Yes, the virgin fixation is puzzling. I expect it has something to do with women as property and the importance of verifying lineage. Yes I have a pet theory (hypothesis) that in civilizations where we lived in large numbers and with animals diseases could bounce from people to animals and back again hence all the plagues. In cultures where people were relatively isolated then virginity doesn’t seem to play as big a role. Mind you if you are paying for a wife to raise your children who you see as the primary reason for your existence then not raising someone else’s children may be a prime issue.
xxx/ellauri170.html on line 865: Richard doesn’t understand Enlightenment / was never Enlightened.
xxx/ellauri170.html on line 867: Richard doesn’t understand Eastern spirituality.
xxx/ellauri170.html on line 921: No proof that God doesn’t exist.
xxx/ellauri179.html on line 627: And then, Novick gives himself away. He writes in another footnote that Holmes was someone with whom James “might have been intimate.” “Might have been”? There’s incertitude for you. My surmise is that Novick is trying to support his hypothesis of James’ initial sexual experience, and that he picks the name handiest to him. Why not James’ closer friends, John LaFarge or Thomas Perry? Novick seems to want to link his two subjects. It is clear the homosexuality doesn’t bother him. He simply wants us to know that James was a sexual man and a loving person. Biographers often develop strange attachments to their subjects. (Indeed!)
xxx/ellauri179.html on line 633: The rest of the story emerges after James abruptly leaves the villa at the end of the third day. He lodges at a hotel in Sorrento and writes several lively letters indicating he fled from Zhukovski and a nest of young homosexuals. They were attached to the composer, Richard Wagner, who lives in a nearby villa. Zhukovski is now a crusading Wagnerian. He wants to introduce James. The novelist refuses. Wagner speaks neither French nor English. James doesn’t speak German.
xxx/ellauri193.html on line 600: Well, first of all, everything can be exaggerated, so calm down a little, Karl Ragnar Gierow. But also there’s a tone here that doesn’t sit well with me. Certainly the literary world has a tendency to calcify—the people who have enough time to write books tend to be from the ­upper classes, so literature’s concerns and perspectives invariably get narrow without new blood. But those sidebar reassurances that working-class poets aren’t here to ravage and plunder seem nervous and uptight, and not really reassuring to boot. It seems to me that we want a little ravagement and plunder in our literary traditions. Why else would we welcome a stirring new voice, if it didn’t stir us up a little? And if it doesn’t stir us up, is it really a new voice, even if it comes from a place most of us haven’t visited? “To determine an author and his work against the background of his social origin and political environment is, at present, good form,” the speech continues, and that’s OK as far as it goes. But if you’re going to decide that two authors are tied for literary merit, surely we can find some criterion besides their socioeconomic origin stories.
xxx/ellauri193.html on line 659: And there you have it. It’s a crude way of evaluating literature, of course, but it doesn’t seem much cruder than the methodology used by the people who chose these two authors in the first place. And which author is better, you ask? Well, let’s see, seven plus five, another seven, carry the one—hey! Ladies and gentlemen, we have a tie!
xxx/ellauri202.html on line 391: The historian Ian Kershaw also pointed out in his 1998 book Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris that the figure who was allegedly Hitler’s father — the son of the Frankenreiter family — would have been just 10 years old when Alois was born. So clearly, the history of that family doesn’t hold water.
xxx/ellauri215.html on line 364: Alexander Stubb who has had direct experience with Putin and Russia, comments on the situation says, "The first argument is that Russia could not help itself. Russia has already been an expansionist and aggressive state. Unlike eg. Greece, Italy, Sweden, Britain, France, Germany and the U.S.A. You have to understand Russia's history to understand where Russia is coming from. ... Russia believes in destiny, there is a certain nostalgia and narrative of it’s expansionist past, which previously made Russia into a great superpower. So the argument that Russia is somehow working to defend itself from Ukraine doesn’t stand up. Russia could not help itself. Its like bulimia. There was absolutely no reason for Russia to attack. Russia just doesn't like capitalist democratic neighbors, just like America does not like communists, and the only one they allow to exist is Finland, which is insignificant. For the rest they think of spheres of interest and power, like the Chinamen."
