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Librivox: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Brothers Karamazov is now in an audiobook! This mammoth task has been completed, thanks many readers and Rainer.

I read this book in 1967, at the Cragieburn ski-field where I was a custodian. I was upstairs in the sleeping loft of the ski hut, and often there would be a loud party downstairs. I’d read it by candle light or with a torch. I made notes! I may still have them. It was part of a few years of delightful self education, prior to going to the University of Canterbury, which by comparison was like a padded cell of the mind, though I have no regrets. I am looking forward to hearing the book read to me.

wouterje
Click for larger image.

I have converted the mp3 for the first book into iPod Audiobook format (keeps track of where you are up to). Book 1 m4b Audiobook format

Links follow to the download page, Librivox, notes on a stage production where I found the image, and Wikipedia – where there is an excellent summary of the characters & their various names!

Continue reading “Librivox: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky”

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Jan Kruis Illustrates Woutertje Pieterse

I just ordered the book after a horrendous experience trying to log in to various dutch sites. They don’t recognise a NZ postcode, though they ask for a country, and then finally after fudging one, they tell me the don’t deliver overseas. But, I found one where they would take my money: http://www.occidentbooks.com, I hope they deliver as well!

wouterje
Click for larger image.

Item from an art show follows, the first two paragraphs translate the dutch ones in the earlier post.

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Woutertje Pieterse

My dutch name is Wouter.  I anglicised it myself in 1952, when I was about 8. I have been reflecting on how easily I made that transition to becoming a little Australian kid. On the one hand it was a good thing, I fitted in reasonably well. On the other I faked not being Dutch, I learned to cut off a whole other Dutch/Australian life. I built a wall dividing two cultures.

I was named after Woutertje Pieterse in a book by Multatuli. Researching that!  Here is an image of the character I was named after!

 

Van Gogh Museum – Jan Kruis tekent Woutertje Pieterse:  (DEAD LINK)

Het Van Gogh Museum toont de originele schilderijen en tekeningen die striptekenaar Jan Kruis vervaardigde voor de geïllustreerde versie van Multatuli’s Woutertje Pieterse. Aanleiding voor deze tentoonstelling is de presentatie van dit boek, uitgegeven door De Bezige Bij.

Woutertje Pieterse gaat over de onbevangen, maar onbegrepen Woutertje die opgroeit in een kleinburgerlijk 19de-eeuws milieu in Amsterdam. Als hij leest over de roverhoofdman Glorioso en van zijn leraar, Meester Pennewip, de opdracht krijgt een gedicht te maken, wordt hij geïnspireerd tot het Rooverslied. De inhoud daarvan schokt zijn familie en kennissen hevig. Met vele andere levendige gebeurtenissen en treffende personages geeft Multatuli zo een mild-satirische beeld van het bekrompen 19de-eeuwse burgerdom. Tegelijkertijd schetst hij een boeiend psychologisch portret van een kind, iets dat in zijn tijd uniek was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multatuli

 

Eduard Douwes Dekker - 001.jpg

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Dharawal State Conservation Area

Further info re previous post:  I hope the National Parks and Wildlife Service has some clout and can be effective to stop coal mining in this area.

DECC | Dharawal State Conservation Area:

A beautiful and distinctive network of creeks, including the ecologically important O’Hares Creek catchment, make Dharawal a special place to visit. Swim in the peaceful creeks and rock pools, enjoy the superb waterfalls, or ride your mountain bike on signposted trails in the park. Birdwatchers will love the prolific bird life.

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Mining threat: Dharawal land and rock art

Sharyn Cullis the secretary of the Georges River environmental alliance (left) and Pat Durman an executive member of the National Parks Association (NPA) Macarthur branch (right) swims in O'Hares Creek, at a swimming spot called Cobong in the Dharawal State Conservation area

Among the state’s cleanest creeks … Sharyn Cullis and Pat Durman swim in O’Hares Creek in the Dharawal State Conservation Area. Photo: Kate Geraghty

Preposterous that coal mining could destroy this region!

This pool is just like the one where spent the endless summers of my childhood, Heathcote Creek, a tributary of the Woronora River, like O’Hare’s Creek a tributary of the George’s River. I am only recently learning about the Dharawal aboriginal people who are connected to this land.

