... my friend Sam Starnes has a novel out called Fall Line. He talks about it in this podcast.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
In case you wondered ...
... Largehearted Boy: Online "Best of 2011" Book Lists. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I'm not so sure ...
... Anecdotal Evidence: `Metre Is a Brain-Altering Drug'.
Bad poetry can be very powerful and seductive, whether transparently bad like Poe’s or “skillfully obscure” like Hart Crane’s, in the words of Yvor Winters. Too much emphasis on sound results in nonsense; too much on sense, propaganda that might as well be prose.
In Poe's defense, I have to say that "To Helen" is actually a pretty good poem, and while "Romance" probably isn't such a good poem, I've always loved that phrase "eternal condor years."
In this corner...
... Elberry on the Hood Rats - The Dabbler.
Knight’s book is a grisly and plausible account of gang life in Manchester, London, and Glasgow. The Manchester scenes are familiar. No need to live in Longsight: in my old home of Didsbury (a posh suburb) I passed a chav, screaming “I’m gonna bleep cut your bleep face, you bleep bitch!” into his mobile phone at about four o’clock in the afternoon. Everybody walked by as if this was normal; and in England, it more or less is.
Hmm ...
... The TLS blog: The art of baseball. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If McInerny dislikes baseball, why should I trust what he has to say about a novel about baseball?
High hopes ride on The Art of Fielding. Chad Harbach’s debut novel, we are promised, will be a contender for next year’s Books of the Year feature. It’s a novel about baseball that both Sports Illustrated and Jay McInerney (who professes to dislike his national sport) love.
Change ...
... Rethinking the Familiar Book Tour | By Joanne Kaufman - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Americans' ever-shrinking attention span and an ever-shrinking number of leisure hours are also issues. "We're asking for people's time and we're competing with other experiences they could use the time for. We want them to leave the event saying 'wow,'" said Ms. Jennings, who'd like to say something similar when she looks at the cash register receipts after one of these events. One recent example: a visit from Vanessa Diffenbaugh, who spoke about the foster-care system—a theme of her debut novel, "The Language of Flowers"—and who gave a PowerPoint presentation about the significance of particular nosegays in the Victorian era.
An apology to Shelley ...
In responding to Shelley's comment on this post of mine I come off sounding petulant, an unfortunate example of my fingers moving faster than my mind. What I was trying to get across is how essential to our system of government the absence of a religious test for political office is. The question has sometimes been raised as to whether President Obama is a Muslim. I have seen no evidence that he is, and even if he were, so what? Better a pious Muslim than an indifferent Christian. I think that to make any exceptions on this matter is dangerous. Moreover, as is pointed out in the article, the Times has no problem with Harry Reid's Mormonism. I don't remember if the Times made an issue of Romney's father's Mormonism when George Romney ran for President. I am sure they made no issue of it when Mo Udall ran.
Anyway, my tone was rude, and for that I apologize to Shelley.
Thought for the day ...
The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.- Jacques Barzun, born on this date in 1907Dave Lull sends along this: Jacques Barzun’s Century.
In his honor:
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Explanation ...
... for desultory blogging:
I have been preoccupied with chores such, as restoring order to my home office after spending a couple of weeks on the stories of mine that ran in The Inquirer Sunday. Also, I had to get my patio garden ready for winter -- which I pretty much finished yesterday, feeling absolutely wonderful doing pure manual labor (wondering all the while why I ever wanted to write -- not that I was any better at carpentry). Then I noticed I was feeling a bit stiff throughout my body (I noticed this especially while walking a few blocks to a favorite fish store and back). I went to Benediction last night, that stiffening continuing all the while. Then I took a hot bath and, after reading a bit, retired for the night -- right until 8 this morning.
I mention this in detail because there was a time in my life when I earned my living getting up day after day around 6 AM and working like that from 8 AM until about 4:30 PM (a half-hour off for lunch). Sleeping until 8 wouldn't have done back then. Could I have got up today, as I had those many years ago? Well, I was awake this morning at 6 -- and grateful I could back to bed. I believe that, if I had had to, I could have done the same this morning. But this time I would have been an old man pushing it.
The foregoing has been the first installment in what I hope will prove an interesting account of my increasing decrepitude, that time of life when one understands what Keats was getting at:
| The weariness, the fever, and the fret | |
| Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; | |
| Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, | 25 |
| Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; | |
| Where but to think is to be full of sorrow | |
| And leaden-eyed despairs, | |
| Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, | |
| Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. |
Fundamentally true ...
