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Love On The Academic Calendar

Discussion in 'Snippets of Life (Non-Fiction)' started by Nonya, Aug 9, 2017.

  1. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Hmm, I have my doubts over a lot of epic writers whom I cherished while growing up. There was a time when I was fond of Paulo Coelho and his alchemical writing. After I graduated to pronouncing his name [confused for years], I was disenchanted with his writing. His writing is romanticised and ethereal but that all transcendental talk is sweet only in ink. His hacks on life seemed specious. Follow your heart, pledge your faith, wander away wearing sunscreen and carrying a parasol.

    Then, I took refuge in Gabriel García Márquez. GGM's writing is magical. He can spin wit in the least expected passages. He is a masterful storyteller. But then ...the more I read, the more I realised that his writing is inflated. He will recite all the names of the Caribbean birds from oriole to troupial in one single chapter. His books are supplementary editions of National Geographic Magazine. He will shoot off in directions that will make you wonder if you are reading a novel or a guide on types of cotton with his precision in conjuring up calico, chintz and cretonne. He would not consign a lady to a cotton chemise. That's too dull. He had to belt out the glaze, thread-count and the albedo of that cotton. Would unadorned writing not attract readers as long as the plot is catchy? But then ...I realised, eh, where is the plot if you strip his writing of the glint in chalcedony and carnelian diction and the entire text of mineralogy he will dump on you. And everyone goes ..wah wah ..what a fantastic tale of minerals and metals and raptors and tubers.

    I have my doubts about these writers now. Was I carried away with popular appeal and the literary merits of these writers. I have later read writers like Mikhail Bulgakov and Elias Canetti and found their writing immersive not as discursively florid but as cursively propitious even in their elaborate narratives.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2017
  2. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Tagore has a (middle) parting. This man has none.
    To me, he seems more like (parting-less) Victor Hugo. A slightly more upbeat and smiley Hugo.

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  3. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    I do exceptionally well in monologues or twin talks. In a crowd, I quail and exit.
     
  4. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Why no David Benatar here? Nonya, you cannot just ask a stirring koschin and not have an equal shaken-up answer.

    You will love or hate or amuse yourself or be educated with his writing. Let me know which one.
     
  5. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Hmm, I think I was slightly harsh with Marquez. I have learnt so much reading his books. I enjoy them. In fact, I got to know about tagua nut through him in his Cholera book. I didn't know that there was a seed/tree that resembled the colour and texture of an elephant's tusk. I was surprised.

    Tagua nut is a rainforest nut known as vegetable ivory for its likeness to animal ivory. These are seeds that grow in pods called cabezas, from the tagua nut palm tree. Tagua's smooth, hard texture is an ideal medium for carving jewelry, boxes and other figurines or using the whole seed as beads for necklaces and bracelets.

    Anything to save elephants. Anything that promotes how to save elephants. So, I like Marquez in my own way.
     
  6. Nonya

    Nonya Platinum IL'ite

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    Fermina tossed Florentino and took up with Juvenal -- story is very like the desi college friends in the first post, who separate, go into different activities in different locations, grow up differently, and then couldn't see how they had found each other all that exciting years ago.
    The same thing could happen to writers/books we had read, and had admired a little too much. We grow up, read others and find out that we need more/different/better to get the same high these days. ;)
    Yes, I get the idea. Haven't read Bulgakov or Canetti. These names sound so like football players in European soccer leagues.
    years ago, I had gone to Japan on work assignment for the MNC we both work for. And was there at the Shibuya bookstore when a bunch of fake books of ichi-kyu-hachi-yon (1Q84) were on grand displays. Kyu is Japanese pronunciation of the word for the number 9. Title signals something orwellian within. The real books were all sold out, and sent away. However just for the evening news, there were a few hard copies sold to customers -- all young women! -- and a few of them were interviewed on camera. They sounded as giggly as the crowd of girls that usually collects in Shibuya and Harajuku. Googing for an image of "harajuku girl" would show you what I mean. Murakami had said that he admires Raymond Carver, and what's more, he attempts to write that style in Japanese fiction. A few Japanese I know (colleagues at the MNC) have read one or two of Murakami's books, and then they had also "moved on". Life got busy, and they have "different tastes" now. One of them (on a visit to America, and we were talking at lunch) told me that it is good to have a bookshelf in the living room, and at least one Murakami Haruki on it. He chuckled and continued that many people who buy the books, never read much of what is inside. Once upon a time @Rihana was mulling over a bunch of words in forin tongues, that roll pleasantly off the tongue, and mean exotic things as well. Tsundoku was one of those words, Japanese, meaning "a pile of unread books". Murakami's books are found in most Tsundoku's, I was told.