xxx/ellauri215.html on line 394: "And this brings me to my conclusion. I’m a strong believer in academic freedom (BUAHAHAHA, stop, you're killing me!) and open debate. I’m somewhat worried coming from a country that lives next to Russia and have been attacked by the Soviet Union and had to survive WW2 as a Soviet neighbor and have had to lose my summerhouse in Porckala to the Soviet Union, that academics make claims that simply are untrue and it doesn’t help if you quote documentation and skew it in a certain direction… more important than international relations theory is the reality of what is happening on the ground.
xxx/ellauri225.html on line 372: About Shakespeare, however, Bloom is nothing short of reverential: “My religion is the appreciation of high literature. Shakespeare is the summit. Revelation for me is Shakespearean or nothing.” He admits that much about the Bard still bewilders him. In a moment of rare vulnerability, Bloom admits he longs for more life. Bloom explains his theory of “self-otherseeing,” which allows one to glimpse parts of one’s self that are hidden from conscious view. “Self-otherseeing” also describes “the double-consciousness of observing our own actions and offerings as though they belong to others and not to ourselves.” Bloom insists that Shakespeare’s characterizations of Hamlet, Iago, Cleopatra and Falstaff use “self-othering,” and by watching them we inadvertently learn to think more seriously about ourselves. But he doesn’t show us how this has applied to him, only the declaration that it does so. We are left mystified and dubious.
xxx/ellauri225.html on line 378: Ultimately Bloom cannot change into anything other than who he has always been—masterful and monstrous. He seems to sense he has moved out of favor in many circles but chooses not to dwell upon why. Instead, he continues as he always has: writing and teaching his handpicked “elite” students at Yale—part of the unique arrangement he has made with the university. He has led a long, cloistered, and entitled life. The aloneness he described as a child seems to have shrouded his adult life as well. I wonder if he questions this aloneness in his darkest moments. I would guess that he does not dwell too deeply upon it, perhaps afraid of answers he doesn’t wish to confront.
xxx/ellauri261.html on line 257: Suddenly she grabbed my knee. “Sammy,” she said, “do you think that Alice and I are lesbians?” I had a genuine hot curl of fire up my spine. “I don’t see that it’s anybody’s business one way or another,” I said. “Do you care whether we are,” she asked. “Not in the least,” I said. I was suddenly dripping wet. “Are you queer or gay or different or ‘of it’ as the French say or whatever they are calling it nowadays,” she said, looking narrowly at me. I waggled my hand sidewise. “Both ways,” I said. “I don’t see why I should go through life limping on just one leg to satisfy a so-called norm.” “It bothers a lot of people,” Gertrude said. “But like you said, it’s nobody’s business, it came from the Judeo-Christian ethos, especially Saint Paul the bastard, but he was complaining about youngsters who were not really that way, they did it for money, everybody suspects us or knows but nobody says anything about it. Did Thornie tell you?” “Only when I asked him a direct question and then he didn’t want to answer, he didn’t want to at all. He said yes he supposed in the beginning but that it was all over now.” Gertrude laughed. “How could he know. He doesn’t know what love is. And that’s just like Thornie.”
xxx/ellauri268.html on line 343: Probably the most influential greedy Jewish caricature after Shakespeare’s Shylock is Charles Dickens’ Scrooge. Scrooge (as many Jewish writers have pointed out) is a miser with an obviously Jewish name (Ebenezer) and a pointed nose. He doesn’t celebrate Christmas and needs to be converted to charity and piety. It’s not especially subtle.
xxx/ellauri292.html on line 49: Rahab marries Radames, a young Egyptian officer, who is to become the new governor of Jericho. They live in the Egyptian embassy set in the city wall. When the Israelites approach Canaan with their army, pharaoh sends word that he is withdrawing his troops. Radames fabricates a story to tell Jericho’s king, but the babylonian lawmaker Hammurabi doesn’t believe it…and he has his eye on the beautiful Rahab.
xxx/ellauri292.html on line 159: Super Tekla doesn’t want to be compared to Unkabogable star Vice Ganda.
xxx/ellauri304.html on line 640: Theme isn’t something you paste on after you write the first draft. Now, potboilers in general don’t have much thematic content because they doesn’t need to go far beyond: Bang Bang and the good guys in the white hats win. Theme is a more ever-present feeling that permeates the book you’re working on. Do you think when Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, she first wrote the stories and then asked herself, “Now whatever could this be about? Selfishness?” But then, she was more political than most and, as I said, many books don’t have any discernible theme, except, buy it please and make me rich. That's my theme anyway.
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