In 1948, from Dublin, where he was staying with his mother, he writes: "The weather is fine, I walk along my old paths, I keep watching my mother's eyes, never so blue, so stupefied, so heartrending, eyes of an endless childhood, that of old age. Let us get there rather earlier, while there are still refusals we can make. I think these are the first eyes that I have seen. I have no wish to see any others. I have all I need for loving and weeping. I know now what is going to close, and open inside me, but without seeing anything, there is no more seeing."
Friday, September 30, 2011
Strictly self-critical ...
... The Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume II - review | Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Liberation via poetry ...
... Much-loved poet Pam Ayres reveals how her verse helped her escape a life of rural poverty | Mail Online. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
During snowstorms, gusts of snowflakes blew in like a corny comic sketch, and a barricade of coats lay along the bottom of the door in a hopeless attempt to keep out the draught.
Continuing ...
... SinC25: Katherine Howell, #4 post of “moderate” challenge | Petrona.
What is so enjoyable about Katherine Howell’s books is not just the realism of the paramedics’ jobs as they are called out to many kinds of bizarre, dangerous, sad, repetitive or funny incidents that test the full range of their ingenuity and survival skills, but also the sheer pace and muscle of the stories, which are more common (in my experience) in crime novels by male authors.
The Letters of Ezra Pound
I hadn't realized that Pound was a graduate of Hamilton College, nor that he had connections to Penn. Here, letters to his parents.
About that Goldman Sachs video ...
... Resource Clips � Auguries-The Unspeakable Truth. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Directly after the interview, it was asserted that Rastani must be a hoaxer. It turned out that this was not so, although he is a part-time trader, at best, and something of a fantasist. But what if he is right? Back in April, this space quoted Marshall McLuhan, “Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.” This explains the extraordinary reaction to Rastani’s statements—he spoke the unspeakable.
Attractive oddness ...
... 1)Shakespeare 2)Dickens….? | Bryan Appleyard. (Hat tips to Dave Lull and Rus Bowden.)
Perhaps one of the reasons for such effusions is the attractive oddness of the man. He sticks out of English literature like a sore thumb. To the Victorians, his immediate superstar predecessors were Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Dickens admired Scott and, in his youth, adopted the romantic, dandy style of Byron, but he was like neither. Tomalin links him to Chaucer in his creation of characters, and Slater sees Ben Jonson as both an influence and a precursor. “In his amateur theatricals, he chose Jonson rather than Shakespeare, and he was very fond of Every Man in His Humour.”
Taking his time ...
... Secrets of growing slowly | TLS.
The authentic Rilkean tone begins to emerge with the first volume of what would become The Book of Hours (most recently translated by Susan Ranson in 2008, an assortment of whose translations are included in the Selected Poems). Written after a trip to Russia in 1899 with Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Book of Monkish Life, a series of poems from the perspective of an icon-painting monk, was followed two years later by The Book of Pilgrimage. These volumes bear the stamp of Rilke's personality in their idiosyncratic conception of God as the supreme manifestation of becoming, rather than of being; Rilke presents Him not through the traditional iconography of the father, but as the son, the guarantor of futurity.
Thought for the day ...
It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something.- Truman Capote, born on this date in 1924
Thursday, September 29, 2011
RIP ...
... The TLS blog: Death of a philosopher.
It is this possibility of absolute nothingness that Rundle is mainly concerned to expose as an illusion. He points out that, in ordinary speech, when we say there is nothing in the cupboard, or nothing that is both round and square, we are talking about an existing world none of whose contents meet a certain description. To say nothing is X is to say everything is not X. We can perhaps conceive of the disappearance of everything in the world, so that there are no things left in it, but even then we are not imagining nothing at all, but rather a void, a vacuum, empty space. Taken literally, the hypothesis that there might have been nothing at all seems self-contradictory, since it seems equivalent to the supposition that it might have been the case that nothing was the case. Is there any way of understanding the possibility that there might have been nothing at all without interpreting it incoherently as a way things might have been -a fact, as Rundle puts it, a possible state of affairs, an alternative possible world? Rundle thinks not, and that therefore the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" does not call for an answer.
Religion of peace ...
... strikes again: Iranian Pastor Sentenced to Death: Nadarkhani Refuses to Convert - International Business Times.
Of course, as good multiculturalists, we must try to understand where these people are coming from and not insist they pay any heed to our decadent Western notions. In the meantime, does anyone have a spare ticket for Saturday night's stoning?
