Monday, November 30, 2009
Mark your calendars ...
... if you're in the area: AS KINGFISHERS CATCH FIRE: A Celebration of the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
RIP ...
... Dame Maria Boulding: nun and author.
Three days before she died, Boulding completed Journey to Easter, a series of meditations on her experience of the Resurrection through pain and suffering.
And the winner is ...
... Jonathan Littell wins the bad sex in fiction prize. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, congratulations, Jon!
Well, congratulations, Jon!
Maybe it is just equivalent ...
... to Victorian sentimentalism: Is it difficult to write well about sex? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thanks to people like Freud and D.H. Lawrence, a good many people feel a need to impose upon sex a weight of significance it cannot reasonably bear.
Thanks to people like Freud and D.H. Lawrence, a good many people feel a need to impose upon sex a weight of significance it cannot reasonably bear.
Oh, this is nice ...
... No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software.
So we really have no idea if the highly touted climate models are at all reliable, right? Just asking.
Today, each instance of custom-written scientific software is like an unknown, novel piece of scientific hardware. Each piece of software might as well be an “amazing wozzlescope” for all that anyone has experience with its accuracy and precision. No one can even tell if it has subtly malfunctioned. As a result, the peer review of scientific software does not indicate even a whisper of the same level of external objective scrutiny that the peer review of scientific hardware indicates.
So we really have no idea if the highly touted climate models are at all reliable, right? Just asking.
The Heidegger problem ...
... Why they’re really scared of Heidegger.
This an excellent critique, and it is nice to have one, finally, from someone who is actually familiar - and not just superficially - with Heidegger's thought.
Heidegger prompts discomfort precisely because he was a Nazi propagating a non-Nazi philosophy. He is just not alien enough. His is a philosophical vision that sits too comfortably with many mainstream attitudes, whether it’s an environmentalist assault upon human hubris or a snobbish disdain for consumerism.
... from this man’s writings, writings in which an insurgent communism could be dismissed alongside a decaying capitalism as manifestations of human societies’ unthinking, Being-forgetting belief in their own rationality, too many disenchanted intellects have found succour – to the extent that Heidegger finds a home. His thought resonates not because he was a Nazi, but because his criticism of modernity echoes many of today’s anti-modern trends.
This an excellent critique, and it is nice to have one, finally, from someone who is actually familiar - and not just superficially - with Heidegger's thought.
Thought for the day ...
Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.- Jacques Barzun, who turns 102 today
Sunday, November 29, 2009
I haven't read Vladimir Nabokov's posthumous and unfinished novel The Original of Laura. But I have read the excerpt from it that appears in the December issue of Playboy - which published quite a lot of Nabokov, including excerpts from Ada and Despair. Judging from the excerpt, the book certainly seems worth a closer look.
The excerpt is tantalizing, frustrating, and altogether fascinating. The fascinating part is perhaps the most interesting, because it is the part that amounts to a peek inside the creative process of a great writer. For instance, in the excerpt, Laura hasn't become Laura yet. She is called Flora. Laura, in fact, is the title character of the novel My Laura written by Dr. Philip Wild, to whom Flora had been married for three years.
What impresses in the excerpt is the overwhelming sense of absurdity. Four deaths are mentioned in its five pages, all in their way ridiculous. Flora's father, Adam Lind, is "a fashionable photographer," but the final pictures he shoots are of himself shooting himself in a Montecarlo hotel. His widow - Flora's mother, "a delightful dancer, though with something fragile and gauche about her that kept her teetering on a narrow ledge between benevolent recognition and the rave reviews of nonentities" - sells "these automatic pictures for the price of a flat in Paris to the local magazine Pitch."
The daughter of the dirty old man who frequents her mother's house when Flora is a child, redolently named Hubert H. Hubert, dies of a stroke in an elevator. His daughter had been run over by a truck at the age of 12. And then, of course, Flora's mother collapses and dies during the dedication of a fountain on the very day Flora graduates from college.