    While all that seemed a tangent for a bit, I often koschin myself whether people put on a facade to wrangle a mate, with a notion to keep her/him for a long married life, and then when the veneer peels off, the long married life runs its hellish course. As you have pointed out, two people with mutually agreeable veneers meet and carry on, and eventually find out they are each made of different stuff. Ain't that the real scene ? Great ephemeral joy, followed by total long term disappointment.

    Why no David Benatar here? I Haven't heard of him until now. I read the NY'er piece at the link. Yes I agree with him; however, to play back the same chorus phrase we had used for books/authors: I used to think differently years ago. And now it is too late. Looking around in the world, I'd recommend a retroactive birth-control for the mummies of so many horrible ones running around in the world today. And besides, one cannot launch into a Benatar in IL; it is because of this excerpt from that NY'er link:
    Like everyone else, Benatar finds his views disturbing; he has, therefore, ambivalent feelings about sharing them. He wouldn’t walk into a church, stride to the pulpit, and declare that God doesn’t exist. Similarly, he doesn’t relish the idea of becoming an ambassador for anti-natalism.
     
  7. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Hehe! As I mentioned, I excite away in monologues or twin talks but withdraw from crowds. Half the crowd won't step in because I am talking and the rest will stay away because you are talking. I have that vain self-confidence in me to hold a sensible and reasonable dialogue, and I have more heuristic confidence in you. We are safe to talk about anti-natalist themes here befitting the ongoing conversation. More later.
     
  8. Nonya

    Nonya Platinum IL'ite

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    If the mohammed won't come to the mountain ..... :smirk: I am in a few other threads. Kneading dough in a bread machine, how to make stuffed empañada from bread dough, left-over subji's or meat curries, and the airfryer. Ah.. yes, I don't quail or exit from gatherings. I enjoy them in moderation. Some of it comes with the hobnobbing required in work; and some of it with non-work contacts. A salad of human contacts is a good experience.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2017
  9. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Hence the reset with that citation. Fermina and Florentino though were cleaved in their youth went on to experience life in their own glorious ways by committing to their shifting vocations and enduring obligations. I liked the character of Florentino. Though he comes across as fiddly, he is ingeniously cheerful about life. Instead of moping over the jilt, he lapped up whatever life offered him and eventually returned to Fermina. I like such characters who don't sulk over crushing failures but leapfrog over obstacles with a sound spirit and joie de vivre. If not this, that, if not her, someone else. They keep moving in life. Aren't love stories supposed to be uplifting in a practical sense and not bore you down with unsurmountable grief? Florentino is quite a character in that book.

    Your,
    On topic
     
  10. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    This is quite an interconnected discussion. Yes, exactly! In literature, we are stultified by trite and predictability from an author after few of his reads and demand more creativity to please our intellectual nerves. In romance, we are disenchanted of the routine endearments and crave more assertion and stimulation to feel desired. In both the cases, we are inflicted with ennui from a stunted fondness. Our steady need to feel loved is not proportional to our spouse's effort to make us feel loved. No wonder the market is flooded with self-help books on how to keep the spark aflame years into a relationship. They make it seem inevitable that such erosion can only be delayed but not thwarted.
     

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