The Reading Room

Bookworm

04:42

0

I'm trying unsuccessfully to remember the name of American author who wrote a series of very popular books during the sixties or seventies on his encounter with a Mexican guru. Any suggestions?

author-identification

Rand al'Thor

05:47

@Fabjaja Nobody has any sort of copy: it was never published and the manuscript was destroyed :-) That's why I'm interested to know exactly how much is known about the story and from what sources. And why I'm pre-pinging, because it might be a difficult one to answer and need a lot of digging, since just reading the text is out of the question.

Bookworm

08:29

1

Q: Was Frederick Lawley based on a real figure in British India?

The fictional character of Frederick Lawley, a prominent British figure in colonial India, is the main object of R. K. Narayan's "Lawley Road" (a short story first published in 1956 in the eponymous collection, also republished in the 1982 collection Malgudi Days which I'm currently reading onlin...

short-stories character-analysis inspiration r-k-narayan

Fabjaja

08:48

@Randal'Thor Ohhh right ok

Bookworm

0

Q: Who is being referenced in the opening line of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"?

The first stanza of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" goes like this: Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. Now, while Robert Frost might think he knows wh...

poetry robert-frost

Mithical

09:14

@Bookworm I think my writing style gets really flippant when I don't sleep

Gareth Rees

10:11

Frost cut two verses from the poem that originally had an explanation:

The woods were bought by Farmer Black
Whose cousin Bill's a lumberjack.
He paid five-ten an acre for't—
'Twas thought a bargain, nine years back.

Bill says that when the woods are sawed
Nine hundred thousand feet of board
Will go to build three hundred homes
In Boston, Springfield, and Concord.

Rand al'Thor

10:33

@GarethRees Good choice to cut them, in my opinion. The poem is more memorable and universal without mentioning specific names or places. As it is, the setting could be pretty much anywhere in the world that has snow in winter and human habitations.

Napoleon Wilson

Given that these introduce an economic aspect that doesn't seem to have been there at all, it would be interesting why they were cut.

Mithical

You just found your next Lit question. ;)

Rand al'Thor

I've now read three-quarters of the 1982 Malgudi Days: 24 of 32 stories, although less than that by length since now they start getting longer.

Got one or two questions from "A Willing Slave", and probably I can finish reading the whole collection by the end of the month.

Napoleon Wilson

10:50

@Mithical I would hope it might be tackled by the answers to the existing question already. (Especially likely if someone like Gareth Rees ends up answering it.)

(Unless it turns out these 2 stanzas were actually a joke Mr. Rees just made up. And worse if I've been the only one falling for it.) ;-)

Alex

17:37

I always thought the line was "Whose woods these are I do not know", which would remove the question. I can't find an original source for this, but an internet search of the phrase shows many examples of it. — Alex 24 secs ago

This is not the first time I have had a different text of a Frost poem in my mind than what appears in the standard editions.

Has someone been secretly altering texts?

In "The Road Not Taken" the original publication has oh I kept the first for another day, while I always had it as oh I marked the first for another day. One again, an internet search reveals that this version is widespread as well.

And it's not like these poems were floating around in manuscripts for hundreds of years where anyone could miscopy or misremember.

Rand al'Thor

17:59

@Alex That'd probably make a good question for the site actually. If there are different versions of the text floating around, it'd be interesting to dig in to how and why those different versions arose.

Sometimes an author modifies a text, even after publication, or before publication and some drafts have survived. Sometimes someone else misquotes or mistranscribes it.

Alex

@Randal'Thor I'm pretty sure I started a draft of this about a year ago. But I never got around to phrasing it well enough to post as a question.

Rand al'Thor

@Alex You know you don't have to write a ream of text every time you post a question, right? ;-)

Alex

I don't?

That's news to me.

Rand al'Thor

Apr 15 at 7:17, by Gareth Rees

Even poorly expressed questions are of value to literature.se because they provides a hook on which to hang a good answer. In the case of the Hamlet question, it could have been better phrased, it could have been more specific, it could have quoted relevant passages, etc. But that wouldn't make much difference to people writing answers -- the essence of the question is quite clear as it stands

Mithical

Most of my Lit questions consist of a short intro, a quote, and two sentences that are usually just a tautology of the title.

Rand al'Thor

18:03

Btw, @Mith, I saw you're close to your Socratic badge. Good going.

Alex

There's also the chance that I'll fall into the dilemma here:

6

Q: Why does Great Literary Classics change details in its abridged versions?

From the Wikipedia article on Great Illustrated Classics: The Great Illustrated Classics series of books offers easy-to-read adaptations of well known classics, featuring large print and illustrations on every other page. The series is targeted at children, but the writing style is suit...

editions

One question about the whole concept of differences, or one question for each difference?