It is all so very tongue-in-cheek, almost a parodistic backward glance at Nabokov's own work, what with an early reference to "a work of fiction which one dashes off, you know, to make money," and the final reference to the novel My Laura: "the 'I' of the book is a neurotic and hesitant man of letters who destroys his mistress in the act of portraying her." Oh, and there is a wonderful passing reference to "a certain Dr. Freud, a madman."
The controversy over the book's publication - dying author asks wife to burn manuscript; she fails to do so and, decades later, his son gives permission for its publication - actually fits right in with the book itself. Maybe the whole thing was arranged by Nabokov with his wife and son as a postmortem joke. The excerpt is definitely worth the price of a copy of Playboy, which presumably still offers other pleasures as well (I refer, of course, to the cartoons and the interview, if they still have an interview). It made me want to at least take a look at the book, if only because the sense I got from the excerpt is rather different from much I have seen written about the work. It can hardly be a masterpiece, but it does seem more than just a curiosity.
The excerpt is tantalizing, frustrating, and altogether fascinating. The fascinating part is perhaps the most interesting, because it is the part that amounts to a peek inside the creative process of a great writer. For instance, in the excerpt, Laura hasn't become Laura yet. She is called Flora. Laura, in fact, is the title character of the novel My Laura written by Dr. Philip Wild, to whom Flora had been married for three years.
What impresses in the excerpt is the overwhelming sense of absurdity. Four deaths are mentioned in its five pages, all in their way ridiculous. Flora's father, Adam Lind, is "a fashionable photographer," but the final pictures he shoots are of himself shooting himself in a Montecarlo hotel. His widow - Flora's mother, "a delightful dancer, though with something fragile and gauche about her that kept her teetering on a narrow ledge between benevolent recognition and the rave reviews of nonentities" - sells "these automatic pictures for the price of a flat in Paris to the local magazine Pitch."
The daughter of the dirty old man who frequents her mother's house when Flora is a child, redolently named Hubert H. Hubert, dies of a stroke in an elevator. His daughter had been run over by a truck at the age of 12. And then, of course, Flora's mother collapses and dies during the dedication of a fountain on the very day Flora graduates from college.
It is all so very tongue-in-cheek, almost a parodistic backward glance at Nabokov's own work, what with an early reference to "a work of fiction which one dashes off, you know, to make money," and the final reference to the novel My Laura: "the 'I' of the book is a neurotic and hesitant man of letters who destroys his mistress in the act of portraying her." Oh, and there is a wonderful passing reference to "a certain Dr. Freud, a madman."
The controversy over the book's publication - dying author asks wife to burn manuscript; she fails to do so and, decades later, his son gives permission for its publication - actually fits right in with the book itself. Maybe the whole thing was arranged by Nabokov with his wife and son as a postmortem joke. The excerpt is definitely worth the price of a copy of Playboy, which presumably still offers other pleasures as well (I refer, of course, to the cartoons and the interview, if they still have an interview). It made me want to at least take a look at the book, if only because the sense I got from the excerpt is rather different from much I have seen written about the work. It can hardly be a masterpiece, but it does seem more than just a curiosity.
Put the lime in the coconut ...
... and call me in the morning: 'Novel Nausea' and the Essay.
See also You Have the End of the Novel, and I Got a Bridge for Sale.
See also You Have the End of the Novel, and I Got a Bridge for Sale.
Alleluia ...
... Latin Mass Appeal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... Bugnini may have finally met his match in Benedict XVI, a noted liturgist himself who is no fan of the past 40 years of change. Chanting Latin, wearing antique vestments and distributing comnion only on the tongues (rather than into the hands) of kneeling Catholics, Benedict has slowly reversed the innovations of his predecessors. And the Latin Mass is back, at least on a limited basis, in places like Arlington, Va., where one in five parishes offer the old liturgy.Benedict understands that his younger priests and seminarians — most born after Vatican II — are helping lead a counterrevolution. They value the beauty of the solemn high Mass and its accompanying chant, incense and ceremony. Priests in cassocks and sisters in habits are again common; traditionalist societies like the Institute of Christ the King are expanding.
