ellauri026.html on line 225: The idea is there, but all the lingering emphasis in the original has been smoothed away. This, too, unfortunately, is typical of the whole. I have said that Wilson’s translation reads easily, and it does, like a modern novel: at shockingly few points does one ever need to stop and think. There are no hard parts; no difficult lines or obscure notions; no aesthetic arrest either; very little that jumps out as unusual or different. Wilson has set out, as she openly confesses, to produce an Odyssey in a “contemporary anglophone speech,” and this results in quite a bit of conceptual pruning. If you wait for the “Homeric tags,” the phrases that contained so much Greek culture they have been quoted over and over again by Greeks ever since—well, you are apt to miss them as they go by. A famous one occurs in book 24, when Odysseus and Telemachus are about to go into battle together: Odysseus tells Telemachus not to disgrace him, and Telemachus boasts that he need not fear. Laertes, Odysseus’s father, exclaims (Wilson’s translation), “Ah, gods! A happy day for me! My son and grandson are arguing about how tough they are!”
ellauri052.html on line 970: The rap against Bellow is that he maligned four of his five wives, especially in his fiction. This is true, and Leader is savvy enough not to take Bellow’s word about them. Wife No. 1, Anita, is shown as the underappreciated mainstay she obviously was. As for wife No. 2, Sondra Tschacbasov Bellow (Bellow called her Sasha), the model for the evil Madeleine, Leader has a scoop: an unpublished memoir shared with him after Bellow’s death. By her own account, Sasha was a vulnerable child-woman lacking basic life skills. From childhood and into her teens, she says, she was the victim of incest committed by her father. When Bellow took up with her, he was 37 and she was 21, a Bennington graduate and a secretary at the Partisan Review. His friends treated her with a sniggering sexism unfortunately unremarkable in the 1950s. At a party Bellow took her to, the critic R. W. B. Lewis, her former professor, drunkenly demanded to
ellauri053.html on line 787: Father set my mother to prepare an abridged version of the Ramayana , keeping to the original but leaving out all superfluous and irrelevant matter so that the main story could be read at a stretch. Father insisted that she should consult the original Sanskrit and not depend upon Bengali translations for preparing her text. This was difficult for Mother, but undaunted she read the Ramayana with the help of a Pandit, and only then did she start writing, but unfortunately the book was not finished before she died and the MS. of the portion she had written got lost. I remember with what avidity we used to read her MS.
ellauri053.html on line 914: Santiniketan, unfortunately, was regarded more or less as a reformatory in those days.
ellauri118.html on line 1112: “Some days, my grandmother would say we were related to her and on other days, she would deny the whole thing because it wasn't very respectable,” Atwood says. “I was actually trying to write a novel about her, but, unfortunately, I didn't know enough about the late 17th century to be able to do it. But I did write a long, narrative poem called 'Half-Hanged Mary,' because she only got half hanged.”
ellauri119.html on line 684: She is good at writing a thriller novel and carries a hypnotic theme that keeps the reader absorbed and lends to a subtle brainwashing/indoctrination toward her worldview. That doesn´t make it right, just believable, and, unfortunately, too many people think that believable means it is true. Believable just means that you can be fooled.
ellauri155.html on line 943: You know, I suppose, who Bertie is: a leading mathematician, philosopher, militant pacifist, wit, and martyr, but unfortunately addicted to marrying
ellauri159.html on line 1213: Perhaps this is what draws me to writing women’s fiction. I can create relationship problems, which I can then go about solving, without hurting anyone but my fictional characters in the process. Real life, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way. The INFJs’ search for perfection can damage otherwise good relationships. So I propose a revised Serenity Prayer for INFJs: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Period. Oh, I got my period.
ellauri161.html on line 685: The writers of this satire unfortunately were as vapid as the characters they wrote. The science is awful, it's satire losses its bite when it tries to paint the whole country as anti-intellectual and all media as entertainment. If you are going to pan the anti-intellectualism that is straining this country do it with some intelligence.
