The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.2137  Thursday, 6 November 2003

[1]     From:   Rolland Banker <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 04:46:09 -0800 (PST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.2109 no spirit dares stir

[2]     From:   Thomas Larque <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 13:51:13 -0000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.2128 no spirit dares stir

[3]     From:   David Crosby <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 10:16:15 -0600
        Subj:   RE: SHK 14.2128 no spirit dares stir

[4]     From:   Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 08:24:55 -0800 (PST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.2128 no spirit dares stir


[Editor's Note: I have doubts if anything more can be usefully said in
this thread and ask the combatants to consider letting it die. -Hardy]

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Rolland Banker <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 04:46:09 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 14.2109 no spirit dares stir
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2109 no spirit dares stir

Here's a change. I will commend Bill Arnold for this thread's continued
life, but only because I am a passionate reader and recently came across
this quote from one of my faves G. Wilson Knight in The Imperial Theme
in his chapter: On Imaginative Interpretation:

"It is, surely, remarkable that, although numerous books and essays have
been devoted to Hamlet's
'character', comparatively little has been said, certainly hardly any
exact analysis has been attempted, of the most powerful acts of
imagination in the play: the ghost scenes. They have, it seems, not as
yet been properly understood in all their deathly portent and unnatural
horror: despite the fact that the poet emphasizes these elements to
excess."

So there. I can be charitable and gracious but, one still does want to
debate; since the list has gone epistemological with the theory of
knowledge thing and one doesn't want to just "turn mystery into dogma"
as G. Wilson Knight would say, couldn't we look at the terms of ghost
and spirit 'extensionally'? Usually, especially in mathematics, the
substituting of equals for equals is extensional and causes no problem.
Like Euclid's "common notion" not needing further elucidation or proof.
Of course I could just be turning mystery into sterility with my
notion.  But wait that could not happen in a discussion about
Shakespeare's works--so no problem there. Whew!

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Thomas Larque <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 13:51:13 -0000
Subject: 14.2128 no spirit dares stir
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2128 no spirit dares stir

>A number of members of SHAKSPER have my book, have read it, either by
>emailing me or writing me directly: they *know* who they are: click on
>the website under my name.  As said, you can communicate directly with
>me

This is probably the best way of getting the book if Bill Arnold still
has copies (particularly new copies) to sell.

>or you can order the book with the ISBN number from any bookstore in
>the world

No, I don't think that you can, because it is not on the list of
"in-print" books in either the USA or the UK.  Unless the bookshop has
special contacts with the publisher or something similar (and British
bookshops, for example, almost certainly wouldn't have - and more
distant non-English speaking nations are even less likely to) the
bookshop staff would not even know that the book existed, let alone how
to get hold of a copy.

>or buy it directly from booksellers on abebooks.com, and the
>book is listed on bn.com. Its EAN code is: ISBN 1-892582-01-5.

What seems to be the only second-hand bookdealer selling Bill Arnold's
book at the moment (with only one copy on offer) is advertising on
Alibris and Barnes & Noble but not on Abebooks.  The best search engine
for second-hand books is probably www.bookfinder.com which searches
Abebooks and many other second-hand and new bookdealers at the same
time.  Enter "Jesus" in title and "Arnold" in author in any of the three
services (Barnes and Noble, Bookfinder, and Alibris), and the book will
appear.

If I had the money to spare I would certainly purchase a copy, but I am
having to run to a budget and can't afford many purchases for sheer
curiosity and personal pleasure at the moment (my large collection of
peculiar anti-Stratfordian materials stands as witness that I have
purchased for these reasons in the past).  I may invest in Arnold's book
at a later date.

Thomas Larque.
"Shakespeare and His Critics"       "British Shakespeare Association"
http://shakespearean.org.uk           http://britishshakespeare.ws

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           David Crosby <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 10:16:15 -0600
Subject: 14.2128 no spirit dares stir
Comment:        RE: SHK 14.2128 no spirit dares stir

Bill Arnold wrote:

>As said, you can communicate directly with
>me, or you can order the book with the ISBN number from any bookstore in
>the world, or buy it directly from booksellers on abebooks.com, and the
>book is listed on bn.com. Its EAN code is: ISBN 1-892582-01-5.

