Copellia

Wed Jan 1 12:43:23 CST 2014

“Four impressive lectures about the culture of recent times (from the
French Revolution) and the conceivable culture of times to come.  Mr.
Steiner’s discussion of the break with the traditional literary past
(Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Latin) is illuminating and attractively
undogmatic.  He writes as a man sharing ideas, and his original notions,
though scarcely cheerful, have the bracing effect that first-rate thinking
always has.” –*New Yorker*

“*In Bluebeard’s Castle* is a brief and brilliant book.  An intellectual *tour
de force*, it is also a book that should generate a profound excitement and
promote a profound unease…like the great culturalists of the past.  Steiner
uses a dense and plural learning to assess his topic: his book has the
outstanding quality of being not simply a reflection on culture, but an
embodiment of certain contemporary resources within it.  The result is one
of the most important books I have read for a very long time.”—*New Society*

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300017106

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/bluebeards-castle/

On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Martha Rooster-Singh <
martharoostersingh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Femme fatale
> A darkly erotic reworking of Bluebeard's Castle, a bawdy Puss in Boots and
> a sado-masochistic version of Little Red Riding Hood - Angela Carter's
> subversive take on traditional fairy stories in The Bloody Chamber is as
> shocking today as when the collection first appeared in 1979, writes Helen
>  Simpson
>  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/24/classics.angelacarter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 12:37 PM, Martha Rooster-Singh <
> martharoostersingh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In the great author's latest novel he sends his brave protagonist out to
>> Montauk  where, in the middle of protected wildlife sanctuaries, in and
>> around, and even under Camp Hero, Gabriel Ice has a castle under
>> construction.  As she makes her way down a confidential space that resists
>> analysis, her antennas, now stiff with the hairspray that Oedipa never put
>> on or took off, are filled with radio traffic, numerals and NATO phonetic
>> letters. More Mondaugen's sferics? The ghosts of murdered Africans? A
>> poetry he can't comprehend. Not literally. Grover with his ham radio? The
>> cries of his robot boy, the Black boy Carl Barrington, constructed from the
>> car parts and junk that the society wastes and piles in the junk yard, the
>> garbage tossed on the lawns to terrorize the childless Black couple, the
>> Jazz man's nightmares and the the desperate schemes of the boys who try to
>> save themselves from the bomb plots and fallout shelters their  parents
>> have given them. Here, Maxine is a double fallout shelter. One, the Cold
>> War shelter, now a tourist attraction, MAD in the new frontier, the other,
>> Ice's Castle under construction. Privacy for the billionaire plutocrat
>> welcoming the Void.
>>
>>  page 193
>>
>> P drops the clue: Bluebeard's Castle. Not a tip of the cap to Kurt
>> Vonnegut here, but an Opera.  So the psycho-sexual journey.
>>
>> The other opera, always connected with this one, has to do with a wooden
>> prince, made of flesh, made wood, then flesh again.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wooden_Prince
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 10:59 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm always interested by how damn often in the human (at least
>>> western) imagination we imagine our creations will rebel against us
>>> eventually. Robots, especially - it's as if we're sure they'll try to
>>> kill us all as soon as they're smart enough to think like us. Really
>>> neurotic of humans to project that onto something that doesn't even
>>> exist yet, I reckon.
>>>
>>> Has extra connotations for the US, given that it's a creation that did
>>> (successfully) rebel against its creator.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 2:55 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > I guess the most important aspect of all of this neo-human engineering
>>> is
>>> > that deus ex machina. Even so benign a being as Slothrup might cost
>>> you your
>>> > balls.  The Creation often confounds The Creator, but only because of
>>> the
>>> > Creator's willfulness.  This is also the story of Faust:  willful self
>>> > creation via artificial means.  Both the same cautionary tale.
>>> >
>>> > David Morris
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Tuesday, December 31, 2013, David Morris wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> P knows his Freud, and he knows opera.  He is well versed in automata
>>> and
>>> >> Frankenstein, as well as the golem,  He hasn't done clones yet...
>>> >>
>>> >> Clone Returns Home (2008)
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> http://variety.com/2008/film/reviews/the-clone-returns-home-2-1200472620/
>>> >>
>>> >> Trailer:
>>> >> HKAIFF 2009 - 複製人懷鄉曲 The Clone Returns Home - trailer
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> On Tuesday, December 31, 2013, John Bailey wrote:
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Yeah, Coppelia is based on ETA Hoffmann's short story The Sandman,
>>> >>> which was the major text Freud used to explore his theory of The
>>> >>> Uncanny (and good stuff on voyeurism and castration). Very
>>> influential
>>> >>> story and essay. Dunno if P read either but I've never been able to
>>> >>> read V. without seeing them everywhere in the novel. V is the human
>>> >>> who transforms themselves into an object, and makes real the horror
>>> >>> implicit in the ballet (it's more obvious in the story, which doesn't
>>> >>> have a happy ending.)
>>> >>>
>>> >>> On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 9:12 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >>> > Watching the movie Tetro, a scene from the ballet Copellia, the
>>> broken
>>> >>> > doll,
>>> >>> > is portrayed. I'd never heard anyone mention the ballet in V. In
>>> light
>>> >>> > of
>>> >>> > Copellia, which seems so obvious to be its reference.
>>> >>> >
>>> >>> >  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copp%C3%A9lia
>>> >>> >
>>> >>> > Coppélia concerns an inventor, Dr Coppelius, who has made a
>>> life-size
>>> >>> > dancing doll. It is so lifelike that Franz, a village swain,
>>> becomes
>>> >>> > infatuated with it and sets aside his true heart's desire,
>>> Swanhilde.
>>> >>> > She
>>> >>> > shows him his folly by dressing as the doll, pretending to make it
>>> come
>>> >>> > to
>>> >>> > life and ultimately saving him from an untimely end at the hands
>>> of the
>>> >>> > inventor.
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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