... Rod Dreher - Bad ritual = bad religion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Though one must remember that one doesn't go to church just to smell the incense. Most mornings I go to early Mass. It's the Novus Ordo in English. There are only maybe 20 people there. And we are there because of shared faith. And it is quite moving, actually, not just emotionally but religiously.
Journalism and bigotry ...
... NYT Slimes Romney | Via Meadia.
... bigotry is something that needs to be fought in all its forms; unreasonable fears and prejudices based on religion will always be with us, but such fears belong in the gutter among the wackos, the haters and the tin-foil hat brigades on both the right and the left. When they rise from the sewers and the swamps into mainstream publications and can be casually uttered in polite company by distinguished professors, something is going very wrong, and people who believe in the American way need to speak up.
As far as I can make out, Professor Bloom is more elitist misanthrope than bigot; his hatred and loathing for Mormonism is part of a broader and deeper disgust with almost everything that the common people think or do in the contemporary United States. The essay drips with condescension and disdain; he hates and fears the Mormons not because they are different from most of their fellow citizens but because they are like them. American Religion, as the professor calls the faiths that ordinary, non-elite Americans profess, is a toxic brew of death denial and mammon worship, and partly as a result American society is a grotesque oligarchical plutocracy.
Having recently reviewed a book of Bloom's, which I rather liked, I would suggest that Bloom lives pretty much in a world of his own imagining. Dispatches from there can be both intriguing and enlightening. This one is both, but not, I suspect, in the manner Bloom intended.
One of the last ...
... of a threatened species: Remembering C. S. Lewis - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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
Monday, November 28, 2011
Ongoing ...
... Dear Book Lover: Why Book Critics Matter - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A reviewer's job isn't to service writers; it's to advise their readers whether to buy a book—or go to a movie, eat at a restaurant, see new art. Good book critics are exceptionally well read and can put a book not only in the context of the writer's earlier work but also in literary history. They can say if the novel is Dickensian, Rabelaisian, Biblical, Proustian or Shakespearean or none of the above.
Good question, I guess ...
... The Millions : Where Have All the Catholic Writers Gone? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, there's Piers Paul Read and Torgny Lindgren. And Michael D. O'Brien.
Well, there's Piers Paul Read and Torgny Lindgren. And Michael D. O'Brien.
I thought this remark, from the comments, interesting: "But seriously, a widespread reinstating of the Tridentine Mass is just going to bleed Catholic membership in most Western countries. It does seem alienating ..." Alienating? To whom? To the millions who buy CDs of Gregorian Chant or who go to see a film like Into Great Silence? Given the response I have been getting to my article yesterday, it looks to me as if a lot of people find it anything but alienating. Moreover, even if it did "bleed Catholic membership," that might not be so bad a thing. Numbers are less important than fervor.
Thank you, Debbie ...
My wife managed to fix my actual glasses, which fell about a couple of weeks ago and didn't seem fixable with the kit we had for doing such. Anyway, she used some wire and now I can see again. (The glasses I lost yesterday and still haven't found were an old pair.)
Thought for the day ...
It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.- Irwin Edman, born on this date in 1896
Sunday, November 27, 2011
A minor alert ...
While trimming ivy in my yard this afternoon, I lost my glases, which makes me pretty much blind (I can see things well if they are a foot or less in front of me). So blogging must be suspended until I can see better.
God, language, ritual ...
... I report on the Mass at my parish: Latin Mass tradition inspires in S. Phila. | Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/27/2011.
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... Books - philly.com, including a review of the Steve Jobs bio and another of a new translation of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Oh, and here's my holiday book roundup: Coffee-table books replete with images, imagination.
Oh, and here's my holiday book roundup: Coffee-table books replete with images, imagination.
Thought for the day ...
God doesn't believe in the easy way.- James Agee, born on this date in 1909
Saturday, November 26, 2011
The nature of discourse ...
... PERMAFOWL | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog.
I link to this solely in order to bring your attention to the first paragraph of the Mark Lawson column that is linked to there. Only a mind tuned into the spin in the first place could possibly accept the metaphor, one of whom would appear to be Mr. Lawson, which explains how he could be taken in by the rest of what he writes about.
Now, before you post a comment about the Falklands War or Iraq, let me remind that nothing I have has any bearing on either, actually. I am interested in the peculiar mental process on display here. Remember: You can be right and think badly, and think quite clearly and be wrong (though the latter is less likely to be wrong than the former).
