when you look at books

[Johnny Canuck3]

I've wasted my life.

It's not too late to change.

 

[Balbi]

 

[Cheesypoof]

I agree Cheesy, and skirting boards are just so passe anyway

if you get into henry miller or some of them good writers i find the deeper you go on, the further they are like good artists anyway. all the top lyricrists, like syd barrett, captain beefheart and ian dury were phenomenal painters and their words read like they paint too. from the same orchard them boys, sounding from the rooftops!!!

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

if you get into henry miller or some of them good writers i find the deeper you go on, the further they are like good artists anyway.D

They aren't like artists. They are artists.

 

[Cheesypoof]

They aren't like artists. They are artists.

yes. i dont know if henry miller painted. i only said 'like' cos i was then gonna say that i think thats where the expression 'artist' must come from.

artist: he does like he paints.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

yes. i dont know if henry miller painted. i only said 'like' cos i was then gonna say that i think thats where the expression 'artist' must come from.

artist: he does like he paints.

I get it: you're using 'artist' to mean 'painter'.

I'm using it in the wider meaning, of 'one who creates art'.

As in 'the artist once known as Prince'.

 

[Cheesypoof]

I get it: you're using 'artist' to mean 'painter'.

I'm using it in the wider meaning, of 'one who creates art'.

As in 'the artist once known as Prince'.

i mean that it can be one who creates art, as in the masters of assonance, alliteration and onomatopeoia, i think those three things are where great artists who arent painting at the time manage to cross the three art forms of art, music and literature. They do it because they create pictures, and usually musically too, with rhymical intonations, like, to pick the great magpum opus's: james joyce (portrait of the artist, the 'cups of rocks it slops' verse; captain beefheart (electricity), syd barrett (octopus, astromine domine); lawrence miller (in his story 'Justine') and henry miller (in the accordian collapsed as milk' description of his wifes orgasm).

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

i mean that it can be one who creates art, as in the masters of assonance, alliteration and onomatopeoia, i think those three things are where great artists who arent painting at the time manage to cross the three art forms of art, music and literature. ).

I think that can be so, but I think that writers who rely on those gimmicky things, are creating art at an elementary level.

Alliteration is nice, but it's most useful when you're writing poetry in high school.

 

[DotCommunist]

Alliteration is nice, but it's most useful when you're writing poetry in high school.

sometimes unintended alliteration can be a downright nuiscance.

 

[Cheesypoof]

I think that can be so, but I think that writers who rely on those gimmicky things, are creating art at an elementary level..

Its hard to do but the good ones like those i name above achieve that perfect golddust standard of art in the works above.

 

[London_Calling]

So Cheesy, what's the recreational drug of choice on a Wednesday nigth?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Its hard to do but the good ones like those i name above achieve that perfect golddust standard of art in the works above.

But if you read good writers like Nabokov etc, you don't see a lot of alliteration.

It probably sounds better in song lyrics, because it's going to get put to music and heard, but the impact of good writing is based on things other than just auditory impact.

 

[scifisam]

No. I don't like books - as in fictional novels - just for the language alone. Beautiful language plus compelling narrative, yup, that works for me.

Simple language plus compelling narrative works for me very well - it shows a trust in the reader, that we can create our own imagery. Beckett's the master of this. It's the reason he started writing in French once he was fluent enough to do so; he was forced to use simpler language, and focus on the story.

That's personal preference, though. It's not saying that one is better than the other, which is what you're saying. You really do need to learn the difference between personal preference and factual superiority.

FWIW, you might like 'By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.' It's a poem-novel, and I had to read it in the first year of my English degree. It struck me as so much purple prose, to be honest, but some people like it, and it sounds like you might well do.

So Cheesy, what's the recreational drug of choice on a Wednesday nigth?

Whatever it is, at least it makes her happy and introspective, rather than violent.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

FWIW, you might like 'By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.' It's a poem-novel, and I had to read it in the first year of my English degree. It struck me as so much purple prose, to be honest, but some people like it, and it sounds like you might well do.

I liked it. It was by someone named Margaret or Elizabeth, wasn't it?

 

[scifisam]

I liked it. It was by someone named Margaret or Elizabeth, wasn't it?

Can't remember - I really hated it. Funnily enough, I do like some Virginia Wolf, so it's not like I hate all prose poems.

