Challenged

[muckefuck]

On the train this morning, I found myself reading an ad for Best Buddies, "a nonprofit...organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities". My first thought, of course, was my friend from Bonn who doesn't like Mozart. (He prefers the music of von Suppé and Delius--Delius! Even Mahler, I could almost accept, but Delius?) Then there are all those people I know who bought a copy of Finnegan's Wake and never managed to get through any of it. And speaking of unread works, what about all those with copies of A brief history of time or The language instinct gathering dust on their shelves?

What will Best Buddies do for all of them? Alas, nothing!

Comments

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, I've never *touched* Finnegan's Wake or A Brief History of Time, and I skimmed The Language Instinct at the library once and concluded it was a pop linguistics bestseller-type.

However, I do have a copy of _Le Ton Beau de Marot_ that my mother gave me in 1995 that I've never managed to hack my way through. I feel guilty about that. /confession.

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about the Hofstadter. It's a pretty cool book, but everything he says about the German translation of A Void having a letter E in it is complete bull - it doesn't [I have the first edition and the paperback reprint and there's definitely no E there]. When I asked Hofstadter about it, he assured me that he was absolutely correct and that his edition had an E in it. Yeah, right.

As far as Finnegans Wake goes, you're better off reading Robert Weninger's The Mookse and the Gripes instead. It'll give you an excellent introduction to the book without actually making you read the damned thing.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! I love you.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

The Best Buddies of San Francisco had an Arnold Schoenberg intervention just last month.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Hopefully the discord it caused was kept to a minimum.

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

Try that one at your next Twelve Tone Anonymous meeting.

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Aw heck, I thought you said an Arnold Schwartzenegger intervention.

[febrile.livejournal.com]

Sadly, about as musical.