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Philip Coates

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Victor did have a great sense of humor, as Carol pointed out, but our resident expert on language, JR, came up with Victor "Manure," which is hilarious, and we all know that JR has a great sense of humor that ranges from droll to deadly with a side trip to demonic [with respects to Mr. Roberts].

I didn't come up with "Victor Manure," Adam. It was something my father used to say when I was a kid, and I doubt he came up with it either. I'm not sure if Xray is right that Mature himself came up with it, but he might well have.

JR

Thanks. It did seem to be right in your hitting zone, so now I am intrigued. Ms. Xray is usually pretty good with movies and American cinema. Now you have me wondering.

Adam

sorry about the sports reference lol

Post Script:

What did you think of Bernard Malamud's first novel, The Natural

"Malamud, however, began his career with his popular first novel, The Natural, influenced by his love of baseball and his fascination with stories of the mythological quest for the Holy Grail. The novel's allegorical framework blends realism and fantasy in its exploration of the theme of moral responsibility. Malamud employs forces of good and evil to complicate the choices and consequences that face his protagonist."

I am a sucker for this type of story.

**** She was correct!

Victor Manure and that beautiful hunk of junk were names he made for himself

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What did you think of Bernard Malamud's first novel, The Natural

Never read it. My antipathy to sports tends to mitigate against my reading novels or seeing movies that focus on that detestable subject. (There are a few exceptions to this general rule, but not many.) I read Malamud's second novel, The Assistant, when I was just out of college. While I was in college, I read some of the short stories in The Magic Barrel. Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors. Nevertheless, I never got around to reading anything else by him. I did see the movie of The Natural with Robert Redford (in an effort to be sociable and please my mother), but I remember almost nothing about it.

JR

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When describing a political theory that has never been tried, like planned anarchy, it must be described in detail, like a scientific theory, or a business plan. Facts of its existence must be presented. “Here it is,” the proponent of planned anarchy might say, “The facts of its existence are shown by the blueprints.”

Reminder, Rand titled her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and she didn’t have a cogent plan for how Government should be financed.

I think we ought to keep this thread on topic, who misses Phil already? 20.gif

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Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors.

Today's Süddeutsche Zeitung (the leading German newspaper) has a big interview of Philip Roth by the author, translator and literary critic W. Winkler. (Winkler has translated John Updike, Anthony Burgess and Saul Bellow into German).

In the caption, Roth is called 'the most important writer of our time'.

Why do you think of Roth as a 'fraud' and a 'mediocrity'?

Edited by Xray
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Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors.

Today's Süddeutsche Zeitung (the leading German newspaper) has a big interview of Philip Roth by the author, translator and literary critic W. Winkler. (Winkler has translated John Updike, Anthony Burgess and Saul Bellow not German. In the caption, Roth called 'the most important writer of our time'.

What do you think of Roth as a 'fraud' and a 'medioctrity'?

Edit your post again, Xray, so that it's comprehensible. Then I'll take a look at it and, perhaps, reply.

JR

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What did you think of Bernard Malamud's first novel, The Natural

Never read it. My antipathy to sports tends to mitigate against my reading novels or seeing movies that focus on that detestable subject. (There are a few exceptions to this general rule, but not many.) I read Malamud's second novel, The Assistant, when I was just out of college. While I was in college, I read some of the short stories in The Magic Barrel. Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors. Nevertheless, I never got around to reading anything else by him. I did see the movie of The Natural with Robert Redford (in an effort to be sociable and please my mother), but I remember almost nothing about it.

JR

Okay, now, this is very intriguing, JR's antipathy to sports. It reminds of Ulysses S. Grant's innate antipathy to the sound of music. JR: is your antipathy innate, or an acquired distaste?

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Edit your post again, Xray, so that it's comprehensible. Then I'll take a look at it and, perhaps, reply.

JR

Sorry about my sloppy typing. I have edited it:

Today's Süddeutsche Zeitung (the leading German newspaper) has a big interview of Philip Roth by the author, translator and literary critic W. Winkler. (Winkler has translated John Updike, Anthony Burgess and Saul Bellow into German).

In the caption, Roth is called 'the most important writer of our time'.