Surprising debut ...
... A Strange Review: Higher Ground | Strange Herring. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Never before have I seen a film that so brilliantly captures the restlessness produced by the faith that promises peace beyond understanding. Higher Ground, based on the memoir by Carolyn S. Briggs and adapted for the screen by the author, is an extraordinarily intelligent, probing, disturbing, and altogether compassionate look at what it means to believe without seeing. Farmiga and Briggs treat their subject, and their central character, with respect and care, though never noncritically.
No relation ...
... but a damn good story: The Dead Roads by DW Wilson | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Old Macdonald ...
... Son of Cults | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes.
On the other hand, who cares about Cozzens today, even if Macdonald is the main reason nobody cares?
But maybe we should care about Cozzens, and maybe Macdonald did us all a disservice in causing us not to.Guard of Honor is a very good book. Cozzens's contemporary, John P. Marquand, is another novelist deserving pf a closer second look, such as what John O'Hara, another contemporary, is starting to receive.
Following Thoreau ...
... Quiet after despair | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/29/2011.
Much more than a how-to manual (though it offers plenty of practical advice), Cabin tells the tale of a man who has passed "his own personal equinox" and is reeling from life's blows (divorce, job loss, health scare, and the death of his mother, his only steady parent). Beset by depression and "visitations of panic and loneliness," he takes to the woods to pursue a lifelong dream. Along the way, he does plenty of reckoning, and the cabin becomes both pretext and instrument for redeeming and renewing himself.
Tiny DIY Books by Victorian Tweens
Charlotte Bronte, that is, and her little brother. Images of their handmade books at The Hairpin.
Thought for the day ...
Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.- Miguel de Unamuno, born on this date in 1864
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
For the defense ...
... Confessions of a literary barbarian: a defense of the Cambridge History of the American Novel. - By Benjamin Reiss - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This reminds me of the professor referred to in The Pooh Perplex who was working on a book called All Previous Thought.
While I find Epstein's characterization of our 71-chapter volume—which covers everything from the publishing business to Henry James, dime novels to modernist aesthetics—closed-minded and inaccurate, his rant does raise a good question. What is literary history, and how should it be brought to bear on the genre of the novel? The Cambridge History of the American Novel is really a biography of the novel as it intersects with American history. Part of the explanation for the changing shape of the American novel involves individual genius (i.e., great writers), but it also involves the stuff of national history: wars, slavery, emancipation, democracy, territorial expansion, civil rights, women's rights, immigration, and capitalism.
Not to pick on the British, but...
Michael Wood's recent piece in the LRB touches - by way of Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending - on that "elusive stupidity of intelligent people." And by people, Wood means the British.
The essay is a funny one at times and includes lots of little insights into the English character. These include references to a "certain self-admiring obtuseness" as well as the belief - at least among some - that "deference" amounts to one's "due."
The best part of the piece comes at the end, though, when Wood turns serious and makes a quiet point about modern literature.
His suggestion amounts to the idea - in the work of Barnes and elsewhere - that fictional characters walk a fine line these days between "ironically miming [their] own helplessness" and "taking refuge in old and comfortable evasion."
To a certain extent, we all walk this line...
Outcomes ...
... The Wilson Quarterly: The WikiLeaks Illusion by Alasdair Roberts.
We live in very different times. There is no popular movement against U.S. military engagement overseas, no broad reaction against established authority in American society, no youth rebellion. The public mood in the United States is one of economic uncertainty and physical insecurity. Many Americans want an assurance that their government is willing and able to act forcefully in the pursuit of U.S. interests. In this climate, the incidents revealed by WikiLeaks—spying on United Nations diplomats, covert military action against terrorists, negotiations with regimes that are corrupt or guilty of human rights abuses—might not even be construed as abuses of power at all. On the contrary, they could be regarded as proof that the U.S. government is prepared to get its hands dirty to protect its citizens.
Thought for the day ...
And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.- Confucius, born on this date in 551 B.C.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Professional eyewitness ...
... The Long Night | Books and Culture.
Adventure stories usually tell of the adventurer's having accomplished something: conquered the dragon, survived the dark forest, married the princess. Tales of adventurous journalists, however, are at best stories of people who go out to see rather than to do. Their finest accomplishments come when, like daring flies, they manage to sneak in and cling to the wall, eavesdropping while others make things happen.
