remember that part?
Do you remember that part in Charlie Stross’ ” Missile Gap “, where the surface of the Earth is peeled onto a Alderson Disk, and American colonists board ocean going vessels to travel to new continents on the disk, and they sail for weeks and weeks and weeks, and pass through vast megastructures called “The Radiators”, and then sail on for months more and are still not close to their destination, which is a horrible and desolate land, filled with man-killing insects?
You do?
In related news, I am 2/3 of the way through “Pride and Prejudice”.
The novel is, with one exception, entirely populated with dilettantes who have no skills, perform no work, generate no value, and bicker over who shall live off of the labor of previous generations and/or money stolen from peasants.
Seriously, I’m 210 pages in, and I haven’t seen a primary character accomplish a single thing of note. Heck, for that matter, I haven’t seen a character accomplish a single thing not of note. Even the cooking, cleaning, and packing of wagons is all done by servants.
The one exception – Elizabeth’s mother’s brother – is presented as a decent person – despite being a working, productive member of society. And, yes, that “despite” is quite crisp and clear.
… As in “I once met a Jew who was a decent fellow”.
I’m going to finish the novel, just so that I can say that I did, but so far, I’m strongly in agreement with Sam Clemens:
http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Mark…
“Jane Austen’s books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.”
Further, let me say that I find it disturbing that so many women like this morally appalling novel. It’s akin to the fact that so many women like “Sex and the City”.
I try to avoid paying attention to either of those facts, lest it turn me into a misogynist.
December 26th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Sorry, you err. These people very successfully accomplish the subjugation of the peasantry.
Austen is Hieronymus Bosch, in fiction. Read thoroughly and think hard on how to prevent such a foul society from ever rising up again.
I trust you realize these people you so despise are one and all Democrats, very successful at convincing the hoi polloi to vote for extremely stupid things, not so?
December 26th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
As for what women think, I’m with Larry Summers. They don’t, much. How’s that female suffrage working for us all then?
December 26th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
[quote comment="229406"]How’s that female suffrage working for us all then?[/quote]
I think that female suffrage has been an unremitted disaster – all of the socialism that we’ve experienced in the US has happened since, and because women have been allowed to vote.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
[quote comment="229407"][quote comment="229406"]How’s that female suffrage working for us all then?[/quote]
I think that female suffrage has been an unremitted disaster – all of the socialism that we’ve experienced in the US has happened since, and because women have been allowed to vote.[/quote]
That’s a bit harsh. I’m sure the men in the UAW, SEIU and ALF-CIO back socialism. And I’m sure there are plenty of men willing to go back to the days of having government pay for their kids.
The real problem is with the supreme court letting the legislative branch write the laws.
December 27th, 2009 at 12:59 am
Maybe if there were more of this we could end women’s suffrage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uPcthZL2RE
December 27th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Think of it as the Seinfeld of the 19th century. I’d always understood that Austen was bringing a meta-commentary to the silly tribulations of her day.
December 27th, 2009 at 6:04 am
Comedies of manners are like that, Travis. On one extreme of the literary spectrum, you have Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, and Charlotte Bronte; on the other, you have Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, and Ken Follett. There are lots of points between those two, and we choose freely among them according to our tastes (at least, until federal regulators intervene). Or, as a friend of mine likes to say, “That’s why there’s chocolate and vanilla.”
Austen had a serious point to make about the English nobility, and she made it quite well. But if you want “blood, guts, gore, and veins in my teeth,” you’d be best advised to stick to the other end of the spectrum.
December 27th, 2009 at 11:25 am
I told you there were no Italians in it, but you went ahead and read it anyway?
December 27th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
You do?
Heck, yes. ‘Missile Gap’ was one of the few things by Stross that I enjoyed. I really, really liked the Soviet ‘Enterprise’.
Just restarted ‘Urth of the New Sun’, and planning on reading all of the ‘sequels’. ‘War and Peace’ can wait.
December 27th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
[blockquote=tjic]I think that female suffrage has been an unremitted disaster – all of the socialism that we’ve experienced in the US has happened since, and because women have been allowed to vote.[/quote]
If us uppity wimminz had been confined to kinder, küche, und kirche, we’d still have a Tsar in Russia, by golly! ;)
December 27th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
(double checks flame-proof suit seals and refrigeration conduits) Hell, lots of folks round here probly believe men shouldn’t have the vote either. s/probly//.
search on “anarchy”… ;-)
December 27th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
I’m not terribly comfortable leaving my rights up to the whims of snout-counting, either.
December 27th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
[quote comment="229405"]Sorry, you err. These people very successfully accomplish the subjugation of the peasantry.
Austen is Hieronymus Bosch, in fiction. Read thoroughly and think hard on how to prevent such a foul society from ever rising up again.
[/quote]
I always thought this was her entire intention.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Speaking of troubling voting demographics, TJIC, any comments on the voting habits of Jews, blacks, and urban Irish?
