C1 Literary Mayhem No.16 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

before you read this: don't forget the gorilla case translation and, we have new books in the library, I will inform you tomorrow ;)

Hello, my name is Joseph Heller 

"Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?"

We will find out in The Catch-22's chapter 1, The Texan:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4iDA8dEogrHSnlqOG5PZ29SbWUyUlN3aVVaMlZiQQ

you can read the rest of the book online 

more

Catch-22 (Best Scene) - YouTube youtube.com5. jún 2010 - 4 min. - Odovzdal(-a) Pauliet2 This scene truly captures the surreal comic horror of Heller's novel. Nothing else in the movie does.

Joseph Heller: Catch 22 - YouTube youtube.com21. júl 2010 - 27 min. - Odovzdal(-a) AllanGregg Joseph Heller, author of "Catch 22" joins Allan Gregg to discuss 40 years of one of the most used phrases in ...

Catch-22 50th Anniversary Animation on Vimeo vimeo.com17. okt. 2011 - 3 min. Illustrated/Animated by Ian Higginbotham Narration by William Rycroft Produced by Alan Trotter.

Jerry Mosey/APAuthor Joseph Heller in his publisher's office in New York 

Translation Excercise

Court blocks book about Gorilla case

13 Feb 2012Beata BalogováPolitics & Society

A SLOVAK court’s decision to block publication of an unfinished book about alleged high-level political corruption being written by investigative journalist Tom Nicholson, a former editor-in-chief of this newspaper, has been described by critics as censorship.

The presiding judge, Branislav Král, argued that he had weighed only two rights in reaching his judgement: the plaintiff’s right to protection of his person; and Nicholson’s right to free expression.

Prime Minister Iveta Radičová called the court’s decision a violation of the right to free speech. “It [the book] is not Mein Kampf,” Radičová said.

“I strongly object to [the ruling], but I cannot do anything more so as not to interfere in the independence of the courts.”

Petit Press director Alexej Fulmek and the head of the International Press Institute’s Slovak branch, Pavol Múdry, both described the court’s decision as censorship.

Múdry told The Slovak Spectator that the court’s decision in fact represented “preventive censorship, since the book has not yet been published and no one except the author knows what is in it”.

“This is how totalitarian regimes proceed,” Múdry continued. “Suspicions of large-scale corruption are in question and public funds are involved. In such a case the public interest must be placed above the protection of the reputation of an individual, whoever that person is.”

C1 Literary Mayhem No. 15 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

before you read this: please don't forget your answers/quotes on The Great Gatsby by Thursday. We'll start from those and have some fun with translation.

Hello fellow humans,

they call me Ray Bradbury and my job is to help you fall in love. "A life's work should be based on love," is what I say..

In the course of my life (I was born in 1920), I have written over ten novels and innumerable collections of short stories. 

But the one I value the most is called Fahrenheit 451. It is a dystopian novel, and 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which book paper burns.

Here's what we're going to read together:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4iDA8dEogrHM1BsNzd5ak1TbVM2andDMXo0emMzdw

if you're interested, you can also read the whole book online or borrow it from me

Enjoy!

p.s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVzc67YuRQE

Iconic author Ray Bradbury and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner talk with LATimes.com blogger Geoff Boucher (Hero Complex) about how TV and radio inspired Fahrenheit 451, the connection between the novel and Playboy magazine and why Bradbury thinks of himself as a "pomegranate."

C1/B2 Library Mayhem

Fellow friends, here is the list of new books in the library, donated from the SCSSS Fund Book Club

If you click at the book title, an Amazon.co.uk page will open for the edition that we have

Wilde,Oscar: Dorian Grey
 Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other stories
 Amis, Martin: Time's Arrow
 Kelman, James: Selected  Stories
Hendry, J.F(ed):  The Penguin Book of Scottish Short Stories
 Greene, Graham: Brighton Rock
 Maguire, Susie: Furthermore


Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
Collins, Wilkie: Moonstone
Dickens, Charles: The Tale of Two Cities
Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451


