In the third installment of his coverage of this year's Modern Language Association convention, Nick Gillespie notes that "it's been years -- decades even -- since a major new way of thinking about literature has really taken the academic world by storm.." I can't help wondering why we need a new way of thinking about literature. A sound way would seem to suffice.
A young friend of mine has just returned from a semester abroad studying literary theory. She found it convoluted, dull and largely irrelevant and dubious -- of course she has spent several years earning her living by writing. Practical experience often leaves one skeptical of theoretical formulations.
Gillespie is a lot more sympathetic to the goings on at the MLA convention than, I confess, I would be. I regard arguments grounded in "infantile sexual experiences," for example, as fundamentally unpersuasive, given that we can know nothing for sure about such, infants being unable to discuss or record any of their experiences. As for evolution -- which also figures in a good bit of this literary theorizing -- I have a few questions: Can Hitler be explained by means of natural selection? Can war? If 99 percent of all species known to have existed are extinct, isn't extinction nature's way, and why should we care if another species bites the dust? If humans have evolved into a species that exploits the environment, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with anything, in fact, if it's a product of evolution?
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Friday, December 30, 2005
An outstanding list ...
... at So Many Books: My Favorite Five in '05 . C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces is a great book, Lewis's masterpiece in fact. And Muriel Rukeyser I have always loved for reminding us that "the world is made of stories / not of atoms." Rukeyser, by the way, was no scientific illiterate, and her biography of J. Willard Gibbs -- probably the gratest scientist America has produced -- is still well worth reading.
This has nothing to do about books exactly ...
... but I'm going to blog about it anyway. WRTI-FM here in Philly just finished broadcasting a performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. It was on when I came back from shopping, so while listening to it I had no idea who the performers were. It didn't especially impress me. For one thing I thought the tempos were too consistently fast. This was particularly the case when "O Fortuna," which opens and closes the piece, returned at the end. I still think Ormandy's version of Orff's cantata is the best (when released, one reviewer called it the best choral-orchestral record ever made). Ormandy seems to understand, as Rattle obviously does not, that the "O Fortuna" music is a parody of the "Dies irae." So his "O Fortuna" is menacing and dramatic, not simply frenetic like Rattle's.
The future of newspapers ...
... is obviously of some concern to us, since we earn our living working for one. So this post by former newsman Jim Bowman, Chicago Newspapers, the Blog: Established dog bites back, interested us greatly.
Newspapers and journalists get a lot of unfair criticism. But not all of the criticism is unfair. As I think this post demonstrates.
Newspapers and journalists get a lot of unfair criticism. But not all of the criticism is unfair. As I think this post demonstrates.
I never knew ...
... that The Man from Snowy River was originally a poem. In Rhyme's reason, David Campbell does "a bit of tub-thumping for Australia's own form of traditional verse, commonly known as bush poetry." Sounds a bit like cowboy poetry. Which gives me an opportunity to do some tub-thumping of my own: Next month is the 22d National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. I attended last years and wrote about in The Inquirer. It's a great event.
Has it come to this?
I'm afraid it has. Because Scott McLemee's review of Margo Jefferson's On Michael Jackson is really worth your time, if only for this description of the Gloved One: "some kind of hermaphroditic, post-racial, trans-human creature from planet Narcissus."
I must say, too, that yesterday's visitor to Cogito, ergo Boom intrigues me too.
I must say, too, that yesterday's visitor to Cogito, ergo Boom intrigues me too.
How Rambo came to be ...
Steve Clackson at Sand Storm draws attention to a piece about David Morell, author of First Blood, the book that introduced John Rambo to the world. I never knew any of this, including the Penn State connection.
Steve also compliments us. Thanks, Steve, the feeling is mutual.
Steve also compliments us. Thanks, Steve, the feeling is mutual.
Adaptation ...
The excellent Arts & Letters Daily links to Yeah, but the Book Is Better, an insightful piece by Thane Rosenbaum, whose novel Second Hand Smoke is being adapted to the screen. A key quote:
With a novel, the author forms an implicit partnership with his audience. He provides the story and its voice, but the reader adds the visuals. The power of a novel's description is often tempered by sketchy details. Much is left out in order to leave something to the imagination. The reader is free to conjure the characters in his own way, to picture how they look, because the mind's eye has a way of assembling an image that is quite different from how a character might appear on screen. In the end, the novelist surrenders his book to his readers. Thereafter it becomes theirs, and his proprietary interest ceases.
But read the whole thing. (My own view, for what it's worth, is that short stories and novellas adapt better, because the screen writer has room to flesh things out rather than cut, cut , cut. The Man Who Would Be King and Angels & Insects are two good examples. With a novel what makes it to the screen is a Cliffs Notes version.)
With a novel, the author forms an implicit partnership with his audience. He provides the story and its voice, but the reader adds the visuals. The power of a novel's description is often tempered by sketchy details. Much is left out in order to leave something to the imagination. The reader is free to conjure the characters in his own way, to picture how they look, because the mind's eye has a way of assembling an image that is quite different from how a character might appear on screen. In the end, the novelist surrenders his book to his readers. Thereafter it becomes theirs, and his proprietary interest ceases.
But read the whole thing. (My own view, for what it's worth, is that short stories and novellas adapt better, because the screen writer has room to flesh things out rather than cut, cut , cut. The Man Who Would Be King and Angels & Insects are two good examples. With a novel what makes it to the screen is a Cliffs Notes version.)
Thursday, December 29, 2005
'Tis the fifth day of Christmas ...
... so it's a fine time to savor Chesterton's The House of Christmas, posted by Lars Walker at Brandywine Books.
A refreshing list ...
Karie B. at Bookish totes up the Bad Books. She didn't like The Da Vinci Code and for exactly the reasons I didn't.
Assumptions, assumptions ...
Lisa Coutant thinks there are false Assumptions about readers. I think she's right.
Calculating a best-seller ...
... though it seems The Da Vinci Code breaks the rules. Some comments here.
What the reviewers said ...
of the movies and books. What Kirkus said in 1950 about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: "Although metaphysical rumblings may disturb adults, this wily symbolism-studded fantasy should appeal to children of an imaginative turn ... Not recommended for adults!"
Bookman's holiday ...
When not doing something connected to my job as book review editor, I like to relax by cooking. Some evidence for this can be found here.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Borrowing vs. stealing ...
I never heard of either Brad Vice or the controversy over a recent short story collection of his. But it seems quite a tale. Grumpy Old Bookman offers some comment and several useful links. A Charming Plagiarist in the New York Press provides the prosecutorial summation. In The literary lynching of Brad Vice Jason Sanford mounts a defense against the original charge, then takes up his cudgel again to ward off new ones. GalleyCat weighed in. So has Booksquare: To Live Outside the Law.
As for myself, I share Grumpy Old Bookman's sentiments about the creative-writing nexus.
As for myself, I share Grumpy Old Bookman's sentiments about the creative-writing nexus.
A bit of exaggeration perhaps?
Check out these pictures of The Cold Snap in Europe from BBC News. Except for the shot of the cars in Kent, it doesn't look like that much a snowfall to me.
The prospect for books (cont'd) ...
Glenn Reynolds links to fascinating piece about an alleged truism regarding electrons vs. paper.
Another legend bites the dust ...
Scott McLemee links to a revelatory letter by Upton Sinclair about Sacco and Vanzetti. Here's more from Scott himself: Impure Literature.
Now take a deep breath ...
Not you. Benjamin Kunkel. Edward Champion lists the Full List of Things That Benjamin Kunkel is Angry About.
Attention, please ....
Miss Snark has turned hers to book synopses submitted for her perusual. She is employing her fabled Crapometer.
Don't worry ...
... even if fiction is dying or actually dead, it's bound to resurrect itself. John Freeman explains Why fiction is a phoenix.
Not another crisis ...
Conversational Reading discusses The Reading Crisis and links to a corresponding discussion of same at n+1.
One of the more interesting Top 10 lists ...
Ninety-nine percent of all the books ever published are out of print. But, thanks in large part to the Internet, they're are easily available and some, apparently, sell briskly. The Book Standard reports that Bookfinder.com Lists Top 10 Out–of–Print Books for 2005 . I didn't know Lynne Cheney had written "a racy ... novel of female bisexuality and prostitution." Maybe Jeffrey Hart is right and the Bush administration isn't so conservative after all.
It's been a couple of years now ...
... but people still haven't forgotten my colleague Carlin Romano's encounter with Dale Peck -- the Raskolnikov of reviewers -- at BookExpo America in Chicago. The Book Bables wonder if Book-Reviewing Has Become Just Plain Creepy . Well, it's guys like me, book review editors, who make the decision to let a review see the light of print.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
It's probably clear by now ...
... that I'm no fan of Harold Pinter, either his pretentious, vacuous plays or his recent Nobel rant. So naturally, I found Lee Harris's Nobel acceptance speech quite satisfying. Lee Harris? Nobel? Well, as Lee asks, "Why not?"
Writers sound off ...
... not necessarily to their advantage: Quotes of the year in the Sunday Times.
And Bill Peschel links to some bizarre resolutions.
And Bill Peschel links to some bizarre resolutions.
The prospects for books (cont'd)
John Sutherland thinks that he's seen the future. It's P2P -- and TBP and Tescoisation are taking us there.
And Philip Oltermann ponders books vs. electronics.
And Philip Oltermann ponders books vs. electronics.
And just in case ...
... you haven't seen it, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit links to a video demonstrating that part of the problem in Iraq may be linguistic.
On this third day of Christmas ...
... let's take a closer look at Dickens's "A Christmas Carol." Hat tip to reader John Carman.
My review ...
... of Kay Ryan's The Niagara River is here at Editor's Choice.
And here's a fresh look at Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here.
And here's a fresh look at Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here.
Monday, December 26, 2005
More nourishing fare ...
... on science than one is likely to find in a newspaper: From First Things, particle physicist Stephen Barr on Science and Teleology.
Since it's officially a holiday ...
... here's a Christmas story by Jeanette Winterson linked to by BookGlutton.
