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  There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible...

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  ...in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory than in any other of our intelligences."
  Jane Austen.

  Marconi started this discussion 2 years ago. ( reply | permalink )

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  uplandpoet 

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  there seems something more speakingly incomprehensible about jane austen...:)

  posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

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  Marconi 

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  I was just fascinated to see Jane Austen say something of some depth about anything other than well-off men necessarily being in need of a wife.

  posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

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  Marconi (edited)

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  there is a wonderful movie by Wim Wenders called, approximately, 'to the end of the world" , in which someone invents a machine that can record our dreams and memories. It turns out to be totally addictive, and destructively so. Austen touches on something here that Proust is normally associated with: the importance of our reconstructions, their centrality, and their infidelity.

  posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

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  Chinmayi Bali 

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  Jane Austen is usually under-estimated. By the way, the intellectual discussions here on Better than Starbucks are making my own thoughts incomprehensible to me.

  posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

  show 4 replies

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    uplandpoet 

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    CB, i can be inconprehensible without being intellectual:)

    posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

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    Marconi 

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    Ok, so I am usually rude about Jane Austen, but its a cheap shot I admit, and I was always respectful of her prose when I was studying literature at college. Its just that my life is more like a short story than a hefty novel, and I am reluctant to spend any more time in her company when I could be reading, say, Coetzee or DeLillo or Cormac McCarthy. And that goes for a lot of other authors too: I recently picked up a copy of 'the sea' the sea" by Iris Murdoch, and despite her impressive reputation, I put it down after a few pages.

    posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

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    Chinmayi Bali 

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    @ UP : A comprehensible statement, at last!

    @ Marconi : You're right about life being too short to waste it reading, let's say, the authors whose works we don't consider worthwhile but its really unfair to compare Austen with Coetzee. They're worlds apart. Being a girl, I'll always have a soft corner for Austen, no matter what.
    Was The Sea, the Sea that bad? I'd like to read it atleast once.

    posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

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    tapbirds 

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    I loved Iris Murdoch's "The Sea, The Sea" and highly recommend it. The imagry and prose were stunning, IMHO. The following is an excerpt from the novel:
    "and I had been admiring the graceful figure of the girl, whose almost dancing pose as she struggles with her chains makes her seem airborne as her rescuer, when I seemed to notice suddenly, though I had seen it many times before, the terrible fanged open mouth of the sea dragon, upon which Perseus was flying down head first."

    posted 2 years ago. ( permalink )

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