Why do you think of Roth as a 'fraud' and a 'mediocrity'?

Edited by Xray
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Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors.

Hmm, I didn’t notice this before. You feel Bellow is a fraud, or a mediocrity, or both? I liked Herzog quite a bit, and I also liked Henderson the Rain King, though somewhat less. I finished Humboldt’s Gift but wasn’t interested in reading more Bellow after that. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve never finished anything by Philip Roth. He just doesn’t click with me.

Okay, now, this is very intriguing, JR's antipathy to sports. It reminds of Ulysses S. Grant's innate antipathy to the sound of music. JR: is your antipathy innate, or an acquired distaste?

I suspect JR has the same feeling I have, it’s really just disinterest in sports, but when it gets foisted on you, like at a family get together where everyone’s watching the football game and you’re sitting there bored stiff, the feeling turns to antipathy.

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What did you think of Bernard Malamud's first novel, The Natural

Never read it. My antipathy to sports tends to mitigate against my reading novels or seeing movies that focus on that detestable subject. (There are a few exceptions to this general rule, but not many.) I read Malamud's second novel, The Assistant, when I was just out of college. While I was in college, I read some of the short stories in The Magic Barrel. Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors. Nevertheless, I never got around to reading anything else by him. I did see the movie of The Natural with Robert Redford (in an effort to be sociable and please my mother), but I remember almost nothing about it.

JR

Okay, now, this is very intriguing, JR's antipathy to sports. It reminds of Ulysses S. Grant's innate antipathy to the sound of music. JR: is your antipathy innate, or an acquired distaste?

It's an acquired distaste.

JR

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Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors.

Hmm, I didn't notice this before. You feel Bellow is a fraud, or a mediocrity, or both? I liked Herzog quite a bit, and I also liked Henderson the Rain King, though somewhat less. I finished Humboldt's Gift but wasn't interested in reading more Bellow after that. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've never finished anything by Philip Roth. He just doesn't click with me.

Okay, now, this is very intriguing, JR's antipathy to sports. It reminds of Ulysses S. Grant's innate antipathy to the sound of music. JR: is your antipathy innate, or an acquired distaste?

I suspect JR has the same feeling I have, it's really just disinterest in sports, but when it gets foisted on you, like at a family get together where everyone's watching the football game and you're sitting there bored stiff, the feeling turns to antipathy.

As he is so often, ND is astute in his analysis here. As a kid, I enjoyed playing neighborhood baseball on a diamond a group of us neighborhood kids built in a vacant lot at one end of my street. I even had a small talent for baseball. I couldn't throw, catch, or run worth a damn, but I could bat. And, as I say, I enjoyed it - up to the age of maybe around 12. Starting about then, I lost interest. This is, after all, a children's game. Why would it go on interesting an adult or even an adolescent? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces organizing tournaments and world championships and TV extravaganzas built around the game Go Fish? Or Tic Tac Toe? If I play a game like that now, it's because I'm entertaining one of my grandchildren - or some other little kid.

The other major sports - which, where I grew up, meant football and basketball, never really interested me at all. I had zero talent for either of them and was repelled by the very idea of a game like football, in which one's goal (if one is a linesman, at least) is to knock one's opponent down and trample him. This is a "game"? This is "fun"? Maybe for barbarians, or for people with the intelligence of a mule or an ape. And the only interest I ever had in any sport was in playing it. If I didn't want to play it, I had no interest in it whatever. Sitting in an uncomfortable seat among a bunch of sweating, grunting morons, watching other people (grown men, if you can believe it) playing a game devised for and suitable for people about 10 years old - why would I want to do something like that? Why would I want to watch something like that on television, when I could watch a theatrical film or a documentary instead - or put on some music and read a book?

If this is one's take on the whole sweaty subject and one has the misfortune to grow up in a place where it is believed that people without athletic talent or at least a strong interest in sports are utterly worthless and probably sexually deviant and definitely in need of a good beating - if one goes through the formative years of one's life having sports forced down one's throat in rather like the way corn is forcefed to a goose whose liver is going to become foie gras - one develops, over time, a fairly intense hatred of the whole sweaty, drunken, proudly meatheaded phenomenon.

