Statistical analysis of voting
- Thread starter MathGirl
- Start date
Un-registered
Really Really Experienced
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2002
- Posts
- 457
It is interesting to read the list of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature and see how many are relatively unknowns now.Pure said:
Can anyone tell me who the US author S. Lewis was (Nobel 1930)?
MathGirl
Cogito
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2002
- Posts
- 5,825
Sinclair L.
Sinclair Lewis was a very important American writer. He was known for his caustic, satiric style. Novels and plays such as 'Arrowsmith,' 'Main Street,' 'Elmer Gantry,' and 'Babbitt' are classics. They described American life in the first 20 years of the twentieth century through the eyes of a misogynist.
As you might guess, I did a paper about him for an English class once.
MG
Un-registered said:
Sinclair Lewis was a very important American writer. He was known for his caustic, satiric style. Novels and plays such as 'Arrowsmith,' 'Main Street,' 'Elmer Gantry,' and 'Babbitt' are classics. They described American life in the first 20 years of the twentieth century through the eyes of a misogynist.
As you might guess, I did a paper about him for an English class once.
MG
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
Re: Sinclair L.
So did I. Didn't like him then. Don't like him now. He caught perfectly the boring mundane existence in small towns in boring prose. We were taught that he was describing the shallowness of American life but we could see exactly the same in our own towns.
He was great at evoking the atmosphere that we wanted to get away from.
Og.
MathGirl said:
So did I. Didn't like him then. Don't like him now. He caught perfectly the boring mundane existence in small towns in boring prose. We were taught that he was describing the shallowness of American life but we could see exactly the same in our own towns.
He was great at evoking the atmosphere that we wanted to get away from.
Og.
MathGirl
Cogito
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2002
- Posts
- 5,825
Sinclair "Toots" Lewis
Dear Og,
I don't think S. Lewis wrote to win popularity contests. You're feelings about his stuff is exactly what he wanted. It's no accident that he's still being taught in English classes today.
Although the society he wrote about is somewhat outdated, we can still see the veneer of "nice" covering rather sordid lives. I think he said a great deal about American life both then and now.
"Our Town" is still being staged, and it retains relevance. His language is dated, but his biting satire has taught several generations of American writers.
MG
oggbashan said:
Dear Og,
I don't think S. Lewis wrote to win popularity contests. You're feelings about his stuff is exactly what he wanted. It's no accident that he's still being taught in English classes today.
Although the society he wrote about is somewhat outdated, we can still see the veneer of "nice" covering rather sordid lives. I think he said a great deal about American life both then and now.
"Our Town" is still being staged, and it retains relevance. His language is dated, but his biting satire has taught several generations of American writers.
MG
Last edited:
Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
MG:
Dear Og,
I don't think S. Lewis wrote to win popularity contests. You're feelings about his stuff is exactly what he wanted. It's no accident that he's still being taught in English classes today.
Although the society he wrote about is somewhat outdated, we can still see the veneer of "nice" covering rather sordid lives.
Speak for your own town! Mine ain't sordid. OK, well, a little perverted.
I think he said a great deal about American life both then and now.
IOW, you got a good grade on the paper.
"Our Town" is still being staged, and it retains relevance. His language is dated, but his biting satire has taught several generations of American writers.
True, "Our Town" is still being staged, but since Lewis didn't write it, it's hardly a point in his favor.
He is, as I recall, somewhat boring.
J.
Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
Wilder. {added: wrote "Our Town."
'Main Street,' by Lewis, was made into a 1923 movie; don't know if it's been staged.
In looking at titles, I see 'Elmer Gantry' and remember that was a not bad film.
Here's a piece of 'Main Street' from the Lewis site. Seems a little heavy handed.
===
http://lilt.ilstu.edu/separry/lewis.html
Main Street, Ch 22, section vii
She [Carol Kennicott, lead character] had sought to be definite in analyzing the surface ugliness of the Gopher Prairies. She asserted that it is a matter of universal similarity; of flimsiness of construction, so that the towns resemble frontier camps; of neglect of natural advantages, so that the hills are covered with brush, the lakes shut off by railroads, and the creeks lined with dumping- grounds; of depressing sobriety of color; rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness of the gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sight of the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along, while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makes the low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street the more mean by comparison.
The universal similarity--that is the physical expression of the philosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of the American towns are so alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to another. Always, west of Pittsburg, and often, east of it, there is the same lumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the same creamery, the same box-like houses and two-story shops. The new, more conscious houses are alike in their very attempts at diversity: the same bungalows, the same square houses of stucco or tapestry brick. The shops show the same standardized, nationally advertised wares; the newspapers of sections three thousand miles apart have the same "syndicated features"; the boy in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyant ready-made suit as is found on just such a boy in Delaware, both of them iterate the same slang phrases from the same sporting-pages, and if one of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may surmise which is which.
