Welcome from your moderator : VW's personality

[Choisya]

I agree Ziki. Aunt Ada would eat all the buns too.

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ziki wrote:

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Choisya wrote:
Ziki: It is a real shame that Twin and the American Classics boards are not ongoing. Have you thought about offering to moderate it yourself, or another American classic? B&N might appreciate your help and then you couldn't criticise yourself.

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, LOL, don't be too sure of that, LOL. Criticism always tells you how to be better. First of all LISTEN. If you do not want to hear what people have to say, it promises no good. Any writer or successful business leader knows this. No man is an island.

What I like about the knowledgeable moderators is their "double ability": they have the literary facts under their belts but/and due to this command of the knowledge they can also keep some distance to the material at hand and provide an alternative perspective. They are therefore able to initiate an interesting level of discussion that is enlightening, critical and goes beyond the mere self-study exercise. I am in no position to provide that.

A moderator is not someone to tell somebody else what to say or not. A moderator 'creates' a worthwhile discussion out of the 'material' the participants provide. That is my take on it. If that element is missing the style of the talk is quite different. Then I can just invite aunt Agda for an afternoon tea and have a chat or read on my own. . Nothing wrong with that; it just depends on what you want.

ziki

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[piihonua]

And she used up all of my favorite home made jam.

[ziki]

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piihonua wrote:
And she used up all of my favorite home made jam.

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oh... that was not her....she eats just marmelade.

ziki

[Choisya]

Aunts are like that - you invite them round for Sunday tea and they take over the joint. Much better to invite uncles who will just finish all the whisky and go to sleep

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ziki wrote:

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piihonua wrote:
And she used up all of my favorite home made jam.

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oh... that was not her....she eats just marmelade.

ziki

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[ziki]

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Choisya wrote:
Aunts are like that - you invite them round for Sunday tea and they take over the joint. Much better to invite uncles who will just finish all the whisky and go to sleep

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ROFL
Fortunately I am short of those types....
ziki

[JesseBC]

As much as the medical model oversimplifies mental illness, I think it's important not to oversimplify in the other direction either. Not all mental illnesses are experienced as disordered or confused. Obssessive compulsives, for example, are excessively ordered, to the point where they have trouble doing anything else.

Many types of anxiety can produce excessively disciplined, ritualized, or orderly behavior in an effort to try to calm the feelings of fear and dread.

I also think it's important not to romanticize mental illness as some kind of special artistic gift. Most people who seek help aren't feeling artistically gifted; they're feeling desperately unhappy and they want to stop feeling that way.

Not to diminish your point, though, either. It is telling that so many creative geniuses are labelled with various mental illnesses, either during their lifetime or posthumously (and, on a professional level, I just think it's entirely irresponsible to diagnose dead people, which is partly why I've balked at Woolf's diagnosis).

But whether the mentally ill are drawn to artistic expression or whether they're more likely to be labelled such because of socially unacceptable ideas and behavior...I don't think it's possible to say conclusively.

Which has been my point all along -- that it's complex and there's much that we simply don't know. It's hard enough to diagnose someone who's sitting in your office talking to you, let alone someone who's been dead for 60 years.

I'm still working my way through Part I of the book. And I notice that Woolf has an extraordinary ability to draw so much character from the smallest actions.

Really, the plot, taken alone, is kind of dull. It's the beautiful language and depth of the characters that's fascinating. An ability to SEE people at that kind of level would, just in itself, make a lot of people unhappy. A burden as well as a gift and certainly unacceptable socially in a lot of situations.

Society relies on many fictions and untruths. The ability to see through that could be very disorienting and alienating.

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ziki wrote:

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Librarian wrote:
It has been said in other sources (can't remember any specific ones offhand) that some people are creative because of their mental illness. In another state of mind, they would not be able to create their novels, their paintings,their musical compositions, etc. This does not mean that you need to be mentally ill to be creative. But some people may not have produced their creations without mental illness. Any thoughts on this, anyone?
Librarian

Message Edited by Librarian on 04-05-200705:20 PM

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Well art is ordered. And mentally ill mind is disordered, confused. Recorded expression in any form can prove to be soothing to such a disturbed mind (even healing) but the results are not always art by definition. That is totally clear when you study such works. We use the word 'mad-crazy' rather carelessly at times. An artist can seem to be wild to a bourgeois mind but he is not crazy inteh sense of being mentally ill. To discuss this we would need to talk about the particular artist you think about, it can be very different case to case. One example is always van Gogh. There might be others. But you can't really speculate if i.e. van Gogh would not have created what he did if he didn't have his episodes. How would we ever know?

ziki

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[JesseBC]

The Ehrenreich excerpt you mean?

I think what she was getting at was that, as much as mental illness is culturally defined, so are its cures. Right now, Westerners take pills for everything, so that's how we address mental illness too.

If a society addresses problems through ecstatic group ritual, they'll probably solve unruly emotions that way too.

I haven't read the book yet, but I don't think she was suggesting that depression would go away if we just had more parties. I think the book is more about how modernization and industry have destroyed social cohesion -- similar to Durkheim's theory of anomie.

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ziki wrote:
Interesting link, healing depression through ecstasy, dancing, music,party heheh....

ziki

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[JesseBC]

I'm still on the Huck Finn boards! I replied to you! So I hope you won't go away -- I'm just finishing the last chapters and would love to have someone to discuss them with.

I hope I'm not all by myself on this board next month either. One month just isn't enough for me usually.

So what's this about Fan being gone? You getting banned? Huh?

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ziki wrote:
quote: I wish people hung around the boards even after the initial discussion month was over. But it seems the boards empty on the last day of the month and I'm always only halfway through the book with no one around to discuss the ending with me :-(
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-->It's a let down.....I am talking to myself on Twain...BN did away even with the moderator But I am not to post any critical comments. BN moderator wants to ban me for my opinions about this board!

ziki

Message Edited by ziki on 04-13-200704:12 PM

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[IlanaSimons]

Sorry that the month slips by so quickly. I'm moving on to moderating the My Antonia board, but I'd definitely tune into any Woolf discussion that carries on.

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JesseBC wrote:
I'm still on the Huck Finn boards! I replied to you! So I hope you won't go away -- I'm just finishing the last chapters and would love to have someone to discuss them with.

I hope I'm not all by myself on this board next month either. One month just isn't enough for me usually.

[JesseBC]

Thought this might be of interest:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,2070468,00.html

[Choisya]

Thanks JesseBC - you beat me to it in posting this, which I read over lunch yesterday Good isn't it?

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JesseBC wrote:
Thought this might be of interest:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,2070468,00.html

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[JesseBC]

Yes, it is.

I got the same feeling, as from the story, of Virginia Woolf as someone who desperately wanted to be heard, but felt like even those who were listening weren't really understanding her.

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Choisya wrote:
Thanks JesseBC - you beat me to it in posting this, which I read over lunch yesterday Good isn't it?

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JesseBC wrote:
Thought this might be of interest:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,2070468,00.html

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