I'll say something about Roth and Bellow later. Right now I have to get dressed and go to a family gathering where I can turn my back on the TV and the stupid sporting event being displayed on its screen.

JR

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Both of those reading experiences persuaded me that Malamud was a much better writer than frauds and mediocrities like Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, who were being touted along with him at the time as important authors.

Hmm, I didn't notice this before. You feel Bellow is a fraud, or a mediocrity, or both? I liked Herzog quite a bit, and I also liked Henderson the Rain King, though somewhat less. I finished Humboldt's Gift but wasn't interested in reading more Bellow after that. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've never finished anything by Philip Roth. He just doesn't click with me.

Okay, now, this is very intriguing, JR's antipathy to sports. It reminds of Ulysses S. Grant's innate antipathy to the sound of music. JR: is your antipathy innate, or an acquired distaste?

I suspect JR has the same feeling I have, it's really just disinterest in sports, but when it gets foisted on you, like at a family get together where everyone's watching the football game and you're sitting there bored stiff, the feeling turns to antipathy.

As he is so often, ND is astute in his analysis here. As a kid, I enjoyed playing neighborhood baseball on a diamond a group of us neighborhood kids built in a vacant lot at one end of my street. I even had a small talent for baseball. I couldn't throw, catch, or run worth a damn, but I could bat. And, as I say, I enjoyed it - up to the age of maybe around 12. Starting about then, I lost interest. This is, after all, a children's game. Why would it go on interesting an adult or even an adolescent? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces organizing tournaments and world championships and TV extravaganzas built around the game Go Fish? Or Tic Tac Toe? If I play a game like that now, it's because I'm entertaining one of my grandchildren - or some other little kid.

The other major sports - which, where I grew up, meant football and basketball, never really interested me at all. I had zero talent for either of them and was repelled by the very idea of a game like football, in which one's goal (if one is a linesman, at least) is to knock one's opponent down and trample him. This is a "game"? This is "fun"? Maybe for barbarians, or for people with the intelligence of a mule or an ape. And the only interest I ever had in any sport was in playing it. If I didn't want to play it, I had no interest in it whatever. Sitting in an uncomfortable seat among a bunch of sweating, grunting morons, watching other people (grown men, if you can believe it) playing a game devised for and suitable for people about 10 years old - why would I want to do something like that? Why would I want to watch something like that on television, when I could watch a theatrical film or a documentary instead - or put on some music and read a book?

If this is one's take on the whole sweaty subject and one has the misfortune to grow up in a place where it is believed that people without athletic talent or at least a strong interest in sports are utterly worthless and probably sexually deviant and definitely in need of a good beating - if one goes through the formative years of one's life having sports forced down one's throat in rather like the way corn is forcefed to a goose whose liver is going to become foie gras - one develops, over time, a fairly intense hatred of the whole sweaty, drunken, proudly meatheaded phenomenon.

I'll say something about Roth and Bellow later. Right now I have to get dressed and go to a family gathering where I can turn my back on the TV and the stupid sporting event being displayed on its screen.

JR

I wish JR were more willing to say what he really thinks, instead of always sugar-coating things.

Perhaps I will attempt to coax more information about his acquired distaste for sports out of him in the future...

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The physical danger of football is concussions leading to mental debility later in life to go along with the original debility. You have 300 pound linesmen crashing into each other. I like quality fast-paced college basketball if it involves the University of AZ. Pro basketball is a sick joke drawing down the college talent before it gets properly seasoned. I enjoyed shooting hoops as an adolescent, but was never very good at the game. The one basketball game I went to, as opposed to seeing it on TV, was in college and it bored me silly. Baseball has always been a slow game, but they made it even slower and steroids have ruined the record books. I most enjoyed the Mantle-Marris home-run derby in the 1960-1961 season (or the 1961-1962) where Mantle hit 54 and Marris 61. I saw it on black and white TV. The one sport I like the best, but I'm not insane about, is top-flight pro-tennis. But I'd never go to a tournament. TV only. I can't begin to understand what all these spectators at spectator sports get out of actually being there. Golf is the most idiotic for that. WTF are they looking at? Overall, football is stupidity incarnate. At least in Sumo they don't bang their heads together.