 

[Gromit]

if you count the number of thumping beats and sounds put together on top of a good song, that makes anything written pale in suspense.

and all relationships are based on it too, IMO.

Yep you are right and therefore should quit your job as a journalist immediately now that you know this right?

How can you ever write anything ever again knowing that prose is such an insignificant medium?

In fact you shouldn't have even started this thread using sentences but have linked to a youtube video of you singing this question at us in rhyme.

p.s. Why is this in health, sexuality and relationships?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Can't remember - I really hated it. Funnily enough, I do like some Virginia Wolf, so it's not like I hate all prose poems.

It's Elizabeth Smart. She's a, er, a canadian.

Maybe you hated it because it was in a class.

 

[selamlar]

this bit in The Wind in the Willows where the mole meets the water rat, explains the onomatopeia, assonace, and alliteration (therefore life) perfectly and its a great example of like 'reading music' and tripping on it too. all the reasons why Syd Barrett was a great lyricrist too, because his style follows Kenneth grahame

As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water's edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside residence, above flood level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like a frame round a picture.

A brown little face, with whiskers.

A grave round face, with the same twinkle in its eye that had first attracted his notice.

Go one then, I'll bite.

How does that passage

explain the onomatopeia, assonace, and alliteration (therefore life) perfectly and its a great example of like 'reading music' and tripping on it too[?]

sic.

I see no onomatopoeia or alliteration, and precious little that could be rightly called assonance. Do you actual know what these words mean, or do you just like the sound they make?

Oh, and most people read books, rather than just looking at them.

 

[gentlegreen]

I've hardly ever read literature.
Literature is about people and their lives - something I can't relate to.

I tend to prefer my music without words.

I bought a copy of Joyce's "Ulysses" once, but didn't get very far - I still felt suffocated by the beery maleness of the book.

I found William Gibson's books absorbing though and fairly well abstracted from day to day life - in spite of a fair bit of violence here and there.

 

[Cheesypoof]

Go one then, I'll bite.

How does that passage sic.

I see no onomatopoeia or alliteration, and precious little that could be rightly called assonance. Do you actual know what these words mean, or do you just like the sound they make?

Oh, and most people read books, rather than just looking at them.

just the sounds.

 

[quimcunx]

My flatmate just followed me round the house, urging me to feel a book, a second hand copy of Don Quixote. He got money off because it's missing 60 pages.

It did, admittedly, feel quite velvety.

 

[Termite Man]

is it okay not to be at all interested in the narrative but just the words.

Since you've started on about Henry Miller I'll have to agree with you , a lot of his work takes me afew reads to actually get what he's saying because the way he uses the words just flows and I enjoy reading them without feeling a need to understand them .

stuff like this

The ovarian world is the product of a life rhythm. The moment a child is born it becomes part of a world in which there is not only the life rhythm but the death rhythm. The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm. There is not only no need to keep alive at any price, but, if life is undesirable, it is absolutely wrong. This keeping oneself alive, out of a blind urge to defeat death, is in itself a means of sowing death. Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. To make the simplest gesture with the hand can convey the utmost sense of life; a word spoken with the whole being can give life. Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. By simple external pressure, by force of surroundings and example, by the very climate which activity engenders, one can become part of a monstrous death machine, such as America, for example. What does a dynamo know of life, of peace, of reality? What does any individual American dynamo know of the wisdom and energy, of the life abundant and eternal possessed by a ragged beggar sitting under a tree in the act of meditation? What is energy? What is life? One has only to read the stupid twaddle of the scientific and philosophic textbooks to realize how less than nothing is the wisdom of these energetic Americans. Listen, they had me on the run, these crazy horsepower fiends; in order to break their insane rhythm, their death rhythm, I had to resort to a wavelength which, until I found the proper sustenance in my own bowels, would at least nullify the rhythm they had set up. Certainly I did not need this grotesque, cumbersome, antediluvian desk which I had installed in the parlour; certainly I didn't need twelve empty chairs placed around in a semicircle; I needed only elbow room in which to write and a thirteenth chair which would take me out of the zodiac they were using and put me in a heaven beyond heaven. But when you drive a man almost crazy and when, to his own surprise perhaps, he finds that he still has some resistance, some powers of his own, then you are apt to find such a man acting very much like a primitive being. Such a man is apt not only to become stubborn and dogged, but superstitious, a believer in magic and a practiser of magic. Such a man is beyond religion - it is his religiousness he is suffering from. Such a man becomes a monomaniac, bent on doing one thing only and that is to break the evil spell which has been put upon him. Such a man is beyond throwing bombs, beyond revolt; he wants to stop reacting, whether inertly or ferociously. This man, of all men on earth, wants the act to be a manifestation of life. If, in the realization of his terrible need, he begins to act regressively, to become unsocial, to stammer and stutter, to prove so utterly unadapted as to be incapable of earning a living, know that this man has found his way back to the womb and source of life and that tomorrow, instead of the contemptible object of ridicule which you have made of him, he will stand forth as a mm in his own right and all the powers of the world will be of no avail against him.

make great writing because it can be enjoyed on more than the one level , as with any artform , the great pieces IMO will be multifaceted .

 

[scifisam]

It's Elizabeth Smart. She's a, er, a canadian.

Maybe you hated it because it was in a class.

Nah. I was on an Eng. Lit. degree, and liked everything else I studied, including some works I really hadn't expected to like - such as Romantic poetry.

@Termite Man: that piece works far better with a few paragraph breaks!

 

[DotCommunist]

An excuse to post this most poetic bit of prose from Plague Dogs

Freedom-that consuming goal above doubt or criticism, desired as moths desire the candle or emigrants the distant continent waiting to parch them in its deserts or drive them to madness in its bitter winters! Freedom, that land where rogues, at every corner, cozen with lies and promises the plucky sheep who judged it time to sack the shepherd! Unfurl your banner, Freedom, and call upon me with cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of music to fall down and worship you, and I will do so upon the instant, for who would wish to be cast into the fiery furnace of his neighbour’s contempt?

I will come to you as the male spider to the female, as the explorer to the upper reaches of the great river upon which he knows he will die before ever he wins through to the estuary. How should I dare refuse your beckoning, queen whose discarded lovers vanish by night, princess whose unsuccessful suitors die at sunset? Would to God we had never encountered you, goddess of thrombosis, insomnia, asthma, duodenal and migraine! For we are free-free to suffer every anguish of deliberation, of decisions which must be made upon suspect information and half-knowledge, every anguish of hindsight and regret, of failure, shame and responsibility for all that we have brought upon ourselves and others: free to struggle, to starve, to demand from all one last, supreme effort to reach where we long to be and, once there, to conclude that it is not, after all, the right place.

For a great price obtained I this freedom, to wish to God I had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when I sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full. The tyrant wasn’t such a bad old bugger, and even his arbitrary rages never killed as many as died in yesterday’s glorious battle for liberty. Will you return to him, then? Ah no, sweet Freedom, I will slave for you until I have forgotten the love that once consumed my being, until I am grown old and bitter and can no longer see the wood for the starved, dirty trees. Then I will curse you and die; and will you then concede that I may be accounted your loyal follower and a true creature of the earth? And, Freedom, was I free?

 

[revol68]

An excuse to post this most poetic bit of prose from Plague Dogs

that is utterly contrived turgid shit, a pointless repetition of corny metaphors and cliched imagery, any insight or powerfulness being lost amongst it's cheap lyrical filler.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Nah. I was on an Eng. Lit. degree, and liked everything else I studied, including some works I really hadn't expected to like - such as Romantic poetry.

@Termite Man: that piece works far better with a few paragraph breaks!

Maybe you disliked the subject matter.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

If you want the conjoining of words into art, poetry, music and meaning, Nabokov gives good examples.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

 

[DotCommunist]

that is utterly contrived turgid shit, a pointless repetition of corny metaphors and cliched imagery, any insight or powerfulness being lost amongst it's cheap lyrical filler.

That's your opinion, in mine:
Really it isn't. Perhaps it needs to be read in context, but I don't think so. If you value language both in it's brutal simplicity and in it's baroque forms, you might apreciate the passage. I get the idea that you are a fan of the former rather than the latter. The economy of words shouldn't really be lambasted with horrible americanisms like 'corny' nor criticised by someone using the word 'powerfulness' when 'power' would suffice.

 

[ajk]

horrible americanisms like 'corny'

According to Merriam-Webster it's been in use since the 14th century.

 

[revol68]

I don't like brutal simplicity but neither do i appreciate choking upon inane dribble masquerading as profound behind a series of clunky, cliched metaphors. That passage you posted is self indulgent shit without the excuse of being teenage poetry.