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PulpRoman added 1 item to Book Diary 2020 list

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Classics)

Evil Looks like what drives me crazy Don’t have no effect on you – But I’m gonna keep on at it Till it drives you crazy, too. As Befits a Man I don’t mind dying – But I’d hate to die all alone! I want a dozen pretty women To holler, cry and moan. I don’t mind dying – But I want my funeral to be fine: A row of long tall mamas Fainting, fanning and crying. I want a fish-tail hearse And sixteen fish-tail cars, A big brass band And a whole truck load of flowers. When they let me down, Down into the clay, I want the women to holler: Please don’t take him away! Ow-ooo-oo-o! Don’t take daddy away! Final Curve When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left. Puzzled Here in the edge of hell Stands Harlem- Remembering the old lies, The old kicks in the back, The Old, Be patient, they told us before. Sure, we remember. Now, when the man at the corner store Says sugar's gone up another two cents And bread one, And there's a new tax on cigarettes - We remember the job we never had, Never could get, And can't have now Because we're colored. So we stand here On the edge of hell In Harlem And look out on the world And wonder What we're gonna do In the face of What we remember. Madam and the Rent Man The rent man knocked. He said, Howdy-do? I said, What Can I do for you? He said, You know Your rent is due. I said, Listen, Before I'd pay I'd go to Hades And rot away! The sink is broke, The water don't run, And you ain't done a thing You promised to've done. Back window's cracked, Kitchen floor squeaks, There's rats in the cellar, And the attic leaks. He said, Madam, It's not up to me. I'm just the agent, Don't you see? I said, Naturally, You pass the buck. If it's money you want You're out of luck. He said, Madam, I ain't pleased! I said, Neither am I. So we agrees! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A great read, so many poems I could put above. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 years, 11 months ago

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3 years, 11 months ago

PulpRoman added 1 item to Book Diary 2020 list

It's scarcity that enables a society to exist. Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?" "Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith? Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man's mind. If that's what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent. Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, 'We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,' and the Lost, 'We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Has some brilliant moments and a few dull ones, would recommend. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 years, 11 months ago

PulpRoman rated The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce 6/10

3 years, 11 months ago

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3 years, 11 months ago

PulpRoman added 1 item to Film Diary 2020 list

1.6

3 years, 11 months ago

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Top Ten Films - Yasujirô Ozu (14 movies items)

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1992 Films Ranked (91 movies items)

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Jennifer Jason Leigh - Movies I've Viewed (16 movies items)

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Private Detectives - Movies (28 movies items)

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All the books that I own (147 books items)

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Influential Cinema (84 movies items)

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My Top 10 Films: Michael Caine (10 movies items)

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Kidnapping and Ransom - Movies (30 movies items)

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PulpRoman added 1 item to Book Diary 2020 list

Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A bit of a tough read, most of it is written from an anthropological basis and the rest can be withered down to the fantastic. Hurston is a good writer, which helped in allowing me to finish but most of it was a trudge. (Almost two weeks) If you’re interested in Haiti and Jamaica in the 30’s this is a decent book;yet, being from the latter the book does have the tone of an outsider trying to make sense of these Caribbean countries. More racial and overtly feminist than her most popular There Eyes Were Watching God, in the market place of ideas (Yes, I’m on a Chomsky binge bih) this can be seen as a progression or regression, I’ll go with the latter which produced not a few groans on my part. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 years, 11 months ago

PulpRoman rated Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica 4/10

3 years, 11 months ago

PulpRoman rated Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (CBC Massey Lecture)

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (CBC Massey Lecture) 7/10

3 years, 12 months ago

PulpRoman added 1 item to Book Diary 2020 list

Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs that may be severe, even in a society that lacks such means of control as death squads, psychiatric prisons, or extermination camps. The very structure of the media is designed to induce conformity to established doctrine. In a three-minute stretch between commercials, or in seven hundred words, it is impossible to present unfamiliar thoughts or surprising conclusions with the argument and evidence required to afford them some credibility. Regurgitation of welcome pieties faces no such problem. Hypocrisy, Milton wrote, is “the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.” To ensure that “neither Man nor Angel can discern” the evil is, nonetheless, a demanding vocation. Pascal had discussed it a few years earlier while recording “how the casuists reconcile the contrarieties between their opinions and the decisions of the popes, the councils, and the Scripture.” “One of the methods in which we reconcile these contradictions,” his casuist interlocutor explains, “is by the interpretation of some phrase.” Thus, if the Gospel says, “Give alms of your superfluity,” and the task is “to discharge the wealthiest from the obligation of alms-giving,” “the matter is easily put to rights by giving such an interpretation to the word superfluity that it will seldom or never happen that any one is troubled with such an article.” Learned scholars demonstrate that “what men of the world lay up to improve their circumstances, or those of their relatives, cannot be termed superfluity; and accordingly, such a thing as superfluity is seldom to be found among men of the world, not even excepting kings”—nowadays, we call it tax reform. We may, then, adhere faithfully to the preachings of the Gospel that “the rich are bound to give alms of their superfluity,… [though] it will seldom or never happen to be obligatory in practice.” “There you see the utility of interpretations,” he concludes.

3 years, 12 months ago

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Books Readers Scenes II - Movies (30 movies items)

4 years ago

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100 Favorite Books (100 books items)

4 years ago

PulpRoman added 1 item to Book Diary 2020 list

Now and then the fable of the horse recurs to me. Weary of liberty, he suffered himself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death for his pains. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,—the purest joy of life. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring. Such, Wilhelm, is our fate. I do not murmur at it: the flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away, and leave no trace behind—how few yield any fruit—and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough! and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen, to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed? Farewell! This is a glorious summer. I often climb into the trees in Charlotte's orchard, and shake down the pears that hang on the highest branches. She stands below, and catches them as they fall.

4 years ago

PulpRoman rated The Sorrows of Young Werther