Mob flicks ...
... Gangster film book looks inside the cannoli box | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/27/2011.
Are gangster movies different in other countries? Which actor is the most prolific mobster? Is a "gangster comedy" a contradiction in terms?Yes. Robert De Niro. No.
Take that, Will!
... Digital monkeys with typewriters recreate Shakespeare - CNN.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Place your bets ...
... Nobel Literature Prize Betting Odds | Bet Online at Ladbrokes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Maybe they'll surprise everybody and give it to Torgny Lindgren.
The short of it ...
... Aphorisms by Ralph Waldo Emerson - All Aphorisms, All the Time. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Classy ...
... The Cahiers Series: “really, really beautiful” – and hand-stitched, even | The Book Haven.
“There are two main justifications for the Cahiers Series. The first is that we publish material that cannot easily be published anywhere else; we can play with form in a way that commercial publishers cannot. The second justification is to make something where the parts, through their relation to each other, add up to more than just that.”
Thought for the day ...
Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.- Henri Frédéric Amiel, born on this date in 1821
Monday, September 26, 2011
Beware the black dot ...
... AbeBooks: The Woman Who Shocked America: Shirley Jackson.
The Lottery was met with much negativity which surprised both the author and The New Yorker, and ultimately caused many subscribers to cancel their subscriptions and send hate mail. It has since become one of the most important American short stories and continues to be analysed, critiqued and taught in schools.
Never thought of it that way ...
... and not sure I do now: On Genuine Literary Citizenship � BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
A very small peat contributor ...
... The TLS blog: Intellectual peat.
“Is Carlyle himself, with all his Genius, to subside into the Level? Dickens, with all his Genius, but whose men and women act and talk already after a more obsolete fashion than Shakespeare’s? I think some of Tennyson’s will survive, and drag the deader part along with it . . . . And (I doubt) Thackeray’s terrible humanity.”
The talented Mr. Dickens ...
... Claire Tomalin: 'Writing induces melancholy. You're alone, a hermit' | Interview | Books | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tomalin's book, a page-turner, seems to me to be an effective reproof to those who, like Michael Holroyd, believe literary biography to be in its death throes. But what does she think? Are publishers going to dispense with fat lives? "No! I think people are always saying things are over. Fiction has been regularly over since the 19th century. You can't entirely talk about books in groups like that. Some work and some don't. Clearly, we have got a public with a shorter attention span, but there is also this great interest in history. I'm devoted to Michael. He's adorable. But I rather think he's enjoying being Cassandra about this."
Metarealist ...
... Remembering Russian poet Alexei Parshchikov, and a meeting in Cologne | The Book Haven.
“Alyosha’s work has a quality at once ancient and entirely new,” says American poet Michael Palmer, Parshchikov’s friend and translator. “His poems present and project the turmoil of the present in a manner that is entirely his own, a tone of this particular fractured and diasporic moment, where the unsettled is the norm, and where all is in continuous flux.”
Also born today ...
... in 1898, George Gershwin.
The date, of course, is wrong. Gershwin died in 1937.
The date, of course, is wrong. Gershwin died in 1937.
Thought for the day ...
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.- T. S. Eliot, born on this date in 1888
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Thought for the day ...
Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.- William Faulkner, born on this date in 1897
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Thought for the day ...
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.- F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on this date in 1896
Friday, September 23, 2011
Blogging hiatus ...
By the time this post appears, Debbie and I will be in Brooklyn. I'm leaving the laptop behind, and so will be offline until late Sunday.
Wielding verse ...
... POETRY REVIEW: "Whorled" | StarTribune.com.
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden, who also sent along "If in America".)
Q & A ...
... Booklist Interview: Kate Lyall Grant, by Bill Ott | Booklist Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mix and match ...
... Poetry Pairing | The Beautiful and the Bad - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Hmm again ...
... Belief in God Boils Down to a Gut Feeling - Yahoo! News.
... the participants took a three-question math test with questions such as, "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"The intuitive answer to that question is 10 cents, since most people's first impulse is to knock $1 off the total. But people who use "reflective" reasoning to question their first impulse are more likely to get the correct answer: 5 cents.
My mathematical ineptness is legendary, but I've always been pretty good at arithmetic. So what am I missing here? What accounts for the remaining 5 cents? Also, it may well be that there is no one-size-fits-all way to arrive at truth.