I missed this ...
... but it's worth noting anyway: Golden Rule Jones posts the Tyrone Family Christmas Letter.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Friday, December 23, 2005
What's in a review?
Conventional Reading posts a discussion of a review of a review. Follow the link to get the full context. My own view on the subject of reviews is strictly phenomenological: If I can accurately and precisely describe what I have read, my reader will know full well what I feel about what I've read. In other words, the subject of a review is the book-reader relationship.
I can't let it go at that ...
… because there are a few others deserving of mention:
Myself & the Other Fellow: A Biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by Claire Harmon. Everything you could want in a literary biography.
Defining the World The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings. Clear, concise and filled with fascinating information not only about the wonderful Dr. Johnson, but much, much else besides.
The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. I have it on good authority that teenage guys not inclined to read much have a hard time putting this one down. A little goofy, but pretty riveting.
State of Fear by Michael Crichton. Dan Brown should read this just to see how a real pro writes a thriller. Devout environmentalists will rend their garments over Crichton’s blasphemy, but he’s got charts and graphs and a lot of other data to support this thriller’s premise.
The Rosary Girls by Richard Montanari. Complex, effective, and often genuinely creepy thriller quite accurately set in Philly.
Myself & the Other Fellow: A Biography of Robert Louis Stevenson by Claire Harmon. Everything you could want in a literary biography.
Defining the World The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings. Clear, concise and filled with fascinating information not only about the wonderful Dr. Johnson, but much, much else besides.
The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. I have it on good authority that teenage guys not inclined to read much have a hard time putting this one down. A little goofy, but pretty riveting.
State of Fear by Michael Crichton. Dan Brown should read this just to see how a real pro writes a thriller. Devout environmentalists will rend their garments over Crichton’s blasphemy, but he’s got charts and graphs and a lot of other data to support this thriller’s premise.
The Rosary Girls by Richard Montanari. Complex, effective, and often genuinely creepy thriller quite accurately set in Philly.
Everybody else does it ...
… so why not me. Here are my picks out of the books I reviewed this year in my “Editor’s Choice” column:
The Society of Others by William Nicholson. “If you want a name, use your own,” the protagonist of this enigmatic novel by the author of Shadowlands tells the reader as he refuses to divulge his name. Which is just as well because The Society of Others ultimately leaves the reader at the center of its mystery.
Sophia House by Michael D. O'Brien. A harrowing account, set in Warsaw during World War II, of the relationship between a bitter bookseller and the 17-year-old Hasidic boy he shelters from the Germans, a demonstration that genuine sainthood costs, in Eliot’s phrase, “not less than everything.”
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice. Told in the voice of the divinely precocious Jesus, this is a remarkably effective fictional presentation of the figure millions continue to regard as their Savior.
The Sea by John Banville. Perhaps the greatest sustained bit of onomatopoeia in the language. The sea of the title resonates in practically every sentence. A tale of loss, not only of a wife, but of meaning, it is stunningly written and quite moving.
The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Simply an important book, crammed with ideas and information. The book you have to read if you want to have some idea of what is happening technologically.
William Pitt the Younger by William Hague. The former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party has written an extraordinarily lucid and compelling biography of the man who was the youngest prime minister ever and the longest-serving prime minister in war time. An enigmatic, but strangely tragic figure.
Makes You Stop and Think by Daniel Hoffman. The former U.S. poet laureate’s sonnets are masterfully crafted, utterly accessible, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking. If you think you don’t like poetry, try these.
The Niagara River by Kay Ryan. Ryan’s short, wry, thoughtful poems are as concentrated as diamonds. They make you reconsider not only the world but the words we use to talk about it.
Pure Pagan Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments Selected and translated by Burton Raffel. Want to know how people who believed in life after death but didn’t think it amounted to much looked at the world? Read this book.
Telegrams of the Soul Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg Translated by Peter Wortsman. Short, quirky pieces by a classic romantic bohemian who paid a higher price for his carefree persona than anyone suspected.
The Society of Others by William Nicholson. “If you want a name, use your own,” the protagonist of this enigmatic novel by the author of Shadowlands tells the reader as he refuses to divulge his name. Which is just as well because The Society of Others ultimately leaves the reader at the center of its mystery.
Sophia House by Michael D. O'Brien. A harrowing account, set in Warsaw during World War II, of the relationship between a bitter bookseller and the 17-year-old Hasidic boy he shelters from the Germans, a demonstration that genuine sainthood costs, in Eliot’s phrase, “not less than everything.”
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice. Told in the voice of the divinely precocious Jesus, this is a remarkably effective fictional presentation of the figure millions continue to regard as their Savior.
The Sea by John Banville. Perhaps the greatest sustained bit of onomatopoeia in the language. The sea of the title resonates in practically every sentence. A tale of loss, not only of a wife, but of meaning, it is stunningly written and quite moving.
The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Simply an important book, crammed with ideas and information. The book you have to read if you want to have some idea of what is happening technologically.
William Pitt the Younger by William Hague. The former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party has written an extraordinarily lucid and compelling biography of the man who was the youngest prime minister ever and the longest-serving prime minister in war time. An enigmatic, but strangely tragic figure.
Makes You Stop and Think by Daniel Hoffman. The former U.S. poet laureate’s sonnets are masterfully crafted, utterly accessible, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking. If you think you don’t like poetry, try these.
The Niagara River by Kay Ryan. Ryan’s short, wry, thoughtful poems are as concentrated as diamonds. They make you reconsider not only the world but the words we use to talk about it.
Pure Pagan Seven Centuries of Greek Poems and Fragments Selected and translated by Burton Raffel. Want to know how people who believed in life after death but didn’t think it amounted to much looked at the world? Read this book.
Telegrams of the Soul Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg Translated by Peter Wortsman. Short, quirky pieces by a classic romantic bohemian who paid a higher price for his carefree persona than anyone suspected.
One from Column A ...
... and two from Column B perhaps. At GalleyCat: Take out a book along with your Chinese food.
Authors speak up ...
Bookreporter.com links to all of its 2005 author interviews. Included are chats with Richard Montanari (The Rosary Girls) and Neil Olsen (The Icon), both of whose books I reviewed and liked. Also one with Steve Berry, whose The Third Secret I didn't manage to get to but heard good things about.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Yet another shared enthusiasm...
Sandra at Book World posts about Arthur Machen, a wonderful writer.
Another chance to speak out ...
Maud Newton links to an opportunity to read a favorite poem and have your reading posted on the Net.
Critical blogging ...
... or blogging criticism. Either way, a panel at the Makor Center discussed it. James Marcus was there. So was Bud Parr. My view is much the same as Terry Teachout's.
History is written by the winners ...
... as Lars Walker demonstrates at Brandywine Books: The Eve of St. Erling’s Day.
Something to think about ...
Karie B, at Bookish raises an issue worth considering:
"Refraining from reading a book (or watching a film) because characters are involved in something you find morally objectional strikes me as .. very odd. Is it because you in your capacity as a reader are afraid of losing yourself in the headspace of the characters or .. what?"
It seems to me that to refrain from reading a book because the characters engage in something I find morally objectionable would seriously limit the range of my reading. I object to murder, but think Macbeth is a great play. In fact, I find I connect quite well with Macbeth himself, especially at the end when, knowing all is lost including honor, that the prophecies have come to pass and Birnum Wood has indeed come to Dunsinane, he still doesn';t shrink from fighting MacDuff.
Lolita, on the other hand, didn't grab me becaus I just couldn't connect with Humbert Humbert as a person. I find it difficult to read a work of fiction whose central character I cannot in some way identify with. A limitation, I am sure, but it hasn't kept me from much.
"Refraining from reading a book (or watching a film) because characters are involved in something you find morally objectional strikes me as .. very odd. Is it because you in your capacity as a reader are afraid of losing yourself in the headspace of the characters or .. what?"
It seems to me that to refrain from reading a book because the characters engage in something I find morally objectionable would seriously limit the range of my reading. I object to murder, but think Macbeth is a great play. In fact, I find I connect quite well with Macbeth himself, especially at the end when, knowing all is lost including honor, that the prophecies have come to pass and Birnum Wood has indeed come to Dunsinane, he still doesn';t shrink from fighting MacDuff.
Lolita, on the other hand, didn't grab me becaus I just couldn't connect with Humbert Humbert as a person. I find it difficult to read a work of fiction whose central character I cannot in some way identify with. A limitation, I am sure, but it hasn't kept me from much.
Opening gambit ...
Steven Hart has a nice piece about Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest. I agree about the opening, but the thing I most remember about the book is a line that comes toward the end (if memory serves): "I haven't laughed so much since the hogs ate my kid brother."
Instant library ...
The complete set of Penguin Classics is now available -- and only available -- at Amazon.
The perils of assigning ...
Lisa Coutant links to a discussion at GalleyCat regarding whether a book should be assigned for review "to somebody if the author of that book had previously panned the reviewer's earlier work."
I certainly wouldn't. And I may have more to say on the subject later.
I certainly wouldn't. And I may have more to say on the subject later.
In the Nicholas of time ...
Speaking of Dostoyevsky, Today in Literature reminds that on this date in 1849 the writer-to-be was led out of the Peter and Paul Fortress (commanded by an ancestor of Vladimir Nabokov) with some fellow prisoners to be executed. Just before the first group was about to be dispatched, a messenger arrived with a reprieve from Czar Nicholas I (who had concocted the whole charade). Dostoyevsky was shipped off to Siberia for four years. Another prisoner became completely deranged as a result of the ordeal and had to be confined to an asylum.
What has this got to do with books?
Well, give me a moment to explain. Bill Peschel links to Dustbury, who links to the Slut-o-Meter. The latter, I find, provides some interesting evaluations:
Tolstoy: -8.24 percent
Dostoyevsky: 6.89 percent
Kerouac: -1.88 percent
Bukowski: 11.86 percent
Henry James: 3.28 percent
What can you make of something that rates Henry James sluttier than Tolstoy and Kerouac?
