Life Got You Down? Time to Read The Master and Margarita

Post by freddie_mercury » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

foobarandgrill wrote: post #119

notyourday wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is just signaling of intellectualism. Most of English translations of classic Russian lit suck -- for example one is highly unlikely to get by reading English translation of "The Master and Margarita" that it is satire even if one gets hundreds of pages of foot notes. Volokhonsky and Peavar do the best but one still needs those hundreds of pages of footnotes which are just not there. Reading TMAM pretty much requi…

Volokhonsky and Peavar translations are a meme carried out to sell more books. There are other translations that are better and truer to the original text.

Post by jazzyk » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #64

barrkel wrote: post #40

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There's nothing actionable, except for longer term investments like where to live and how to plan your spending vs saving. Brexit is horribly fascinating in this respect, as the outcome controls whether I'll need do leave. Definitely true for tribal politics though.

In my view, these kind of actionable news you can get from reading the news once a month or (my favourite) from The Economist every weekend.

Post by netcan » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

mhb wrote: post #117

netcan wrote: post #86

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On news being not actionable, this is what Douglas Adams had to say we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if…

That was great. Thanks.

Post by simias » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #118

simias wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pointless projection. I read The Master and Margarita a long time ago because I read somewhere that it was one inspiration for the Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil, so I wasn't exactly driven by pretentious intellectualism. It still managed to become one of my favorite novels and I even started learning Russian because of it (still working on that actually). I hope someday I'll be able to read it in the…

> I read The Master and Margarita a long time ago because I read somewhere that it was one inspiration for the Rolling Stone's Sympathy for the Devil, so I wasn't exactly driven by pretentious intellectualism. I have a hunch you do not discuss The Master and Margarita at parties. Edit: The downvotes on this is the exact reason why McDuff is popular - it is intellectual masturbation. The one mocked by Russian writers.…

Post by tk75x » Wed, Oct 17, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

person_of_color wrote: post #42

Just finished The Name of The Wind and time to read this ;)