One of those younger priests is Father Gerald Carey, the pastor of my parish, St. Paul's. Every Sunday at noon the traditional Latin Mass is celebrated there, and celebrated with precision.
Plenty to argue over ...
... The 100 Best Books of the Decade.
Glad to see that Maximum City, Out Stealing Horses, and The Secret Scripture made the cut. But, while The Da Vinci Code is a noteworthy book, it ias also a badly written, badly researched, and poorly plotted one populated with stick-figure characters. Home and The Road have their fans, and they are legion, but I am not among them.
The value of the premodern ...
... Anderson’s Pure. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... these thinkers differed, often dramatically, over the details. But on this big picture they were agreed. Contra Quine and the majority of contemporary academic philosophers, the ancients and medievals regarded the intellectual and the spiritual, reason and religion, as necessarily fused all the way down.
This week's Inquirer reviews ...
... our friend Susan Balée does some wading: Kingsolver's plot thickens.
See also:
... Wine theft mystery is a Gallic treat.
... A father faces the unthinkable.
... Fall of the Wall, 1989: A brilliant account of a Europe transformed.
... Via simplicity, a poet attains the universal.
... Flight to simpler life from sea of troubles.
And more - Travel Bookshelf: There's a world of culinary destinations.
See also:
... Wine theft mystery is a Gallic treat.
... A father faces the unthinkable.
... Fall of the Wall, 1989: A brilliant account of a Europe transformed.
... Via simplicity, a poet attains the universal.
... Flight to simpler life from sea of troubles.
And more - Travel Bookshelf: There's a world of culinary destinations.
A different class of book ...
... my roundup of books you may want to buy in order to give a way: Books as beauty upon the tabletop.
Thought for the day ...
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.- C.S. Lewis, born on this date in 1898.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Blogging to resume ...
... not until tomorrow. We are just back from Brooklyn. The WiFi in the hotel was underwhelming, which was why I didn't post anything.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
No longer forgotten ...
... 'It's Always Four O'Clock' and 'Iron Man' by W.R. Burnett. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Never too late ...
... Retired Hoylake journalist has first book published at the age of 76. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Intellectualizing ...
... without using intellect: The Architect as Totalitarian.
Of course, then there are the people who want to stop time and turn every city into a monument of the past.
Of course, then there are the people who want to stop time and turn every city into a monument of the past.
Light blogging ...
Debbie and I are taking off for Brooklyn to visit with her son and his family. So blogging will be light indeed today. But it's holiday! Don't spend your time here. Enjoy the day!
Happy Thanksgiving
Riverbank in Autumn by Maxfield Parrish
http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/parrish/p-parris42.htm
For Thanksgiving ...
... Three Men: A poem of thanksgiving.
... The Cranberry Cantos. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
... On Poetry: A Thanksgiving blessing. Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
... The Cranberry Cantos. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
... On Poetry: A Thanksgiving blessing. Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Thought for the day ...
Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.- Eugène Ionesco, born on this date in 1909
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Get a jump ...
... on the MSM: The CRU “climategate” proxy code: a primer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also “Climategate” and the Social Validation of Knowledge.
See also “Climategate” and the Social Validation of Knowledge.
... it’s important not to overstate the case. I don’t think we have anywhere near enough evidence to show that the academic consensus on global warming is completely bogus, or even close to it. Nor has it been proven that all or most prominent scientific supporters of global warming theory are as unethical as those exposed in this scandal.On balance, therefore, I still think that global warming exists and is a genuinely serious problem. But I am marginally less confident in holding that view than I was before. If we see more revelations of this kind, I will be less confident still.
Forgotten wordsmith ...
... Not-So-Silent Cal Wrote With Eloquence. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man. When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.
The real thing ...
... Mary Karr on Becoming Catholic. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Yes, it really does have to do with prayer, not argument. And, as the great Abbé Mugnier said, "We must love."
Thought for the day ...