Tolstoy: -8.24 percent
Dostoyevsky: 6.89 percent
Kerouac: -1.88 percent
Bukowski: 11.86 percent
Henry James: 3.28 percent
What can you make of something that rates Henry James sluttier than Tolstoy and Kerouac?
The perils of reprise ...
Bill Peschel ponders sequels cinematic and literary. I think the problem with sequels is that the motive for them always seems more purely commenercial than anything else.
RIP: Fiction ...
Steve Clackson posts a CBC piece wondering Is Fiction Dead?
At BookExpo America a few years ago I heard much talk that strongly narrative nonfiction was beginning to displace fiction. I think the key here is "strongly narrative." Fiction that tells a good story continues to sell. But I see no evidence that "the war in Iraq ... has fuelled readers’ appetites for political non-fiction." Fiction that eschews narrative in favor of style and interior musings seems to appeal to a minority of readers (but often gets highly praised by reviewers). It's not all that different from movies: The movies we're supposed to take seriously as "art" are "intimate" indie flicks. But I can't be the only person who has noticed how little variety there often is among the idependents. If you have the Independent Film Channel on cable, channel surf there from time to time: Amazing how many of the films are shot the same way, with the same sort of lighting, the same sort of sweet-melacholy score, the same mood.
At BookExpo America a few years ago I heard much talk that strongly narrative nonfiction was beginning to displace fiction. I think the key here is "strongly narrative." Fiction that tells a good story continues to sell. But I see no evidence that "the war in Iraq ... has fuelled readers’ appetites for political non-fiction." Fiction that eschews narrative in favor of style and interior musings seems to appeal to a minority of readers (but often gets highly praised by reviewers). It's not all that different from movies: The movies we're supposed to take seriously as "art" are "intimate" indie flicks. But I can't be the only person who has noticed how little variety there often is among the idependents. If you have the Independent Film Channel on cable, channel surf there from time to time: Amazing how many of the films are shot the same way, with the same sort of lighting, the same sort of sweet-melacholy score, the same mood.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Magical thieving ...
A Russian security guard has been arrested for stealing two copies of the latest Harry Potter novel and threatening to blackmail publisher Bloomsbury. Even worse, he jumped the pub the date!
Presidential reading ....
DR. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India, writes about a few of the books that he read this year. (Hat tip: patrakaar2b.)
The prospects for books ...
Michael Hyatt has some further thoughts on what the future may hold for books. Grumpy Old Bookman adds some thoughts of his own.
A good year for crime fiction ...
... but not a great year, David Montgomery says. Here is his look back.
Odds & ends
J.M. Coetzee defends the social sciences.
There's a poetry workshop going on at the Guardian, and it's not too late to join in.
Philip Hensher responds to Ian Rankin.
The Bookseller and the Historian
There's a poetry workshop going on at the Guardian, and it's not too late to join in.
Philip Hensher responds to Ian Rankin.
The Bookseller and the Historian
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
True, it has nothing to do with books ...
... but four out of five letters makes it close. And it's a pretty intriguing post Lisa Coutant has at Oy She's At It Again.
Words matter ...
Magnus Linklater in the Times of London declares that "the beauty of language in traditional hymns is what inspires, not modern banalities." O come off it, all ye Faithful.
Also in the Times, an obituary for George Painter, biographer of Proust.
Finally, again from the Times, A Christmas Carol serialized and condensed by Charles Dickens himself.
Also in the Times, an obituary for George Painter, biographer of Proust.
Finally, again from the Times, A Christmas Carol serialized and condensed by Charles Dickens himself.
Where to look up what ...
Martyn Everett at Booksurfer links to a report comparing Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. I use both -- and subscribe to Britannica.
Newspapers aren't the only ones ...
... who don't figure into their equation people who read books. According to Booksquare, neither do book publishers.
As for newspapers, Ghost Word posts this.
As for newspapers, Ghost Word posts this.
It's a jungle out there ...
Sand Storm links to a story that demonstrates just how predacious the publishing world can be.
"Had we but world enough, and time ..."
As Andrew Marvell put it in "To His Coy Mistress." Well, maybe we do. Take a look at The Clock of All Time.
Be of good cheer ...
Or maybe not. James Panero at armavirumque looks at Shakespeare's war on Christmas.
More recommendations ...
Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian offers up her picks at the Guardian, which has some others besides. And Christopher Caldwell at the Weekly Standard has a fine appreciation of Anthony Powell.
Update: January magazine has a comprehensive list. And Blogcritics serve up picks with a twist.
Update: January magazine has a comprehensive list. And Blogcritics serve up picks with a twist.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Not your usual book recommendations ...
... over at Instapundit. That's because they're from readers. Which makes them more interesting. And, since everybody seems to do it, I guess I'll get around in the next couple of days to making some recommendations of my own.
A must post before leaving the office ...
There's so much worth reading to at Miss Snark -- just go and scroll down. Here's the site of her fan club (hat tip: Bonnie Calhoun).
Probably won't blog anymore today. I have a review to write.
Probably won't blog anymore today. I have a review to write.
The big issue ...
... seems to be "literary" vs. "genre" fiction. At least it comes up a lot. Sarah Weinman touches on it in Here we go again, redux.
Prediction is difficult ...
... according to Niels Bohr. But maybe a sense of humor helps. Headlines from 2029 via Brandywine Books.
My day job ...
... about which I am supossed to blog from time to time, calls. Deadlines have been moved up and a story has just arrived that is, shall we say, a tad long. Back later.
Colin Wilson (yet again) ...
Recently, published two posts about Colin Wilson , here and here. Now, Scott McLemmee at Cogito, ergo Zoom links to a discussion of what he had to say in his recent piece about Wilson. I make no apologies for my enthusiasm for Wilson. For one thing, Wilson writes well, and if he at times comes off as a little credulous, he never comes off as sterile. He may think indiscriminately, but he also thinks passionately. Reading him, one feels that ideas are a part of life, not just items on a syllabus.
Lion's share ...
Douglas Gresham, stepson of C.S. Lewis, talks about Lewis and Narna: In the name of the father ... But Lewis himself might not altogether agree with what Gresham has to say.
A late start ...
... this morning. Just got to the office in desperate need of coffee. Blogging will have to wait a bit.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Another shared enthusiasm ...
Rockslinga links to her sister's new blog Clara & Fanny, devoted to women composers. I think that's a good idea, because there are number of women composers whose work deserves to be heard more, among them Rebecca Clarke, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Germaine Tailleferre, and Lili Boulanger. Also Sofia Gubaidulina.
Rogues' gallery ...
Prufrock's Page links to a roundup of the year's most notable plagiarism. It's quite a list.
Attention, scifi fans ...
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has posted his Science Fiction Recommendations.
One more time ...
I link back to my earlier Harold Pinter link so that all can read Rus Bowden's wonderfully pertinent comment: Au contraire. Check out Rus's links, too.
Some things to look into ...
Steve Clackson at Sand Storm links to a proposed Book of the Year. Meanwhile, Suzy Prince sings the praises of British Kitchen Sink fiction in A Kind of Loving (I am myself an Alan Sillitoe fan).
Advice for the news business ...
... from William Powers at the Wilson Quarterly: The Collapse of Big Media: Seven Steps to Salvation.
A point worth pondering:
Herding young viewers and readers into little media ghettos will not win them over. Young people recognize demographic targeting—they grew up with it. Rather than patronize them with endless “youth” sections and segments, why not include young reporters and commentators throughout your pages and broadcasts? In particular, the opinion columns of America’s great newspapers are the Sun Cities of journalism, where older journalists go to live out their golden years. They need fresher perspectives. Meanwhile, because the nightly network newscasts tend to draw an older audience, the networks skew the content toward the interests of the elderly—that’s why we see all those “Your Health” segments about new cures for wrinkles and arthritis, high blood pressure and low libido. Such tactics are driving the young away from everything you do.
And another:
Only disconnect. There’s a widespread sense in the news business that contemporary audiences want their news delivered strictly in quick hits: Nothing too thoughtful or lengthy, thank you very much; who has the time? This may be true at the moment, as consumers try to adjust to the proliferation of news sources. But content that can be downloaded on a cell phone and digested in a moment isn’t very nourishing, and a day will arrive when the public hungers for more. Though this diet of news niblets is initially appetizing, people will inevitably realize that they’d do better to push away from the buzzy grid and seek more substantial nourishment elsewhere. The baby boomers are about to start retiring, and they’re going to have a lot of time on their hands. Tiny news bites won’t fill the hours or satisfy their need.
Of course, the trick is not to write in such a way as what you write seems to read long.
A point worth pondering:
Herding young viewers and readers into little media ghettos will not win them over. Young people recognize demographic targeting—they grew up with it. Rather than patronize them with endless “youth” sections and segments, why not include young reporters and commentators throughout your pages and broadcasts? In particular, the opinion columns of America’s great newspapers are the Sun Cities of journalism, where older journalists go to live out their golden years. They need fresher perspectives. Meanwhile, because the nightly network newscasts tend to draw an older audience, the networks skew the content toward the interests of the elderly—that’s why we see all those “Your Health” segments about new cures for wrinkles and arthritis, high blood pressure and low libido. Such tactics are driving the young away from everything you do.
And another:
Only disconnect. There’s a widespread sense in the news business that contemporary audiences want their news delivered strictly in quick hits: Nothing too thoughtful or lengthy, thank you very much; who has the time? This may be true at the moment, as consumers try to adjust to the proliferation of news sources. But content that can be downloaded on a cell phone and digested in a moment isn’t very nourishing, and a day will arrive when the public hungers for more. Though this diet of news niblets is initially appetizing, people will inevitably realize that they’d do better to push away from the buzzy grid and seek more substantial nourishment elsewhere. The baby boomers are about to start retiring, and they’re going to have a lot of time on their hands. Tiny news bites won’t fill the hours or satisfy their need.
Of course, the trick is not to write in such a way as what you write seems to read long.
The plays are the things ...
In Germany, Euripides is proving elusive, and Ibsen is thought to be more up-to-date than Chekhov.
