Mark

(except the bulge in your pants...)

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I've said it before and I'll say it again...women run screaming. It's a terrible burden, dressing to both sides simultaneously...

On which sordid note I'm off to buy comics. See you all tomorrow.

Cheers...I'm not any kind of expert on Russian literature. Haven't really penetrated beyond the basics, as of yet...although I can recommend Solzhenitsyn's 'Cancer Ward' and 'The Gulag Archipelago' (non-fiction, but still counts as sort-of-literature in my book) to anyone with stamina. Dense, bleak, but brilliant. For those who want something a little lighter, 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch' is a wonderful, if miserable read.

We've got a copy of 'Dead Souls' at home, so I'll dig into that soon.

i like the B&W ones... but truth to be told, i didn't bother much with YOUR avatars :p

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And it shows...lazy but effective. Nothing I couldn't have done myself on a home computer, in fact... That's OK...I understand. I'm not an attractive young woman. *sniff*

Thanks a lot, Rogan...there's some nice ones there. Hang on while I choose one...

EDIT:...and that'll do for now. Cheers, sir. Much better...

Dostoyevski's more obscure works are best, in my humble opinion.

Everyone should read Gogol's stories.

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Which Dostoevsky are you referring to? And which Gogol collection is the one you'd recommend? I'm doing a lot of reading at the moment, so I'd be happy to give him a try.

But what happens when THIS thread goes off topic?

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You get exiled back to the old forum, on your own. You'll be able to fill in all the posts you want...but no-one will ever read them. Moo hoo ha ha...

thanks! one of the few pics in recent years I've done on larger than A4 size paper (A3 in fact)

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It shows. Good shading, too...

Don't think it is Bowie, but it's possible. He wasn't big in '69, but he'd actually been around for a while, and did uncredited backing vocals on a few occasions (he's there on the Stones' 'It's Only Rock & Roll', for example). There's some surprisingly entertaining pre-Space Oddity Bowie available - it's mainly fairly whimsical hippyish psychedelia, but if you can get past the overly-mannered performances, there are some excellent songs. A few of them are performed on the rather wonderful 'Bowie At The Beeb' live collection, I think, from late-60s BBC radio sessions.

N.B. - forgive the Anglicized spelling.

Charlie -

In the early days, the key influence on Dylan was Woody Guthrie. A lot of his early material is pretty directly imitative of Guthrie's dustbowl ballads...he was also a not-inconsiderable expert on spirituals, blues and folk music from the early/pre-20th century. The melody of 'Blowin' in the Wind' is taken in part from an old slave song called 'No More Auction Block', while the lyrical frame of 'Hard Rain' is from a 17th Century Scottish folk song called 'Lord Randall' ("Oh, where have you been, Lord Randall, my son?"). Similarly, 'Girl From The North Country' is a fairly straight lift from the melody of 'Scarborough Fair', minus the "parsley sage, rosemary and thyme" part (it's a very old song, again...). I could go into a few direct poetic influences if you want, too. My favourite example is the Browning poem (can't remember the title, but I've got it at home somewhere...I'll look it up if you're interested) which features a stanza rhyming "sandals", "candles", "scandals" and "handle". Think 'Subterranean Homesick Blues', and realise quite how cheekily smart and well-read the bastard was...

Rogan's right, Chekhov's short stories are masterful. Haven't read Gogol, but must get round to it. Dostoevsky is also a magisterial novelist, and I'd definitely agree that he's better than Tolstoy (although I am rather fond of 'War and Peace', it's not the greatest novel ever written, and 'Anna Karenina' is far better). 'Crime and Punishment' is 2/3 wonderful, but the final chapters are slightly underwhelming. Put simply, it's good on the crime, but tails off somewhat when it comes to the punishment. 'The Idiot' and 'The Brothers Karamazov' are both better, in my opinion.

What can I say? A cheap shot, but I couldn't resist...

I've always been puzzled by the image of the Smiths as a dour, po-faced miserablist band. Sure, they can be a tad gloomy (just a leetle, perhaps), but I can't be the only person who finds a lot of their lyrics marvellously funny? Morrissey's an underrated comic writer, in my book.

You're enjoying this new forum far too much, aren't you, John?

