The Feminization of American Culture: Ann Douglas: 9780374525583: Amazon.com: Books

[Keith Davis]

This discussion leads naturally to questions of P's substance use...

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 10:47 AM, Bled Welder <bledwelder at gmail.com> wrote:

> I hate to break this to you, but the gods gave us booze.
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 7:35 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> "Whiskey don't make liars, it just makes fools
>> So I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said" --James McMurtry
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 7:19 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>wrote:
>>
>>> On 9/29/2012 7:41 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>>
>>>> The big three of the 30s and 40s, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner
>>>>> were
>>>>> all heavy alcohol users.  Was this mainly to fight inner demons, or
>>>>> was it
>>>>> integral to their creative powers?  Their writing was so different.
>>>>> What
>>>>> were the common elements? Where was the "family resemblance"?
>>>>> (Wittgenstein)
>>>>>
>>>> Looking back, from Wittgenstein, we might say that the idea, a family
>>>> resemblance, is one that, if only when we look back, peep in the
>>>> public record, open the old photo albums, watch those old home movies,
>>>>   generates memories and defeated desires, so Nihilism...
>>>>
>>>> and, like the phrase about family resemblance, American Nihilism,
>>>> while not fathered by Nietzsche, looks a lot like the mustached
>>>> European madman.
>>>>
>>>> We might also photoshop into the portrait, Mr Eliot, who is, after
>>>> all, as much a part of this American generation of nihilists as the
>>>> others, though he does find a dead tradition to bury his individual
>>>> talents in.
>>>>
>>>> And there are lotz of others, though not as famous as these members of
>>>> the family.
>>>>
>>>> But what kind of nihilism? There are so many in American fiction.
>>>>
>>>> And, we might say that  Pynchon, with his early works, V., and Lot49,
>>>> is much in the family; no conclusion or final illumination, no Joycean
>>>> epiphany. The heart is darkness, the bomb is pushed from its precipice
>>>> by the boys, the island burns, the beasty is in us and we are
>>>> metaphysically and aesthetically lost; sometimes in the pun house,
>>>> sometimes in the labyrinth, sometimes in the mundane stranger's
>>>> murdering meaninglessness under the indifferent sun , sometimes in the
>>>> grip of Them.
>>>>
>>>> Does Booze make this nihilism more intense, release the aesthetic from
>>>> the metaphysical sickness unto death? Camus talked of suicide and
>>>> rolling a stone; perhaps this is what the booze soaked nihilism
>>>> afforded?
>>>>
>>>
>>> I kind of think it might.  For example Proust and Joyce weren't big
>>> drinkers, and both  In Search of Lost Time and Ulysses ended quite
>>> affirmatively.
>>>
>>> I wonder if Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights) and Samuel Richardson
>>> (Clarissa) might not have taken a drop or two to get them into a darker
>>> view of things.  They were quite the exceptions to their respective eras.
>>>
>>> On a personal note I've observed that watching the  PBS nightly news in
>>> a semi alcoholic haze makes the very serious discussions  appear slightly
>>>  absurd.
>>>
>>> P
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust
>> in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
>> groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
>> urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>>
>
>


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