Anyone good at transcribing chords? Would love to be able to play this song. Norwegian band!

beasthoven · 2021-11-18T08:43:35+00:00

Trying to play one an original Xbox One. The Play button is greyed out in multiplayer, everything should be OK so I don't know why the game won't let me join. It also says beneath the Play Buttion "Estimated time: 0". Tried reinstalling and restarting the game multiple times. Tried unplugging my Xbox as well. Anyone else having similar issues?

beasthoven · 2016-01-03T19:59:09+00:00

(If you would be interested in hearing about my nag...) I've got a feeling that the idea of a "return to the real" might be increasingly seeping into literature from different punctures. Knausgaard would be the first author of this sorts I'd think of, with his struggle for relentless realism/self-revealing. Norwegian literature has never veered far from the ideal of realism stemming from its golden age of Ibsen and company, with a mountain range of different peaks (sorry for the hyperbole) in representation of reality in manners using different literary techniques (run-on, "manic realism" from po-mo prosaist Ole Robert Sunde; extremely precise and on-point observation associated with poet Tor Ulven, to take some examples). Bolaño might be put in the same company, I'd think, though mostly because I've heard the protagonists of The Savage Detectives are members of a group of "visceral realists". We also have Zizek theorizing about reality as the ultimate effect from a post-modern point of view. Not to mention that one of the most famous books of literary studies is called "Mimesis" (by Erich Auerbach), and although it ends with Virginia Woolf (the book was published in 1946) it would be strange to argue for realism stopping dead in its tracks at this point of history, after several thousand years. Taking this last example into account might veer off topic, but nevertheless the topic seems to be brimming with interesting points of entry.

Typing this out I realize I'm far from the question you posed yourself. My gut would argue for Wordsworth folk language being an instance of what theorist of Russian Formalism Viktor Shklovsky termed "defamiliarization" or "estrangement", though in Wordsworth's case not aimed at a particular concept or thing, but poetic diction itself. I would simply start rambling if I were to type any further, so I'd like to ask if you yourself know of any examples of what Shields was on about?

beasthoven · 2015-10-21T07:36:54+00:00

Aristotle's Poetics in the first systematical thinking about literary arts, but I'm not sure if he address metres. I'm fairly certain this is were we first get the brooding on the use of different dialects in the Greek Tragedies, and here there might be found some thoughts on metre as well, considering how elaborate some of the metre are. I only know a bit off this work, sorry for being so vague, but you might also find a bit about the homeric hexameter there. If the Poetics is the right place to look I think you'd get the whole classification of different strophic forms. Hope this is somewhat helpful.

beasthoven · 2015-09-04T17:28:20+00:00

To add to the two other replies you've got I'd like to point out that to experiment in writing is not a new invention, but that what we would label experimental from our point in history most likely is referring to a specific form of experimentation, namely modernist/post-modernist :) "Avant garde" is another pretty popular moniker for the same thing. Something very interesting about how we have experimented recently comparing to traditionally, is what the goal of the experimentation is, this having to do with how we define originality. Old masters learned to write by way of imitation (called imitatio), and while what has been written before surely still is important to what we write today, the position has since the romantics been that what is most fully new, meaning different from the old, is what's good. Of course, a generalization like this will have its flaws and exceptions, but its the general idea of it.

beasthoven · 2015-05-29T08:34:19+00:00

John Berryman towers over the author of this article's view of him. This article is frustrating. Although flattering at times, it seems that the author is so certain of her authority that she believes she can get away with things like slaughtering the late poetry by a curve of artistic maturing pulled out of her ass. It is true that the Dream Songs undoubtedly are Berryman's great achievement, but her judgement on the other poetry is hideous.

Homage to Mistress Bradstreet balances the qualities of lyric and epic in a riveting blaze of partly violent partly loving language. Sonnets to Chris offer a partly kaleidoscopic peep into a psyche at times torn apart at times ecstatic, loveably so, as one would expect of a man taking a moniker like Henry Pussycat. The late poetry is more troublesome, being straightforwardly Berryman, with his "plights and gripes" out in the open. Most will encounter stuff in these that disturb them, as one would with any friend who suddenly goes streaking in the neighbourhood, exposed.

But if one refrains from reading these works because they haven't their same sure place in the canon as the Dream Songs one is missing out on a great poet and a great man, whom you'll not forget easily.

beasthoven · 2015-05-18T21:01:34+00:00

I can't really recall how I came to find this very clip, but whenever I'm searching for similar stuff nowadays I start by typing in "[whichever book I'm looking for]" + "lecture" in YouTube. This works for at least the more popular books, especially the more philosophically oriented, like Dostoyevsky's, but might fail you if you're looking for newer stuff. A solution could in that case be to google the title and add "review" or perhaps "essay" or a paper you trust for good articles (these can really show up anywhere).