I link to this solely in order to bring your attention to the first paragraph of the Mark Lawson column that is linked to there. Only a mind tuned into the spin in the first place could possibly accept the metaphor, one of whom would appear to be Mr. Lawson, which explains how he could be taken in by the rest of what he writes about.
Now, before you post a comment about the Falklands War or Iraq, let me remind that nothing I have has any bearing on either, actually. I am interested in the peculiar mental process on display here. Remember: You can be right and think badly, and think quite clearly and be wrong (though the latter is less likely to be wrong than the former).
Losers ...
... Book Review: Against Thrift | Shiny Objects - WSJ.com.
What leaped out at me when I read this was this: "Most academics I know can rank-order everyone in the room at a professional conference with the speed and precision of a courtier at Versailles." What kind of an asshole does that? Then I thought back to my brief and utterly undistinguished days in grad school and remembered how one of he things that turned me off to that scene was being surrounded by so many basically smart, very well-trained mediocrities for whom any idea that had not been inculcated to them by an authority figure (i.e., someone who could their careers) was indistinguishable from a headache.
Entertaining cruelty ...
... Book Review: Gossip - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dignifying the dish, Mr. Epstein does define many facets of the indefinable. Gossip enforces a community's norms. Gossip satisfies the ambition to be an insider. Gossip implies a judgment. Gossip is "a species of truth, deliverable in no other way than by word of mouth, personal letter, diaries and journals published posthumously and not obtainable otherwise." Gossip is like receiving stolen goods, "it puts you in immediate collusion with the person conveying the gossip to you." Gossip is "fascinating speculation." "Unedited information." It fills the discrepancy between appearance and reality. "Gossip is two or more people telling things about a third that the latter would prefer not be known."
Hmm ...
... Why are male writers so bad at sex scenes? | Life and style | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
An interesting question. I think the problem comes from the fact that the sexual act itself has limited literary potential. What I mean is that if you take just about any bodily activity and settle down to describe it in terms of its detail and meaning, you're not going to get very far. Think of blowing your nose or going to the bathroom, or whatever. (What's going on in your mind and heart at such times may have the potential the physical operation itself lacks).
Henry Miller's sex scenes work for the same reason Chaucer works: They are ribald, filled with a sense of underlying absurdity.
In writing, sex gets in the way of the erotic. There is a long short story by A.E. Coppard called "Judith." There is a scene in it that takes the reader just to the threshold of a sexual encounter. But it stimulates the imagination in just the right way.
Miller's best sex scenes are intentionally comic. D. H. Lawrence's, however, tend to be unintentionally comic. See in particular The Plumed Serpent, as bad a book by a major author as exists. Love, lust, passion may drive us to have sex, just as a car can drive us to Niagara, but the car remains a car, a vehicle, quite separate and distinct from the landscape that thrills us, and what thrills us about sex is a good deal more than what Alex in A Clockwork Orange liked to call "the old in and out."
An interesting question. I think the problem comes from the fact that the sexual act itself has limited literary potential. What I mean is that if you take just about any bodily activity and settle down to describe it in terms of its detail and meaning, you're not going to get very far. Think of blowing your nose or going to the bathroom, or whatever. (What's going on in your mind and heart at such times may have the potential the physical operation itself lacks).
Henry Miller's sex scenes work for the same reason Chaucer works: They are ribald, filled with a sense of underlying absurdity.
In writing, sex gets in the way of the erotic. There is a long short story by A.E. Coppard called "Judith." There is a scene in it that takes the reader just to the threshold of a sexual encounter. But it stimulates the imagination in just the right way.
Miller's best sex scenes are intentionally comic. D. H. Lawrence's, however, tend to be unintentionally comic. See in particular The Plumed Serpent, as bad a book by a major author as exists. Love, lust, passion may drive us to have sex, just as a car can drive us to Niagara, but the car remains a car, a vehicle, quite separate and distinct from the landscape that thrills us, and what thrills us about sex is a good deal more than what Alex in A Clockwork Orange liked to call "the old in and out."
Thought for the day ...
Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.- Eugene Ionesco, born on this date in 1912
Friday, November 25, 2011
Plenty, I'd say ...
Bryan Appleyard - What’s Wrong with Bertrand Russell? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think D. H. Lawrence had Russell's number. Here's snippet from a letter he wrote Russell:
I think D. H. Lawrence had Russell's number. Here's snippet from a letter he wrote Russell:
Your will is false and cruel. You are too full of devilish repressions to be anything but lustful and cruel. ... The enemy of mankind, you are, full of the lust of enmity. It is not the hatred of falsehood which inspires you. It is the hatred of people, of flesh and blood. It is a perverted mental blood-lust. Why don't you own it.
