Not everything I study is as interesting though! And I have to know the entire literary history of Western Europe, from Homeros to James Joyce. What I'm actually studying is Linguistics & Literature. They come in a pack for the first three years. But I already know I'm going to pick Western Literature or something similar for the final two years. Linguistics does have its intriguing sides, but there's so much BS to be studied, and in some way the literary science interests me more. I feel bad for the interesting parts of Linguistics, but there's just too much crap (Phonetics mainly) to fully like it. But that might change over the course of 3 years...
Man I wish I got to study such cool stuff I'm studying Human Geography and Development studies, and most of the reading is out of a textbook. I'm taking a religion paper and an international politics paper as well this trimester though, so I've been reading excerpts and even full versions of some fairly important texts. I read Machiavell's The Prince on Saturday, and the original article version (it became a book) of Samuel Huntingdon's The Clash of Civilisations. So yeah, some interesting things, but a lot of it requires effort to lift the page. Ahh I really wanted to read The Count of Monte Cristo last year, but I never got around to it. It was after I heard the classical piece by the same name (forgot the composer) in The Shawshank Redemption. I was writing an essay on the music in the film, so I read about the book, and it sounded really good, but... just not enough hours in the day. How many languages do you speak?
Second part of my response: I'm planning on reading some Oscar Wilde stuff too, and I think I'll start with the French literature after that. My specialisation is Dutch and English literature, but that doesn't mean I should limit my reading to those two languages. A specific book I'm thinking of is Alexandre Dumas' Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (i.e. The Count of Monte-Cristo). I'm not sure if I'll read it in French though, really depends on the vocabulary the guy used. Long way to go And then there's so much great poetry and films! sigh...
I don't go see it live, though I saw it once when I was a kid. Me and my parents happened to be on vacation in France and we went to watch. But watching it at home in front of your tv or outside a bar that has a tv is way more fun. You don't have to wait hours and hours to see close to 200 cyclists pass you by in 5 seconds. And I've read Dune like 4 years ago. I think I even read the 2nd book in the series, but I just couldn't be bothered anymore by reading a series as lengthy as that one. I'm trying to read all the English classics I learn about. (I study Literature.) I'm, as you know, reading 1984 when I don't feel guilty and I bought Joyce' Ulysses, which is a little tougher in terms of vocabulary in comparison to 1984.
I know exactly how you feel, man. I've been back at uni for two weeks now, and I really want to read Dune, which I started in the two week winter holiday, and got 200 pages in until I abruptly had to stop to give way for ridiculous amounts of uni reading. I think I spent 15 minutes reading Dune, and felt almost guilty afterward... damn readings, they're such ball breakers. I've been somewhat keeping up with the Tour de France. I got into it after reading Lance Armstrong's autobiography, but I'm not familiar with many of the recent names, so I'm a little on the back foot here. It goes through parts of Belgium, Germany and Spain, right? Did you go see it?
Nah, I haven't finished it yet. I should be studying these days, so I tend to feel guilty when I start to read stuff I'm not obliged to read for my upcoming exams. I've got too much stuff on my mind. I'm into movies, books, magazines AND the Tour de France (which ends tomorrow, luckily ) so I'm finding it hard to focus on one particular piece of fiction or non-fiction.
I trust you're done with 1984 now? How did you find it?
Yeah. Italy is pretty conservative and right minded. Too bad for them.
No it does not! I'm just saying that one can argue that the shunning of individual rights does seem to have some kind of positive effect. In NZ our left has moved consistently right. We had arguably the best welfare system of the 1930s, and Keynesianism was all over the show. Now we have elected a right government, and things are going to sh*t, but it wasn't a lot better under the old Labour goverment. So yeah, Europe sounds good, apart from those ultra-nationalists I see elected to the European parliament. Enlightenment seems lost on them.
Does the economic growth necessarily make up for it? And yeah, I live in Western Europe, where individual rights are pretty much the basics of how it all goes down over here. The US claim that they have that stuff too, but in my country, being a "liberal" is almost being "right". Whereas in the US, the liberals are the lefties. But yeah, I love Europe and its freedom. Thank you, Enlightenment.
Well, yes, you and I see it as negative, but we are socialists. To others (fascists or just of right persuasion), taking away individual rights for a big picture is their idea of a good system. Look at Singapore, where it is illegal for immigrant workers to get pregnant, and they give $10,000 to poor people who get sterilised. That's utterly disgusting to me, but look at Singapore's economic growth, so there's something good in it (though, from a socialist perspective, very easy to critiscise).
In a way, I guess, yeah. Though he didn't necessarily feel the need for a drastic "revolution". But yeah, he must have hated how a system of which equality is the essence, and which he probably longed for to be partially realised, was just abused by the ones with power. The system that would have to ban those kind of situations to the past. And "fascist", isn't that something negative by definition? Taking away essential rights and individual freedom in function of "the big picture"?
Hmm yeah, the USSR kinda made being a socialist a dirty word, just like calling yourself a fascist would be, well, stupid. Even though calling yourself a fascist doesn't actually make you a neo-nazi, bigotted, anti-semitic [insert closing insult], as much as I hate the right. So Orwell implies, through A.F., that the initial, innocent, and necessary revolution was betrayed?
That aside, Soviet Russia was just another country at war, ruled by dictators and was, apart from the lack of ethnic cleansing like the Germans did, not much better than nazi Germany. They used the communist system, but they didn't exactly make it work for the people... They just used it for their own political, economic and testosteron driven goals.
Hm. I doubt that Orwell thought there would be some serious changes in Russia, knowing the country's nature and history. I think he just despises how things went down practically in the Soviet Union when their communism was "working". Him being a socialist himself might be an extra incentive to criticise the Soviet Union, declaring their way as "how to not do it", you know? I think he felt that what happened over there was an embarrassment to any ideology related to it (in theory), as do I. I'm a socialist and I think the Cuban communist revolution with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro was the best thing that could've happened to the Cuban people back then, but it disgusts me that Mao and Stalin were "communists" too. Cuba may have its major flaws, but it proves that communism can be the way to go. Certainly in a country in need, like Cuba was in the 50's.