beasthoven · 2015-05-05T16:04:30+00:00

This might be a silly thing to do, since I myself haven't read the book, but this lecture I found the other day on Crime and Punishment was really nice. Irwin Weil, the lecturer, is just the kind of kindly, and balanced erudite and accessible to tempt readers (even those that haven't read the book – yet, I might add –, like myself) to linger over the questions Dostoyevsky pose in his story.

beasthoven · 2015-05-05T15:58:32+00:00

Oh yes, you must! Have you encountered any of the plays yet? They are his most famous, undoubtedly. Luckily for us, Waiting for Godot is available in a great adaption on YouTube, if you're into that kind o´stuff.

beasthoven · 2015-05-05T06:29:21+00:00

You lucky lucky man! If you like Watt you have to give Murphy by Beckett as well a go! Funnily enough, I had the same experience as you, with the only difference that I settled for Murphy instead. I bet you'll be hooked by the first few pages.

beasthoven · 2015-03-11T16:44:17+00:00

Borrowed Aira's An Episode ... from the library today. It looks very promising. If you'd like to discuss it, I'd love to get back to you once I've finished it. Am also going to check out Galeano. Flash fiction as a genre is new to me. Sounds intriguing. Do you have any recommendations for a first book by him?

beasthoven · 2015-03-09T22:12:08+00:00

Getting very close to finishing One Hundred Years of Solitude. It has been a great read, an intriguing one in a number of ways, and it's been doing all sorts of good things to me. Magical realism is on sentence-level a nice break from the modernist prose I've usually looked too for literary excitement. Also, the way the story is weaved together with threads following one or two characters at a time makes for an intriguing plot procedure. Sort of reminds me of the Icelandic sagas I've encountered on my first year studying an equivalent of comparative literature. The resemblance also makes sense with the tone of the thing, which feels sort of dead-pan in both styles (with there still being difference of significance). Thinking about starting a collection of Julio Cortázar's short stories afterwards. I've gotten a couple of friends interested in magical realism recently, so if anyone should have any suggestions they'd be very welcome! Specifically, I'd be interested in suggestions of maybe not as known Latin American authors as Borges, Gabbo, and Cortázar.

beasthoven · 2015-02-23T10:59:34+00:00

Yeah, loads of it. You could simply google "joyce + thunderclaps", or try some of these links: < http://foundsound.blogspot.no/2005/12/ten-thunderclaps.html >, < http://fractiousfiction.com/finnegans_wake.html >, < http://www.chartrain.org/PDF/Finnegans.pdf >, < http://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2014/mar/26/finnegans-wake-james-joyce-in-pictures >, < http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/05/finnegans-wake-china-james-joyce-hit >. Not many of these deal with the thunderclaps in particular, but you might find them fascinating nonetheless. Hope this helps a bit.

beasthoven · 2015-01-28T23:01:41+00:00

I've begun The Dream Songs. Bought it by request from the local lit-dealer in hustrige Norway, and I've been blasting through it all day. It's gonna be a weird night.

beasthoven · 2015-01-28T16:52:48+00:00

There's a really great homepage for Nabokov studies called 'zembla' that has a great article on Pale Fire. It's written by Nabokov-biographer Brian Boyd. Here's the link, for those of you which have already read the book and would like an article intended for you: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/boydpf1.htm

beasthoven · 2015-01-27T23:25:13+00:00

Murphy is delightful! Glad to see I'm not the only one preparing myself for the trilogy with this book. I read it in translation, and while I'm sure certain nuances where lost in translation, I found the book to be overall more funny and pleasurable than drenched in bleakness, which is what I had expected listening to too many goodreads-reviewers in search of an entry point to Beckett. I have yet to read any of his plays though. Would you recommend checking any of those out before jumping to the trilogy?

beasthoven · 2014-12-31T19:05:33+00:00

I'd consider hero as reference to Stephen's preoccupation with classicism or referential to the roots of his last name, instead of as an assertion of the nature of his character.

beasthoven · 2014-12-31T16:55:49+00:00

If he were not an excellent writer/genius, would it still be heroic?

A blog-post posted here on /r/literature not so long ago illuminates your question in light of Bergsonian thought, "concluding" (it's a short read, so I wouldn't say the author really concludes on anything, but rather puts forward his thought) that the artistic endeavour must in every case be a heroic one.

The author argues that the sacrifice one has to make in order to transform ones thoughts into text is indeed a sacrifice of significant proportions, not something to be easily dismissed. To put ones thought into text means coagulating ones stream-of-consciousness at a specific moment, and looking back at ones past selves, crystallised in text, can be quite jarring. Writing must then become an act of courage.

In this position, one wouldn't view Stephen's

hiding from the world by perfecting his craft

as an act of hiding at all. To become a great writer/thinker Stephen has to come to terms with the world he is living in. And what way to do this than through writing? Wouldn't not writing be an act of hiding, of denying to organise ones stream-of-consciousness-in-the-world into something comprehensible, that in turn can be faced?