Hard to satisfy ...
... Boston Review — Vivian Gornick: My Hungry Soul.
... the door to the literary world began steadily to inch its way open for Kazin, and then finally it swung wide, whereupon a life of ever-growing eminence ensued. For more than half a century Kazin wrote, taught, and published; received prizes and fellowships at the highest levels; went to dinner with the great and the near-great; was invited to all the parties that mattered. He also married four times and had many affairs. Life should have felt rewarding—but it didn’t. The parties he went to bored him; the women he slept with left him wanting; the men whose respect he most desired he felt ignored by.
Thought for the day ...
Do not plan for ventures before finishing what's at hand.- Euripedes, born on this date in 480 B.C.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Hmm ...
... Fahrenheit 451: Reading the 1950s | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Concomitant to the Bomb was, of course, the cold war – and clearly that, too, influenced the book. The Soviets were sending writers to gulags and banning questionable books, while in the US McCarthy was persecuting writers and the HUAC was in full swing. And then, of course, the memory of the Nazis still burned all too bright.
Well, actually, HUAC was busy mostly in the 1940s and McCarthy investigated the State Department and the Army, not writers. As for Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451, he goes into that here, to wit: "Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature."
The 1950s were like any other time, a mixture of good and bad, fresh and stale. I remember nuclear drills in school, when we got down under our desks. I don't remember many of them, though -- only one, actually -- but I do remember that none of us thought about it very much. Great way to interrupt the school day. For me, the good and the fresh outweighed the bad and the stale. Interestingly, it was first time I heard alarms being sounded about the federal goverment's fiscal incontinence. Subsequent decades certainly dealt well with that, didn't they?
Master of cliché ....
... Book Review: That Used to Be Us - WSJ.com.
Mr. Friedman can turn a phrase into cliché faster than any Madison Avenue jingle writer. He announces that "America declared war on math and physics." Three paragraphs later, we learn that we're "waging war on math and physics." Three sentences later: "We went to war against math and physics." And onto the next page: "We need a systemic response to both our math and physics challenges, not a war on both." Three sentences later: We must "reverse the damage we have done by making war on both math and physics," because, we learn two sentences later, soon the war on terror "won't seem nearly as important as the wars we waged against physics and math." He must think we're idiots.
Friedman is one of those - Malcolm Gladwell is another - whose modus operandi is to pass of a catchphrase as an idea.
Going after Amazon ...
... Allentown: Inside Amazon.com warehouse workers complain of brutal conditions - mcall.com.
Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it's like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get.
In case you wondered ...
... Transmissions from a Lone Star: Why Solzhenitsyn still matters | Columnists | RIA Novosti.
Solzhenitsyn was always a prose architect of great skill, prone to experimenting with structure and narrative forms. He referred to the stories in Apricot Jam as “binary,” each tale in the book being a juxtaposition of two separate halves, linked by theme or character. However these halves are frequently separated in time and space, or are written from radically different points of view. The gap between the linked stories is crucial to their overall meanings; that which goes unsaid contains as much meaning as that which is written.
Easy does it ...
... or does it?
... “One Novel a Decade Isn’t Going to Cut It” � Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... the novel has obviously declined in cultural significance. No one would deny that. The empty-headed distinction between “literary fiction” and “genre fiction,” which continues to be thrown around as if it referred to anything more than an inability to read intelligently, is testament to the novel’s decline. As much as I dislikedFreedom, Franzen’s ambition to write a “big social novel,” to undertake the “job of social instruction,” is admirable. Novelists may not be “color commentators” (my God, what stupid language!), but they are part of the American discussion, the constant back-and-forth over American ideals and values, and they should write as if they are.
Crème de la crème ...
... AbeBooks: Lettered Editions: Alphabetical Book Collecting.
Lettered editions are traditionally limited to 26 copies, one for each letter of the alphabet, but it is not uncommon for a lettered edition to be limited to 52 copies with books marked by upper and lower case letters or represented by A to Z followed by AA to ZZ.
Thought for the day ...
There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.- Maurice Blanchot, born on this date in 1907
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
In case you wondered ...
... The “Christianist” Nightmare: It’s Just A Bad Dream | Via Meadia.
... what we are seeing is the continued triumph of individualism in American life — a force before which both the Christian Right and the Secular Left must bend. The Right sees the advance of individualism and fears that all is lost, that the socialists are about to take over; the Left sees the rise of libertarian individualism in economic life and policy and fears that this is part of an impending total triumph of the Right.
