November 2015 – Noodlings

Live Tweet Demons

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Josh Nudell

The third installment of tweets from novels: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s #Demons.

"well, he did very little as a scholar, nothing at all, apparently. But w scholars here in Russia, that is ever and always the case" #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) September 29, 2015

"This thesis cleverly and painfully needled the Slavophils of the day and instantly gained him numerous and infuriates enemies." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) September 29, 2015

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"Never before had she seen such writers. They were impossibly vain, but quite openly so, as if thereby fulfilling a duty." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) September 29, 2015

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"He only knew how to twirl his moustaches, drink, and spout the most uncouth nonsense imaginable." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) September 29, 2015

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"All men of genius and progress in Russia were, are and will always be card players and drunkards." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 8, 2015

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Until that day he had remained certain of 1 thing…[that] he had charms over her…not only…as a famous scholar, but as a handsome man #D

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 8, 2015

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"For 20 years this conviction had been rooted in him and of all his convictions it was perhaps the hardest to part with." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 8, 2015

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He's light-minded, a maunderer, cruel, an egoist, w base habits, but you will appreciate him..there are much worse #Demons #describeascholar

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 8, 2015

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"Three of us went to the American States on an emigrant steamer, 'in order to try the life of the American worker ourself…" 1/2 #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 13, 2015

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"…and thus by personal experience to test on ourselves the condition of man in his hardest social position." 2/2 #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 13, 2015

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"We got hire there to work for an exploiter…[who] cheated us when he paid us off…[and] also beat us there, more than once." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 13, 2015

"There are people for whom clean linen is even indecent, sir." -Liputin #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 20, 2015

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"He was not drunk, but was in the heavy, leaden, foggy state of a man who wakes up after many days of drinking." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 20, 2015

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"It seemed you would only have to shake him a couple of times by the shoulder and he would immediately become drunk again." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) October 20, 2015

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"Not one nation has ever set itself up on the principles of science and reason; …unless perhaps for a moment, out of foolishness" #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 5, 2015

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Nations are formed & moved by another ruling & dominating force…the unquenchable desire to get to the end, while…denying the end #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 5, 2015

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"The aim of all movements of nations….is solely the seeking for God, its own God, …and faith in him as the only true God." #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 5, 2015

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a sign of a nation's extinction (is) when there (are) gods in common. When there are gods in common, they die…with the nations themselves

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 5, 2015

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"Is it true that the Marquis de Sade could take lessons from you?" #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 5, 2015

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"I want to bequeath my skeleton to the academy, on condition that a label be pasted to its forehead reading 'Repentant Freethinker'" #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 6, 2015

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"You take advantage of my kindness to make caustic remarks and play some sort of bourru bienfaisant" #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 10, 2015

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"Tea was poured by a thirty-year-old maiden lady, the hostess' sister, browless and pale-haired, a silent and venomous being" #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 24, 2015

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"This police officer–an ecstatically administrative person V.I. Filibusterov–was still a newcomer to our town…" 1/2 #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 27, 2015

But he had already distinguished himself and been noised abroad for his boundless zeal…and an innate sobriety 2/2 #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 27, 2015

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I am speaking only of scum…which exists in every society, [and] rises to the surface in any transitional time #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 27, 2015

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The whole perplexity lies in just what is more beautiful: Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum? #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 27, 2015

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We alone shall remain, having destined…to assume power. We shall rally the smart ones to ourselves, & ride on the backs of fools. #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 27, 2015

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This generation must be re-educated to make it worthy of freedom #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 27, 2015

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"The crew must remain a crew and obey, otherwise I'll…What trash these people are, though!" #Demons

— Joshua Nudell (@jpnudell) November 27, 2015

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Previously in this series, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Orhan Pamuk’s The New Life.

Taking a moment on a holiday

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Josh Nudell

I like food a lot, and today is one of, if not the premier food event across the United States. Standard, not metric, tons of Turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, potato, and pumpkin pie will be made and consumed today, to go with cider and adult beverages. I like all of these things, and even have a soft spot for the traditional fare, which is sometimes derided as boring. After that preface, however, I must admit that I am not particularly fond of Thanksgiving, and not because of its historical connotations. In part, I don’t have the facilities to host and while there are some friends in town, family and other friends are scattered from coast to coast, so my interest in the day is somewhat muted. Yet have a more philosophical opposition to specific gluttonous days: rather than a single day to eat well and eat too much, would it not be better to eat well and to satiety every day? Time is precious, but good food is worth it, and my ideal is to host gatherings [see the above limitations] with more frequency.

On this Thanksgiving day, I have the added limitation of having just gotten back from a trip to Minneapolis, and am therefore laying low–cleaning, baking, and generally putting things back together. More than that, I didn’t get to spend enough time writing on this particular trip, and (in so doing) realized that what I really want to do is to spend time working on my dissertation. I also fully intend to spend Black Friday the same thing.

There is a risk that publicly acknowledging thanks on a dedicated day implies that one need not do so any other day, but I think it is still worth doing so. In the macro level, I am thankful for my health, my loved ones, including friends and family. More specifically, though, I am thankful that I still really enjoy my research and am still getting an opportunity to read and write for my job (as much as I am looking forward to getting back to teaching).

Δ Δ Δ

I hope to write more here, but between job applications, dissertation, teaching, and the various protests that have taken place at the University of Missouri, it has been a busy several months.

October 2015 Reading Recap, as such

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Josh Nudell

Back near the start of October I decided to challenge myself by reading Dostoevsky’s Demons, in part because I have yet to successfully grind through one of those long Russian novels, having abandoned Brothers Karamazov and War and Peace part way through. I have more trouble with Russian translations than with a lot of other languages, and will readily admit I sometimes struggle to keep tabs on who is doing what when there are multiple ways of addressing each character. These are me problems, but I was determined.

Then October happened. The job application process happened, and a whole slew of things I needed to do came up, and a small number of social events sucked what little time I had left. There have been days where wheedling away at a dissertation paragraph has taken the place of opening a book for twenty minutes. It is all rather exhausting and I only managed to get through about a third of Demons. I have not yet given up on it, though, at this point, I might not finish it for another month. I hope not, and if it comes to that I might race through something a little bit lighter before I finish this one.

Anyway, that was my fiction reading for the month of October. Such as it was.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
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2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Month: November 2015