All things come in time ...
... for him who knows how to wait. Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita will soon make it to Russian TV.
Before it's too late ...
... check out Booksurfer, which links to the TLS and a look at the art of the obituary.
Roll out the manuscript ...
Jack Kerouac typed On the Road on long rolls of tracing paper. Next month a portion of that manuscript scroll will go on display at the San Francisco Public Library.
More journalistic head wear ....
Not to be outdone by colleagues' outre chapeaus, Inquirer blogger extraordinaire Dan Rubin demonstrates how ideas simply blossom when he dons his thinking cap.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Let's be politically incorrect ...
... and talk about Christmas! Lars Walker at Brandywine Books has some uplifting thoughts about Charles Wesley's "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!" Foamy the Squirrel won't mind a bit.
Apologies ...
I don't know what exactly is going on but everything I've posted this month has disappeared and been replaced by much older posts. I have an email into Blogger, but who knows? So we may be out of whack for awhile.
All is lost ...
... at least so far it looks that way -- all the posts I wrote today, and all those I wrote this month. Too bad, because I had linked to some interestng stuff. Will try again later.
Don't know what's going on ...
... but all my posts for today seem to have disappeared and been replaced by my earlier ones.
Odd & ends ...
Sarah Weinman has another useful roundup posted.
Sand Storm links to a look at blogospherical growing pains.
More good advice to authors from Miss Snark.
Sand Storm links to a look at blogospherical growing pains.
More good advice to authors from Miss Snark.
About time ...
Powerline takes a break from politics to consider literature. The first book I reviewed for The Inquirer, back in 1976, was Hearing Secret Harmonies, the concluding volume of Anthony Powell's great 12-volume cycle A Dance to the Music of Time.
Introducing science fiction ...
John Scalzi thinks science fiction could use some outreach. And Glenn Reynolds thinks highly of Scalzi's latest.
Climate of opinion ...
Public discourse tends to be both intemperate and imprecise. In fact, its intemperateness is directly proportional to its lack of precision. So a lot of heat is generated, but not much light is shed.
This problem not only is not new, it would appear to be perennial. Clear definitions, sound propositions, and properly framed arguments are as rare today as they were when Socrates insisted upon them in the Athenian agora.
It is a problem that affords a wonderful opportunity for newspapers to exert a positive effect on public discourse by providing the precision that is otherwise absent. Unfortunately, newspapers have not taken advantage of the opportunity, but continue instead to make their own contributions to the problem.
On the front of this morning's Inquirer, for instance, there is a teaser to a series starting tomorrow about the Gulf Stream, which, the teaser says, "has taken center stage in research in global warming."
Global warming, the all-purpose cause of every environmental disaster, whether it be drought or flood, hot spells or cold. Well, consider this: In May 2003, physicist Freeman Dyson, retired director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, published in the New York Review of Books a review of Vaclav Smil's The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change. It should be prominently displayed in every newsroom in the nation. Since I bought a copy from NYRB's online archives, I feel I have the right, according to fair use, to quote a couple of key passages. I highly recommend getting a copy; it's only three bucks.
Here, however, is a fine example of precision:
The physical effects of carbon dioxide are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind strength, and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase "global warming." This phrase is misleading because the warming caused by the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide is not evenly distributed. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on the transport of heat by radiation is less important, because it is outweighed by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is more important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. The warming mainly occurs where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading, because the global average is only a fraction of a degree while the local warming at high latitudes is much larger. Also, local changes in rainfall, whether they are increases or decreases, are usually more important than changes in temperature. It is better to use the phrase "climate change" rather than "global warming" to describe the physical effects of carbon dioxide.
Given that Mars and other planets also show evidence of warming, it should be obvious that the phrase "global warming" is less a mental shortcut than a mental short-circuit. And though what Dyson says in this paragraph may not seem all that significant, he goes on to explain a good many other related matters -- also quite precisely -- leading him to conclude:
The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans have to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreements about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values. The disagreement about values may be described in an oversimplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is respect for the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels, and the consequent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are unqualified evils.
Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to reorganize nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper together. For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are war and poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment, disease and hunger, the miseries that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in The Threepenny Opera, "Feeding comes first, morality second." If people do not have enough to eat, we cannot expect them to put much effort into protecting the biosphere. In the long run, preservation of the biosphere will only be possible if people everywhere have a decent standard of living. The humanist ethic does not regard an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as evil, if the increase is associated with worldwide economic prosperity, and if the poorer half of humanity gets its fair share of the benefits.
This is a serious matter. It deserves serious discourse, not reliance on bumper-sticker memes.
This problem not only is not new, it would appear to be perennial. Clear definitions, sound propositions, and properly framed arguments are as rare today as they were when Socrates insisted upon them in the Athenian agora.
It is a problem that affords a wonderful opportunity for newspapers to exert a positive effect on public discourse by providing the precision that is otherwise absent. Unfortunately, newspapers have not taken advantage of the opportunity, but continue instead to make their own contributions to the problem.
On the front of this morning's Inquirer, for instance, there is a teaser to a series starting tomorrow about the Gulf Stream, which, the teaser says, "has taken center stage in research in global warming."
Global warming, the all-purpose cause of every environmental disaster, whether it be drought or flood, hot spells or cold. Well, consider this: In May 2003, physicist Freeman Dyson, retired director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, published in the New York Review of Books a review of Vaclav Smil's The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change. It should be prominently displayed in every newsroom in the nation. Since I bought a copy from NYRB's online archives, I feel I have the right, according to fair use, to quote a couple of key passages. I highly recommend getting a copy; it's only three bucks.
Here, however, is a fine example of precision:
The physical effects of carbon dioxide are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind strength, and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase "global warming." This phrase is misleading because the warming caused by the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide is not evenly distributed. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on the transport of heat by radiation is less important, because it is outweighed by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is more important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. The warming mainly occurs where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading, because the global average is only a fraction of a degree while the local warming at high latitudes is much larger. Also, local changes in rainfall, whether they are increases or decreases, are usually more important than changes in temperature. It is better to use the phrase "climate change" rather than "global warming" to describe the physical effects of carbon dioxide.
Given that Mars and other planets also show evidence of warming, it should be obvious that the phrase "global warming" is less a mental shortcut than a mental short-circuit. And though what Dyson says in this paragraph may not seem all that significant, he goes on to explain a good many other related matters -- also quite precisely -- leading him to conclude:
The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans have to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreements about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values. The disagreement about values may be described in an oversimplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is respect for the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels, and the consequent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are unqualified evils.
Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to reorganize nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper together. For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are war and poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment, disease and hunger, the miseries that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in The Threepenny Opera, "Feeding comes first, morality second." If people do not have enough to eat, we cannot expect them to put much effort into protecting the biosphere. In the long run, preservation of the biosphere will only be possible if people everywhere have a decent standard of living. The humanist ethic does not regard an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as evil, if the increase is associated with worldwide economic prosperity, and if the poorer half of humanity gets its fair share of the benefits.
This is a serious matter. It deserves serious discourse, not reliance on bumper-sticker memes.
Friday, December 16, 2005
A column of poetry ...
Poet Laureate Ted Kooser has started something called American Life in Poetry, described as a "free column for newspapers," in which Kooser introduces readers to a poem he has selected. The Inquirer hasn't signed up yet -- though I suppose I ought to pitch the idea -- but here's a link to Column 38, which I presume is the latest.
Mixed to match ...
Bill Peschel links to a fun match game at Paperback Writer, who also has a very interesting post titled Taming the Dragon, about a voice recognition software program.
Words, words, words ...
December's OED Newsletter offers Quotable Quotes and Interesting Antedatings. And while we're at it, The OED needs your help, too: BBC Wordhunt.
Stars shake free ...
In the Book Standard Johnny Temple looks at how big-time authors like Stephen King and Walter Mosley are choosing to pass up large advances and publish with independents: Stephen King and the Continuation of the Indie Power Grab. Of course, now they can afford to.
Assaying the essay ...
Scott McLemee has a characteristically fine piece on the essay at Inside Higher Education: The Formless Form. I posted some thoughts on the subject myself a while back here.
The right to write what's on your mind ....
Boyd Tonkin in The Independent writes about Menaces to Free Speech. Hat tip: Bookninja.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Pop goes the lit again ...
Will Duquette at The View From the Foothills in a post titled I've Always Thought So links to some comments by Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley and novelist Richard Wheeler. Key Yardly quote:
the "literary" fiction being written in this country nowadays strikes me as so jejune, self-absorbed and lifeless that I am just about unable to read it, much less pass fair judgment on it. Instead, I find myself turning more and more to what is commonly dismissed by the literati as "popular" or "genre" fiction…
Well, I mostly agree. At least when it comes to American fiction. I liked John Banville's The Sea and last year I liked Muriel Spark's The Finishing School. But a lot of so-called literary fiction in this country portrays a world that I don't seem to encounter in reality.
the "literary" fiction being written in this country nowadays strikes me as so jejune, self-absorbed and lifeless that I am just about unable to read it, much less pass fair judgment on it. Instead, I find myself turning more and more to what is commonly dismissed by the literati as "popular" or "genre" fiction…
Well, I mostly agree. At least when it comes to American fiction. I liked John Banville's The Sea and last year I liked Muriel Spark's The Finishing School. But a lot of so-called literary fiction in this country portrays a world that I don't seem to encounter in reality.
Representing reality ...
I had not re-read the last couple of chapters of Russell Brain's Mind, Perception and Science when I wrote this earlier post (which links to even ealier ones on the same subject). But I had read the book, so maybe that's why the post, which was meant to articulate some thoughts of my own, merely echoed what Brain ultimately had to say:
... if the stuff of the universe that we know directly is mind, and matter is the same thing known only by means of conceptual symbols created by mind, it would seem as reasonable to call at least part of reality mind as to call it matter. And matter, even crude matter, is not what it was. It has turned into energy, and the atom has become a pattern and the molecule a pattern of patterns, till all the different physical substances and their behaviour have come to be regarded as the outcome of the structure of their primitive components. But we have already met with pattern in the nervous system, underlying and rendering possible the most fundamental characteristics of the mind. And pattern in some mysterious way possesses a life of its own, for it can survive a change in the identity of its component parts as longs as its structure remains the same. As a wave can move over the sea and remain the same wave, though the water of which it is composed is continuously changing, a pattern can shift over the retina and therefore over the visual area of the brain and remain recognizably the same pattern. The pattern of our personality though it changes slowly remains substantially the same, though every protein molecule in the body, including the nervous system, is changed three times a year. The ingredients have altered but not the structure.