With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy.- Félix Lope de Vega, born on this date in 1562
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Behind the scenes ....
... On Editing the Novel (a Primer): Laura Warholic by Alexander Theroux. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
She's not the only one ...
... A Fourth Thing Elizabeth Kolbert Didn’t Know. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Just remember: I link, you decide.
See also All The News That’s Fit To Bury.
Just remember: I link, you decide.
The envelope, please ...
... the IBPC's Winning Poems for November 2009. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
And here's the judge: Majid Naficy.
Thought for the day ...
We feel and know that we are eternal.- Baruch Spinoza, born on this date in 1632
Monday, November 23, 2009
There's more to life ...
... than memory: Maud Newton's life - a novel, not a memoir. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Fine ...
... as long as they behave: "It would have been a sure way to invite demons to the party," or, Subtle connections.
Thought for the day ...
Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.- Paul Celan, born on this date in 1920
Sunday, November 22, 2009
What we heard ...
... last night: Eschenbach goes deep into Mahler's Seventh.
Rather than unfolding it with a predominantly linear sense of counterpoint, Mahler built the symphony in recurring heterogeneous blocks that Eschenbach treated as organic entities. When returned to, these entities had markedly different tempo and character, as if having morphed while absent. Such touches contributed to the overall musical narrative - crucial in a symphony whose five movements can seem like separate tone poems. In this performance, everything had its rightful place, even the brief mandolin and guitar solos that can be tricky to balance.
This is precisely right. Also, by last night, it had all come together better.
Bryan on a roll ...
... For PZ Myers 3: Ross and Phoebe.
But that's not all from Bryan today. There's also Sendak and Cyberspace.
Treating science as an ideology, an occasion for polemic and abuse, and anathematising those who dissent is profoundly unscientific. It is an attitude that will, in the end, damage not just science itself but science as a public institution. Science is, as Thomas Nagel put it, a 'view from nowhere', it is a method, not a posture towards the world. It assumes - and, indeed, attains - the possibility of a superhuman perspective. As such, it is a profoundly admirable and magnificent achievement of the human intellect. But it is only one such achievement. When science aspires to be anything else - ideology, for example - it is prone to delusion, fantasy and intolerance.
(Case in point: This WaPo story.)
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... is a kind of reunion:
... Michael Harrington, who was my first assistant, looks at Writings left behind by Vonnegut.
... also, Dan De Luca, who still works at the paper and reviewed a lot for me as well, checks out Orhan Pamuk: A life sacrificed to obsessive, hopeless love.
... Katie has a YA roundup: Young-adult nonfiction and novels.
... Glenn Altschuler, who frequently reviewed for me, reviews Alice Munro: What comes before happiness.
... Michael Harrington, who was my first assistant, looks at Writings left behind by Vonnegut.
... I ponder Philip K. Dick's deconstruction of madness.
... also, Dan De Luca, who still works at the paper and reviewed a lot for me as well, checks out Orhan Pamuk: A life sacrificed to obsessive, hopeless love.
Thought for the day ...
Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.- George Eliot, born on this date in 1819
Saturday, November 21, 2009
By the time this posts ...
... we'll be off to the orchestra (as we say in Philly) to see the Mahler Seventh. Here's the conclusion with Lenny doing the honors.
Man at work ...
... here is a video Laura and I made this morning as a prototype of things to come on this blog. The was spur-of-the-moment and improvised. Hence, my sloppy, disheveled appearance - which does, however, work well when asking for handouts on the sidewalk.
A poem ...
At Rest
We lie here silent in the dark,
Unmoving and unmoved, for that is best.
Undesired, we desire nothing, and would be
At peace, were peace not something
To be desired, a presence distracting
From the absence we would enjoy,
Could we enjoy anything.
Do not ask us who we are,
Who cannot tell and do not care,
Content to be aware of being. No,
Not content. Say only: Undisturbed.
You may hear this by clicking on the podcast at right.