Dylan et Matlin (prod.): The Caedmon Short Story Collection 
James, Henry: Washington Square
Kerouac, Jack: Dharma Bums
Defoe Daniel: Moll Flanders
Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Grisham, John: The Pelican Brief
Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
Davies, David Stuart (ed.): Short Stories from the 19th Century
Salinger, JD: The Catcher in the Rye
James, Henry: Daisy Miller
Green, Graham: Under the Garden
Wharton, Edith: Madame of Treymes
Wells, H.G.: The Red Room and other Stories
Lawrence, D.H.: Sons and Lovers
Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island
Tolkien, J.R.R: The Hobbit
Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty Four
Wellsh, Irvine: Trainspotting

And here's an new list of ALL books in our small literary library

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoiDA8dEogrHdEVwNWM4cjZVNXVSZW5SM0FMN0NJWGc

and a little experimental feature where you can order them according to the year published, author, title, level...

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S4073883oZF

If you want to borrow the books, or have any questions, contact me here or in class.

Thank you.

C1 Literary Mayhem No. 14 The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."

My name is Nick Carraway and I am telling you a story of my friend, Jay Gatsby:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4iDA8dEogrHNTdmYmRlNGYtOWQ0Ni00MDA4LWEzOGYtZTZkMWVhMjUzZDdk

I want you to read the story before the class and see if you can answer the questions here:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4iDA8dEogrHeUpXemhBb1FTQTJ3LVo0Ujlwc3IxUQ

The Great Gatsby (1925) is one of the greatest American classics. The novel was written in Paris by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and it has come to be seen as a representation of the Jazz Age (or Roaring Twenties).  Read the whole novel here  or borrow it from me ;)

more interesting Gatsbys

Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2E6F5B966E25A447

Great Gatsby explained in 60 seconds (tm)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL926BEC0C4BBF2F64

Great Gatsby Adventure!

http://greatgatsbygame.com/

Could You Survive 1920s?

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/keys/games/game_0_1920s/

Fitzgerald Crossword Puzzle Contest - Puzzle Entry Form and Clues

 How much do you know about Fitzgerald's works and life? Print out the puzzle, complete it, and compare your answers to the solution.

C1 Literary Mayhem No.13/2 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Friends,

A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. So, here's what I've got to say:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4iDA8dEogrHNzQ0ODU5NWQtMjQ5NS00NTg1LTk2ZTctNDdkNjMyMDcwZWJi

"For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed." (Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance speech)

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1954 was awarded to Ernest Hemingway "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC_ZksjsnRQ

Words from Ernest Hemingway and music from Fugazi. 
A Come Up, Kinch production.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LWb6_vPMN0

Gil (Owen Wilson) is introduced to Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll) in Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5ih1IRIRxI

Aleksandr Petrov, the one man Army behind this classic adaptation, has achieved so many well deserved prestigious awards for this once in a life time movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKeGQNxjNOA

readings from the novella, plus interviews with folks from Cuba who knew Papa back in the day, including Ernesto Garcia Gutierrez.

Ernest Miller Hemingway

Born: 21 July 1899, Oak Park, IL, USA

Died: 2 July 1961, Ketchum, ID, USA

Residence at the time of the award: USA

Prize motivation: "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style"

Language: English

Biography

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.

During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel,The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.

Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

C1 Lit/Translation Mayhem No.13/1

Hello folks,

with the pre-test approaching, I have not much more for you to read, rather create. Because, as you may have noticed, translation is a creative process of intepreting

It's high time you got yourself a Monolingual English/English learner's dicttionary, and  take it to the class with you, since you're not allowed to use online or electronic ones at the pre-test (for obvious reasons) - such as this one I am going to give you a few tips on using it. And we will do some more translating excercises..

ALSO, I am waiting for your Kerouac translations and here's one more text to translate before Thursday:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EmHjogO9CrZEvGHUCtbk43X1EBKVlgPc4s9O8JfXSBU/edit

B group, we also might go through this interesting piece by George Orwell on Freedom of Speech, I encourage you to read it:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4iDA8dEogrHOWFjN2ViNWItYTc3MS00NjdkLWI5ZWQtODZhZjNkYTA0NGY4

On this day...
January 29: Constitution Day in Gibraltar 1845 – American poet Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" appeared in the New York Evening Mirror, its first publication attributed to Poe.