Timing is everything ...
... Depression fear: How BUtterfield 8 explains the moment we're in. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Interesting how O'Hara's star continues to rise.
The novel captures something that the film, which stars Ms. Taylor's sexy white slips, utterly discards: the menacing undertone of that end-of-Weimar period worldwide, those two crucial years poised between the Black Monday crash of October 1929 and the middle of 1931, when the novel is set. The months before flickering hopes of recovery were dashed as the worldwide Depression doubled back and sunk us deeper into the black hole of fear itself. We were teetering precariously over the edge of the abyss in 1931, but didn't know for sure. It's often forgotten that during that tense period, there were mixed signals, some signs that a recovery was possible.
Interesting how O'Hara's star continues to rise.
All preach, no practice ...
... Richard Dawkins, an Original Thinker Who Bashes Orthodoxy - NYTimes.com.
“My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side,” he says, listing the essential questions that drive him. “Why do we exist, why are we here, what is it all about?
Well, I guess that explains why he has done virtually no science in his so-called career. The problem is that science is not philosophy and if it's philosophy he was interested in, he should have studied philosophy. I found The God Delusion to be philosophically puerile. Combine that with the fact that some scientists who have done estimable work - John Polkinghorne, Owen Gingerich, Francis Collins - have arrived at a conclusion opposite to the one Dawkins thumps tubs about continually, one has to wonder if Dawkins might have benefited from doing some science.
Pulling punches ...
... Raymond Chandler and the Blue Dahlia Gambit | Literary Kicks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Chandler had originally plotted the killer as Buzz, who is played by William Bendix. Chandler fancied an ending where for psychological reasons Buzz murdered Ladd’s unfaithful wife in a blackout rage. Then, his memory of the incident was to be meticulously pieced together so that he would finally remember what happened and confess to the crime. However, the Navy disapproved of this ending, as it would show Navy personnel in a bad light (these were the War years, after all). So Chandler’s output came to a halt.
It's called pastiche ...
... Uncreative Writing - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Today technology has exacerbated these mechanistic tendencies in writing (there are, for instance, several Web-based versions of Raymond Queneau's 1961 laboriously hand-constructedHundred Thousand Billion Poems), inciting younger writers to take their cues from the workings of technology and the Web as ways of constructing literature. As a result, writers are exploring ways of writing that have been thought, traditionally, to be outside the scope of literary practice: word processing, databasing, recycling, appropriation, intentional plagiarism, identity ciphering, and intensive programming, to name just a few.
Librarian poet ...
... If it's Thursday, it's IOW Verse Day II - The Globe and Mail. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Thought for the day ...
When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "one word at a time."- Stephen King, born on this date in 1947
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Different directions ...
... A Tale of Two Literary Worlds | iNewp.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
n+1′s staff has grown in the past five years. As it holds non-profit status, one can assume its level of contributions from wealthy benefactors– or from n+1 staffers– has risen.
The Underground Literary Alliance, on the other hand, in 2007 suffered betrayals and defections, followed by internal disputes and dismemberment. Its final actions– two readings staged by ULA poet Frank D. Walsh– occurred in 2009.
The future of newspapers (cont'd) ...
... New coupon app available Wednesday �| ajc.com. (Hat tip, Vikram Johri.)
Wordsmith ...
... Jon Hendricks | Lyrics for Miles and Monk | Cultural Conversation by Will Friedwald - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mr. Hendricks is best known for what was a comparatively brief period of his life: 1956-61, when he co-led Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. His collaboration with David Lambert stretches for more years on both sides, but in a very short time LHR completely transformed the use of the human voice in jazz. Using Mr. Hendricks's lyrics, the group sang words to iconic jazz instrumentals and solos, and swung harder and with more hip humor than any other vocal ensemble before or since.
And the winner is ...
... Edna O'Brien wins Frank O'Connor Award | Irish Examiner. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Q & A ...
... Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, Comes to Vanderbilt | InsideVandy. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Poetry ... asks you to slow down. It runs at a fairly slow gear - for at least two reasons: one is that it causes you to fall into a more meditative, thoughtful state, to stop multitasking. Buddhists would call multitasking monkey-minded, when you're thinking of so many things at once. Poetry gets the monkeys out of our head—or it just leaves one monkey. Poetry offers the opportunity for you to get mentally and emotionally focused.
