KHAZANAH [himpunan post Marquez]

marquez

Kalau ada yang bunyi macam tak sedap bagitaulah.... aku buat sekali lalu je... Thanks for reading.

M-

marquez

Peluang kedua untuk membaca heheheheh

gorgonz

baca cerita nin macam dengar ayahanda aku jer yg bercakap.....

Paracelsus ni ke yang cipta paracetemol tu? Baguih sungguh mamat ni... berjasa untuk umat.

dalam cari.com pun ada alchemy, kalau ada faith semua jadi

mbhcsf

Sekuntum bunga ros boleh dibakar,

mbhcsf

Sekuntum bunga ros boleh dibakar,

I know this is kind of outdated, but I have to say that it's a wonderful piece of writing.  The points being presented are inevitably true.  I'm not sure myself why reading is not a habit acquired by many people...especially Malaysians in particular.  Maybe it's considered uncool to read to acquire some knowledge and to broaden one's horizon.  Or maybe people just don't know that reading and being knowledgeable (hmm...knowing what Britney Spears was doing in the last 24 hours is not what I consider "knowledgeable"!) will only make them more attractive?  There are always more interesting things to talk about.  

I have met avid readers who can be quite nerdy and geeky, but I have also met many people who don't read, but they look 100% geeky....especially those who spent time on the computers or video games and are not able to converse about anything else other than computer stuff.  

Personally, I feel that reading enhances my ability to think critically and rationally (although the latter is a bit difficult to achieve since I can be quite emotional at times).  Reading also enables me to learn about other cultures, hence, I believe that reading can encourage people to be more open minded.  I agree with Sherrina that reading enables you to travel to many places you've never been before.   

By the way, I did check out some postings by MariahOsman (biasalah...dah orang kata jangan tengok tu..of course I nak tengok jugak) and I found some of them quite disturbing....especially about her dreams.

seribulan

sorry if I'm wrong..is he one
of the forumner here???

marquez

The hunky intellectual is currently posting using the name Racer X (how orijinal...)

M-

seribulan

hah...bull's eye....

I have read the first 35 pages and it's very interesting.  I was amazed how he used the death of Don Emilio (who committed suicide using cyanide and not being able to play chess again) in the beginning of "Love in the Time of Cholera".  It's wonderful :bg:

mbhcsf

pardon me? cyanide can be very cytotoxic ...interesting storyline you got there..

marquez

Bacalah - kalau tidak kamu akan menyesal ~ iklan

OnEdge

Marquez, edge ada dengar about this book...

last Sunday pi MPH tadak...pi Popular tadak..pi Pay Less Book pun tadak...sampah tol...

malas tol nak pi Kinokuniya...can get me knocked down prices ah? hehehehe

marquez

Apparently bookshops are not bringing the book in (sekarang ni masih hardcover)... aku punya pun special import (megahlah tu heheheh)... Hari tu Silberfish ada bawak masuk dalam 20 copies... habis dalam masa 2-3 hari... tapi bosnya kata nak gi India minggu depan so kalau lu nak reserve boleh lah.. maybe aku leh get 10% discount... (price: 89.90, with discount: dalam 81) - ini American Edition.

OnEdge

Hardcover? aiseh....paperback tadak ka?

aku cukup sayang nak baca hardcover nih....biasanya buat simpan display aja (macam ada sorang tuh cakap....chix magnet...ahahahahahahahaha)

haah..kalau ada paperback ..nak order one....

marquez

Is Sherlock Holmes gay?

The Swinging Detective
By LAURA MILLER

Everyone already knows, instinctively, that Holmes is homosexual,'' Graham Robb writes in a chapter on early fictional detectives in his new book, ''Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century.'' This was news to me, though not to many other people, as I discovered after asking around. Sherlock Holmes and his companion, Dr. Watson, long ago joined various male duos (among them the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Batman and Robin and even Frodo and Sam) as the subject of smirks, winks and occasionally more earnest efforts at extracting the hidden meanings of pop icons. But Robb -- who offers his speculations on the sexual orientation of Holmes and other literary sleuths in a coda to a book that's mostly about historical figures -- doesn't want his observations taken for mere crude outing. He is not, he insists, engaged in ''a sly attempt to ensnare the great detective in the elastic web of gay revisionism.''

