Re: On Deaf Ears

1

The dialogue format is Plato's most successful act of trolling.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 06-27-14 9:48 PM
horizontal rule
2

He is not a genius and like Margo Tenenbaum I don't even have to think about it. Also he came up in conversation an hour and a half ago, specifically how he is not a genius.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 06-27-14 11:20 PM
horizontal rule
3

I think I mentioned in an earlier thread that Might magazine is the only David Eggers related project that I've ever found worthwhile.

I'm under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that in renaissance/early modern Europe, dialogues were a pretty popular form among a certain set.


Posted by: AcademicLurker | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 5:16 AM
horizontal rule
4

Galileo got into a certain amount of trouble from writing dialogues.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 5:31 AM
horizontal rule
5

As did Giordano Bruno.


Posted by: AcademicLurker | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 5:51 AM
horizontal rule
6

"The Circle" was great.


Posted by: dz | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 7:55 AM
horizontal rule
7

2: You don't think about Margot Tenenbaum?


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 7:58 AM
horizontal rule
8

I have my students in my intro class write dialogues after reading dialogues by Plato, Boethius, Hume and some contemporary dialogues. It is some of the more enjoyable student writing I ever get.

One good tactic is to follow the Cicero model where the characters get equal weight, rather than the Plato teacher-pupil model.

Also, readers and writers just need to relax and have fun with the form. Don't get your expectations all ramped up by Plato and the classical reputation of the form.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 7:59 AM
horizontal rule
9

7: In my room with the curtains drawn / See her in the arms of Ben Stiller / Saying "No, I'm not."


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 8:19 AM
horizontal rule
10

Oh, sorry, it was Owen Wilson who played Eli Cash.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 8:20 AM
horizontal rule
11

I found Eli Cash vastly the most sympathetic character, but for Henry the accountant.

That review is very harsh, but doesn't even glance toward the matchstick flare in the more-in-sorrow gloom characteristic of negative reviews of otherwise-favored authors' dreck: familiarity and repetition have rendered progressive concerns, views, demands, etc., as nauseating and repellent as reactionary ones.

It might just be me.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 10:34 AM
horizontal rule
12

The Socratic dialogue was a genre with more practitioners than just Plato.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 10:53 AM
horizontal rule
13

9 made me laugh.

I used to think Smarter Feller was great.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 11:18 AM
horizontal rule
14

Writing good dialogue is so hard that no playwright should ever attempt it?


Posted by: Dave W. | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 2:23 PM
horizontal rule
15

No but you know the scene I mean.

Do you especially think I'm *not* a genius? You didn't even have to think about it, did you?

Well, I just don't use that word lightly.


I find all the characters sympathetic, or anyway I do right now, slightly drunk. There was a line from the film, one of Margo's, that I wanted for the tattoo I'm secretly never going to get anyway, but it was too long and anyway I'm not sure about text tattoos.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 06-28-14 6:54 PM
horizontal rule
16

Since this is the lit thread the opening of the first of Thomas Bernhard's autobiographical novels, telling us how he really feels about his hometown of Salzburg. Pardon the French and lack of accents, it's mostly laziness on both accounts - bounced off him in German once and found a nice French edition in a used bookstore so I figured I'd try again at an easier level. All emphasis in the original.

La ville est peuplee de deux categories de gens: les faiseurs d'affaires et leurs victimes. Pour celui qui y fait ses etudes, elle n'est tres souvent vivable que de facon douloureuse, mortellement sournoise et qui, avec le temps, perurbe derange, disloque, detruit toute nature. [D]'autre part, l'architecture salzbourgeoise produit dans ces conditions meteorologiques des effets de plus en plus devastateurs sur la disposition mentale de ces etres. Le climat prealpin, qu'ils le sachent ou non, est toujours nocif pour ces etres pitoyables: il pese en consequence sur l'esprit, le corps et tout le caractere de ces gens qui sont, bien entendu, completement esclaves de ces conditions naturelles. Ce climat prealpin produit sans cesse avec une incroyable brutalite ces habitants irritants, enervants, qui vous ruinent la sante, vous humilient, vous outragent. Ils n'ont pas d'autres dons qu'une grande bassesse, une grande abjection.

Fucking hell.


Posted by: teraz kurwa my | Link to this comment | 06-29-14 6:38 AM
horizontal rule