Memory and meaning ...
... This must be valuable because it lingered: On Writing “Into the Fable” � BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
You stake your belief on the value of the image when it may be memory’s equivalent of a found photo: intriguing, mysterious, ghostly-narrative, vaguely urgent, but ultimately pointless.
Resident alien ...
... T.S. Eliot's On-Again, Off-Again Anti-Semitism – Forward.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In July 1919, Eliot wrote to a Bloomsbury hostess: “Remember that I am a metic — a foreigner, and that I want to understand you, and all the background and tradition of you.” In a 1925 review for The Nation, excerpted in Volume II of “Letters,” Eliot observes that modern poetry is an urban phenomenon: “Here too the metic plays a large part; for the metic, like the Jew, can only thoroughly naturalize himself in cities.”
Congratulations ...
... Rutgers-Camden professor Jacob Soll wins MacArthur grant | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/20/2011. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Soll says he became "almost like a geneticist, following the trail of this crazy DNA." Machiavelli turns out to be a founder of "modern political science, one in which you look rationally and critically at what political leaders do, and see what their real goals are and the means they use to achieve them." Machiavelli's dry-eyed, sometimes coldly rational, even cynical look at real people and real power was an early awakening of the modern.
Thought for the day ...
If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom.- Leo Strauss, born on this date in 1899
Monday, September 19, 2011
Beyond self-indulgence ...
... Branford Marsalis: The Problem With Jazz - Page 1 - Music - Seattle - Seattle Weekly. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This has been a problem for some time, and not just with jazz. In fact, contemporary classical composers in particular have long since, in many cases, forgotten how to write for people who aren't composers or critics.
Ongoing ...
... In E-Books, Publishing Houses Have a Rival in News Sites - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ordinarily ...
... I would not do this. But I just got a copy in the mail of the latest issue of Boulevard, in which I make a contribution to the Symposium on the subject of creative writing courses and writers' workshops. I just read it, which I usually do not do, but found I might be spot on this time. You can find it any bookstore.
Indeed ...
... The “Christianists” Aren’t Taking Over This Week | Via Meadia.
This is exactly what I observed during the years I wrote for The Inquirer's Faith Life section. The hysteria about evangelical and fundamentalist Christians was all politically motivated hype.
Thought for the day ...
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.- William Golding, born on this date in 1911
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Listen in ...
... Maya Roads: A Literary Journey Through the Central American Rainforest - New America Media. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Elusive ...
... Book Review: The Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volumes 1 and 2: 1898-1925 - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In 1925, he wrote Virginia Woolf: "I feel like a shell with no machinery in it, the moment I try to use my mind at all; it's no use." His wording recalls the "voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells" of "The Waste Land" and the vacuity that gives "The Hollow Men" (1925) its theme.
Memory and more ...
... Time on the Brain: How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But would the results be different if the subjects were mystics?
The bottom line is that memory is essential to constructing scenarios for ourselves in the future. Anecdotal evidence backs this up. Our ability to project forward and to recollect the past both develop around age 5, and people who are good at remembering also report having vivid thoughts about the future.
But would the results be different if the subjects were mystics?
Close call ...
... Me one, Grim Reaper zero. Booyah. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A couple of guys were running along the bank. They could see I was failing and shouted advice. I followed some of it. I couldn’t breathe, but I moved my arms in a pathetic pantomime of a back-stroke. I kicked harder, fully aware that it was the very last chance to do so. Then somehow I was free of the worst of the current. The guys on shore waded out and hauled me in like a dying carp.
Thought for the day ...
A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must, in practice, be a bad government.- Joseph Story, born on this date in 1779
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Literary conversation ...
... Inside Kenneth J. Harvey - The Globe and Mail. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I reviewed what I think was Harvey's first novel, The Town That Forgot How to Breathe, and thought it was very good.
Pledging allegiance ...
... to "kindness": Harvard Now Values ‘Kindness’ Not Learning: Virginia Postrel - Bloomberg. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Michel Houellebecq
Let me start with a question: Do they really have more sex in France?
Normally, I wouldn't care much about this question or its answer. However, by chance, I've read two novels recently - both by contemporary French authors - which focus almost entirely on the sexual lives of their characters. The first is Herve Le Tellier's Enough Above Love, which I reviewed in Rain Taxi. The second is Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles, which is a book that caught me way off guard...
