<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">there is no way to cut and paste to make a reply - too much to catch up on - just a few thoughts;<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I don't decry highbrow. What did I say? I do say that the critics seem to like writers that just don't work for me, like Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen. Jeffrey Eugenides is a strange case: I love the way he writes and have zero interest in the content of his stories. I'll keep trying.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I simply cannot say what it is about my favorite classical music that so moves me. I can recognize great writing in composers who leave me quite uninterested in hearing more of them: Schubert, Haydn, Bruckner. I cannot say why I love some Debussy and some not at all. Could it be like a beautiful woman that somehow just leaves you cold?<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Case in point: I was listening to NPR and they were playing a symphony from the classical period. It really didn't sound anything like a great composer at all, and so I concluded that this was another one of those forgotten composers they are trying to resurrect. Let them stay dead, I say. And then I heard a section that just sang to my soul. And then it was back to blah blah. And then another hint of greatness. It was Mozart's Sym. #1, written at the age of nine. What was it about the great sections that so contrasted with the blah ones? I just don't know. I just know it when I hear it. It is as if you described a painting to me - colors, figures, etc. I would have no idea whether I liked it or not. Maybe this just fits the idea of the gestalt - something that cannot be broken down and analyzed according to its parts.<br><br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Huh? I have nothing whatsoever against Shakespeare and Beethoven. The latter, in fact, wrote the most consistently great music of anyone. No blah stuff from him.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Dan, I once has a midyear break of a month in which I read 50 books - all fiction, of course. Probably most of them were in the range of Elmore Leonard, and no nonfiction, which I read much more slowly. A great nonfiction book might make me stop and think for half an hour on a page. So I am probably reading between 250 and 300 books a year, depending on the percentage of nonfiction. Yes, of course I am retired. My back won't let me garden or play golf or much of anything, and so I read.</div><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I find it strange, even disgusting and totally missing the point, to have classical music as sonic wallpaper. It's sort of like speaking in incomplete sentences or fragments. The point is to put your entire concentration to it. ( Dvorak at a party? Schoenberg. Now there's one to put on to make people go home!) I have taught music to nonmusicians and can report that most of them have few to no listening skills. They listen as a gestalt - they cannot listen to two or more instruments at the same time, like as in a string quartet. They are used to listening to a singer sing a melody and the rest is background, which they would miss if it weren't there, but which they cannot remember if asked. Even two instruments is too much challenge. One kid said that it was impossible. No, it's just something you haven't learned because no one tried to teach it to you.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">As for critics, I read Jacques Barzun and not much else. I try to get through Wood's review in the New Yorker and generally I don't, and in fact already do'nt like the book he is reviewing. Lit crit is the only course I lacked to get a degree in English. I would probably have argued my way to a F.<br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">maybe more later bill w<br></div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Dan TheBookMan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:danust2012@gmail.com" target="_blank">danust2012@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><span class=""><div>On Sep 29, 2558 BE, at 9:07 AM, Mike Dougherty <<a href="mailto:msd001@gmail.com" target="_blank">msd001@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span>On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Dan TheBookMan <<a href="mailto:danust2012@gmail.com" target="_blank">danust2012@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><br><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span>On Sep 29, 2558 BE, at 6:12 AM, Mike Dougherty <<a href="mailto:msd001@gmail.com" target="_blank">msd001@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span>On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 8:31 AM, spike <<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" target="_blank">spike66@att.net</a>> wrote:</span><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span>We already have excellent objective standards in literature: sales receipts.</span><br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span>I would not consider sales receipts to be literature... though I guess</span><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span>your accountant can tell quite a story when all those moments are</span><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><span>reviewed for a year. :)</span><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span></span><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><span>I didn't read that as Spike calling sales receipts literature, but as him saying they indicated a piece of literature's quality. Ditto for other arts. I'm not saying I agree, but were it true than Shakespeare definitely sells. And so does Beethoven. (Not sure what William has against either since both are far more popular outside the cultural elites and professorial class than, say, Brecht (in drama) and Schoenberg (in music), though those two are not lacking in the sales department.)</span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>haha, yeah... you read it correctly. </span></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>:)</div><span class=""><br><blockquote type="cite"><span> I did a double-take and wanted</span><br><span>to share the idea of sales receipt as a tiny bit of 'literature.'</span><br><span>Just last night I accepted a receipt at point of sale (cash) and put</span><br><span>it directly into the trash. I felt bad for the senseless waste that</span><br><span>transaction represents. I knew, however, that the protocol cannot be</span><br><span>challenged ad-hoc: it must be a cultural change to stop generating</span><br><span>those useless scraps of paper.</span><br></blockquote><br></span><div>Many places now ask if the customer want a printed receipt. Places using Square also just email a receipt, so nothing gets printed -- unless there's a special request.</div><span class=""><div><br></div><div><div style="line-height:normal"><span style="line-height:20px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height:normal"><span style="line-height:20px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height:normal"><span style="line-height:20px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height:normal"><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"> Sample my Kindle books via:</span></div><div style="line-height:normal"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/" style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)" target="_blank"><font color="#000000">http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/</font></a></div></div></div></span></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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