Topic suggested by Ravi on Fri Aug 14 17:25:30 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Since contemporary is anything after WWII, this topic covers anything before that time.

Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Ramji (@ 205.177.170.52) on: Fri Nov 20 10:16:15
  
  My favorite sample of Pg Wodehouse humor. I am not quoting the exact words.
  
  " He went into the room and came back so fast he almost met himself coming out"
  
  
• From: Raj (@ master.hyd.deshaw.com) on: Tue Dec 29 07:29:37
  
  Ramji,
  Meet your twin soul, as far as PGW goes , in me. Try this :
  "The fascination of shooting as a sport wholly depends on whether you are on the right side or wrong side of the gun"
  More :
  
  1. ...fell into the washing machine and did as many revolutions per
  minute as a small African republic....
  2.Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent
  of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully
  resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with
  a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.
  Rajesh
  
  More when I have time!
  
  
• From: Ramji (@ 205.177.170.55) on: Tue Dec 29 09:48:25
  
  Rajesh:
  
  I just wrote back to you in another thread. I think this place is more suitable. PGW belongs in the classics- timeless.
  
  Ramji
  
  P.S. I just realized I had quoted the same lines in two places. Will come back with more later.
  
  
• From: Raj (@ hydrec2.hyd.deshaw.com) on: Mon Jan 4 01:37:47
  
  Ramji and Ramamoorthy sir,
  
  Here I am again..but I am afraid I'll have to take
  leave till March. Tomorrow, I'll try to sign off in style with more quotes..
  
  I'll be looking forward to reviving this thread in March, if you choose to leave it dormant till then, that is. Please do continue the good work!
  Here are some links on the net:9if you havent seen them ,that is)
  
  http://mech.math.msu.su/~gmk/pgw.htm
  http://web.singnet.com.sg/~siddarth/pgwodehouse.html
  http://www.egr.msu.edu/~bhurkeal/wodehousians.html
  http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~chandra/pgw.html
  http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~chandra/plum.HTML
  http://www.smart.net/~tak/wodehouse.html
  http://www.smart.net/~tak/wodehouse.html
  http://kekux1-stub.kek.jp/~marat/pgw.html
  http://www.aiusa.com/satire/wodehouse.htm
  http://www.newdream.net/~scully/toelw/wodehouse.htm
  
  "Do you know,' said a thoughtful Bean,'I'll bet that if all the girls Freddie has loved and lost were placed end to end--not that I suppose one could do it--they would reach half-way down Piccadilly.'
  'Further than that,' said the Egg. 'Some of them were pretty tall.' "
  
  ``Alf Todd,'' said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of
  imagery, ``has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark
  room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild cat's left
  ear with a red-hot needle.''
  _Ukridge_ (1924)
  
  
  More can be found from the sites above.
  
  Cheerio, then.
  Raj
  
  
• From: babu (@ ) on: Tue Feb 2 23:06:44
  
  Anybody here to discuss W. Somerset Maugham ?
  
  
• From: bull (@ cache.mch.sni.de) on: Thu Feb 4 04:50:31
  
  Babu : SURE! Have you read "Liza of Lambeth"?
  
  
• From: babu (@ 198.153.135.233) on: Thu Feb 4 23:34:57
  
  yeah, thats his first short story I think. My favourite is "On Human Bondage". the title itself deserves credit and none of the novel I have read describes unrequited love and intense obsessions with such passion. That novel sort of reminded me of myself :)
  
  
• From: Raj (@ master.hyd.deshaw.com) on: Fri Mar 19 12:03:01
  
  Ramji and Ramamoorthy:
  Wodehouse fan is back! Try this:
  "To attract attention in the dining-room of the Senior Conservative
  Club between the hours of one and two-thirty, you have to be a mutton
  chop, not an earl."
  
  " It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a fellow wish
  he'd got a soul or something..."
  
  More will come
  
  
• From: JayBee (@ sp-69-139.tm.net.my) on: Sun Mar 21 02:45:15
  
  When I was schooling, our English master forced us to read up P.G.Wodehouse. He said it would improve our style and vocabulary. The old man was right.
  It did help a lot. You know what a "lily-livered poltroon" is? Aha! For that you have to be a Wodehousian.
  I started with the "Jeeves" series. Carry on, Jeeves", etc. and my last book was "Mulliner Nights". When I went to do my medicine in India, Higginbotham's was a treasure house. So I continued with my forage into the world of Wodehouse. Bertram Wooster getting into trouble all the time. Jeeves would ridicule him, just by lifting one eye-brow.
  Such subtlities.
  I only dropped Wodehouse when I became addicted to Ian Fleming. But Ian Fleming is no master. But through him, the world got its greatest hero of all times-J.B. Not JayBee. I meant James Bond-special agent 007, licenced to kill:-)
  
  Regards
  
  JayBee
  
  
• From: vj (@ chme111pc14.ecn.purdue.edu) on: Thu Apr 29 18:02:01
  
  Could someone review Charles Dic*ens.. for me?
  
  
• From: rajiv (@ 208.238.117.28) on: Thu May 6 15:43:34
  
  just finished reading 'the old curiosity shop' by CD.. while the story is extremely predictable and even quite cliched at times, the descriptions more than make up! especially descriptions of Quelp, the ultimate villain of all time.. i shall post some clips soon..
  