Haven't seen the stage version, but I believe it's somewhere between the album and the film. The movie is, as Rogan says, worth seeing, but don't expect magnificence. It's a fairly self-indulgent mess, and some of the musical re-workings are awful (Tina Turner's version of The Acid Queen wipes the floor with the original, though, IMHO). Eminently worth watching, though, especially with the aid of all the drugs you can eat. It's trippy as fuck.

That's me on the bottom left.

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What, the ashtray?

Nice one, John...there's a few others already dotted around the site. He's confused by the absence of vast swathes of threads to post in, I fear...

Hypocrite? Moi?

Oi! You! Stop maniacally building up your post count for a few minutes, and sort out my avatar, why don't you?

:D

My knowledge on English Lit is pretty damn good too, though just like Mark I have some gaps: it's just impossible to know it all.

Agreed...I'd never claim to be an expert on 'literature' (although my all-round knowledge is pretty good, and if I don't know something I've almost certainly got a few books on my shelves with the full lowdown - the advantages of a large collection of reference tomes, I suppose), 'cause I know enough to realise how little I know, if that makes sense. It does, doesn't it?

Right, see, I knew it was about being sexually attracted to black people, but I didn't realize it was about SLAVES. Wow.

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"Scarred old slaver, see he's doin' alright / Hear him with the women just around midnight"

"Drums beat cold, English blood's beating hot / Lady of the house wondering where it's gonna stop"

Yeah, it's fairly clear when you actually dwell on the words, isn't it? I'm very fond of unobtrusively disturbing songs. Another classic for me is 'Girlfriend in a Coma' by the Smiths...a cheery little ditty which is, when you get right down to it, a bedside confession by a bloke whose just nearly murdered his girlfriend. "There were times when I could have 'murdered' her / But you know I would hate anything to happen to her ... "Girlfriend in a coma, I know, I know it's really serious". Also 'This Charming Man', actually, which is pretty obviously about a young boy being picked up by a predatory older homosexual. "Why pamper life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat" indeed...

...but this is getting off-topic. Slaps on the wrist all round, I fear...:)

Am I ever anything else?

you mean you didn't know?

and my mom wanted to name me Demian (a big Hesse fan, y'see... nothing to do with the Omen...)

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I wasn't sure what it meant, actually. Kept meaning to ask. What language group does Serbian fall under? I'm not an expert on European languages at all...

I really rather like that, Sethos. Nice one - excellent detail, too.

That's broadly the story as I understand it (the film makes some frankly baffling changes, but I think it's safe to ignore those). I sort of agree about the 'downer' ending, though...Tommy hasn't just been abandoned by his followers, but corrupted by power/adulation (see 'Sally Simpson' in particular, and note that Uncle Ernie is one of the camp attendants...creepy, no?), in a fairly obvious comment on rock megastardom ('Sally Simpson' was apparently inspired by a genuine incident Townshend saw at a Doors concert, where a young girl was fairly brutally beaten down by over-zealous security brawlers, and Morrison did fuck-all to stop it, being too absorbed in his own adulation) and corrupt religious leaders. Mind you, it's also possibly implied that it's only through trial and suffering that he can come to true self-realisation...he's beaten, broken and alone at the end, but he's also truly self-aware for arguably the first time.

...top tunes though, eh? ;)

But then you also get stuff like "Brown Sugar." When I finally looked that up I can tell you my exact thoughts: "Holy shit, this song is about having SEX with SLAVES!" 

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You mean the "Brown sugar...how come you taste so good...just like a black girl should" chorus never tipped you off? it always amazes me that it's so popular, actually. Get past the mighty riff and it's absolutely filthy. Songs have been banned for far less explicit content. It's always amusing to see prudish old ladies let their hair down and sing along to it at parties...presumably blissfully unaware of what they're actually singing about. Wonderful.

I'm good on a few specific fields of literature - 20th Century American Drama a speciality. James Joyce, too...

I'm also a pretty reliable source of musical arcana - Bob Dylan is the obvious one (dissertation research in particular gave me an alarming amount of Dylan-related trivia and knowledge), but years of obsessive reading, listening and mulling-over have left me as quite the expert on a good few eras/bands/genres.

Those are my major areas of knowledge...I'm also reasonably hot on my Shakespeare, with some gaps, and I've got a basic comprehension of Old English (eg. Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer...a very strange language indeed). I love films, and am familiar with a fair bit of cinematic history, but I wouldn't dream of calling myself an expert.