What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (7 Viewers)

[David Kronenbourg]

i'm about to start the fermata. just as soon as i finish quarantine by jim crace which is excellent

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Quarantine - I vaguely recall liking that one. Not altogether unlike The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ.

I was thinking of reading The Fermata next too but now I'm thinking of reading something by Anna Kavan. I have just recently heard of her, she sounds interesting. Anyone read anything of hers?

I'm a bit bogged down in a hefty biography of Freud. I've started skipping bits.

 

[jonah]

Seemed like the place to ask -

Can anyone think of any fiction they've read featuring an epileptic character? Compiling a list for my MA thesis which has a silly name and is all about derrida and the gumpty brain disease of me and my eppo brethren.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

Seemed like the place to ask -

Can anyone think of any fiction they've read featuring an epileptic character? Compiling a list for my MA thesis which has a silly name and is all about derrida and the gumpty brain disease of me and my eppo brethren.

i haven't read this myself. won the pulitzer last year
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinkers_(novel)

 

[rettucs]

hey jonah, this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0099284596/?tag=thumpedcom04-21

it was a film in the 80s too. Liam Neeson was in it.

 

[rettucs]

read half of that last week while travelling. Its a superb read. Its my 4th Orwell book and easily the best I've read so far. Very enjoyable stuff.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

got started on this last night,its a translation from middle english of some passages from two medieval books dealing with being a recluse/virgin for the greater glory of God.It has the original passage opposite the modern english so you can see how the language has progressed,some words are pretty obvious,others not so.pretty fascinating stuff.

 

[jonah]

Bernie Lomax & scutter, thanks guys I'll have a look about for both!

 

[Jim Daniels]

Seemed like the place to ask -

Can anyone think of any fiction they've read featuring an epileptic character? Compiling a list for my MA thesis which has a silly name and is all about derrida and the gumpty brain disease of me and my eppo brethren.

jonah - The Idiot by Dostoevsky, although you probably have that one. Haven't read it in years, must pick it up again, after seeing this... http://www.charge.org.uk/htmlsite/dost.shtml


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Fyodor Dostoevsky[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
1821-1881[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

The Russian Writer Dostoevsky, whose writings are among the worlds greatest literature, had a rare form of temporal lobe epilepsy termed "Ecstatic Epilepsy". Dostoevsky kept records of 102 epileptic seizures during his last two decades, which mainly occurred at night and were tonic-clonic or grand-mal. Seizures which occurred in the daytime were often preceded by an ecstatic aura, which has led neurologists to theorise that he had temporal lobe epilepsy with secondary grand-mal epilepsy. [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Dostoevsky used his experiences to create characters with epilepsy in [/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]four of his twelve novels [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
Kirillov in The Possessed [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Smirdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Nellie in the Insulted and Injured [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Prince Myshkin in The Idiot[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Idiot is an example of how art can contribute to scientific observation. Dostoevsky lets us see into the mind and emotion of the person with epilepsy through his character Prince Myshkin. Here Prince Myshkin describes the onset of a seizure with an ecstatic aura.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]'He was thinking, incidentally, that there was a moment or two in his epileptic condition almost before the fit itself (if it occurred in waking hours) when suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments....His sensation of being alive and his awareness increased tenfold at those moments which flashed by like lightning. His mind and heart were flooded by a dazzling light. All his agitation, doubts and worries, seemed composed in a twinkling, culminating in a great calm, full of understanding...but these moments, these glimmerings were still but a premonition of that final second (never more than a second) with which the seizure itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable.'[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[/FONT]​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This description is very similar to Dostoevsky 's observation of his own epilepsy [/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] For several instants I experience a happiness that is impossible in an ordinary state, and of which other people have no conception. I feel full harmony in myself and in the whole world, and the feeling is so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could give up ten years of life, perhaps all of life.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I felt that heaven descended to earth and swallowed me. I really attained god and was imbued with him. All of you healthy people don't even suspect what happiness is , that happiness that we epileptics experience for a second before an attack."[/FONT]
​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Dostoevsky was affected by physical and mental disturbances following a seizure (This is also called the 'post-ictal 'state) It took him up to one week to recover fully. His chief complaint was that his 'head did not clear up' for several days and symptoms included, "heaviness and even pain in the head, disorders of the nerves, nervous laugh and mystical depression" [/FONT]

 

[jonah]

Yeah, I'm tossing up whether I want to look at Dostoevsky as my main author or Rushdie, or if I even want a main author at all, since in a way that's got to be Derrida. But thanks for the isolations there Jim! Definitely going to feature in some manner, however minutely.