  
• From: Udhaya (@ 205.218.142.217) on: Thu May 20 15:33:39
  
  a review of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
  
  Dostoevsky considered this last novel his magnum opus. With this he felt he had expressed himself completely. This sprawling 936-page novel does tackle every issue that ever fascinated man--religion, society, class, sensuality, morality, mortality, honor, love, lust, greed, kinship, sin, retribution--you name it this has got it.
  
  After having read modern novels with their crystal focus and edited crispness, The Brothers Karamazovoverflowed my mind with outlandish tangents, intense-to-a-fault pondering and blatant pontificating. But no matter how taxing and dated the style or subject matter, the underlying soul, the integrity of the writer's search won me over time and again. Dostoevsky is the kind of noble soul who would feel shame for the natural flaws in him, flaws that we easily rationalize and even feel proud of in ourselves. He also embraces these flaws in others with such insouciance that I want to go hug him and buy him vodka. With his characteristic concern, fascination, understanding, and philosophy about the pull and push of human instincts, Dostoevsky creates a macabre universe of characters that appall and rivet us and ultimately reveal humanity in all its paradoxical splendor.
  
  At the center of the The Brothers Karamazov is the patricide, the events that foreshadow it, the three sons--Dmitry the sensualist, Ivan the amoral intellectual, and Alyosha the searching mystic, the lengthy trial, and resolution. Affecting the lives of these three starkly different brothers are their illegitimate brother the deranged, confused Smerdyakov, the elegant Katerina, and the vixen Grushenka. There also other important characters, like the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, Rakitin the cynical friend and the priest who guides Alyosha.
  
  On a larger level, Dostoevsky uses Dmitry to stand for Russia's inherent national character of being caught between passion and honor, whereas, Alyosha stands for the ideal, spiritual, all healing Russia and Ivan stands for the other extreme of cold, dispassionate intellectual rationale. Dostoevsky also takes surprising jabs at American society and psychology as a discipline during the trial scenes that I hadn't found in his other works. All in all, this is an ambitious, monumental work to say the least. If you already like Dostoevsky, you might appreciate this work. If you haven't read any of his other stuff, you may want to start with , "Crime and Punishment" or "The Idiot" before coming to this heady novel.
  
  {It is awkward to have to post a review under classics just because the book is pre-WW. Review of books should all belong in one section regardless of the era of the book.}
  
  
• From: vj (@ 128.210.124.64) on: Wed May 26 17:04:25
  
  Udhaya,
  has it struck you that the Russian writers seem to have some uncanny knack for interesting insights on very ordinary human incidents? They also seem to exude 'collectively' some mystery about them and their characters, its as if the characters actually need not exist but they do.. by the author's choice only and scanbe considered as aproximate realisations of a human mind that just has a different way to respond to trifling human situations...
  We should be starting threads on discussion of genres of writing...
  
  Vijay
  Vijay
  
  
• From: electron (@ 203.197.139.16) on: Mon Jul 5 03:32:12
  
  Is there any site where I can read 'Of human Bondage' by Somerset Mau' full and free?
  
  help please
  
  
• From: electron (@ 203.197.139.16) on: Mon Jul 5 03:39:30
  
  Do I have any site where I can 'Of human bondage' by Somerset Maugham free and full?
  
  
• From: Kani (@ 194.149.80.1) on: Tue Jul 6 04:15:55
  
  http://www.bibliomania.com/Fiction/Maugham/Human/index.html
  
  Here is the complete electronic version of the book you asked for.
  
  Happy reading.
  
  
• From: Saketh (@ 128.226.4.145) on: Mon Aug 30 17:16:34
  
  They collided, and it proved that no two objects can be at the same point in space simultaneously
  
  
• From: Saketh (@ 128.226.4.145) on: Mon Aug 30 17:17:39
  
  The previous one was PGW quote
  
  
• From: ravi SUNdaram (@ 192.149.1.168) on: Thu Sep 2 10:06:42
  
  Re Wodehouse: Uncle Dynamite:
  Poor Constable Potter was at the reciving end of this: "You thought I was Major Barbazon-Plank! no, I said Barbazon-Plank, the Major, to distinguish myself from my illustrious brother Barbazon-Plank, the Minor. And by curious coincidence, he joined the army and reached the exalted rank of a Major, thus becoming Major Barbazon-Plank, the Minor. And I went to Africa and did some prospecting and ended up owning a few gold mines, thus becoming, Miner Barbazon-Plank, the Major." (para phrased, not an exact quote).
  
  
• From: pattu (@ pppb12-resalebatonrouge1-2r1073.saturn.bbn.com) on: Fri Oct 29 00:00:42
  
  i thought this discussion was about classics....
  i don't mean to belittle PGW.. but i was wondering when there is seperate discussion forum for him...why he is being discussed again here...??
  
  for Maughm fans... have you read this book.."Razor's Edge" by him??
  Terrific!!!!
  
  
• From: R.karthikeyan (@ ) on: Thu Jun 10 11:31:57
  
  
  hello,
  
  sir i want list of tamil names starts with "su"
  
  

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