This does not, of course, address the question I raised -- from what do the symbols representing the patterns derive? Suppose the electrical impulses that are atoms and particles are elements of a grand transmission? It is not the electrical signal reaching our television set that concerns us, but rather the imagery on the screen. That imagery is the point of the transmission. This is what has always bothered me about philosophical materialism: It is as if one were trying to make sense of Hamlet by studying the carpentry of the Globe Theater.
... if the stuff of the universe that we know directly is mind, and matter is the same thing known only by means of conceptual symbols created by mind, it would seem as reasonable to call at least part of reality mind as to call it matter. And matter, even crude matter, is not what it was. It has turned into energy, and the atom has become a pattern and the molecule a pattern of patterns, till all the different physical substances and their behaviour have come to be regarded as the outcome of the structure of their primitive components. But we have already met with pattern in the nervous system, underlying and rendering possible the most fundamental characteristics of the mind. And pattern in some mysterious way possesses a life of its own, for it can survive a change in the identity of its component parts as longs as its structure remains the same. As a wave can move over the sea and remain the same wave, though the water of which it is composed is continuously changing, a pattern can shift over the retina and therefore over the visual area of the brain and remain recognizably the same pattern. The pattern of our personality though it changes slowly remains substantially the same, though every protein molecule in the body, including the nervous system, is changed three times a year. The ingredients have altered but not the structure.
This does not, of course, address the question I raised -- from what do the symbols representing the patterns derive? Suppose the electrical impulses that are atoms and particles are elements of a grand transmission? It is not the electrical signal reaching our television set that concerns us, but rather the imagery on the screen. That imagery is the point of the transmission. This is what has always bothered me about philosophical materialism: It is as if one were trying to make sense of Hamlet by studying the carpentry of the Globe Theater.
An interesting project ...
The Syntax of Things considers Underrated Writers, one of whom turns out to be Philadelphia Daily News alumnus -- and National Book Award winner -- Pete Dexter.
Pop goes the lit, or vice versa ...
The hot topic at Blogcritics is Literary vs. Popular Fiction. Hat tip: Sand Storm.
A look at Narnia
A sound appraisal of The Lion, ther Witch and the Wardrobe at Collected Miscellany.
One comment on Tolkien's objection to the allegorical aspect of Lewis's work: Tolkien, a linguist, preferred the simpler sagas such as Beowulf to the allegorical work of the High Middle Ages. Lewis, on the other hand, a specialist in medieval literature, naturally loved allegory. One of his most important scholarly works (eminently readable, though) is The Allegory of Love.
One comment on Tolkien's objection to the allegorical aspect of Lewis's work: Tolkien, a linguist, preferred the simpler sagas such as Beowulf to the allegorical work of the High Middle Ages. Lewis, on the other hand, a specialist in medieval literature, naturally loved allegory. One of his most important scholarly works (eminently readable, though) is The Allegory of Love.
Don Quixote alert ...
Bud Parr at Chekhov's Mistress alerts us that Don Quixote's 400th anniversary will be a topic of discussion on Open Source Radio tonight.
An opportunity for me to remind everyone again to take a look at this.
Update: Brian Phillips in the Hudson Review on The First-Person Don Quixote.
An opportunity for me to remind everyone again to take a look at this.
Update: Brian Phillips in the Hudson Review on The First-Person Don Quixote.
Fustest with the mostest ...
Booksquare reminds us of the invaluable resource that is Project Gutenberg.
A publishing tale ...
Readers of Instapundit will know all about John Scalzi's Old Man's War. They will also know that his previous book, Agent to the Stars, is available online in its entirety here. Scalzi's Introduction is well worth pondering on several counts.
This AP story is worth pondering, too.
This AP story is worth pondering, too.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Count your blessings ...
So you think it's bad for progressive intellectuals in Amerika. Check out Mother Russia. Victor Sonkin not only thinks this year's choice for the Open Russia Booker Prize is "definitely not the novel of the year," but further notes:
Adding insult to injury, the Booker committee then announced that it was parting ways with Open Russia, the foundation backed by jailed billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky that had sponsored the prize for the past four years. Open Russia is going through difficult times, what with Khodorkovsky's imprisonment, attacks in pro-Kremlin media outlets and looming new legislation that threatens the existence of NGOs.
Adding insult to injury, the Booker committee then announced that it was parting ways with Open Russia, the foundation backed by jailed billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky that had sponsored the prize for the past four years. Open Russia is going through difficult times, what with Khodorkovsky's imprisonment, attacks in pro-Kremlin media outlets and looming new legislation that threatens the existence of NGOs.
Labyrinthine ways ...
Jonathan Jones, in the Guardian, shows how, inspired by J.M.W Turner, anthropologist J.G. Frazer exerted greater influence on modern literature than either Freud or Marx: Modern Myths.
Amen, sister ...
Rus Bowden at Poetry and Poets in Rags links to Shirley Dent's "Why Polemics Are Killing Poetry" at spiked-culture. I could not agree more. I have often complained that too many people have entered journalism who would have been better off in the minsistry or social work. Now they're writing pomes!
A second opinion ...
Daniel Green at The Reading Experience takes issue with Joseph Epstein's reassessment of Edmund Wilson that I linked to in this post. I actually do not see that Epstein's objections to Wilson as a critic are grounded in his perception of Wilson as a less than admirable human being. The passage I quoted in the post I just linked to seems to me the crux of Epstein's argument.
But I find this point of Green's interesting:
Insofar as the critic is first of all a reader, he/she does experience the same emotions in reading works of literature as any other reader, but the emotional effects are inevitably particular to, and not detachable from, the reading experience itself. How exactly is it possible to "develop in thought" an emotional suggestion? How could such a "thought" be anything but incomplete and lifeless in comparison to the actual emotion? And why would we need a critic to expatiate on his/her emotional reactions in this way?
As someone whose bias is phenomenological I would answer this by saying that you cannot accurately and precisely describe a work (which I think necessitates reference to its mechanics) without also engaging its emotional implications and reflecting one's own emotional response.
But I find this point of Green's interesting:
Insofar as the critic is first of all a reader, he/she does experience the same emotions in reading works of literature as any other reader, but the emotional effects are inevitably particular to, and not detachable from, the reading experience itself. How exactly is it possible to "develop in thought" an emotional suggestion? How could such a "thought" be anything but incomplete and lifeless in comparison to the actual emotion? And why would we need a critic to expatiate on his/her emotional reactions in this way?
As someone whose bias is phenomenological I would answer this by saying that you cannot accurately and precisely describe a work (which I think necessitates reference to its mechanics) without also engaging its emotional implications and reflecting one's own emotional response.
A sequence of views ...
Arts & Letters Daily links to an interview with evangelical Darwinian Richard Dawkins at Beliefnet. There's a link at the bottom to a piece by Gregg Easterbrook that raises some questions about Dawkins's position. That piece links to another Easterbrook piece, an appreciation of the late astronomer Fred Hoyle, a scientist who did important work in his field -- notably regarding nucleogenesis -- unlike Dawkins, an entomologist (his specialty is arachnids) who preaches how wonderful science is, but doesn't seem to practice it very much. All three pieces need to be read in order to gain, I think, a proper perspective.
Start the day right ...
... and visit the BAFAB Blog BAFAB stands for Buy a Friend a Book. Sounds like a good idea to me -- and a sign of true friendship.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Another fan of Montaigne ...
Stefanie Hollmichel at So Many Books responds in a very personal (which is as it should be) to Montaigne's essay "On Conversation" in a post titled "Let's Talk". I blogged about Montaigne a while back here and here.
The way we were ...
Chekhov's Mistress notes how times have changed when it comes to poetry. It is interesting to look at what sort of books sold well in the past. You can take a look here.
Another list ...
Kirkus has its list of 2005's top books up, which includes a list of 25 we may all have overlooked. (Hat tip: Conversational Reading.)
A twofer ...
Grumpy Old Bookman makes some astute observations about the Mainstream Media and brings to our attention a most interesting book: "This book has, it seems, been online since 1997, is in its 18th revision, and 226,438 people have taken a look at it."
Writing by numbers ...
Booksquare discusses Judging Writing, with particular reference to Sam Sacks's "The Fiction Machine" in New York Press.
Recently, I was reading a book I was thinking of reviewing and, about a third of the way into it, I realized that it exemplified everything that had prompted me in 1966 to give up a fellowship and leave grad school for good. To be a good writer what you need to do is read a lot -- not in order to analyze it, but just to let it sink deep down into your consciousness -- and write a lot. Most of all you need on-the-job training in life. What you don't need is to sit around with a lot of other aspiring writers talking about writing.
Recently, I was reading a book I was thinking of reviewing and, about a third of the way into it, I realized that it exemplified everything that had prompted me in 1966 to give up a fellowship and leave grad school for good. To be a good writer what you need to do is read a lot -- not in order to analyze it, but just to let it sink deep down into your consciousness -- and write a lot. Most of all you need on-the-job training in life. What you don't need is to sit around with a lot of other aspiring writers talking about writing.
Another discovery ...
POD-dy Mouth reviews what sounds like an interesting book published by Xlibris -- in 2000. She is right: Had it been published by Random House -- which has a 49 percent share of Xlibris -- it would have been remaindered long ago. The problem of separating the wheat from the chaff in alternative publishing continues to fascinate me.
An unsolicited plug ...