If Kennicott were snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyed to a town leagues away, he would not realize it. He would go down apparently the same Main Street (almost certainly it would be called Main Street); in the same drug store he would see the same young man serving the same ice-cream soda to the same young woman with the same magazines and phonograph records under her arm. Not till he had climbed to his office and found another sign on the door, another Dr. Kennicott inside, would he understand that something curious had presumably happened.
Finally, behind all her comments, Carol saw the fact that the prairie towns no more exist to serve the farmers who are their reason of existence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on the farmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment; and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return for usury a stately and permanent center, but only this ragged camp. It is a "parasitic Greek civilization"--minus the civilization.
"There we are then," said Carol. "The remedy? Is there any? Criticism, perhaps, for the beginning of the beginning. Oh, there's nothing that attacks the Tribal God Mediocrity that doesn't help a little. . .and probably there's nothing that helps very much. Perhaps some day the farmers will build and own their market-towns. (Think of the club they could have!) But I'm afraid I haven't any 'reform program.' Not any more! The trouble is spiritual, and no League or Party can enact a preference for gardens rather than dumping-grounds. . . . There's my confession. WELL?"
"In other words, all you want is perfection?"
"Yes! Why not?"
"How you hate this place! How can you expect to do anything with it if you haven't any sympathy?"
"But I have! And affection. Or else I wouldn't fume so. I've learned that Gopher Prairie isn't just an eruption on the prairie, as I thought first, but as large as New York. In New York I wouldn't know more than forty or fifty people, and I know that many here. Go on! Say what you're thinking."
"Well, my dear, if I DID take all your notions seriously, it would be pretty discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel, after working hard for years and helping to build up a nice town, to have you airily flit in and simply say 'Rotten!' Think that's fair?"
"Why not? It must be just as discouraging for the Gopher Prairieite to see Venice and make comparisons."
'Main Street,' by Lewis, was made into a 1923 movie; don't know if it's been staged.
In looking at titles, I see 'Elmer Gantry' and remember that was a not bad film.
Here's a piece of 'Main Street' from the Lewis site. Seems a little heavy handed.
===
http://lilt.ilstu.edu/separry/lewis.html
Main Street, Ch 22, section vii
She [Carol Kennicott, lead character] had sought to be definite in analyzing the surface ugliness of the Gopher Prairies. She asserted that it is a matter of universal similarity; of flimsiness of construction, so that the towns resemble frontier camps; of neglect of natural advantages, so that the hills are covered with brush, the lakes shut off by railroads, and the creeks lined with dumping- grounds; of depressing sobriety of color; rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness of the gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sight of the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along, while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makes the low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street the more mean by comparison.
The universal similarity--that is the physical expression of the philosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of the American towns are so alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to another. Always, west of Pittsburg, and often, east of it, there is the same lumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the same creamery, the same box-like houses and two-story shops. The new, more conscious houses are alike in their very attempts at diversity: the same bungalows, the same square houses of stucco or tapestry brick. The shops show the same standardized, nationally advertised wares; the newspapers of sections three thousand miles apart have the same "syndicated features"; the boy in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyant ready-made suit as is found on just such a boy in Delaware, both of them iterate the same slang phrases from the same sporting-pages, and if one of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may surmise which is which.
If Kennicott were snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyed to a town leagues away, he would not realize it. He would go down apparently the same Main Street (almost certainly it would be called Main Street); in the same drug store he would see the same young man serving the same ice-cream soda to the same young woman with the same magazines and phonograph records under her arm. Not till he had climbed to his office and found another sign on the door, another Dr. Kennicott inside, would he understand that something curious had presumably happened.
Finally, behind all her comments, Carol saw the fact that the prairie towns no more exist to serve the farmers who are their reason of existence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on the farmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment; and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return for usury a stately and permanent center, but only this ragged camp. It is a "parasitic Greek civilization"--minus the civilization.
"There we are then," said Carol. "The remedy? Is there any? Criticism, perhaps, for the beginning of the beginning. Oh, there's nothing that attacks the Tribal God Mediocrity that doesn't help a little. . .and probably there's nothing that helps very much. Perhaps some day the farmers will build and own their market-towns. (Think of the club they could have!) But I'm afraid I haven't any 'reform program.' Not any more! The trouble is spiritual, and no League or Party can enact a preference for gardens rather than dumping-grounds. . . . There's my confession. WELL?"
"In other words, all you want is perfection?"
"Yes! Why not?"
"How you hate this place! How can you expect to do anything with it if you haven't any sympathy?"
"But I have! And affection. Or else I wouldn't fume so. I've learned that Gopher Prairie isn't just an eruption on the prairie, as I thought first, but as large as New York. In New York I wouldn't know more than forty or fifty people, and I know that many here. Go on! Say what you're thinking."
"Well, my dear, if I DID take all your notions seriously, it would be pretty discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel, after working hard for years and helping to build up a nice town, to have you airily flit in and simply say 'Rotten!' Think that's fair?"
"Why not? It must be just as discouraging for the Gopher Prairieite to see Venice and make comparisons."
Last edited:
Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
Regarding "Main Street", this just in....
Interesting topic, MG.
J.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1555/3778360.html
'Six Feet Under' writer Craig Wright adapts Sinclair Lewis novel for the stage
Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
Published March 30, 2003
GAHT30
On Jan. 2, playwright Craig Wright sat down in the basement rehearsal hall of Great American History Theatre to listen as cast members read through his second draft of "Main Street." Wright, a staff writer for HBO's "Six Feet Under," was back in his hometown visiting friends so Ron Peluso, the theater's artistic director, seized the opportunity to gather his actors around a table and gauge how this adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' 1920 novel sounded to the ear.
"It's about 65 pages," Wright said. "There are about 50 good ones. I'd like to find the 15 that aren't and look for ways to fix them, or throw them out. I just want you to know it isn't perfect."
It had been about a year since Wright approached Peluso with the notion of finding a play within "Main Street," the most definitive Minnesota novel ever written. Lewis' masterwork prefigured cultural tussles that rage today, began to sketch the outlines of that passive/aggressive phenomenon called "Minnesota Nice" and appreciated, like only a native son could, the environmental landscape where high plains meet forest.
"Main Street," though, is a sprawling, episodic novel with characters and plots that aggressively chart their own course. Wright and Peluso wondered about how to adapt it for the stage.
They tinkered with the idea of a big-scale musical, splashing glib characterizations on the little town of Gopher Prairie and its cocooned denizens. But Wright felt Lewis' work was more complex and ambiguous. He and Peluso decide to focus on the relationship between Carol Kennicott, an educated and sophisticated St. Paulite who wants to transform Gopher Prairie into a cultured village, and her doctor husband, Will, who, like his townfolk, thinks things are just dandy in this peppy little burg on the prairie.
Wright listened at the January reading, and also filled in for one absent actor. He crossed out whole paragraphs and made extensive margin notes. He and the actors looked at their scripts, suggested moving scenes, trimming, streamlining, expanding -- seeking to somehow swing the dramatic arc toward Carol. Afterward, he offered his thoughts.
"It feels like parts of a play, but I don't see a play," he said. He was right -- the piece seemed more a travelogue of Carol's life.
"I think it's the story of a woman who wanted to be an artist but didn't have the courage of her own convictions," he said. "And she turned her self-hatred onto the inhabitants of a small town -- people who are provincial, but they never asked to be improved or analyzed. So I think it's a lot about the inner turmoil of a person who retreated into marriage and retreated into small-town living because she didn't know what else to do with herself."
Interesting topic, MG.
J.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1555/3778360.html
'Six Feet Under' writer Craig Wright adapts Sinclair Lewis novel for the stage
Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
Published March 30, 2003
GAHT30
On Jan. 2, playwright Craig Wright sat down in the basement rehearsal hall of Great American History Theatre to listen as cast members read through his second draft of "Main Street." Wright, a staff writer for HBO's "Six Feet Under," was back in his hometown visiting friends so Ron Peluso, the theater's artistic director, seized the opportunity to gather his actors around a table and gauge how this adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' 1920 novel sounded to the ear.
"It's about 65 pages," Wright said. "There are about 50 good ones. I'd like to find the 15 that aren't and look for ways to fix them, or throw them out. I just want you to know it isn't perfect."
It had been about a year since Wright approached Peluso with the notion of finding a play within "Main Street," the most definitive Minnesota novel ever written. Lewis' masterwork prefigured cultural tussles that rage today, began to sketch the outlines of that passive/aggressive phenomenon called "Minnesota Nice" and appreciated, like only a native son could, the environmental landscape where high plains meet forest.
"Main Street," though, is a sprawling, episodic novel with characters and plots that aggressively chart their own course. Wright and Peluso wondered about how to adapt it for the stage.
They tinkered with the idea of a big-scale musical, splashing glib characterizations on the little town of Gopher Prairie and its cocooned denizens. But Wright felt Lewis' work was more complex and ambiguous. He and Peluso decide to focus on the relationship between Carol Kennicott, an educated and sophisticated St. Paulite who wants to transform Gopher Prairie into a cultured village, and her doctor husband, Will, who, like his townfolk, thinks things are just dandy in this peppy little burg on the prairie.