Apparently Bill is being too modest. In addition to his book on Jesus,
he is also the author of a groundbreaking book on Emily Dickinson, which
is also *not* available on Barnes and Noble.com. Here, though, is a
review posted to B&N by Jim C.:

"Bill Arnold's book is by far the best book I've read on Emily
Dickinson. According to the author, 'The untold story of Emily
Dickinson's 'Secret Love' can now be told in its entirety. She disclosed
their affair and his name via acrostics and anagams in the tradition of
the French courtly-love poets. Her 1,775 poems, often misconstrued as
'cryptic,' are mostly 'Secret Love' poems with a cabalistic code
intended to be de-coded after their deaths...Her 'Secret Love,' Sam
Bowles, publisher of the Springfield Daily Republican, and her
Congressman-father from Massachusetts founded the Republican party. As a
respected journalist with a wife and family, whose job was editor and
political pundit, it was untenable for him to suffer the gossip of a
scandalous love affair with a flaming-redhead poetess in the middle of
the Nineteenth century...Thus, the reason Emily Dickinson remained
unpublished in her lifetime becomes self-evident. Except for a dozen
poems published anonymously, six by Sam in his SDR, their
carefully-crafted crossword puzzle remained hidden until now. The
mystery 'Master' know to her as Mister Sam, an inverso-anagram) behind
her poems can now be revealed. As Simon Worrall's new book established,
the facts are now clear and this biography is a must read for Dickinson
fans everywhere. Take it to the beach."

I think it is time Bill Arnold took his gibberish to an unmoderated
forum.

David Crosby
<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Bill Arnold <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Wednesday, 5 Nov 2003 08:24:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 14.2128 no spirit dares stir
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2128 no spirit dares stir

Thomas Larque writes, "The book is not on the in-print databases of
either the US or the UK, and currently is not available on Abebooks or
any of the second-hand book search engines examined by
www.bookfinder.com (which searches Abebooks and a long list of other
second-hand book databases).  A refined search (for just "Arnold" and
"Jesus") brings up a single result.  Alibris is selling a signed copy
for $19.90 plus postage.  This means that one person can purchase the
book, but otherwise the points in my previous posting hold true.  Most
people in the world cannot access this book even if they want to (now
with one exception), unless they have access to a library containing a
copy."

OK: I will *not* respond point-for-point to the above post, but I will
elucidate a few points about American publishing and the distribution of
books.  In America, we have a Books-in-Print system run by Bowker: my
book *Jesus: The Gospel According to Will* is so listed.  Bowker then
distributes disks to bookseller who then consults those disks when
individuals call up and seek the book.  Inasmuch as my book falls under
scholarship, Amazon.com and other big name online distributors, such as
BN.com, wish to deep discount the book before listing it--these
days--since the events of 9-11 and the general collapse of markets
worldwide as a consequence.  In fact, when some of these big
conglomerates put up a book, they do not *always* cross-reference the
book by *name of author* and by *title* and by *ISBN number* and by
*publisher* and thus the book might be there, and found, if the finder
were to separately seek by all methods.  As indicated by the post I am
responding to, the book was found by multiple, and different, methods.

Thus, there are other avenues for book publishers to distribute their
books.  Just as Mel Gibson has produced his own version of *Jesus* and
finds it now a chore to line up a distributor [I worked in the movie
business part-time for three decades, and the same is true of some books
that are true of some movies] so do small presses find themselves up
against the same difficulties.

Abebooks.com has my book listed: and for those not in the *know* let me
say that Alibris.com finds books on Abebooks.com and then *relists*
them.  That explains Alibris.com having my book and not Abebooks.com,
when someone tried to find it.  Take note: Abebooks.com lists
*individual* copies of books, as does Bookfinder.com, and when that one
copy is gone, that *one* copy is delisted.  If a bookstore has multiple
copies, they must *relist* and therefore bookstores that sold my copy to
someone from this list recently, will, as a course of the events, relist
it.  It is a chore, for all concerned, but as with Grebanier,
hard-to-find scholarly books are there, and seekers must continue to
seek, and they will find.

Rest assured that all is *not* as some assume, but all is as it *is* and
it ain't always as some assume it to be.

Do rest assured of this: *Jesus: The Gospel According To Will* is
*findable* as someone on this list just bought a copy off of the online
bookseller Abebooks.com.  Who else in this world is at all interested in
Shakespeare and Jesus in the same breath, spirit, soul, ghost or will?

So, either directly contact me by clicking my website below, or go back
to the various search engines again.  He who seeks will find the door
opened to him/her, as the famous man of wisdom did in fact tell us all.

Bill Arnold
http://www.cwru.edu/affil/edis/scholars/arnold.htm

_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>

DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
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