Over the weekend I got my 2006 Weekly Planner from Today in Literature. It's quite nice. In addition to the dates and facts and essays, which I love, the woodcuts by Barry Moser are exceptional.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Finishing books ...
Brandywine Books asked some bloggers if "it's appropriate to ignore or scan parts of a book which you review?"
Here is what they said.
I myself feel honor-bound to read a book I'm reviewing all the way through. Since I write a column designed to recommend books, I don't have to finish one I don't like anyway. But from time to time I have to read a book I don't think is very good -- and even some of those I recommend are not without faults. The Da Vinci Code is bad, but it goes through one eye and out the other, so it's no great effort to read, just not very rewarding -- in fact, totally unrewarding. But I remember reading a book a few years back that had patches of such dull incomprehensibility that I might as well not have read them, given that I got nothing out of them.
Here is what they said.
I myself feel honor-bound to read a book I'm reviewing all the way through. Since I write a column designed to recommend books, I don't have to finish one I don't like anyway. But from time to time I have to read a book I don't think is very good -- and even some of those I recommend are not without faults. The Da Vinci Code is bad, but it goes through one eye and out the other, so it's no great effort to read, just not very rewarding -- in fact, totally unrewarding. But I remember reading a book a few years back that had patches of such dull incomprehensibility that I might as well not have read them, given that I got nothing out of them.
Something else we missed ...
The Millions posted A Year in Reading: An Emerging Best of List compiled by Dan Wickett, who runs Emerging Writers Network, where he just has posted a list of What to Look Forward to in 2006.
Something to think about ...
... for sure. Instapundit links to The Death of Traditional Publishing, on Working Smart, Michael Hyatt's blog. Hyatt is the president and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Read the comments, which are also very interesting.
One slight correction: It's wan't Yogi Berra who made the remark about predicting being hard, though it sounds like the sort of thing he would have said. It was, however, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr: "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
That's something to keep in mind, especially in connection with all the prediction you encounter in the media. Sometimes it seems as if the entire newspaper is a subset of the horoscope column.
One slight correction: It's wan't Yogi Berra who made the remark about predicting being hard, though it sounds like the sort of thing he would have said. It was, however, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr: "Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
That's something to keep in mind, especially in connection with all the prediction you encounter in the media. Sometimes it seems as if the entire newspaper is a subset of the horoscope column.
Odds & ends
Some interesting best books of the year lists at Ghost Word.
Confessions of an Idiosycratic Mind notes -- and registers -- some high dudgeon over the Crime Writers Association's growing cozy with filthy lucre.
Today in Literature reminds us that on this date in 1976, Saul Bellow delivered hi Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "...there is no simple choice between the children of light and the children of darkness," Bellow said. "Good and evil are not symmetrically distributed along political lines." (Tell that to Cary Tennis.)
Read Bellow's whole speech here.
Confessions of an Idiosycratic Mind notes -- and registers -- some high dudgeon over the Crime Writers Association's growing cozy with filthy lucre.
Today in Literature reminds us that on this date in 1976, Saul Bellow delivered hi Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "...there is no simple choice between the children of light and the children of darkness," Bellow said. "Good and evil are not symmetrically distributed along political lines." (Tell that to Cary Tennis.)
Read Bellow's whole speech here.
Something new about Orwell ...
An interesting piece about George Orwell in the Guardian. Seems some previously undisovered letters reveal some things we didn't know. (Hat tip, Sand Storm.
The joy of serendipity (again) ...
I have been spending a lot of my time exploring lit blogs, as should be obvious from the links I have been posting. I hope tonight to get around to posting something of my own again, though I plan to do that less than I have -- not because I don't have the time or the inclination, but because this blog exploration is turning out to be so much fun. Today's first discovery, over at Gumball Poetry, is The Last Expedition.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Verbal pedigree ...
Reader Murray Wilson emails me in reference to a word I used in my review of Claire Harmon's Myself & the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson:
I checked your usage of "fey" on the internet and found only one dictionary
which gave it, which suggests it is quite new and not generally accepted.
What is its pedigree?
Turned out to be an interesting question. The word originally meant "fated to die." Then it started to morph, coming to mean "visionary" and "having a certain otherwordly air," then "a tad precious" and even "campy." Oddly, all of these senses could be applied to Stevenson, who was thought -- and thought himself to be -- fated to die young (which he did, though not for the reason anticipated), who had certain otherworldly air about him and could be -- even in his writing -- a tad precious. Harmon remarks that Stevenson's manner was "gay," though Stevenson himself was straight.
I thought fey worked, and my editor did not object.
I checked your usage of "fey" on the internet and found only one dictionary
which gave it, which suggests it is quite new and not generally accepted.
What is its pedigree?
Turned out to be an interesting question. The word originally meant "fated to die." Then it started to morph, coming to mean "visionary" and "having a certain otherwordly air," then "a tad precious" and even "campy." Oddly, all of these senses could be applied to Stevenson, who was thought -- and thought himself to be -- fated to die young (which he did, though not for the reason anticipated), who had certain otherworldly air about him and could be -- even in his writing -- a tad precious. Harmon remarks that Stevenson's manner was "gay," though Stevenson himself was straight.
I thought fey worked, and my editor did not object.
Get me rewrite ...
... wait, no, I am rewrite -- at least I am if it's my book we're talking about.
Catherine Bush posts a discussion on Bookninja of her own extensive revisions of her novel Claire's Head.
Catherine Bush posts a discussion on Bookninja of her own extensive revisions of her novel Claire's Head.
Reality challenges fiction ...
The Box o' Truth looks at whether shooting a lock off is as easy as books and movies make it out to be. (Hat tip to Bill Peschel.)
And don't miss Sarah Weinman's Conquering Weekend Update.
And don't miss Sarah Weinman's Conquering Weekend Update.
Another good answer ...
Kate Greenstreet at every other day also addresses the question of poetry's usefulness.
Last call ...
Only last month, the Whitbread Book Awards 2005 shortlist was announced. Now the Sunday Times is reporting that Whitbread -- once Britain's best-known brewer -- has decided it's closing time. Not to worry if you're one of those nominated for the 2005 prize: Whitbread's not reneging on that one, which will be announced next month.
(I notice that Hugh Grant was a judge last year. Well, why not? The guy's an Oxford grad, for God's sake -- and he played a book shop owner in Notting Hill.)
(I notice that Hugh Grant was a judge last year. Well, why not? The guy's an Oxford grad, for God's sake -- and he played a book shop owner in Notting Hill.)
Saturday, December 10, 2005
A good answer ...
Lisa Janice Cohen at Blue Muse Poetry proposes a fine answer to a frequently posed question:
What Good is Poetry?
(For Gary B)
It buys us nothing, will not
fill empty bellies bloated
with endless promises
or excise a bullet
from an accidental wound
unravel time to force
the trigger to untrip.
But it is the copper penny
spent, redemption
from the poverty of language
that sucks the marrow
from the bones of our misfortune.
The only thing of value
I can offer.
What Good is Poetry?
(For Gary B)
It buys us nothing, will not
fill empty bellies bloated
with endless promises
or excise a bullet
from an accidental wound
unravel time to force
the trigger to untrip.
But it is the copper penny
spent, redemption
from the poverty of language
that sucks the marrow
from the bones of our misfortune.
The only thing of value
I can offer.
A bit of light verse ...
Melville Goodwin, a frequent visitor to this blog, posted some very clever light verse as a comment on my most recent fashion statement. This has inspired me to post some light verse that I wrote last spring in honor of the Royal wedding. The Inquirer's fine arts editor, Jeff Weinstein, who edits my "Editor's Choice" column -- and is the best editor I've ever worked with -- suggested it, and luckily some ideas actually floated to the surface of my consciousness. Here's what appeared on the day of the nuptials:
Perhaps the most important task of a British poet laureate is to celebrate royal weddings with an epithalamium, a poem in honor of the bride and groom to be. Of course, this particular nuptial has been downscaled, postponed - and the Prince has been asked by the Church of England to apologize to his beloved’s former husband.
But poet laureate Andrew Motion has put off his task for other reasons. He was extremely fond of the previous royal bride, and it’s been reported that he’s having trouble coming up with adequate rhymes for "Camilla. "
So, in his place, our resident laureate offers the couple his poetic gift (having tried and rejected "vanilla," "chinchilla," "sarsaparilla" and, in an American vein, "bridezilla").
Royal Couplets
Of marriage, matron, prince, and bard I sing,
And of delays the fates seem bent to fling
Into the way of true love’s unsmooth course.
Who wouldn’t swap his kingdom for a horse
When called upon to first acknowledge sin
To gain the church’s pardon, just to win
A Town Hall wedding scheduled on the day
That Papal obsequies get in the way?
And now, the charge to praise love’s true devotion
Has England’s Laureate in a commotion.
The scribe dear late Diana’s charms inspired
Has found his rhyming muse is sick, and tired.
What’s to be done, but take our pen in hand,
Declaring even messy love is grand?
All vain and pompous circumstance aside
It’s just another hopeful groom and bride.
Therefore we wish poor Charles and his Camilla
Full wedded bliss, down to the last scintilla.
Perhaps the most important task of a British poet laureate is to celebrate royal weddings with an epithalamium, a poem in honor of the bride and groom to be. Of course, this particular nuptial has been downscaled, postponed - and the Prince has been asked by the Church of England to apologize to his beloved’s former husband.
But poet laureate Andrew Motion has put off his task for other reasons. He was extremely fond of the previous royal bride, and it’s been reported that he’s having trouble coming up with adequate rhymes for "Camilla. "
So, in his place, our resident laureate offers the couple his poetic gift (having tried and rejected "vanilla," "chinchilla," "sarsaparilla" and, in an American vein, "bridezilla").
Royal Couplets
Of marriage, matron, prince, and bard I sing,
And of delays the fates seem bent to fling
Into the way of true love’s unsmooth course.
Who wouldn’t swap his kingdom for a horse
When called upon to first acknowledge sin
To gain the church’s pardon, just to win
A Town Hall wedding scheduled on the day
That Papal obsequies get in the way?