Let us become strangers again, I think it is better.
I was never too impressed by his philosophizing. I remember reading Why I Am Not a Christian when I was 16 and closing the book after reading his proffered rebuttal to Aquinas's assertion that there can't be an infinite series of causes. Russell simply said that he could easily imagine an infinite series of causes. But I immediately thought to myself that the question had nothing to do with what one could imagine. I could easily have imagined that Russell was too shrewd to have written something so dumb. Moreover, while one could posit an infinite series of causes, actually imagining one is something altogether different.
Ongoing ...
... Book Review: The Language Wars - WSJ.co. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The trouble with descriptivism—the idea that the grammarian's job is to describe the language, not to issue judgments about propriety—isn't that it's theoretically unsound. Rules really are just conventions. The trouble with descriptivism is that it's inhuman. People will always want to know the right way to say a thing. The secretary writing a letter or the corporate communications drone writing a press release doesn't care whether "impact" as a verb is "generally accepted," as modern usage manuals put it; he wants to know if using "impact" as a verb will make him sound stupid.
Captivating ...
... Ivebeenreadinglately: A Naked Singularity.
For nearly a year now, I've carefully avoided mentioning on this blog one of the best novels I read last year--one of the best novels I've read in a good while--Sergio De La Pava's A Naked Singularity. I read it over Christmas last year, and for nearly a week this 700-page debut novel had me completely captivated, laughing and worrying and being surprised and amazed. Ordinarily, I would have been quoting from it here--like I quoted from it relentlessly to rocketlass as I read--and praising it to the rooftops. But I didn't.
Thought for the day ...
Harmony is pure love, for love is a concerto.- Lope de Vega, born on this date in 1562
Thursday, November 24, 2011
More now than ever ...
... The Kinks, “20th Century Man” (Great Moments in Pop Music History) | Britannica Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Poet of wonder ...
Cynthia Haven on Czeslaw Milosz around the world | TLS.
Orr’s criticism underscores how much the West has exhausted its fascination with the poetry of historical circumstance. As Robert Hass put it, readers “press their noses longingly against the window of people who have had dramatic historical experiences”. But the comments also expose a fundamental misunderstanding. Orr’s remarks reduce Milosz to a poet of witness, when he clearly wished to be considered a religious poet, and I would add that he is a poet of wonder as well.
Thought for the day ...
Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.- William F. Buckley, Jr., born on this date in 1925
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Hmm ...
... The Literary Hipster’s Handbook — 2011 Q4 Edition.
Seems to me, if you need a handbook, you're hopelessly unhip. But I guess that's the point.
Thornton Wilder
I've just finished Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey - a book about which I knew very little, but immediately enjoyed.
Part of what I liked most about this short novel is Wilder's style - which is cool, complex, and precise. But more than that: it's consistent. I admire that in a writer and think that Wilder's prose are top-notch.
Another aspect of the novel that I enjoyed was that little twist whereby we are presented at the start with visions of the end - and we spend the remainder of the novel accounting for what we have already been told.
Actually, this is one reason that I think Waugh's Brideshead is effective - namely that we are greeted with Charles Ryder as he exists at the end of his tale, and yet we do not know him as we will.
The same holds true in Wilder's story: we are presented with the collapse of the bridge in a far and distant land and spend the remainder of the novel contemplating the lives of those affected by this seemingly random occurrence.
Finally, while the novel was written almost a century ago, it shares something, I think, with contemporary movies like Babel, which weave tapestries composed of intersecting lives and interests. I liked that Wilder did this, too: his characters are connected by their shared tragedy, but their lives touch prior to the collapse of the bridge as well. This provides for increased emotion, particularly toward the end of the book.
And speaking of the end of the book: the first four parts of the novel are fantastic - and go a far way toward uncovering the meaning of fate (and other, equally difficult terms). That's why, though, I didn't feel that the final section - which accounts for the thoughts of Brother Juniper who has witnessed the bridge's collapse - was entirely necessary. Because by the end of this novella, the reader - if he's been doing his job - recognizes what Wilder's been plotting all along: a meditation on life and its awful fragility.
Well, maybe ...
... Doubts cast on faster-than-light neutrinos experiment | Science | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The team, who work on an experiment called Icarus, tested an argument described in a recent paper by Andrew Cohen and Sheldon Glashow at Boston University, who claimed that faster-than-light or "superluminal" neutrinos would lose energy by spewing out electrons and their antimatter partners, called positrons. Professor Glashow shared the Nobel prize for physics in 1979.