Or is he? On the topic of Sherlock Holmes it's hard to find anyone who can avoid being sly or, for that matter, coy. Coy is just what Robb becomes when he avows that what's significant ''is not that certain characters are or are not homosexual but that gay readers found their likeness in them,'' only later to advance the implausible theory that Holmes's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, modeled the character on Oscar Wilde. Whether or not Robb is being entirely serious -- can anyone be serious when discussing the savant of 221B Baker Street? -- there is something decidedly unconventional about the sexuality of Holmes and several other popular fictional detectives (Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe spring to mind). Yet whom these geniuses desire, if anyone, seems less important than what they choose to do about it.

That Holmes was partly based on Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin, hero of the first detective story, ''The Murders in the Rue Morgue,'' no one can deny. The similarities would be embarrassing if Doyle had ever pretended to be writing more than pulp entertainment. Robb, who argues throughout ''Strangers'' that to be homosexual in the 1800's was not always as dire a fate as is commonly believed, explains that Dupin and Holmes are what used to be called ''coded gay.'' References to the love that dare not speak its name were ''carefully encrypted'' in the writings of the time and ''are becoming less decipherable as time passes.'' Some of the more arcane markers of homosexual inclinations, according to Robb, included beating servants and crushing flowers.

Much of what leads Robb to peg Dupin as gay is less obscure. The brilliant amateur sleuth, a man of aristocratic family, lives in reduced circumstances as a result of ''untoward events.'' He is ''enamored of the night'' and frequents the dicier parts of town. The unnamed (but more solvent) narrator immediately perceives that ''seeking in Paris the objects I then sought . . . the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price.'' They set up housekeeping together. By day, they remain indoors with curtains drawn, burning candles and incense -- exactly the sort of behavior that, Robb notes, scandalized a London courtroom when Wilde admitted to it decades later.

These vague but suggestive details, combined with a handful of ambiguous classical references, make up Robb's case for Dupin's homosexuality. His reasoning is ingenious and his style elegant, but he has not quite absorbed Holmes's famous deductive formula: ''When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'' Dupin's habits suggest a secret homosexual life to Robb, but to another reader they might indicate, say, the regular use of recreational drugs, a practice with which Holmes was certainly familiar.

Then there are the ever-present sidekicks: Watson and the narrator of ''Rue Morgue.'' In real life, such attachments do foster suspicion, but Dupin and Holmes are not real men; they are extravagantly fictional. They need their amanuenses narratively, not erotically. ''I am lost without my Boswell,'' Holmes remarks, understating the situation. Holmes requires Watson -- that stand-in for the baffled reader -- to tell the story, and since a person like Holmes can't exist outside of stories, he is far worse than lost without the good doctor.

None of which proves that Holmes isn't ''really'' gay. He very well might be, though any passion for Watson, who is forever ogling the female clientele, probably went unrequited. It hardly matters. We could debate the sexual orientation of Holmes (and Poirot and Marple) forever, but his sexual practices are plain: he's celibate. He has to be. If Holmes were to become romantically involved, the results would be catastrophic. It would ruin the fun. Holmes's celibacy isn't a mask covering some other, secret aspect of his nature, it is his nature, and one of the main reasons we love him.

Great critics have struggled to define the eccentric charm of Doyle's tales. It has so little to do with adult sexuality because it has so little to do with adulthood. Edmund Wilson, a hater of detective novels but a Holmes enthusiast, wrote that ''over the whole epic there hangs an air of irresponsible comedy, like that of some father's rigmarole for children.'' Clive James, in an essay included in the recent collection ''As of This Writing,'' relegates Doyle's work to ''the radiant books of our youth,'' but nevertheless attests to the ''cozy satisfaction still to be obtained from reading about Sherlock.'' The Holmes stories take place in an idyll of perpetual boyhood, at the stage Freudians call ''latent,'' when love scenes are something to retch at and the ambivalence of grown-up life is held at bay. For all its solemnity, ''The Lord of the Rings'' partakes of the same dream. That's why sex is of small consequence in either work and the word ''adventure'' is essential to both.

People still argue over whether or not Tolkien's work constitutes ''literature''; Doyle never presented the Holmes stories as such. Yet even the skeptical James thinks ''Doyle was some kind of great man,'' and like Tolkien, Doyle has inspired a following of near-lunatic devotion. Sex, it seems, doesn't always sell, and the surest path to authorial immortality may be to make sure your hero never gets any.

[ Last edited by marquez on 28-1-2004 at 12:15 AM ]

marquez

Paperback kena nunggu 4-5 bulan lagi ler....