Laddy Carbury, just a 19th century blogger?

After spending just a little time "researching" blogging in order to bring the Brookside Blog up to "industry standards" I've come to believe Lady Carbury was way ahead of her time. She was a blogger.

Her book "Criminal Queens" is lightly researched. It is written for mass, uncritical readers. When she asks for professional "editorial criticism" it is from her favorite collection of London's writers/editors. There's lots of professional payback going on. If you review my book and say nice things, I'll review your book and say nice things.

She would have loved Facebook.

Lady Carbury also likes to combine/confuse her social life with her professional literary contacts.

The introduction to my copy of The Way We Live Now explains that the main plot for the book was going to be exposing and satirizing the London literay scene. Perhaps Mr Trollope wasn't good at smoozing with other writer/editors. He just wasn't getting the good reviews he thought he deserved.

I'm certainly glad he decided to add the Mexican train swindle plot to the story otherwise it would have been The Way Some of Us Who Write Novels Live Now. Lacks punch...

Not sure if this blog will ever be up to "standard". It's more of a rant than a blog.

Next: Melmotte, the big wonderful, tragic "hero"??

Search engine tags: Blogging history: 19th Century Bloggers: Anthony Trollope: Lady Carbury, pioneer blogger

the game's the thing

Choosing to read The Way We Live Now while fresh from The Big Short was a fortunate decision.

Trollope's Mexico railroad scandel is a lot less complicated than our recent financial meltdown but the fundamentals are the same. Greed.

"Men reconcile themselves to swindling. Though they themselves mean to be honest, dishonesty of itself is no longer odious to them. Then there comes the jealousy that others should be growing rich with the approval of all the world - and the natural aptitude to do what all the world approves."

There was not much romance in the Big Short. TWWLN is like one very long Jane Austen marriage marketplace but with "teeth". The ladies are only out for a husband who will provide the house in London and financial security. For some love is not a priority, more a luxury.

I want a mood organ...

Phili K. Dick comes up with some great creations in this book.

I love the mood organ. In the morning it wakes you and gives you the attitude you need to get that day going.

"If you set the surge up high enough, you'll be glad you're awake."

Don't we all need one of these?

Then there's kipple.

"Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders...When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself."

The empathy box and Wilbur Mercer.

The surviving humans on earth need a way to commune with each other so they use an empathy box. By holding the handles and watching the video of Wilbur Mercer climbing his hill in the wilderness Isidore merges with the old man and others watching him on his climb. The experience includes bleeding when stones are thrown and cut Mercer's arm. Not sure how this is achieved.

"He had crossed in the usual perplexing fashion; physical merging-accompanied by mental and spitual identification - with Wilbur Mercer had reocurred. As it did for everyone who at this moment clutched the handles, either here on earth or on one of the colony planets. He experienced them, the others, incorporated the babble of their thoughts, heard in his own brain the noise of many individual existences. They- and he -cared about one thing; this fusion of their mentalities oriented their attention on the hill, the climb, the need to ascend".

Climbing the hill to the Stanford Dish will never be the same for me again. I'll be looking for Wilbur Mercer.

Phili K. Dick, just a local writer

Our September title is Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The movie Blade Runner was adapted from this novel.

It was a surprise to me that this story is set in San Francisco and that Philip K. Dick is considered to be a local writer. He went to high school and college in Berkeley in the 1940's.

This novel takes place after the humans have done a good destroying their world so most people have moved to Mars. Dick was in high school when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan so I can understand where the the image of a world filled with empty apartment buildings and kipple might come from. Post apocalyptic stories are a favorite theme for science fiction writers. They get to create their new world from the rubble or fly off to another planet.

After reading this book I have a new, wonderful appreciation for spiders. The scene where the android, Pris, cuts off the legs of a spider one, by one is right up there with any other torture scene. Because the earth is such a mess real animals have died off. Caring for the few animals left has become a religion. It's miracle Isidore has found a living spider in his decaying apartment building only to have it cruelly disasembled by an android.

More to come...

You call this a blog?

After months of blogging I have finally read a description of a good blog. They are "frequency, brevity and personality". I fail the first two but I think "personality" shows through. I'll work on the other two, oh lucky reader.

I have fallen behind. In the last installment I was sorting through our light, summer read, Michael Lewis's "The Big Short". At our July meeting Jeannie L. used a quote from the book to sum up the financial mess :

"The upper class of this country raped this country. You fucked people. You built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience. Nobody ever said, 'This is wrong.' " Page 232

I think that says it all.

Our August Title was George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London." Another "light " read.

I find this book really uneven. The first half when he is working in Paris as a "plongeur" is lively and interesting. The people and situations are vivid. He's really working and making an effort.

In the London half of the book he borrows old clothes so he can be a tramp to see how the out of work survive in England. I guess it's more of an expose of the life of the British unemplyed and how the system doesn't work.

My copy of the book lists it as fiction. It reads more like "gonzo journalism". Perhaps Orwell was just ahead of his time. Thank you Hunter S. Thompson.

The subprime meltdown, so how did we get into the mess?

Ah-h-h once again we have picked a light, frothy summer title. "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. I have started the book for a second time because my brain wasn't working very well the first time I picked it up. I do like the fact that on page 77 our author congratulates any reader who has gotten so far and offers them a gold star.

He does a very good job of explaining a complicated topic by telling the story through a few colorful characters.

Steve Eisman is in New York investigating the growing subprime mortgage industry.

"...subprime financiers had been sunk by the small fraction of the loans they had kept on their books" but now the market had learned a complicated lesson, "you can keep on making these loans, just don't keep them on your books. Make the loans, then sell them off to the fixed income department of big Wall Street investment banks, which will in turn package them into bonds and sell them to investors." This is the "originate and sell" model.

Mike Burry is in California figuring out how to make money from this time bomb ready to blow up.

" 'What you want to watch are the lenders, not the borrowers.' (Burry) said. 'The borrowers will always be willing to take a great deal for themselves. It's up to the lenders to show restraint, and when they lose it, watch out.' By 2003 he knew the borrowers had already lost it, By early 2005 he saw that the lenders had, too"

At this point I am reminded of a story Michael Lewis tells in his book, "Liar's Poker", about his career as a Salomon Brothers bond trader. He discovered that the traders who knew nothing talked on and on, but the traders who really knew what was going on said very little.

I'll just take this advice and keep this short.

More to come!

The "ultimate" book about Impressionist Art

"The Ultimate Trophy" tells the fascinating story how the Impressionist art movement started what we know as the modern art "industry". Locked out from the French Academy Impressionist artists organized their own exhibitions. Their art was affordable so "normal" people could buy and collect it.

Impressionist art was actually "marketed" to the buying public. This produced a "new phenomenom, the powerful dealer, who interpreted and marketed the new art to the public, and simultaneously employed the artists he was promoting by guaranteeing to buy their work."

The American artist, Mary Cassatt, was living and painting in Paris so she introduced her family and other wealthy Americans to the new Impressionist Art. Hook credits her with convincing many American collectors to buy art from her fellow painters. Quickly America became a huge market for the art French collectors were not interested in buying.

I enjoyed the chapters describing how different countries including America, England and Germany either embraced or rejected Impressionist art based on their historic relationship with France.

Hook actually credits the Impressionists with "softening up" the public for future modern trends that were to come. Athough Monet continued to paint water lilies through it all.

I like his short description of what defined Impressionism and what the public thought was wrong with it, "the colours used were strident and garish; there was a lack of finish: and the subject matter was banal."

Philip Hook is a wonderful writer. His language is clear and very readable. He mixes his own personal experiences as an art dealer with history to make for an interesting story.

more to come...