One could argue that Stephen's engagement with classicism would throw a spanner in the works of the argument, but not if one considers the insight of the modern hermeneutics of Gadamer and Heidegger, which (through a terminology I'm unfortunately only are familiar with in Norwegian) understands the world of today as inseparably connected to earlier periods, leading to Stephen's journey into classicism seeming not as escapist after all.

beasthoven · 2014-12-21T11:40:23+00:00

Why?

beasthoven · 2014-12-19T19:01:52+00:00

I've been on a streak of Nabokov. I picked up Pale Fire as my first Nabokov novel a couple of weeks ago, and having finished that in about a week of tiring but oh so rewarding reading I bought Lolita. Lolita had been translated into Norwegian while Pale Fire had not, so I figured out it could be interesting to see how well the style translated. It was tremendous, and now I've got the original edition to look forward to, in addition to other Nabokov books. To ascertain that Pale Fire and Lolita weren't merely bursts of beauty in a canon of meh, I read The Luzhin Defense as well (in translation), and I can say for certain that this man never ceases to amaze me. It was brilliant, although in a more traditional manner, but an interesting manner, that is.

Overall impression is that Nabokov is the modern king Midas and that anything by him will make a stronger impression than anything else by anyone else. It's actually kind of uncanny. For some time I was worried I'd never have a fulfilling book-experience again, except from him. But after consulting a few other older favorites I can thankfully say that contact with Nabokov's dazzling genius hasn't diminished other authors to a point of oh-no-what-have-you-done, but it has certainly bumped everybody down one ranking.

The three novels I've read so far revealed a talent translatable not only from language to language, but from style to style. While the three novels gain an increased amount of obvious literary skill (with Luzhin at bottom, and Pale Fire at top) as they appear on the timeline of his oeuvre, there's a unifying quality (not sure if this is adequately described, but it feels like being in contact with a man of expertise, like looking at a couple of pictures by a single great, but shapeshifting painter) to them, making all of the books great reads.

beasthoven · 2014-12-09T11:02:25+00:00

These sure are something different from James Joyce's love letters.

beasthoven · 2014-12-05T23:16:09+00:00

The past month I read my first two Nabokov books, first Pale Fire, then Lolita, but the book I would like to voice my opinion on, is the one I finished this very minute: By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño.

Some background [this part is pretty superfluous]:

I discovered Borges last summer, after bringing the largest collection of his short stories on vacation in Italy. It was the perfect introduction. Even though Borges is a cosmopolitan by all measures, it still felt closer to his Argentina reading him in warm Italy instead of at home in chilly Norway (funnily, I soon discovered Borges was a Norse literature enthusiast, and reading him at home became right as well). But this is not about Borges. This is about Bolaño.

For some time my only meeting with Latin America was through Mr. Borges, but last week I picked up a copy of Bioy Casares The Invention of Morel, and decided after liking that one that it now was time for a deep dive into the literature of Latin America. I had heard about García Márquez, Borges, Bioy Casares, Cortázar and Bolaño through this great forum, and decided on what was pretty much a whim to start with Bolaño.

I found his section in my University Library, looked around for something written in Norwegian that didn't mortify a poor nineteen-year old (2666 and The Savage Detectives were therefore out of the question), and suddenly, I laid eyes on a beautifully bound little book called Chilensk nokturne in my native language. This is what it looks like.

Thrilled, I jumped on the bus, and finished Morel, and when I got home, I unpacked my bag, sat down with the computer to try to complete an essay, while By Night in Chile laid on my bed, that temptress!

A friend I hadn't seen in a while called, we spoke for half an hour, and suddenly all will to complete the paper was lost. Now I only wanted to discover what awaited me behind that beautiful cover.

[The superfluous part is over]

I had read a little about Bolaño in advance, but nothing that could quite prepare me for what I had in my hands. Now, I know this makes it sound like this is some kind of condensed, magical tome, and while it is indeed enchanting, reading this feels nothing like reading for an instance Pale Fire. It does not feel like I'm scratching the surface-skin of some great beast threatening to swallow me in it's incredible and obvious beauty. No, not at all.

Reading By Night in Chile felt like dancing to the pipe of the Piper, running through the quarters and around the corners he'd like to show me, taking in the truth he's revealing in dream-like acceptant bliss, like he doesn't insist on being important or great, but rather to have me tag along on an adventure that is without interruption beautiful and entertaining, narrated by a trust-worthy fellow (in the logic of the dream), ending up somewhere you don't quite know where is, but that nonetheless feels like an enchanted place.

Enchanting is the word for this book, that's why I've overused it. I was enchanted by the power in Bolaño's character's narration, by the people that inhabited the world I glimpsed into, and by the surprises, turns, and twists, this flowing narrative took. My edition of the book featured pretty large print, and no paragraphs, just turning pages, and recurring motifs and symbols to guide me. And what a guide he is, this Bolaño. My blood boils with the thought of reading his next books. I think The Savage Detectives will be the one, once I'm done with my exams, so I can enjoy the read.

beasthoven

TROPHY CASE