Saul Bellow (and Roth, too)
I've just finished Herzog - a book that I meant to read five years ago. Let me begin by stating the obvious: this is a masterful novel. Narrative ingenuity, philosophical insight, cultural mayhem - it's all there, served with consistent (but always animated) prose. I must say, there's something about Bellow's novels which seem to outlast those of Roth. Maybe it's the writing itself which is superior; or maybe it's a more expansive vision of plot. Either way, I find that there exists in Bellow's work a certain intellectual gravity which is not always present in Roth's stories. And it's not that I mind Roth (in fact, I find his treatment of sex and sexuality to be unusually perceptive); it's just that, when it comes to style and narrative punch, I find myself drawn to the Nobel Laureate. The last word is reserved for Herzog (Penguin ed., 328):
"The explosions had become implosions, and where light once was darkness came, bit by bit."
'Twould be nice ...
... A civil conversation about religion. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
There is much in what Armstrong says (more in this case than in what she has to say about Islam, regarding which she is purely bien pensant). But the cloud of unknowing has to do with putting off what we think we know in order encounter the transcendent- which we cannot "know" - and the logos is only aggressive when taken as it too often has been in a strictly intellectual sense. Understood as the Western equivalent of the Tao - which is how it ought to be understood, and how Heraclitus, for one, seems to have understood it - it is anything but.
Thought for the day ...
Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.- René Magritte, born on this date in 1898
Friday, November 20, 2009
More better lists ...
... Library Journal Best Books 2009 featuring A.S. Byatt, K'wan, & Bich Minh Nguyen. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Link is fixed. (Thanks, Dave.)
Quite the marvel ...
... That Evening Sun's Hal Holbrook: A Candid, Emotional Movieline Interview. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Generally sound ...
... Things I will not be writing about.
As it happens, I am going to writing about The Original of Laura and may even make mention of what John Banville has to say about it.
Something to crow about ...
... see Andro Linklater's recommendation here. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.
I am immensely fond of crows. Three are looking down upon me as I write, and others are in a paining behind me. I would love to have one.
Thank you very much ...
... Gratitude’s Grace Can Be Itself a Gift. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As Will said:
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho! the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Sounds very interesting ...
... Absence of Mind. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also: The Dwight H. Terry Lectureship. (Also from Dave.)
Thought for the day ...
For what is a man's soul but a flame? It flickers in and around the body of a man as does the flame around a rough log.- Selma Lagerlöf, born on this date in 1858
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Not being English ...
... I was unfamiliar with Frank Johnson; thanks to this wonderful piece, I have some idea of what I missed: A Frank Johnson primer. Some more here: Frank Johnson remembered.
Well, maybe ...
... Blog names world's worst books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The books I saw mentioned don't pretend to be great books. Pretentious literatures is far worse.
Roth, Revisted
Stage Fright: How to read Philip Roth's quartet on aging. An interesting piece by Judith Shulevitz.
This week's batch ...
... of TLS Letters: Research in the humanities, Acceptable errors, Lynette Roberts, and more!
Things to think about ...
... The 10 weirdest physics facts, from relativity to quantum physics.
Well, it looks more line none, really. But this impresses:
Well, it looks more line none, really. But this impresses:
Atoms are 99.9999999999999 per cent empty space. As Tom Stoppard put it: "Make a fist, and if your fist is as big as the nucleus of an atom, then the atom is as big as St Paul's, and if it happens to be a hydrogen atom, then it has a single electron flitting about like a moth in an empty cathedral, now by the dome, now by the altar."If you forced all the atoms together, removing the space between them, crushing them down so the all those vast empty cathedrals were compressed into the first-sized nuclei, a single teaspoon or sugar cube of the resulting mass would weigh five billion tons; about ten times the weight of all the humans who are currently alive.
I guess a materialist is someone who doesn't think the world adds up to much.
OK, I'm an old guy ...
... and this sounds almost like a new language to me (which is fine): Icculus-inspired promo for jambandbootleg in Surrender to the Flow #22; a risqué PHiSH poem in RATTLE #32!
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