...Because while Enough About Love offers a negative account of marriage and monogamy, the novel is, at its roots, playful. Houellebecq, though, is far darker, far more severe: his book is one of sexuality turned violent, of passion reduced to painful routine. It's not quite Jelinek, but it's not so far off either.
Still, despite the miasmic qualities hovering above The Elementary Particles, the novel does make a strong case for the shifting nature of sexuality as it grows old. One of Houellebecq's characters - Michel - interacts with this vision of sex by repressing its reality all together; another character - Bruno - does the opposite, charting a course toward endless arousal. The problem, of course, is that in its infinitude, this arousal, too, becomes meaningless. Neither character, it seems, can win (and by win, Houellebecq mostly means maintain an erection).
So, while I can neither confirm nor refute the frequency with which the French are evidently making love, I can - thanks to Houellebecq's novel - corroborate one fact: which is that sex and sexuality have assumed in contemporary French fiction a metaphysical value that is at once arresting and, in its honesty, surprisingly refreshing.
Masterwork ...
... John le Carré: a Tinker, Tailor A-Z by William Boyd | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Time is a storm in which we are all lost.- William Carlos Williams, born on this date in 1883
Friday, September 16, 2011
Curious George ...
... The American Scholar: Dubya and Me - Walt Harrington. (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)
"... you shouldn’t chase public opinion. … Lincoln had a set of principles that were important to him. ‘All men are created equal under God’ is the ultimate. It’s the ultimate principle for America’s freedom. … But Lincoln acted on it in a difficult political environment. People forget that he was in a very tough reelection campaign, and it wasn’t until Sherman makes it to Atlanta that his prospects brightened. Secondly, Lincoln had a strategic vision for the country. One of the great presidential decisions ever was to keep the country intact. … The question oftentimes in history is what would have happened if a different decision were made. We’d have been Europe.”
Chuckles ...
... Seven Dwarfs password gag declared Fringe's best • The Register. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I like the Hannibal Buress line a lot.
Hmm ...
... Beyond 'New Atheism' - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Your religious beliefs typically depend on the community in which you were raised or live. The spiritual experiences of people in ancient Greece, medieval Japan or 21st-century Saudi Arabia do not lead to belief in Christianity.
But, as D.T. Suziki has pointed out, Meister Eckhart managed to arrive at something very like Zen without any direct knowledge of Buddhism, and the similarities among the various mystical schools can hardly be explained by social conditioning. Moreover, any reasonably reflective person takes into account such factors as one's upbringing, education, etc., all of which, as Gutting indicates, apply to other views as well.
Thought for the day ...
It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral elements of his dreams.- John Knowles, born on this date in 1926
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Real drama ...
... Defeats and Victories Not Recorded in the Annals of History � Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Stoner takes an outwardly nondescript life, the sort of life that many of us want to escape into fiction, and demonstrates that the real drama of human experience is in the daily refusal to escape, the uninterrupted renunciation of extreme situations, the muted decision to stay and do some good. It’s hard to make such a book sound very exciting. That Stoner is exciting — unexpectedly so, and incredibly moving — is the true measure of Williams’s achievement.
Hmm ...
... In the Wake: Per Petterson and the Notion of Contemporary Existentialism | Quarterly Conversation.
... it is fair to argue that America has never, truly, produced an existentialist writer worthy of the term. Our closest attempts can be seen in the works of the Lost Generation, the suburban masters of the 1950s, and in Carverite minimalism of the late 1970s and early ‘80s, but even at their best they lack a certain je ne c’est quoi that permeates Kafka or Kundera or Beckett.
Maybe it has something to do with the American temperament. And also with the fact that, as often as not, an "existential" novel uses fiction as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself.
Thought for the day ...
There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.-Robert Benchley, born on this date in1889
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Very interesting ...
... Cults | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes.
“Nazism and Soviet Communism…show us how far things can go in politics, as Masscult does in art. And let us not be too smug in this American temperate zone, unravaged by war and ideology.”
There you have encapsulated where Macdonald goes wrong. The art/ politics analogy simply doesn't work. Yes, art and artists can sell out politically. But art and politics do not, deep down, have very much in common at all. I had friends in college who were much taken with Macdonald - and he can be a very entertaining, even insightful writer. But he was nowhere near as good a thinker as he and his admirers seem to to think.
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