ahhh....fiction....


sorabji.com: Last book you read: ahhh....fiction....
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).
By Kym-kym-bo-bym on Friday, January 30, 1998 - 02:48 am:
    it was a book called "The Fermata"

    this supercool and intelligent friend of mine recommended it.

    i couldn't put it down.
    this guy chronicles his ability to stop time.
    it borders on the risque. and damn well jumps off the edge. and he uses it not to do bad things, but to undress women etc. and he has the power, etc.....
    it is interesting, made me wonder what i would really do if i could stop time.

    i recomend it.

By Snake in the grass on Friday, January 30, 1998 - 06:51 pm:
    Waaaaitaminnit! "...not to do bad things, but to undress women etc." There's a world contained in that "etc.," and as for the undressing, I'm assuming from context that without this special power, the undressing would not be, um, facilitated. Says another world about YOUR attitude, maybe? Come on, K-K-B-B, elucidate.

By Kymical on Sunday, February 1, 1998 - 01:12 am:
    okay, okay...

    basically what he would do is undress them...look at them naked. it is about how he does that. he talks of one lady that he sees in his office and he stops time and feels her french braid, and then takes off her skirt....and looks at her in her underwear. then he puts her clothes back on. nothing extreemly preverse. there is only one preverse part but i think i would appreciate some guy who could stop time doing it for me. he brings this woman to an orgasm on the train witha vibrator. but she doesn't know it. she just knows she is having an orgasm, without any stimuli. i think it is a nice thing to do. i mean he could steal money or corrupt data. but all he does it that. and sometimes when he is behind on his work he would use it to catch up.
    i think it is pretty good hearted use of such a power.

    k-k-b-b.

    huh?

By Slithers off looking for another victim on Sunday, February 1, 1998 - 09:38 pm:
    Sorry, Kymical, I mistook your gender, and was going to jump with both feet on your tender young butt for being a junior sexist pig. As it is, I marvel at today's young women, who are capable of thinking in categories unknown to me. If in fact what you have written is the product of thought.........

By R.C. on Sunday, February 1, 1998 - 11:02 pm:
    I wd certainly NOT find it innocuous to have some strange man manipulating my body with foreign objects without my knowledge & against my will! That is tantamount to having sex with someone who got drunk & passed out. This novel sounds like the product or a real sick mind. For goodness sake -- if you cd Stop Time/why wd yr 1st impulse be to use that ability in a sexual manner? I can think of a million other things I'd be doing with that particular talent. But I suppose the author knew that his book wdn't get read if it didn't have a sexual slant.

By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Sunday, February 1, 1998 - 11:16 pm:
    "This novel sounds like the product of a real sick mind"....jeez, that's kinda harsh, isn't it? I haven't read the book but I've skimmed it and I thought it was really, really stupid... but sick? Compared to the writings of William S.Burroughs, the Marquis DeSade, and Georges Bataille, this is Disney stuff.

    Come to think of it, my own novel is probably the product of a sick mind too ;)

By Nelly on Sunday, February 1, 1998 - 11:23 pm:
    I've read a review of this book. It's by Nicholson Baker.

    But as we all know, the experience of reading a book can be quite different from what we imagine it is from others' descriptions...

    Read it and then see what you think.

    I'm only saying that because I want somebody else to do it for me.

    I read Vox. I've already paid my dues, I think...

    You see I wanted to read the novel (even though I knew it was about phone sex and I had read a review) because I was so impressed with the article he had written for the New Yorker about library catalogs. That article really stirred up the library world in a way it needed to be stirred.

    And I thought he wrote well. It was a long article, and it got down into the details and made them shine and reveal their poignancy. That's not easy to do with library cataloging, the details of which make most people's eyes glaze over.

    Well, there was some good writing in Vox too, some shimmering textures of thought, but I have to say I got through it pretty quickly and turned it in well before the due date because I just got an icky feeling about it. The fact there were stains from some kind of liquid on the cloth cover may have added to that.

    When you read novels written in the first person, you always have to remind yourself that the protagonist isn't necessarily the same as the author (isn't supposed to be, if it's a novel) and that distinction may be important with Baker's stuff. Or it may not be. (Was Ishmael Melville?)


By
Bob on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 11:05 pm:

    22


By wisper on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 07:45 pm:

    it's happening again!
    aaah! the matrix!


By C on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 02:03 am:

    does anyone know of any non-retarded wedding-appropriate poems or passages of fiction or what-have-you?


By dave. on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 02:36 am:

    nope. oxymoron.

    jeez, i'm doing it again.


By kazu on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 10:39 am:

    My friend K. used a passage from the Velveteen Rabbit that was kind of nice. If I remember, I'll look it up later.


By semillama on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 10:49 am:

    Kahlil Gibran is nice, but it's starting to get over used.


By Spider on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 11:08 am:

    W.S. Merwin wrote a very nice, unsentimental, love poem called "Kore," found in his collection "Flower and Hand." Let me see if I can find it online.


By Spider on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 11:17 am:

    Mm, it doesn't seem to be online.

    Pablo Neruda?


By patrick on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 12:22 pm:

    C & ? sittin in a tree

    K.I.S.S.I.N.G


    first came love

    now comes marriage


    soon they're pushing a baby carriage


By J on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 05:36 pm:


By wisper on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 07:14 pm:

    oooh ooooh!
    use the David & Donna 90210 vows


By moonit on Thursday, August 28, 2003 - 08:01 pm:

    heee Days of our lives.