I am reading: Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney’s George River (I’ll post more later about that book)

I am outraged by the proposals to destroy these areas. This must be stopped. I hope that there is a massive opposition to these offensive plans. Please comment if you know of petitions, or campaigns.

Mining ‘threat to swamps and rock art’:

Resistance is growing to coalmine plans, writes Ben Cubby.

Full article from the SMH follows:
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The Kidnapping of Haiti

On Radio New Zealand news today there was a report of violence in the street and looting in Haiti, they made it sound as if the Haitians were the problem, gang violence, terrorism even, and the US were there to help. I know this is pure twisted reporting, part of an empire building strategy that we get such news. But it is so easy to sound like a conspiracy theorist, even to myself.

Then, the following items bring a more sane perspective:
I listened to:

Democracy Now

This daily report is so valuable, and essential listening IMO for anyone wanting to know what’s happening in the world. Just excellent journalism.

I listened to Cameron Reilly doing a useful synopsis of

Haiti’s history

Looks like he will have more Podcasts coming on this theme.

I like Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine site.

Am editing this post – Monday, 8 February, 2010 – to add this link from socialistworker.org – jus reading it makes it clear how Orwellian the neoliberal language for imperialism is: re-construction, healing, reform. Yeah Right!

The “shock doctrine” for Haiti | SocialistWorker.org:

With its intervention in Haiti, the U.S. is sending a signal to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean–where masses of people have rejected neoliberalism and elected reform socialist leaders like Hugo Chávez, who aim to tame the excesses of capitalism and pass reforms to address social needs.

and read this Pilger item:

ITV – John Pilger – The kidnapping of Haiti:

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration.

Full item follows
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Being in Nothingness Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace

Being in Nothingness Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace:

Being in Nothingness Virtual Reality and the Pioneers of Cyberspace

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation…A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”

–William Gibson, Neuromancer

Suddenly I don’t have a body anymore.

All that remains of the aging shambles which usually constitutes my corporeal self is a glowing, golden hand floating before me like Macbeth’s dagger. I point my finger and drift down its length to the bookshelf on the office wall.

I try to grab a book but my hand passes through it.

“Make a fist inside the book and you’ll have it,” says my invisible guide.

I do, and when I move my hand again, the book remains embedded in it. I open my hand and withdraw it. The book remains suspended above the shelf.

I look up. Above me I can see the framework of red girders which supports the walls of the office…above them the blue-blackness of space. The office has no ceiling, but it hardly needs one. There’s never any weather here.

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Donna Haraway – Links

Donna Haraway – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Donna Haraway Donna Haraway with Cayenne, 2006; photograph by Rusten Hogness

Wired Interview:

You Are Cyborg By Hari Kunzru

For Donna Haraway, we are already assimilated. The monster opens the curtains of Victor Frankenstein’s bed. Schwarzenegger tears back the skin of his forearm to display a gleaming skeleton of chrome and steel. Tetsuo’s skin bubbles as wire and cable burst to the surface. These science fiction fevered dreams stem from our deepest concerns about science, technology, and society. With advances in medicine, robotics, and AI, they’re moving inexorably closer to reality. When technology works on the body, our horror always mingles with intense fascination. But exactly how does technology do this work? And how far has it penetrated the membrane of our skin?

The answers may lie in Sonoma County, California. It’s not the most futuristic place in the world; quite the opposite. The little clusters of wooden houses dotted up and down the Russian River seem to belong to some timeless America of station wagons and soda pop. Outside the town of Healdsburg (population 9,978), acres of vineyards stretch away from the road, their signs proudly proclaiming the dates of their foundation. The vines themselves, transplants from Europe, carry a genetic heritage far older. Yet this sleepy place is where visions of a technological future are being defined. Tucked away off the main highway is a beautiful redwood valley. Here, in a small wooden house, lives someone who says she knows what’s really happening with bodies and machines. She ought to – she’s a cyborg.

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Donna Haraway: A Cyborg Manifesto

Haraway_CyborgManifesto.html:

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181. AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg.

Amazon.com: The Haraway Reader (9780415966894): Donna Haraway: Books:

An excellent introduction to the writings of Professor Haraway, but also a necessary addition to her previous books. (It is nice to find essays once only located in various anthologies now within the same book!) The new essays on dogs and kinship are stellar, illustrating how Harway’s work is moving forward to advance the study of science and politics in everyday life contexts. A must read in cultural studies, feminist theory, and the history of race and ethnicity.

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