--Brant

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Interesting. As a reluctant and untalented participant in team sports (I was good at hurdles and gymnastics though) and a lifelong luxuriant in watching them, I think I get an idea of the intensely masculine intellectual slant of your essentially anti=collectivist feelings.

Sweat and beer are just human liquids, the results of exertion and the reward for them however unearned.

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Interesting. As a reluctant and untalented participant in team sports (I was good at hurdles and gymnastics though) and a lifelong luxuriant in watching them, I think I get an idea of the intensely masculine intellectual slant of your essentially anti=collectivist feelings.

Sweat and beer are just human liquids, the results of exertion and the reward for them however unearned.

Where I live it is quite unnecessary to exert oneself in order to sweat. (Not even slightly.)

JR

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Interesting. As a reluctant and untalented participant in team sports (I was good at hurdles and gymnastics though) and a lifelong luxuriant in watching them, I think I get an idea of the intensely masculine intellectual slant of your essentially anti=collectivist feelings.

Sweat and beer are just human liquids, the results of exertion and the reward for them however unearned.

Where I live it is quite unnecessary to exert oneself in order to sweat. (Not even slightly.)

JR

I get you. My cousin Cindy lives in El Paso and has not gone outdoors there willingly for 20 years.

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I suspect JR has the same feeling I have, it’s really just disinterest in sports, but when it gets foisted on you, like at a family get together where everyone’s watching the football game and you’re sitting there bored stiff, the feeling turns to antipathy.

Just to expand on this a little, imagine everyone else is watching the game, talking about favorite quarterbacks, and ooh that was a bad call from the referee, that sort of thing. And you’re sitting there reading the newspaper, or fiddling with your Iphone, checking OL, whatever, and someone (picture a nagging mother) complains that you’re not taking part in the conversation! C’mon, be social! What’s wrong with you?

I sometimes threaten that when I host, it’s going to be all Russian opera night. It never happens though, it ends up being all about everyone else wanting to watch ball games. And so, they get their way.

Tonight will be either basketball or golf, I believe. I really really don't understand watching golf, I mean aren't there glaciers melting in Greenland that are more entertaining to watch?

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ND:

Do you, or have you, ever played the game?

Gee, sounds like the HUAC question on the Communist Party!

Adam

thanks for the loon vid

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Robin Williams on golf - one of his best skits and that is saying a lot - pure genius

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Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces organizing tournaments and world championships and TV extravaganzas built around the game Go Fish? Or Tic Tac Toe? If I play a game like that now, it's because I'm entertaining one of my grandchildren - or some other little kid.

Story time and make-believe are also for entertaining children, no? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces critically analyzing The Three Little Pigs or Hansel and Gretel? And yet we have adults dedicating large portions of their lives to talking about their favorite stories.

I had zero talent for either of them and was repelled by the very idea of a game like football, in which one's goal (if one is a linesman, at least) is to knock one's opponent down and trample him. This is a "game"? This is "fun"? Maybe for barbarians, or for people with the intelligence of a mule or an ape.

Yes, I think that the proper definition of "barbarian" should be "anyone who has a talent for anything which JR does not, or who enjoys that which he does not."

Sitting in an uncomfortable seat among a bunch of sweating, grunting morons, watching other people (grown men, if you can believe it) playing a game devised for and suitable for people about 10 years old - why would I want to do something like that?

I think it would be quite entertaining to watch you trying analyze the structure of an NFL offense or defense, and then tell us again that it's a game for morons and 10 year olds.

Why would I want to watch something like that on television, when I could watch a theatrical film or a documentary instead - or put on some music and read a book?

You really love your story time! Do you still do show and tell as well?

J

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Do you, or have you, ever played the game?

Gee, sounds like the HUAC question on the Communist Party!

Sure. I can’t say I was ever very good at any of them, but we had football games on the suburban cul-de-sac where I grew up, and there was flag football in PE class at school. Also, I was taken to many Dolphins games early in Dan Marino’s career (and for years before he came along), and played in my High School band, meaning I had to go to all those games too. I can’t say I was ever enthusiastic, I suppose I’m just not wired for it.

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Do you, or have you, ever played the game?