Wright listened at the January reading, and also filled in for one absent actor. He crossed out whole paragraphs and made extensive margin notes. He and the actors looked at their scripts, suggested moving scenes, trimming, streamlining, expanding -- seeking to somehow swing the dramatic arc toward Carol. Afterward, he offered his thoughts.
"It feels like parts of a play, but I don't see a play," he said. He was right -- the piece seemed more a travelogue of Carol's life.
"I think it's the story of a woman who wanted to be an artist but didn't have the courage of her own convictions," he said. "And she turned her self-hatred onto the inhabitants of a small town -- people who are provincial, but they never asked to be improved or analyzed. So I think it's a lot about the inner turmoil of a person who retreated into marriage and retreated into small-town living because she didn't know what else to do with herself."
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
Re: Sinclair Nobel Prize Winner Lewis
I know that I feel what he wanted me to feel. He was a great writer. I just don't like the effect he deliberately produced. Now if he had written about short mathematicians and rare scented ungulants - I might still want to read him.
Og
MathGirl said:
I know that I feel what he wanted me to feel. He was a great writer. I just don't like the effect he deliberately produced. Now if he had written about short mathematicians and rare scented ungulants - I might still want to read him.
Og
Master_Vassago
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2002
- Posts
- 1,618
This Just in.
For all of you so out of the literary loop Bob Seager wrote "Mainstreet." hehe. Couldn't help but post that.
For all of you so out of the literary loop Bob Seager wrote "Mainstreet." hehe. Couldn't help but post that.
Un-registered
Really Really Experienced
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2002
- Posts
- 457
THANK YOU ...
... everybody for tne information and some insight into Sinclair Lewis.
... everybody for tne information and some insight into Sinclair Lewis.
Svenskaflicka
Fountain
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2002
- Posts
- 16,142
From the summaries, I can see that this S.Lewis-fellah is your answer to our Per Anders Fogelström. He wrote about Stockholm in the beginning of 1900.
There is something positive about reading about poverty, starvation, prostitution, abuse, theft, prejudice, immigration and politics in Stockholm in the 1920'ies, such as making people feel that we DEFINITELY don't want to go back to that, and so we have to work on getting a decent living standard for all.
But for the life of me, I can't understand why they force 14-year-olds to read that. Is there ANY better way to kill a youngster's interest in classic literature?
There is something positive about reading about poverty, starvation, prostitution, abuse, theft, prejudice, immigration and politics in Stockholm in the 1920'ies, such as making people feel that we DEFINITELY don't want to go back to that, and so we have to work on getting a decent living standard for all.
But for the life of me, I can't understand why they force 14-year-olds to read that. Is there ANY better way to kill a youngster's interest in classic literature?
Uther_Pendragon
Really Really Experienced
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2001
- Posts
- 365
|Pure said:
Erm.
The reads are, in general, something awarded to you
before the people read your words. Maybe it
reflects the quality of your title.
Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
HI UT
well, there is that number one story with 1,000,000 votes ("reads") called "A" my name is Alice, so sometimes I agree. But in general I think 'reads' does not reflect just title.
If you mean 'sexy title' I don't think that quite does it, since there are some non descript titles high on the list and some 'explicit' ones lower (Brother fucks Sisters, sort of thing)
Now I am biased since I did crack the top 20 'reads' for a while.
OTOH, 'reads' is like book sales-- maybe it reflects the cover only, but 'sales' are not a bad index of popularity (a peculiar kind of quality possessed by Mc Donalds hamburgers.)
well, there is that number one story with 1,000,000 votes ("reads") called "A" my name is Alice, so sometimes I agree. But in general I think 'reads' does not reflect just title.
If you mean 'sexy title' I don't think that quite does it, since there are some non descript titles high on the list and some 'explicit' ones lower (Brother fucks Sisters, sort of thing)
Now I am biased since I did crack the top 20 'reads' for a while.
OTOH, 'reads' is like book sales-- maybe it reflects the cover only, but 'sales' are not a bad index of popularity (a peculiar kind of quality possessed by Mc Donalds hamburgers.)
Svenskaflicka
Fountain
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2002
- Posts
- 16,142
Re: Silas Marner
Silas Marner... University level. Interpretations.
"What does the author MEAN by this image? What does it SYMBOLIZE?"
Heck, for all we know, he might have just made a 5-word-monkey like on the other thread here...
MathGirl said:
Silas Marner... University level. Interpretations.
"What does the author MEAN by this image? What does it SYMBOLIZE?"
Heck, for all we know, he might have just made a 5-word-monkey like on the other thread here...
