who do have independent thought. Then I'd be like you. And that would make me very, very sad.

what are you talking about? i've said in almost every post on wilde that i don't like his writing. i am not a fan of wilde. all this ra-ra-ra about "thinking for yourself" and all these jibes about "reading comprehension" and "insecurity", and then you clearly haven't even read or paid attention to a single thing i've said. my point all along has been that there is a separation between objective-aesthetic 'good' and capital-b 'Beauty' and then | subjective-personal 'opinion' on the other. i don't like wilde and i've never really felt much obliged to read him during my "think like everyone else degree" (LOL), but the gist of my points was that you are criticising his works for an intended effect of the aestheticist style. you are essentially wanting a more traditional realist form of narration from a book that purposefully and consciously eschews that very thing. do you understand? your personal preference for traditional realist modes of narration is crossing over from the realms of the purely subjectival ("i prefer it otherwise") to the objective critique ("the book could be better if he didn't have the long conversations"). no the book could not be better if he swapped out the long inter-character conversations. they are part of the aesthetic point and stylistic effect. if he changed it out according to your (subjective) preference, the (objective) quality of the book would suffer. this is what you are not understanding. i have defended wilde on this point for nigh-on 3 pages now, whilst all the while not even caring a jot for wilde's work. i acknowledge he is the high-point of british aestheticism, but personally i much prefer a host of french/continental writers that i think just did the whole thing better. but i admire his execution and i admit that he is a top-rate writer, even if personal preferences do obscure my 100% enjoyment of his work. you are confusing, again, your personal reaction based on previous readerly taste and experience with an objective 'room for improvement' type critique. it would not improve his work at all if he regressed back to a more didactic, third-person omniscient narrator. in fact it would ruin the whole thing.

dilbert, what are you talking about? painting and brush-strokes? what a terribly misunderstood and misapplied metaphor. wilde's overall painting is great. the whole thing is carried off supremely well. it just is. as a statement of aestheticist principles and writing, it is about as good as any other existing english-language expression of the same. a better analogy would be like saying you've gone to a gallery to look at turner, but came away preferring the hogarth. it doesn't mean turner's work is 'executed badly' or has 'room for improvement'. what FEOS is saying in analogous terms is "oh, if only turner tidied up his focus a little and did away with all those obfuscating clouds....". well, then it wouldn't be turner, would it? just like it wouldn't be wilde. next time you want to chime in with a comment, do try harder to make some sense, chap.

i am also applying all of my extensive freudian-, jungian-, lacanian- and laingian- psychoanalytical knowledge to my above two posts, and i really do not see much evidence at all of 'insecurity'. i have no idea why you keep on harping on about it. me defending an author i don't even like on the grounds of objective criticism seems like quite a personally-disengaged affair, to be honest; i have no personal stake in the defense. i have no problem at all with non-lit grads reading the classics - it would be absurd if i wanted to somehow 'covet' the great works of literature just for a narrow set of university students (many of whom in the lower-performing end are no better or more attentive readers than someone without the 'training'). my point has always been that there is a division between objective-aesthetic appreciation and subjective-quibbles-- a line which you are blurring. to be honest i think you are more inflamed by the fact that a literature major is telling you this than you are by the actual content of my messages: it just irks you, doesn't it? hence all this crap about finding 'insecurity' in my long disquisitions on an author i wouldn't even read in my own spare time. i'm actually doing you a favour, helping you to develop a more nuanced understanding of what it is to read and how your own tastes are formed. if you start reading wilde... knowing what to expect... knowing what your own personal tastes are... then it doesn't follow that a purportedly self-aware reader would say "the book could be better if he changed this narration and so-and-so". non, nein, no. it doesn't work like that. instead you put the book down and understand that perhaps some victorian realists or french naturalists of the period would be more suited to your own personal tastes. if wilde's book was changed according to your supposed 'feedback', it would become just another markedly second-rate example of realist fiction. now, for someone who continually harps on about 'insecurity', i sincerely hope you take this very straightforward point with a little bit of humility and understanding. suggesting feedback which, by all accounts, would completely ruin the book... is not being a good reader. it's confusing your personal tastes and preferences with misreading a 'flaw' in the book. poor show.

I can't believe that this argument is the only reason you two log on anymore.

I didn't like Robinson Crusoe.

I enjoyed reading Robinson Crusoe, I didn't care much for the prose but the story was interesting especially the descriptive stuff.
It got a bit daft towards the end when he'd singlehandedly created complex hydraulic machinery from bamboo and palm leaves but overall it was am interesting read, and getting my head around the old language and spelling of words reminded me why I like Wilbur Smith.

(Pretty sure the copy I had was 'Robinson Cruesoe' though.)

Jenspm wrote:

Having to read Thomas Friedman.. Not sure how anyone can take this guy seriously.

You would be surprised... He's listed as one of the most influential columnists among Washington pols...

My favorite columns are when he says we should be more like single-party autocratic China, because "they get things done".

Last edited by Jay (2012-10-03 05:54:10)

check out paul krugman and david brooks next

I've only read lexus and the olive tree, to be fair, but in that he's like that crazy uncle who has some idea of the world and backs it up with weird anecdotes that really have no basis in reality. He uses examples that are poorly researched and downright wrong. And unlike the crazy uncle he's influential and his views are dangerous.

I honestly can't find anything to defend him.