Gee, sounds like the HUAC question on the Communist Party!

Sure. I can't say I was ever very good at any of them, but we had football games on the suburban cul-de-sac where I grew up, and there was flag football in PE class at school. Also, I was taken to many Dolphins games early in Dan Marino's career (and for years before he came along), and played in my High School band, meaning I had to go to all those games too. I can't say I was ever enthusiastic, I suppose I'm just not wired for it.

lol I meant golf.

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lol I meant golf.

I've played golf, I was ok at it, but it doesn't interest me.

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina. ~H.L. Mencken

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Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces organizing tournaments and world championships and TV extravaganzas built around the game Go Fish? Or Tic Tac Toe? If I play a game like that now, it's because I'm entertaining one of my grandchildren - or some other little kid.

Story time and make-believe are also for entertaining children, no? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces critically analyzing The Three Little Pigs or Hansel and Gretel? And yet we have adults dedicating large portions of their lives to talking about their favorite stories.

I had zero talent for either of them and was repelled by the very idea of a game like football, in which one's goal (if one is a linesman, at least) is to knock one's opponent down and trample him. This is a "game"? This is "fun"? Maybe for barbarians, or for people with the intelligence of a mule or an ape.

Yes, I think that the proper definition of "barbarian" should be "anyone who has a talent for anything which JR does not, or who enjoys that which he does not."

Sitting in an uncomfortable seat among a bunch of sweating, grunting morons, watching other people (grown men, if you can believe it) playing a game devised for and suitable for people about 10 years old - why would I want to do something like that?

I think it would be quite entertaining to watch you trying analyze the structure of an NFL offense or defense, and then tell us again that it's a game for morons and 10 year olds.

Why would I want to watch something like that on television, when I could watch a theatrical film or a documentary instead - or put on some music and read a book?

You really love your story time! Do you still do show and tell as well?

J

Interesting, is it not, that Jonathan assumes any book I might read would tell a story?

JR

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Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces organizing tournaments and world championships and TV extravaganzas built around the game Go Fish? Or Tic Tac Toe? If I play a game like that now, it's because I'm entertaining one of my grandchildren - or some other little kid.

Story time and make-believe are also for entertaining children, no? Do we see adults with serious expressions on their faces critically analyzing The Three Little Pigs or Hansel and Gretel? And yet we have adults dedicating large portions of their lives to talking about their favorite stories.

I had zero talent for either of them and was repelled by the very idea of a game like football, in which one's goal (if one is a linesman, at least) is to knock one's opponent down and trample him. This is a "game"? This is "fun"? Maybe for barbarians, or for people with the intelligence of a mule or an ape.

Yes, I think that the proper definition of "barbarian" should be "anyone who has a talent for anything which JR does not, or who enjoys that which he does not."

Sitting in an uncomfortable seat among a bunch of sweating, grunting morons, watching other people (grown men, if you can believe it) playing a game devised for and suitable for people about 10 years old - why would I want to do something like that?

I think it would be quite entertaining to watch you trying analyze the structure of an NFL offense or defense, and then tell us again that it's a game for morons and 10 year olds.

Why would I want to watch something like that on television, when I could watch a theatrical film or a documentary instead - or put on some music and read a book?

You really love your story time! Do you still do show and tell as well?

J

It's no fair to slice and dice a rant. A rant gets all it's strength and cohesiveness from its completeness. It's like this Easter stuff all over the television today. WTF? If you slice and dice Easter you'll have the left-over rabbit for diner; all else will be gone except the over-cooked eggs.

--Brant

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lol I meant golf.

I've played golf, I was ok at it, but it doesn't interest me.

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina. ~H.L. Mencken

Mark Twain:

"Golf is a good walk spoiled [ruined]."

- This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but until the attribution can be verified, the quote should not be regarded as authentic.

I have played since I was about six (6) or seven (7) and it is one of the most difficult games that I have ever played. However,since I have played, I can enjoy watching it on television. I watch almost no television anymore, but when you love any game, you can watch it on television.

Hell, I watched chess on television and that is another game that I started playing when I was about five (5).

However, I can understand how boring it may seem to "watch" golf on television. The analogy to watching paint dry is apropos.

Adam

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