Can we have a Wanker's Corner?

[onebatmother]

Hello.

It's been noted in the past that there are some pretentious wankers amongst us who like to discuss some general subjects (eg.Porn, Religion) in a fairly, erm.. academic manner, and that this sometimes seems to intimidate and/or infuriate other posters.

There doesn't seem to be an easy solution to this problem: there's no doubt that people really do feel intimidated and that it might prevent them from posting on a subject that concerns them. It also must feel hijack-y at times.

At the same time, it's hard for the Wanker's to be told that they mustn't post anything that might intimidate.

Would it be possible to have a special place, with very hard chairs to keep us awake, that we may call our own?

Or like the girl on the roof at the end of If.

Could you wankers please help me out here?

Iorek, I am very sorry about the Judas thing - please don't take offence as none was intended.

That's alright, Swedes. I just felt I ought to refute the charge in case of further misunderstandings.

Damn, onebat, there was a copy of Daniel Deronda in my local Oxfam going for £1 with a glorious 1970's TV tie-in cover. I nearly bought it for you when you said you were looking for one, but thought it was too late.

that was very good swedes - haven't time now though. Will try later but I'm a bit shite.

Iorek - Is it OK if I laugh up my sleeve (just a little bit) at you protesting your allegiance to being a wanker?

No.

Ah, well you didn't say that it was a hair shirt. As you were.

Can we please turn to Daniel Deronda for a moment?

I keep laughing about this : "Catherine ... having resolutely refused Lord Slogan, an unexeptionable Irish peer, whose estate wanted nothing but drainage and population ..."

Do you think Miss Arrowpoint refused him because
a) He was a bog standard Irish man?
b) His estate was boggy?
c) He held crap parties?

LOL

.. or (d) She thought that a Pole with a baton what's more was a surer source of marital bliss.

(G. E. is very good in her wry assessment of suitors -- like Iorek's 'He really is not disgusting.')

Isn't all this longing for truth and self transcendence (Klein, Socrates) actually a need for human fellowship? Hence the comfort of religion, a partner and Mumsnet?

Or should I go back to books bearing the Richard and Judy Good Read stickers?

Is this in relation to Daniel Deronda or just generally? It is an interesting question. I have always felt them to be quite distinct. In fact my experience is of always lurching uncomfortably from one to the other. But perhaps you are right that it is the same impulse.

I don't know enough about Socrates or Klein. What did they both have to say on the subject?

Iorek - Both generally and DD. Is the good object simply human fellowship? Is it possible to face the truth about oneself without at least one other decent human being, your choir, your parents, your colleagues, Mumsnet? And is it possible to truly belong to someone or a community without having faced the truth about oneself?

Has anyone read Gide's Strait is the Gate?

I don't know. And I haven't. I can't begin to imagine what the truth about oneself might be. But I don't suppose there can be even the apprehension of truth without human fellowship. And it may be that the desire for truth is in fact simply the desire to identify our own understanding in order that we might communicate it and believe that we are understood by others.

Anyway I see that it is after midnight. I'm not posting anything more until the daylight hours after what happened last time.

I finally read The Bloody Chamber, Iorek. Was that a story you were interested in discussing? Or was it perhaps the whole collection that you spoke of?

WE ARE TIRED OF BEING 2ND CLASS MN CITIZENS

WE WANT COMPS!

OverseasmumsnetteRsunIteForfaIrtrEatment

Threadworm! Just found this. I keep putting things in "threads I'm watching" but rarely think to check them.

I did want to talk about The Bloody Chamber, mainly in the context of Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. But unfortunately I still haven't got round to reading it.

I have however finished Daniel Deronda. I enjoyed it very much, although it felt a bit unbalanced - Gwendolen seemed so much more real to me than everyone else in the book, especially the Deronda/Mirah/Mordecai triangle. I am keen to discuss.

I was reading some Melanie Klein too, but unfortunately have had to return my borrowed copy of Envy and Gratitude so need to procure another. (I have been battling a terrible temptation to start a thread in breast and bottle feeding discussing her idea that babies who fail to thrive at the breast do so because they don't trust their mothers.)

Move away from the thread honeybunny and put down that incendiary concept [winks]
I am going to catch up on everything soon. I have a plan for Christmas reading. Sorry I've been so crap. Are we all well?

Thinking about the use of enchantment, which I read about a para of at college, I wonder wehther it might be an idea to do a non-fiction thing, over a couple of months or so. Would it be easier to talk about crits than lit, do we think?

I've not read Bettelheim much and have forgotten whatever it was that I knew. Will try to look at him.

Just thinking about The Bloody Chamber on its own terms (the story of that name, not the collection), I like it because of its rather voluptuous sensuality and overlayered meanings.

You know the Freudian concept of overdetermination of dream elements, symptoms, etc? It is sometimes a bit of a cop out becuase it means that the therapist/theorist doesn't have to abandon whatever interpretation he has come up with when someone presents another plausible interprtation. But, cop out or not, it is useful in looking at this story because there are so many competing symbolic elements.

It isn't just a depiction of a dangerous male sexuality threatening a woman. There is a dangerous female sexuality too the frightening 'bloody chamber' where the man is driven to despair, the Iron Maiden (this torture instrument is named for its resemblance to entraping female genitalia?). Strangely despite all the murdered women in this story it is a dangerous female sensuality that impresses me most. I hadn't read it for years and when I reread it I realised why a particlar Suzanne Vega song, The Queen and the Soldier, appealed to me so much because of its similarity to this forgotten story. The same sort of sensuality and a plainly dangerous woman.

Then there is the religious symbolism, the contrived Fall of the woman, breaking a trap-setting promise not to look, so that she can be subsequently punished.

Very weak ending though, I thought.

Oh, and re the dangerous women with entrapping vagina, etc, obv that is a v reactionary idea, which men use to justify hate, but Angela Carter subverts that kind of thing, yes? She takes the hold of the notion of a dangerous female sensuality and keeps it for women? The sensual tone of the story is womanly, rich, and dangerous.