And now, the charge to praise love’s true devotion
Has England’s Laureate in a commotion.
The scribe dear late Diana’s charms inspired
Has found his rhyming muse is sick, and tired.
What’s to be done, but take our pen in hand,
Declaring even messy love is grand?
All vain and pompous circumstance aside
It’s just another hopeful groom and bride.
Therefore we wish poor Charles and his Camilla
Full wedded bliss, down to the last scintilla.
The future of book reviews ...
Steve Clackson of Sand Storm has a very interesting post today about book reviewing. A key point: "Reviews should after all be geared to market the book not the reviewer or the magazine/newspaper..." I'm not sure reviews should be geared to marketing a book -- I think reviews function more along the lines of Consumer Reports -- but they definitely should not be geared to marketing the reviewer or the publication.One of the good consequences of space cuts is that reviewers have been forced to focus on the book under consideration and not other books by the same or differnt authors that the reviewer thinks are comparable: While the comparisons may be apt, they also seem to exist primarily for the purpose of displaying the reviewer's erudition.
Reviewing a book is not as easy as many people seem to think it is. Though reviewing involves criticism, it is not the same as criticism, the principal difference being that criticism presumes the reader has read the work or works being discussed, whereas reviewing presumes just the opposite. The most valuable thing any reviewer can do is bring to the public's attention a worthwhile bit of writing that might otherwise be overlooked.
I also think Steve is right that the future of reviewing is online -- and I think the nature of the Internet will eventually bring about a new form of review.
Feedback, please!
Reviewing a book is not as easy as many people seem to think it is. Though reviewing involves criticism, it is not the same as criticism, the principal difference being that criticism presumes the reader has read the work or works being discussed, whereas reviewing presumes just the opposite. The most valuable thing any reviewer can do is bring to the public's attention a worthwhile bit of writing that might otherwise be overlooked.
I also think Steve is right that the future of reviewing is online -- and I think the nature of the Internet will eventually bring about a new form of review.
Feedback, please!
"Fantastic Variations on a Knightly Theme" ...
That's the subtitle of Richard Strauss's tone poem Don Quixote. It has obvious bearing on what I'm about to link to.
This year is the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote. My colleague Eric Mencher and I proposed to The Inquirer that he and I go to Spain and follow the rueful Don's wanderings, in much the same way as, the year before, we had strolled in Dublin where Leopold Bloom wanders in Ulysses (the Rosenbach Library and Museum in Philadelphia, which has the manuscript of Ulysses, also has the best first edition of Cervantes's great novel). For various reasons -- these are tight times for newspapers -- the proposal never took off. But Eric and his wife Kass just spent the past few weeks in Spain, and Don Quixote was eveidently still on Eric's mind. One of his ideas was to take this Don Quixote figure he had bought at the Reading Terminal Market and use it as a stand-in for the actual Don. The photo shown is an example of what you would have seen had our proposal been accepted. You can see more HERE.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Fashion progress ...
As you can see, the headwear I modelled just the other day is already catching on in the news room. Further evidence may be seen here.
Yours truly, of course, has already moved on to a grander design.
(Thanks to Ted Adams at Heudnsk Log.)
Remembering James Hilton ...
James Hilton was a very popular novelist in the '30s and '40s. He wrote Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon, and Random Harvest, all made into successful films (two with the great Ronald Colman). He even won an Oscar -- for the screenplay for Mrs. Miniver. I don't know whether anyone reads his books today -- though they are certainly worth reading. Ron Hogan, at Beatrice, recently posted some interesting remarks by Carolly Erickson about Hilton's Lost Horizon.
A chance to speak out ...
Naxos AudioBooks has a competition for Voice of the Year: "The Male Poetry Reader of the Year and the Female Poetry Reader of the Year will headline a 2-CD set – Poetry for the Winter Season – to be released in October 2006."
Many years ago -- I was in college -- one of the three major networks -- I don't remember which -- broadcast during prime time a program of poetry reading. It was a sort of cavalcade, one poem seguing into another. The one I remember best was Hurd Hatfield, the actor who had the title role in the classic film of The Picture of Dorian Gray, reciting T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of JU. Alfred Prufrock," strolling among the ladies in a drawing room. It was mesmerizing. I am convinced if more such were done more people would discover the power that poetry can have.
UPDATE: Here's a link to the Lannon Audio Archives.
Many years ago -- I was in college -- one of the three major networks -- I don't remember which -- broadcast during prime time a program of poetry reading. It was a sort of cavalcade, one poem seguing into another. The one I remember best was Hurd Hatfield, the actor who had the title role in the classic film of The Picture of Dorian Gray, reciting T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of JU. Alfred Prufrock," strolling among the ladies in a drawing room. It was mesmerizing. I am convinced if more such were done more people would discover the power that poetry can have.
UPDATE: Here's a link to the Lannon Audio Archives.
Worth noting ...
ScottMcLemee, over at Cogito, ergo Zoom, links to a piece he wrote a few years ago in the Chronicle of Higher Education, about the C.S. Lewis Wars.
Chicken Spaghetti links to a CJR Daily analysis of the NYT Book Review's 100 "notable" (no "best" for the august Times, I guess) books of the year. Seems the Times prefers its own.
Thane at Book Clan looks at some Silly Book Titles.
Chicken Spaghetti links to a CJR Daily analysis of the NYT Book Review's 100 "notable" (no "best" for the august Times, I guess) books of the year. Seems the Times prefers its own.
Thane at Book Clan looks at some Silly Book Titles.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Things we missed ...
Martyn Everett at Booksurfer links to a piece about the Bad Sex Award.
David Montgomery at Crime Fiction Dossier has his Holiday Gift Suggestions posted.
King Wenclas at Attacking the Demi-Puppets looks Into the Literary Future.
The Interboard Poetry Community's Poetry Competition winners for November have been posted. Congratulations all!
Jerry Jazz Musician has a competition to determine who will be the next Accent on Youth columnist. It could be you!
And check out Bill Peschel's posts on David Allen's Getting Things Done system. (I must look at this more carefully myself.)
David Montgomery at Crime Fiction Dossier has his Holiday Gift Suggestions posted.
King Wenclas at Attacking the Demi-Puppets looks Into the Literary Future.
The Interboard Poetry Community's Poetry Competition winners for November have been posted. Congratulations all!
Jerry Jazz Musician has a competition to determine who will be the next Accent on Youth columnist. It could be you!
And check out Bill Peschel's posts on David Allen's Getting Things Done system. (I must look at this more carefully myself.)
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
A little more about Colin Wilson ...
Scott McLemee adds some info to his column about Colin Wilson (scroll down).
Editor as dandy ...
I took time out the other day to model some vintage headwear. I think it's quite becoming, actually.
Sic transit gloria mundi ...
Essayist extraordinaire Joseph Epstein weighs critic Edmund Wilson in the balance and finds him wanting. Key paragraph:
Wilson was impressed by the two idea systems of Freudianism and Marxism, my own view is, because he was insufficiently impressed by life’s mysteries; as a professional explainer, he preferred problems that had solutions, questions for which there were answers, and in Freudianism and Marxism he found no shortage of both. I suspect his difficulty with Joseph Conrad and Franz Kafka, two major writers whose power he could never quite comprehend, stemmed from the fact that each took as his subject, precisely, the complex mystery of life: Conrad on the cosmic level, asking why we are put on earth; Kafka on the level of human nature, asking why we are as sadly and comically limited as we are.
Indeed.
Wilson was impressed by the two idea systems of Freudianism and Marxism, my own view is, because he was insufficiently impressed by life’s mysteries; as a professional explainer, he preferred problems that had solutions, questions for which there were answers, and in Freudianism and Marxism he found no shortage of both. I suspect his difficulty with Joseph Conrad and Franz Kafka, two major writers whose power he could never quite comprehend, stemmed from the fact that each took as his subject, precisely, the complex mystery of life: Conrad on the cosmic level, asking why we are put on earth; Kafka on the level of human nature, asking why we are as sadly and comically limited as we are.
Indeed.
A good question ...
... is raised in column by Bill Wineke in the Wisconsin State Journal, a link to which was sent to me by Roger Miller, who reviews for The Inquirer and was once a book editor himself. Wineke's piece is headlined Narnia comes from another academic world.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
One-stop shopping ...
Sarah Weinman offers a copious roundup of reviews.
And, as perhaps a corollary to thoughts on The State of Fiction, Bill Peschel recounts how Everybody Goes to Remaindertown.
And my colleague Richard Barron emails me a link to The House of Blogs, where you can find lots and lots of reviews -- and which I will now add to my blogroll.
And, as perhaps a corollary to thoughts on The State of Fiction, Bill Peschel recounts how Everybody Goes to Remaindertown.
And my colleague Richard Barron emails me a link to The House of Blogs, where you can find lots and lots of reviews -- and which I will now add to my blogroll.
The trouble with expertise ...
Theodore Dalrymple write about Shakespeare and much besides in "Truth vs. Theory" in the City Journal (hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily. Once again, cause for caution when it comes to experts and expertise.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Out of the depths of psychology ...
Harvard psych prof Daniel Gilbert recently posted a piece about "The Vagaries of Religious Experience" at Edge. It seems mostly an attempt to refute William Paley's proto-intelligent design argument (though Paley was not, as Gilbert would have it, a "naturalist" -- he was an Anglican priest, theologian and philosopher) by arguing that "highly ordered phenomena can and do emerge from random processes." But the example he uses -- coin tosses -- seems somewhat bizarre. "If we toss a coin for long enough, we eventually observe some highly ordered strings such as 'head, head, head, head, head, head' or 'head, tail, head, tail, head, tail.'" What highly ordered phenomena are these supposed to be? No predictable sequence will ever emerge. Even if one grants the premise -- that "highly ordered phenomena can and do emerge from random processes" -- the point would be to demonstrate that a given phenomenon has emerged from such processes.