ellauri164.html on line 372: I blew through this novel myself, which in retrospect was somewhat of a grave mistake, as the book alternates between compelling and highly engaging dialogues to unrealistically long monologues which to me resemble a Rimbaud poem in translation than anything else, which is to say: hard to parse. That they got more than what they bargained for is what the ordinary reader will be struck by first when they read this. The complexity of each of the conversations cannot be overstated, which I think will inevitably result in readers just mechanically scanning the sentences rather than internalizing the arguments, with the final result being the great part of the novel sliding off like rain, leaving only vague impressions like it did with me unfortunately, but the parts that did affect me left me very humbled. And chiefly this impression will not be helped by another one of the defining features of the novel, which is its vagueness. It deliberately leaves a lot of key details unheard and leaves a lot to the ability to infer events by the reader. Though sometimes frustrating to a reader like me who reads history and biography, I recognize that it should be so for this novel, for the main conflict in it is a psychological one, so I wouldn't have it any other way.
ellauri171.html on line 1048: Judah, who has bought her for his firstborn son, Er, loses it, er, I mean loses Er. When he, er, I mean Er dies, Judah gives Tamar to his second son, Onan, who is to act as levir, a surrogate for his dead brother who would beget a son to continue Er’s lineage. (Onan you must be familiar with first hand!) In this way, Tamar too would be assured a place in the family. Onan, however, would make a considerable economic sacrifice. According to inheritance customs, the estate of Judah, who had three sons, would be divided into four equal parts, with the eldest son acquiring one half and the others one fourth each. A child engendered for Er would inherit at least one fourth and possibly one half (as the son of the firstborn). If Er remained childless, then Judah’s estate would be divided into three, with the eldest, most probably Onan, inheriting two thirds. Onan opts to preserve his financial advantage and does coitus interruptus with Tamar, spilling his semen on the ground. For this, God punishes Onan with death, as God had previously punished Er for doing something equally wicked (unfortunately we are not told what, maybe sodomy in the flock).
ellauri189.html on line 823: There are also secular Jews, who don´t keep the Tora and whose culture is not Jewish, but mostly American, and some are really deep in the disgusting western pop-culture. The majority of the secular Jews who live in the holy land are not mixing with other people, so even though they don´t keep the Jewish religion, they are Jewish. On the other hand, there are the secular Jews who live abroad, mainly in the US - most of them, unfortunately, are mixing with other nations. While some of them are now Jews, if they continue like this, in 1-2 generations, none of them would be considered Jewish, and real Jews wouldn´t be able to marry them any more.
ellauri214.html on line 76: J.K. Rowling has also included plenty of sexism in her writing, indicative of her internalised misogyny. Cho Chang was Harry Potter’s love interest throughout books 4 and 5. However, Cho was in a relationship with another student in the fourth book, and unfortunately this student was killed by Lord Voldemort at the end of the book. This leaves Cho rightfully distraught. Though still in emotional turmoil, she develops a crush on Harry and they begin dating. During their first kiss, Cho is crying because she is thinking of her dead boyfriend. Harry and Cho break up after multiple arguments later in the book. Later on in the series, Harry develops feelings for his best friend’s sister, Ginny Weasley. Rowling periodically writes how Harry prefers Ginny to Cho because Cho was too emotional after the death of her boyfriend. Harry preferred Ginny, who was stronger and could contain her emotions, supposedly because she had grown up with 6 brothers (no, 5, Ronny is a sissy). This comparison of the two girls demonstrates Rowling’s internalized feelings that women exist for the purpose of pleasing men. The thinly veiled idea that women who are too emotional or too much drama queens are not desirable is evident in Rowling’s writing. Fleur Delcore is another example of this feeling. Fleur is a student at a French wizarding school who competes against Harry in a difficult tournament in the fourth book. Fleur is part veela, who are magical beings of extreme beauty but can turn monstrous when angered. Fleur eventually marries Ron Weasley’s older brother, Bill. Hermionie, Harry’s other best friend, and Ginny constantly complain about Fleur. However, the only thing their animosity can be traced back to is that Fleur is a beautiful Frenchy woman and she is confident in that, whilst they are just snubnosed Brits. This further develops Rowling’s internalized misogyny. She views women who are confident in their beauty as annoying, and has the idea that women should seek male validation. Though these portions of the book were likely unintentional, speaking from personal experience, it has to be said that Rowling’s writing of women in her book have had a lasting effect on her female readers.
ellauri236.html on line 380: Meanwhile, the police are on the trail of the kidnappers, and Dave Fenner, an ex journalist and now a private investigator, is hired to rescue her and deal with the gangsters. Fenner and the police eventually work out where the young socialist is located and go to the club, where a gun battle ensues. Slim is killed and Miss Blandish is rescued, but unfortunately, after months of fornication and drugs at the hands of the gangsters, Miss Blandish cannot cope with life without Slim (and his Ma!) and kills herself. Damaged goods.
ellauri322.html on line 82: Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never fail to appear in their effects. As a great mass of the community are thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink of commotion; and deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the means of information, are easily heated to outrage. Tupla hah.
ellauri375.html on line 273: I understand, and I apologize for not being more direct. In Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the Ultimate Question that corresponds to the Ultimate Answer "42" is never explicitly revealed. It's one of the central mysteries of the story, and it's left open to interpretation and speculation. So unfortunately, I can't provide you with the exact question.
xxx/ellauri068.html on line 229: Since another common practice today is the out-of-context quote, misinterpreted without the slightest remorse, allow me to end with one: “The world, unfortunately, is real,” Borges wrote in one of his great essays, which could be read as an acknowledgment or a surrender.
xxx/ellauri068.html on line 231: And yet, immediately after, Borges wrote something else, which can be read either as a response or a challenge: “I, unfortunately, am Borges.”
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 622: On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!
xxx/ellauri178.html on line 334: J: Not directly, which makes it hard to quote scripture. I mean, most of the verses on diseases involve prayer, not medication. Now, I’m not discounting prayer, but unfortunately, most men won’t be willing to go to their elders and ask for prayer for erectile dysfunction (as per James 5:14), and most wives won’t go to the elders and ask for prayers for their husbands for the same. Sadly, I feel a lot of elders wouldn’t respond appropriately either.
xxx/ellauri215.html on line 392: The Realism part is that if things did happen as it did in Georgia, Crimea and now Ukraine, you need security and that's where NATO comes into play when it comes to security. There was also an attempt to accommodate Russia into the WTO into G8. But it wasn't possible. Why? Because Russia unfortunately was too poor, and under current leadership is another imperialist and expansionist power. We can accommodate just one at one time. This war is not the fault of the US. It is not the fault of the EU. It is not the fault of Ukraine. Its not my fault, or Westend's for that matter. There is only 1 person and 1 country that can be blamed for this attack no matter what kind of theoretical framework you put around it and that is Putin and Russia."
xxx/ellauri320.html on line 188: Following the publication of Cartland's unfortunately titled fifth novel, A Virgin In Mayfair, the divorce case came to court in November 1932. After days of lurid headlines, and even more lurid evidence, Cartland won the case.
xxx/ellauri380.html on line 425: In eight remarkable chapters of August 1914 (the so-called Stolypin cycle), Solzhenitsyn painted a portrait of the statesman Pyotr Stolypin, scourge of the revolutionary left and reactionary right alike and the last best hope for Russia’s salvation. Prime Minister of Russia from 1906 until 1911, Stolypin’s abiding concern was to promote far-reaching agrarian reforms that would lead to the creation of a “solid class of peasant proprietors” in Russia. He believed that a property-owning peasantry would provide the social basis for a revitalized monarchy in Russia. He was a “liberal conservative” who rejected pan-Slavist delusions and who advocated a monarchy that respected the rule of law, one that could govern in cooperation with a “society” that had an increasing stake in the existing social order. But unfortunately Stolypin was shot (in the presence of the Tsar) at the Kiev opera house in September 1911. His assassin was, quite strikingly, a double agent of the secret police and revolutionary terrorists!
23