When Maddalena Antonello and others on the Icarus team analysed the energy of the neutrinos arriving at Gran Sasso, they found no evidence that they had lost energy the way Cohen and Glashow predicted. The finding has bolstered the view of many physicists who believe the Opera result is an error of measurement.
But that could also mean that Cohen and Glashow are wrong. In itself, it does not prove that the neutrinos didn't get there aster than light.
Thought for the day ...
When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia.
- Guy Davenport, born on this date in 1927
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Apologies ...
... for the light blogging. I have been preoccupied with a couple articles of mine, which will both run Sunday -- and it a holiday week, and there is shopping a cooking to be done. And there's only so much of me.
Good to know ...
... The fight hasn't gone out of literature just yet | Books | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer, respectively "exquisite" and homophobic postwar writers competing for audiences and approval, took their enmity into dinner parties, book launches and, on one memorable occasion, a TV studio, where Mailer butted Vidal in the green room. Way to go! Later, floored by another blow from Mailer, Vidal bounced back with "as usual, words fail him". Now that Mailer is dead, Vidal can take satisfaction from being the last man standing (just).
Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer, respectively "exquisite" and homophobic postwar writers competing for audiences and approval, took their enmity into dinner parties, book launches and, on one memorable occasion, a TV studio, where Mailer butted Vidal in the green room. Way to go! Later, floored by another blow from Mailer, Vidal bounced back with "as usual, words fail him". Now that Mailer is dead, Vidal can take satisfaction from being the last man standing (just).
Thought for the day ...
For the man sound of body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.- George Gissing, born on this date in 1857
Monday, November 21, 2011
Over the wall ...
... Philosophy, lit, etc.: Erratic Schwabinger Otto Gross.
Gross was a prototype of the young punk rebel. The focus of his rebellion was the constricting, martial culture of German-speaking central Europe.
Labor of love ...
... Bryan Appleyard - A Tale of Two Terences. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“I consider myself enormously lucky. I always thought that love came through sexual attraction, I really did. But it wasn’t that at all. I told him I had no desire to go to bed with him and that I loved him as a person, and he said he felt the same about me. That’s a great gift.”
Thought for the day ...
For when it is the good that is under consideration, and the ethical object is predominant, truth must be considered more in reference to art than science, if, that is, unity is to be preserved in the work generally.- Friedrich Schleiermacher, born on this date in 1768
Sunday, November 20, 2011
The mystery remains ...
... The Brain is Wider Than the Sky | Bryan Appleyard | Review by The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
How it was ...
... Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory | Video on TED.com. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Cheering for themselves ...
... Literary History at the National Book Awards - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... including mine of William Kennedy's Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes: Books - philly.com.
Thought for the day ...
For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell.- Josiah Royce, born on this date in 1855
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Neutrinos, 2 ...
... speed of light, 0: 2nd test affirms faster-than-light particles - CBS News.
Dave Lull ends along this: Scientists Report Second Sighting of Faster-Than-Light Neutrino.
(Post bumped.)
Dave Lull ends along this: Scientists Report Second Sighting of Faster-Than-Light Neutrino.
(Post bumped.)
This is a really fine review ...
... and I feel qualified to say that: The Brain is Wider Than the Sky by Bryan Appleyard – review | Books | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Appleyard's central point is that, in our desire to think great things about our IT "cloud", we're deliberately oversimplifying ourselves. We're hammering ourselves into ridiculously reductive boxes. In our desire to be part of something greater, we're making ourselves small.
The trouble with bureaucrats ...
... EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration - Telegraph.
Exactly how can these people not know that this will make them laughingstocks? If water cannot prevent dehydration (excessive loss of body fluid), well what can? What I find amazing is that large numbers of people continue to think that government - populated with as large a number of ninnies as anything on Earth - is what we should look to for solutions to the many problems we now face, most of which have been created by ... government. This is the grand stupidity of our age. And amazingly, it is the highly schooled who primarily subscribe to it.
Regarding Jacques Barzun ...
... Wisdom of the Ancient | Fall 2011 | Columbia Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.- Wilhelm Dilthey, born on this date in 1833
Friday, November 18, 2011
Q & A ...
... Jonathan Lethem: The literary world is like high school - Salon.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Depends ...
... Are broadsheet book reviews 'bland, boring and formulaic'? | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Art and life ...
... Book Blog | The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Charlie Rose show is a cultural treasure, provided you ignore the host. In this instance, the late John Updike talks about the art of fiction from the perspective of the character he is “measured against”, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.