Gilbert says that "statisticians have sophisticated techniques that can help determine whether a particular pattern of coin flips is so unlikely that it (like Paley's watch) can only be explained by a non-random process. But research in psychology has shown that people have rather poor intuitions in this regard, and that they tend to mistake the products of random processes for the products of non-random processes but not the other way around." OK, so people are unlikely, using their intuition, to arrive at a correct determination of whteher something emerged out of randomness. So skip the intuition, and use those "sophisticated techniques that can help determine" it. Stephen D. Unwin, a theoretical physicist turned risk analyst, wrote a book a couple of years ago called The Probability of God. Unwin makes skillful use of one of those sophisticated techniques statisticians have: Bayes's Theorem. Gilbert should take a look at Unwin's book.
Gilbert says that "statisticians have sophisticated techniques that can help determine whether a particular pattern of coin flips is so unlikely that it (like Paley's watch) can only be explained by a non-random process. But research in psychology has shown that people have rather poor intuitions in this regard, and that they tend to mistake the products of random processes for the products of non-random processes but not the other way around." OK, so people are unlikely, using their intuition, to arrive at a correct determination of whteher something emerged out of randomness. So skip the intuition, and use those "sophisticated techniques that can help determine" it. Stephen D. Unwin, a theoretical physicist turned risk analyst, wrote a book a couple of years ago called The Probability of God. Unwin makes skillful use of one of those sophisticated techniques statisticians have: Bayes's Theorem. Gilbert should take a look at Unwin's book.
A shared enthusiasm indeed ...
On Saturday I wrote a bit about Colin Wilson. Dave Lull sends me a very interesting piece about him by Scott McLemee: "A Killing Concept".
Year' s worst book ...
Robert Conquest, a poet who actually knows something about international relations (being also a historian and a former diplomat), thinks he's found the "Worst Book of the Year". (I'm not sure, but this may be available only to subscribers.)
Score one for me ...
The other day I opined in this post that "the recent surge in [oil] profits is neither typical nor sustainable." Now along comes the International Herald Tribune with this piece, in which John Browne, chief executive of BP, is quoted as calling current [oil price] levels "unsustainably high."
To return to the theme of that original post: Why are high gas prices front page news, but a 30 percent drop in gas prices isn't? Why is it news when the price of crude rises, but not when it falls (and it's fallen about $12 a barrel since the summer high)? Could this selectivity have anything to do with a drop in newspapers' credibility (essential to their survival, if anything is)? Here is another take on the selectivity theme -- note Columbia Journalism Review editor Steve Lovelady's singularly silly response.
And why is this of interest to a book review editor? Because book revewing is one of the principal areas in which newspapers have chosen to short-change readers. At least as many people read books as watch TV. But you'd never know that from reading newspapers.
To return to the theme of that original post: Why are high gas prices front page news, but a 30 percent drop in gas prices isn't? Why is it news when the price of crude rises, but not when it falls (and it's fallen about $12 a barrel since the summer high)? Could this selectivity have anything to do with a drop in newspapers' credibility (essential to their survival, if anything is)? Here is another take on the selectivity theme -- note Columbia Journalism Review editor Steve Lovelady's singularly silly response.
And why is this of interest to a book review editor? Because book revewing is one of the principal areas in which newspapers have chosen to short-change readers. At least as many people read books as watch TV. But you'd never know that from reading newspapers.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
The joy of serendipity ...
Yesterday I googled a phrase in a poem by Conrad Aiken and so came upon this, which led me to Kate Benedict. I particularly commend, for poets both aspiring and practcing The Rule of Benedict. I also liked the poetry that I read there enough to buy her book. But the way, she's right:
"Conrad Aiken’s poems deserve a much wider readership than they currently enjoy."
"Conrad Aiken’s poems deserve a much wider readership than they currently enjoy."
The state of fiction ...
Sand Storm reprints a piece in the Toronto Globe & Mail entitled "The Great Fiction Crash of 2005".
This is strictly from a Canadian perspective, so I don't know if it reflects things in this country, though I note that one of the publishers interviewed says that Canadian best-seller lists tend to be dominated by American writers. A few years ago, at BookExpo America, the annual confab of the publishing industry, many publishers reps I talked to said that things semed to be trending in the direction of strongly narrative nonfiction. That didn't surprise me, given how often critically approved fiction tends toward atmospherics rather than action and incident.
The lead of the Globe & Mail piece notwithstanding, I don't think The Da Vinci Code has had anything to do with this. Doubleday bent over backwards to publicize The Da Vinci Code and reaped the benefits. That even people with Ph. D.'s found the book plausible proves only that people can actually be educated beyond their intelligence. Had Scribners done for Anthony O'Neill's The Lamplighter what Doubleday did for The Da Vinci Code, I suspect O'Neill's book would have met with similar success. I still think it will be around decades after Dan Brown's tripe has been mercifully forgotten.
But I have a review to get to work on. Here's the Globe & Mail's Top 100 Books of 2005.
This is strictly from a Canadian perspective, so I don't know if it reflects things in this country, though I note that one of the publishers interviewed says that Canadian best-seller lists tend to be dominated by American writers. A few years ago, at BookExpo America, the annual confab of the publishing industry, many publishers reps I talked to said that things semed to be trending in the direction of strongly narrative nonfiction. That didn't surprise me, given how often critically approved fiction tends toward atmospherics rather than action and incident.
The lead of the Globe & Mail piece notwithstanding, I don't think The Da Vinci Code has had anything to do with this. Doubleday bent over backwards to publicize The Da Vinci Code and reaped the benefits. That even people with Ph. D.'s found the book plausible proves only that people can actually be educated beyond their intelligence. Had Scribners done for Anthony O'Neill's The Lamplighter what Doubleday did for The Da Vinci Code, I suspect O'Neill's book would have met with similar success. I still think it will be around decades after Dan Brown's tripe has been mercifully forgotten.
But I have a review to get to work on. Here's the Globe & Mail's Top 100 Books of 2005.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
A shared enthusiasm...
I know I'm not supposed to like Colin Wilson -- or at least I'm not supposed to take him seriously. But I've enjoyed a lot of his books. Poetry and Mysticism, for instance, turned me on to the poetry of Elizabethan scholar A. L. Rowse. I also think there is much to Wilson's insistence on the importance of peak experiences. John Morgan has mounted an excellent Colin Wilson Page and Morgan's Brief Introduction to Colin Wilson's Thought is excellent. Wilson will turn 75 next June. I am already planning to write something about him to honor the occasion.
In the meantime, here's an interview with him.
I also just bought some of Wilson's books. They were out of print, which gives me the opportunity to correct an oversight and introduce people to what I think is one of the best book sites on the Internet: Books & Book Collecting, a subset of Trussel's EclectiCity.
In the meantime, here's an interview with him.
I also just bought some of Wilson's books. They were out of print, which gives me the opportunity to correct an oversight and introduce people to what I think is one of the best book sites on the Internet: Books & Book Collecting, a subset of Trussel's EclectiCity.
Taking a closer look ...
... at the Carnival of Poetry, which I didn't have a chance to do yesterday at work -- because I had a lot of work to do -- I'm impressed by what I see. I haven't read through everything yet, but think it worth noting a few that especially appealed to me:
Six Stories by Sara Goudarzi
Night Blues by Ned Nedful
November Song by Jessamyn of Thereomorph
Vibe by Trebuchet of Legwarmers
The Song by Liz of Letting Me Be
Highway Hymn V by Ed of Life and Times (a very interesting modified sestina)
and
Grenadilla Tone by Garnet of Glittering Muse
As I say, these are just some that especially grabbed me upon first encounter. Do take a look. Find what you like.
Six Stories by Sara Goudarzi
Night Blues by Ned Nedful
November Song by Jessamyn of Thereomorph
Vibe by Trebuchet of Legwarmers
The Song by Liz of Letting Me Be
Highway Hymn V by Ed of Life and Times (a very interesting modified sestina)
and
Grenadilla Tone by Garnet of Glittering Muse
As I say, these are just some that especially grabbed me upon first encounter. Do take a look. Find what you like.
Friday, December 02, 2005
A paradox to ponder ...
Newspapers delight in denouncing any industry that appaears to be making unreasonably high profits -- witness all that's been in the papers recently about oil industry profits. In fact, over time, the average rate of profit in the oil and gas industry is something on the order of 8 cents on every dollar. The recent surge in profits is neither typical nor sustainable.
Newspapers, on the other hand, generally average profits in double-digits. Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., which owns The Inquirer, pulls in about 13 percent profit annually. This is thought to be insufficient. Parent Knight Ridder and Wall Street investors want something nearer to 20 percent. Newspapers have managed to maintain double-digit profit margins by cutting staff and space (newsprint is expensive). In fact, they have been consistently offering customers less of a product, but at the same price. If any other industry did that sort of thing, newspapers would be all over them.
Perhaps if newspapers functioned like other businesses and spent some of those profits enhancing rather than diminishing the product, they might find circulation and advertising increasing. Perhaps the margin of profit would be less, but the long-term health of the industry might improve.
Newspapers, on the other hand, generally average profits in double-digits. Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., which owns The Inquirer, pulls in about 13 percent profit annually. This is thought to be insufficient. Parent Knight Ridder and Wall Street investors want something nearer to 20 percent. Newspapers have managed to maintain double-digit profit margins by cutting staff and space (newsprint is expensive). In fact, they have been consistently offering customers less of a product, but at the same price. If any other industry did that sort of thing, newspapers would be all over them.
Perhaps if newspapers functioned like other businesses and spent some of those profits enhancing rather than diminishing the product, they might find circulation and advertising increasing. Perhaps the margin of profit would be less, but the long-term health of the industry might improve.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
More odds & ends ...
Lynn Viehl takes a look at the NYT's 100 best books of 2005 -- and isn't exactly thrilled by what she sees. (Hat tip to Bill Peschel.)
On Sunday, at the Manayunk Art Center, they're having an Artists' Co-op Show, featuring work by Luke Harris, followed by a reading by poets included in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania.
On Sunday, at the Manayunk Art Center, they're having an Artists' Co-op Show, featuring work by Luke Harris, followed by a reading by poets included in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania.