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Unread 10-23-2005, 04:57 AM
Tim Love's Avatar
Tim Love Tim Love is offline
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http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tpl/lit/reviews.html#Booker
is quite a long summary (with many quotes) of "The Seven Basic Plots" by Christopher Booker, which came out last year. It might be of interest to prose-writers, though the author strays from the subject sometimes. E.g. - "in the prevailing ethos of the American way of life, the highest prize may be not to achieve individual maturity but simply to earn the approbation of the crowd ... This profoundly important aspect of the American character originated in the rootless insecurity of a society which carried so much unconscious emotional bruising from the way it was originally forged: from the rebellious desire to escape from the oppressively 'grown-up' old world of Europe, and from the psychological one-sidedness of the struggle to impose the white man's will on that vast natural wilderness... All this has engendered in American culture an endemic immaturity which we see reflected throughout its history ... It is this which helps to explain the remarkable fact that so few stories conceived in America over the past two centuries have ever managed to resolve in an unambiguous image of the fully mature, fully realised Self"
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Unread 10-23-2005, 06:26 AM
Joseph Bottum Joseph Bottum is offline
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What a nutball Booker must be! If only the prose didn't sound so dreadful, the book seems like it might be a fun, crazy read. I love the "I-get-to-have-it-both-ways" feeling of the line: "the psychological one-sidedness of the struggle to impose the white man's will on that vast natural wilderness." So did it feel one-sided, or was it a struggle with something vast? Who cares?--Booker's got a hundred other thoughts, if this one doesn't work!
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Unread 10-23-2005, 09:47 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Tim, It seems a little late to me to be accusing America of immaturity. If I am granted the favor to read at Christ Church or the Royal Festival Hall, if I walk around Delphi or Florence, I am keenly aware that my county was only put to the plough 125 years ago. Yes, ours was a vast wilderness, but I've yet to see anyone improve upon the system our Founders came upon for its governance.

Two Miles West

“Roses and lilies two miles west,”
said the red paint on whitewashed plank
nailed to a burly trunk that sank
like a drover on an ample breast.

Once creaking oxcarts rolled this way
over the wilderness of grass
whose stems whispered ‘Alas, alas,’
as the plough cleft the virgin clay.

Where wayworn mothers came to nest
and chain clinked on the swingle ring,
what profit did the flowers bring?
“Roses and lilies two miles west.”
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Unread 10-24-2005, 04:31 PM
Richard Wakefield Richard Wakefield is offline
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I love these vast arguments spun from one or two remote historical facts. They explain everything! It's an intellectual trope we might call "monocausality."
I also love the loaded diction and phrasing of that last line: "so few stories" have "ever managed" -- as if resolving into "an unambiguous image of the fully mature, fully realized self" were what all those writers were trying but failing to do. Who knows but what they accomplished just what they intended, portraying immature, unrealized selves? And who knows but what that's a more honest portrayal of how people (even including our sophisticated trans-Atlantic brethren) typically end up?
RPW

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Unread 11-11-2005, 12:43 PM
don eminizer don eminizer is offline
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...And on the eighth day,
God...(and George Lucas)...
Created Redemption...
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