Mithical

@Randal'Thor Had been meaning to get it half a year ago, and then... things happened.

Alex

@Randal'Thor The question was intended to be about the series as a whole, as I think the phenomenon exists in other books as well. I gave examples from Monte Cristo because that’s the one I happened to have access to. I can edit the question to make it specific for simplicity’s sake. Although, what happens if I get access to the others. Should I ask 66 separate questions? — Alex Oct 28 '18 at 13:08

Rand al'Thor

@Alex I guess it depends on what kind of answers you'd like to see. A general "why do abridged versions change details" might get some super-general high-level answers, cf:

21

Q: Translation: Why are parts of the original language kept?

Inspired by this question. In many translated works (the first to come to mind are translations by Richard Pevear and the English versions of Isaac Bashevis Singer's writings) there are elements of the original language which is kept, while the bulk of the text is rendered into translation. Why ...

translation

If you ask a specific question about a Frost poem, you might get an answer along the lines of "he published this version in this magazine in this year, then later changed this and that detail for these reasons" or "it's a misquotation which dates to this collection/website/whatever".

Alex

@Randal'Thor It's hard to know what kind of answers I'd want (in both examples) because I don't know if there is an overarching answer that covers all cases (or at least most cases), or there is a different answer for each case.

Rand al'Thor

18:14

In the case of the Great Illustrated Classics question, I guess it makes sense to try putting them all in one question, because there's one publisher and maybe one abridgement process, so there might be a common explanation to those changes.

But when you don't know the source of the alteration, like with those Frost poems, then finding whodunnit can be a research challenge itself, and at least a good chunk of an answer.

Tsundoku

18:46

@Bookworm I wondered about the same thing but I seem to have mislaid the notes I took while reading the book last year.

Gareth Rees

19:22

@Alex In your remembered version of "Stopping by Woods" where the first line is "Whose woods these are I do not know", what is the second line?

Bookworm

1

Q: In what way is Daisy's reply about the temple courageous and subtle?

In Part Two R. K. Narayan's novel The Painter of Signs, Daisy, who works for the Indian government's Family Planning Program, and Raman, the painter of signs from the book's title, visit a remote village. The Family Planning Program aims to reduce the number of children per family to two. However...

r-k-narayan the-painter-of-signs

Mithrandir24601

@Randal'Thor No I'm not ;) :P

Rand al'Thor

Drat, another doubleping.

@Mithrandir24601 Well what are you waiting for :-P get on it

Tsundoku

19:40

@Bookworm Ninth question in the Narayan reading challenge. By number of questions, this is one of the more successful ones.

Alex

@GarethRees Same as the standard version.

His house is in the village though

I think.

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku I considered editing the list of completed topic challenges to mention how many questions were in each one. But decided not to, because having few (or no!) questions doesn't necessarily reflect badly on the topic of the challenge: it might have been just that people were more busy in that month, or some other factor unrelated to the topic itself. No need to "shame" the less successful challenges.

Tsundoku

I did not mean to "shame" less successful challenges. (How can one shame an inanimate thing anyway?) There have been challenges where I read (the) relevant work(s) without asking questions. It's the reading that counts.

Rand al'Thor

Sorry, that wasn't meant to be aimed at you, but rather at my own idea of including the question count in the list on meta. Maybe "shame" is the wrong word, but it would have made the 0-1 question challenges look worse than the 10 question challenges, even if they were perfectly valid and could have had 10 questions if site/user circumstances had been different that month.

Tsundoku

It would be nice to hear from people who are reading the books, even if they don't post questions. But that appears to be extremely rare.

Bookworm

20:15

2

Q: Why do I have a different version of "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"?

The first stanza of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" reads as follows in its original publication in New Hampshire (1923): Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow...

poetry robert-frost

Gareth Rees

20:54

Whose woods these are I do not know
The bank foreclosed them long ago
— Vikram Madan

Tsundoku

Whose words these are I do not know
They were plagiarised long ago ;-)

Mithical

Hmm, I don't think that meter works so well.

"they were plagiarized a long time ago" might be better.

Tsundoku

Well, plagiarists are usually not great poets, so I'll let it stand as it is.

By the way, the Globe theatre in London made a video of their 2009 Romeo and Juliet production available for free on YouTube.

Napoleon Wilson

22:27

@Bookworm It's a bit unfortunate, though, they we now have two independent questions which might have to be answered with a single intertwined answer. Maybe waiting for a proper answer to the first question might have been more fruitful than spewing out 5 million versions of the same question right away. ;-)

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