I mean, if a majority of a demographic voting for socialist bushwa demonstrated inherent unfitness for the franchise, we could start with “Being Born In Massachusetts”, because there’s obviously something in the water up there.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
“morally appalling novel”… pfft. Austen writes about what she knows; the upper-middle “leisure” class of Britain. But she makes distinctions within that class between those who discharge their roles responsibly and those who are wastrels. Landowners are responsible for the competent stewardship of their tenants and land (Mr. Rushworth, in Mansfield Park, is shown as incompetent and unfit either as a landowner or member of society due both to his vacuousness and his failure to provide habitable lodging for his tenants); younger sons without an inheritance are responsible for finding a respectable profession (Mr. John Knightley goes to the law in Emma, Edward Ferrars to the clergy in Sense and Sensibility). Mr. Gardiner, the lawyer in Pride and Prejudice, is held in esteem by all in that novel whose esteem is worth having; Austen is clear that, in sneering at him, characters like Caroline Bingley are snobbish and incapable of understanding what true quality consists of.
It is correct that the novels Austen wrote did not agitate for a wholesale uprising of the peasant class. It is correct that the bulk of the action in P&P has more to do with courtship than with the work landowners do to keep their estates going, and that the social commentary revolves around interpersonal interactions rather than the evils of inherited property. But just because Austen didn’t write the novel that you want to read doesn’t mean that her works are “morally appalling”. She clearly makes a distinction between people of character and merit and those without, and although her standards for distinguishing between the two are not exactly congruent to yours, they are hardly morally abhorrent, and fulfilling a productive role in the society she’s writing about certainly does come into play.
Might it be possible that, like Elizabeth Bennett in her initial assessment of Darcy, you read this novel with a prejudiced eye, that you had a conclusion in mind that you wished to reach before you started and that your reading and interpretation of the work conspired to support that conclusion? Is it possible that, already embracing the opinion that most women enjoy things that are a waste of time, you are overeager to consign Austen to the trashheap of worthless (or morally pernicious, even!) woman-oriented popular entertainments, simply because she didn’t choose to write about work?
And, @Tam, even though I hold fairly cheap the right to participate in the sham that is our democratic process, I would still be perturbed if I thought that Travis wished to deprive me of that right based solely on my gender. I *think* that he is simply expressing regret for the results of women’s suffrage, not a wish to strip women (or other left-tending groups) of the vote. Seems to me that’s not how he rolls, but correct me if I’m wrong, Travis.
December 29th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Oh, snap! Well done! Huzzah!
December 29th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Yup. Someone got taking to the wood shed.
December 29th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
[quote comment="229488"] I would still be perturbed if I thought that Travis wished to deprive me of that right based solely on my gender. I *think* that he is simply expressing regret for the results of women’s suffrage, not a wish to strip women (or other left-tending groups) of the vote. [/quote]
No, I am explicitly saying that it would be a good thing to strip women of the vote.
I’d also like to strip men of the vote, but I think that men voting, while harmful, is not quite as harmful as women voting.
Re: other groups voting: it’s true that some demographics vote very poorly (measured not just in outcomes, but also in how little they know, on average, about candidates, policies, and economics). The reason that women voting is so much more problematic than, say, Irish voting, is that there are so many more women than any other group you might care to mention.
The end goal, though, is that no one should be able to vote.
Or, to rephrase, nothing (or nothing of import) should be decided by elections.
December 29th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
[quote comment="229497"]Oh, snap! Well done! Huzzah![/quote]
Stop kissing Kelly’s ass in the comments – it’s unseemly.
December 29th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Alright, I suspected that your opinions lay somewhere along those lines, but was imprecise in my phrasing and did not receive the clarification I was hoping for. Two questions:
Do you think it would be a good thing, in terms of outcomes, to strip women of the vote, while allowing men to retain the vote?
Do you think stripping women of the vote, while allowing men to retain the vote, would be morally defensible?
January 1st, 2010 at 12:18 am
Travis sez:
“Re: other groups voting: it’s true that some demographics vote very poorly (measured not just in outcomes, but also in how little they know, on average, about candidates, policies, and economics).
“The end goal, though, is that no one should be able to vote.”
So, what’s it to be? Anarchy? Monarchy? Or a Republic (if you can keep it)?
I choose Republic, and I choose to keep it as the Founders envisioned and provided: a limited, representative government, voted upon by those who owned property, paid taxes and could read and write. All of which was predicated upon, in the Founders own words, “a moral people,” about which I see little possible redemption at the moment.
In the name of “democracy” (an idea the Founders pronounced as anathema) and “freedom” we have let all that go. At the time, womens suffrage fell under the first category. Now if we would but reinstate those basic qualifications listed above we would go a long way toward restoring some sanity to to government and society.
Sorry, Tam, but I’ve seen the graph that demonstrates how state, and eventually federal, government spending leaps in every state after women get the vote, and increases every year thereafter. Not every woman is as independent as you are and it’s not because men are holding them down, certainly not in this day and time. Women vote for statism as security, generally.
To repeat Travis’ statement:
“The reason that women voting is so much more problematic than, say, Irish voting, is that there are so many more women than any other group you might care to mention.”
Just so. The same applies to any group who vote out of purely group centered interest rather than for the good of the nation. And, yes, I know that’s a hard one… few there are who do not think of their own interests first. But …
“America will last as a free Republic until the people (*v. Congress) discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.” (Paraphrase from de Toquville, Franklin and others.)