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

[Paul Mackin]

On 9/29/2012 11:19 AM, Keith Davis wrote:
> This discussion leads naturally to questions of P's substance use...


And the difference between alcohol and hallucinogenic substances.

Alcohol can be hallucinogenic too but by that time you're so far gone it 
doesn't matter.

P

>
> On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 10:47 AM, Bled Welder <bledwelder at gmail.com 
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> www.innergroovemusic.com <http://www.innergroovemusic.com>

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