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Bookworm
Bookworm
2:03 AM
0
Q: Did Napoleon ever shoot a bookseller?

BarnabyIn The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (1975) there is a story about Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) that runs as follows: "At a literary dinner Campbell asked leave to propose a toast, and gave the health of Napoleon Bonaparte. The war was at its height, and the very mention of Napoleon's name, ex...

historical-context
 
 
1 hour later…
verbose
verbose
3:25 AM
@GarethRees ooh, good to know. It's also the first published of the three novels in the volume
Thanks!
Even better than The Bottle Factory Outing? I love that novel
 
verbose
verbose
3:53 AM
Apparently it's the 1787th greatest book of all time, who knew
 
Mithical
Mithical
@Bookworm Hmm. I'm not sure this quite fits within our scope.
 
verbose
verbose
The bottle factory workers decide to get rid of an inconvenient corpse by sealing it in a brandy barrel. One of them foresees a problem:
> if old Paganotti mistakes the barrel and siphons himself a drink? By Jesus, there'd be more body in the brandy than he bargained for.
Apparently Bainbridge was shortlisted five! times for the Booker but never won. I wonder how many other multiply shortlisted authors who have never won are out there ... Anita Desai at least thrice
For all you mathemagicians out there, that five! is just five, not 5 * 4!
 
verbose
verbose
4:45 AM
@Mithical I guess it qualifies because Thos. Campbell is a poet?
 
Mithical
Mithical
Or because the source of the anecdote is a published work, it could be considered a question about that book
 
verbose
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@Mithical yeah but we don't accept questions about just any published work, do we? I mean, if the work in question were a medical textbook and someone says, "I don't understand this paragraph on p. 287," I don't think we would say that's on topic because it's in a published work.
 
Mithical
Mithical
It's... a contentious subject.
 
verbose
verbose
I don't see why? We had a discussion in meta about whether we should be "Books" or "Literature" and we chose the latter because we explicitly didn't want to be about any or every book (and also because we wanted to include oral tradition works)
Related, I do wish people would weigh in here, at least by up- or downvoting the answers provided so far.
 
Mithical
Mithical
5:01 AM
@verbose I've given it some more exposure
 
verbose
verbose
@Mithical thanks, that's kind of you. May I ask how? I'm intrigued
 
Mithical
Mithical
@verbose Yes, so it really depends on what the specific question is. There have been protracted arguments about questions about research papers, for instance. I personally usually err on the side of a broader scope, but the edge cases usually get dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
@verbose Slapped a featured tag on it :)
 
verbose
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@Mithical oh ah. Thanks!
Unrelated, I was talking to my dog about AVL trees, and he claimed he has a nicer bark than they do 🐶🌳
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
@Bookworm Beautiful poem, I missed it somehow while reading Keats. I should memorize it.
 
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@CowperKettle, baby! It has been a few days since you posted any of your l'lle quotations and such here. Glad to see you again. I was wondering whether everything was okay with you.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
5:15 AM
I'm okay, only tired from riding my bicycle ))
Riding bicycle, sleeping and reading psychiatry research articles.
 
verbose
verbose
Is that a metaphor for something, or are you being literal?
oh okay, literal then
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
I'm a delivery boy on a bicycle
 
verbose
verbose
I understand you're not the only one who's exhausted; your bicycle is prolly two-tired as well.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
The weather 3 days ago
Now it has all melted.
 
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🥶
 
Mithical
Mithical
5:18 AM
@verbose Who would ever use a bicycle as a metaphor?
 
verbose
verbose
@CowperKettle you did say Yekatarinburg was cold, but I didn't think it would involve snow in May. I thought South Bend, where snow in April was a thing, was bad enough.
@Mithical ah, nice. I guess not bicycles so much but things like "easy as falling off a bike" or "it's like riding a bicycle, once you learn you never forget" are common enough metaphors. Though I suppose the former is usually "log" rather than "bike."
metaphors in the sense of figurative language, not as in the specific rhetorical device
I miss my bicycle. It got stolen during the pandemic shutdowns and I can't really afford to replace it. I've considered selling my car and getting an electric bicycle instead ...
 
Mithical
Mithical
Oof. I keep mine inside when not in use to both prevent theft and protect from the weather.
 
verbose
verbose
5:43 AM
Mine was in the basement garage of my apartment bldg
 
verbose
verbose
6:15 AM
@Bookworm To the Nile and the HNQ
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
6:38 AM
1
Q: What is "the sin that no Christian need pardon"?

MithicalTowards the beginning of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood has a dream where he is sitting at a sermon by a Jabes Branderham. At a certain point, in this dream, he decides to accuse Jabes of "the sin that no Christian need pardon": I was condemned to hear all out: finally, he reache...

emily-bronte wuthering-heights
 
 
1 hour later…
verbose
verbose
7:49 AM
@Bookworm that's actually a hilarious passage. Thanks for reminding me of it, @Mithical! Time was when I would call Wuthering Heights one of my three favorite novels (the other two, since you're dying to know, were Middlemarch and Emma).
 
Mithical
Mithical
re: The spelling of "Jabes", @verbose ^
@verbose Slowly working my way through it...
 
verbose
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@Mithical Apologies. Feel free to roll back. I was relying on memory, backed up by a look at Project Gutenberg.
@Mithical It is not an easy read. I struggled with it as a child, and gave up. As a teenager, I got through it, but thought it was preposterous. It took me a third read to recognize it as a masterpiece. The last sentence is very beautiful indeed.
 
 
4 hours later…
Gareth Rees
Gareth Rees
12:12 PM
There is a very useful essay, ‘The Structure of Wuthering Heights’ (1926) by C. P. Sanger, that discusses the legal aspects of the story that Brontë leaves implicit. You can’t follow the logic of Heathcliff’s actions in the second part of the story without knowing how the law of inheritance worked!
 
 
2 hours later…
Peter Shor
Peter Shor
2:38 PM
@verbose Is there any rule that says a masterpiece can't be preposterous? I'd say that Vladimir Nabokov's book Pale Fire is clearly a masterpiece, but also preposterous.
 
Gareth Rees
Gareth Rees
3:30 PM
@verbose Project Gutenberg is convenient but the edition they chose to digitize shows poor editorial judgment in that dialect has been partly standardized, e.g., Joseph's first speech in chapter 2 is “T’ maisters dahn i’ t’fowld. Goa rahnd by th’ end ut’ laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him” but Project Gutenberg has “T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld. Go round by th’ end o’ t’ laith, if ye went to spake to him.” I suppose we must be thankful that the editor didn’t change “laith” to “barn”.
 
 
5 hours later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
8:20 PM
1
Q: Scansion of a line in Yeats' "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death"?

Pearl"An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" holds a firm iambic tetrametric rhythm throughout, except for line 8, which includes 9 syllables: Or leave them happier than before; How would you scan this line? Would "-pier than" count as an anapaest?

poetry meter william-butler-yeats
 
 
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Bookworm
Bookworm
10:14 PM
0
Q: What does "the last day" and "the first" mean?

Silent SojournerFrom John Le Carré's Smiley's People: Till today again, when they were back. Except that today was about fifty thousand times worse, because today was now, and the street today was as empty as on the last day or the first, and the man who was five metres behind her was drawing closer, and the ma...

john-le-carre smileys-people
 
 
1 hour later…
verbose
verbose
11:33 PM
@GarethRees That is poor judgment, I agree. Thanks for alerting me to that!
 

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