The bit where he talks about his pre-seizure state is exactly what I'm hoping to focus on particularly, that "almost before the fit" thing that I guess you call the "aura", which I personally don't experience at all, at least not yet. I'm looking at issues of false promises, and the promise of a event that can never happen as well as telepathy and the religious connotations of the condition, so Dostoevsky will probably end up being absolutely perfect. I love that idea of the aura being an unbearable perfect moment.

 

[SomethingManic]

Ecopunks by Tom Bailie.

It was alright. Got a bit bland towards the middle and never recovered.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

Man, this is effing awesome. It doesn’t let up from the get go. The character Muldrow is a total badass. The Coens need to get back on this shit.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Im planning to read this biography of Freud next.

Finished the Freud bio. It wwas mostly very interesting but it went into more depth than I really needed on all the books he wrote. Apparently back around the stone age some brothers were jealous of their father so they murdered and then ate him - yeah yeah yeah, skip. He was an interesting character all the same. The end was quite sad. Having spent his whole life living and working from the same house in vienna he had to leave Austria in his 80s in the last year of his life and move to britain following the arrival of the germans in austria and the outbreak of anti-semitic behaviour. He died just as the war broke out and his sisters, who were between 75 and 80, died during the war in concentration camps except for one who starved.

Then I read An Island Called Morau by Brian Aldiss. Not one of his better efforts although it did have a bitter half-man half-fox character who managed to get a rifle and appeared from the bushes from time to time taking potshots at people. Still, I wouldnt recommend this book.

Then, Bob Dylan's Chronicles Vol 1. This was enjoyable enough, got a bit tiresome by the end. Woody Guthrie was great, I got it already.

I searched all the bookshops in Dublin and Glasgow for The Fermata but no luck so I have ordered it as well as a stash of Anna Kavan books. While I am waiting for those I have been dipping into Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy and a book of essays on metaphysics by Theodore Adorno. Although Russell is very easy to read I find these books a bit of a chore and will probably put them aside again for another while as soon as the new ones arrive.

 

[rettucs]

not sure why. I'm pretty sure I won't like it.

 

[Lili Marlene]

on a completely different tack, to get my mind off college work i'm reading a chapter a night of this

which is more of the same knowing new york teenage romance as in Nick and Norah. I'd say you'd totally like this @jonah if you didn't inexplicably and totally out of character dislike the first one.

It's obviously limited in what it's going to say about life but, good god, I have literally laughed out loud many times already, it is a damn funny book. I wish this book was read instead of all that twilight melodrama nonsense. If it got popular it would probably fall foul of the censors though since it's chock full of people cursing.

Still reading this. It keeps veering from charming to bloody obnoxious and hateable. A bit like teenagers I suppose.



I'm also reading this Shaney

which is about Freud being mistranslated and made super-techy when all his work was really a big humanist mission. I don't actually know if it still applies because he may have been retranslated since?

 

[jonah]

I've been pretty awful at reading of late, but I have lots of term papers and my dissertation coming up so I kind of like reading some light but enjoyable literature on the side -- any recommendations for stuff I should get out of the library tomorrow?

 

[Moods For Mallards]

I'm reading The Lost Revolution - The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party by Brian Hanley and Scott Millar.
It's a great read, bashing through it at a rate of knots.
Didn't know Charlie Bird was a young Sticky.

Next up: Claire Keegan's Antarctica.

Edit: the Charlie Bird thing isn't the msot interesting part, obviously.

 

[SomethingManic]

The Beach - Alex Garland

Pretty fantastic. Much better than the film, although to be fair they are very different. Storyline is great, although the end was a bit odd. I felt really passionate towards the end and swore a few times rather loudly. Which is always a good sign.

Also, I tried to read The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad but it had too many big words. So I gave up.
Going to read In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami instead.

 

[rettucs]

what kind of big words? Give us an example. I do hate big words meself.

 

[jonah]

I actually really enjoy Conrad on a whole, though reading Heart of Darkness is like a punishment. Is it possible to get through an English degree without having to read The Secret Agent at least twice? I've had to present on it in two separate Universities, and neither time by choice. Still, I think its a great novel.