By cyst on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 02:21 am:

    thanks, all. I can't find any pablo neruda stuff I like. or dorothy parker. or william shakespeare. or philip roth, or helen gurley brown, or laura ingalls wilder.

    I have not yet been able to bring myself to consider using kahlil gibran, though maybe we will.

    I've come across that "kore" poem in my search. but I didn't like it. I mean, I know I don't like anything, but isn't that about persephone, who only got married because basically she was abducted and taken to hell?

    happy marriage is just not supported in the literary canon.


By Spider on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 10:18 am:

    The word "kore" also refers to the type of ancient Greek statue of a fully-clothed young woman with her feet together (picture), representing modesty and other virtues. I think Merwin had this definition in mind; the poem isn't about Persephone, but about his (2nd) wife (out of 3).

    Are you looking for something specifically about marriage?





By Spider on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 10:36 am:

    Hehe...in my search, I came across this A.R. Ammons poem:

    Their Sex Life

    One failure
    on top of another


By kazu on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 10:37 am:

    "It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every last minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they emerged and quested about her consiousness.

    She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So This was a marriage! She had been summond to behold a revelation."

    -Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 10-11.


By kazu on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 10:37 am:

    "It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every last minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they emerged and quested about her consiousness.

    She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So This was a marriage! She had been summond to behold a revelation."

    -Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 10-11.


By kazu on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 10:41 am:

    sorry about the double post.

    I can't find my copy of the Velveteen Rabbit. I know it was around the part that says how you become really real when you are loved.


    Damn that shit always makes me cry.


By J on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 11:24 am:

    I like ceremony of the rings,short and sweet.


By c on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 11:34 am:

    Thanks for the ZNH passage and the other suggestions. I forgot what we're planning to use besides Ogden Nash. Rainer Maria Rilke, I think. I'm still being picky--everything's either too sad, too erotic, or too precious. But it doesn't matter. The only thing anyone is going to care about will be the scattered fucking thundershowers on their nice outfits.


By J on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 11:39 am:

    Calm down hon that's what umbrellas are for and emphasis on the word "scattered" thundershowers.


By Spider on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 11:40 am:

    What by Rilke?

    I found this:

    Love Song

    How can I keep my soul in me, so that
    it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
    it high enough, past you, to other things?
    I would like to shelter it, among remote
    lost objects, in some dark and silent place
    that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
    Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
    takes us together like a violin's bow,
    which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
    Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
    And what musician holds us in his hand?
    Oh sweetest song.


By agatha on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 12:05 pm:

    Use some Richard Brautigan, and fuck them all up.

    I would like to remind you at this point that this is YOUR wedding.


By kazu on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 12:17 pm:

    Has anyone noticed that people, mostly women, who are eager to offer advice are doing so mostly so they can talk about their own wedding?

    I enjoyed readings cyst's posts and for the most part, enjoy hearing about other people's wedding plans...but I got caught in the hell that is the "let me tell you what to do with your wedding so I can rave on about mine" conversation this summer.


    And I'm not even planning a wedding.


By semillama on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 12:33 pm:

    Kazu knows what I went through with that person's groom, except delete everything about weddings and insert the topic "Canadians take off their shoes before entering a house and Americans don't."


By kazu on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 12:43 pm:

    If Spunkem wants to hear a Canadian talk about Canada, let's set up a conversation with him and T.


    I guarantee he will be begging for Rowlf's criticism of the US within 30 minutes.


    Don't get me wrong. I really like T and his wife, but he's one of those who takes an hour to say what can be said in five minutes.


By semillama on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 12:44 pm:

    and it takes him an HOUR to comprehend what other people take a MINUTE to understand. He's not dumb or anything, just a little THICK.


By Spider on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 12:48 pm:

    That sounds like dumb to me. So, how come you guys like these people?


By kazu on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 01:20 pm:

    He's just a little slow, not dumb, and he's a nice guy and some of his stories are good. I like talking about chinese cooking with him.


By semillama on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 02:20 pm:

    no, he's not dumb, think of it like your idea is a SPERM, and it needs to penetrate the EGG of his mind in order for your idea to take root.


By TBone on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 02:31 pm:

    Sem -- the master metaphor mixologist.


By semillama on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 03:07 pm:

    Thank you.


By Hal on Friday, August 29, 2003 - 06:34 pm:

    Cock and a half.


By c on Saturday, August 30, 2003 - 11:57 am:

    people often use requests for advice as excuses to drone on about their own experiences. I know I do, anyway.

    I found the "kore" poem I had read, but it's a different poem, by someone else. robert creeley. I'll skip the start.

    ---

    ...
    It was a lady
    accompanied
    by goat men
    leading her.

    Her hair held earth.
    Her eyes eyes were dark.
    A double flute
    made her move.

    "O love,
    where are you
    leading
    me now?"

    ---

    I don't know why that poem is in a book of suggested wedding readings. It's not sad in that we're-all-going-to-get-old-and-die Shakespeare sort of way, but in that I'll-tell-you-where-we're-going-we're-going-to-HELL-and-I-mean-for-real sort of way.


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