Thought for the day ...
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer's role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.- J. G. Ballard, born on this date in 1930
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Birthday boy ...
... Literary Review - Christopher Hart on 'Kiss Me, Chudleigh' by Auberon Waugh, edited by William Cook. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think I admire Auberon more than I do his father, if only because he survived living with his father.
I think I admire Auberon more than I do his father, if only because he survived living with his father.
Writing machine ...
... Literary Review - Roger Kimball on P.G.Wodehouse: A Life in Letters by Sophie Ratcliffe. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What Wodehouse craved was quiet and the company of his pipe, his pets and, above all, his typewriter. In 1902, when he was twenty, he published his first book, The Pothunters. On Valentine's Day, 1975, he was discovered next to all the usual accoutrements, along with the manuscript of his half-completed last novel, published asSunset at Blandings a couple years thence. Like the gnu he wrote about in 'Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court', he'd handed in his dinner pail, victim not of a crack shot but a heart attack.
Hear, hear ...
... Book Review: The Brain is Wider than the Sky by Bryan Appleyard - The Dabbler. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... where I most approve of Appleyard is that he is an unashamed generalist in an increasingly splintered and specialised academic world. He is interested in everything, so his books are about Everything. Where science and art try to ignore each other, Appleyard tries to get them to talk (he ends, optimistically, with the union of art and technology in David Hockney’s iPad paintings, one of which adorns the cover).
I tried to buy the Kindle version of Bryan's book, but I can't because it seems you can't buy a Kindle edition from Amazon UK except in the UK. So I just bought the book.
Objection ...
... Amazon's Kindle lending library is contract breach, say US authors | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Better to go than sit around being a terrible old bore.- Auberon Waugh, born on this date in 1939
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Memory and imagination ...
... Holocaust Survivor Aharon Appelfeld Is Israel’s Greatest Living Writer – Tablet Magazine.
A more complex response lies in his small 1993 book Beyond Despair, which is as profound a meditation on the relation of memory to imagination as anything I know. Once, at Boston University, he gave a lecture based on one of its chapters. Afterward, my students stood together, not moving, not speaking, in the courtyard. “I can’t stop trembling,” said one of them, as I approached this little grove of human aspens. Holding the book now, I can’t help trembling myself.
It's tonight, folks ...
... Reminder: Tonight is the first LIVE National Book Award Ceremony Webcast. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Creative borrowing ...
... Stevenson’s other island | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This seems to me on the order of what Bach did in The Well-Tempered Clavier with some of the themes he found in J.C.F. Fisher's Ariadne musica neo-organoedum - namely, made better use of them.
This seems to me on the order of what Bach did in The Well-Tempered Clavier with some of the themes he found in J.C.F. Fisher's Ariadne musica neo-organoedum - namely, made better use of them.
Authenticity ....
... The king of the bibles - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Strips of cloth” is no substitute for “swaddling clothes”. And Mary was “with child” – we think of the Madonna and Child – and she had not “fallen pregnant” as it says in one of the modern versions. You cannot satisfactorily replace “through a glass darkly” with the crass literalism “puzzling reflections in a mirror” or “sounding brass and tinkling cymbal” with “noisy gong and clanging cymbal”. The King James Bible was designed to be read aloud in churches. All the modern versions sound as if they have been written by tone-deaf people with tin ears and no rhythm.Indeed.
An interesting take on...
...Philip Roth and Narcissism
"Whereas Whitman, most likely a closeted homosexual, tamed his libido and taught it wonderful poetic tricks, and whereas Dickinson exerted superhuman pressure and turned hers into a diamond of sublimation, Roth ejaculates. Because he is a talented writer, frequently this is pleasurable to observe. But he is never in possession of the loom—so elegantly mastered by his contemporary, Saul Bellow—that lets a writer process his or her bales of bile into beautiful fabrics that keep us warm."
A fine place ...
... Dublin Writers Museum | Celebrating the Mordant, Witty and Darkly Romantic | By Julia M. Klein - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If any country should have a writers' museum, it's Ireland. We visited there when Eric Mencher and I did out Bloomsday piece. In fact, Robert Nicholson was then the curator of the Joyce Museum, and he graciously admitted us early, so we could be there just at the time of day when Ulysses opens. And Julia Klein and I used to be colleagues at The Inquirer.
On foot, but not pedestrian ...
... The Ghost Writer | Books and Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Some sixty years earlier, C. S. Lewis had asked a church congregation, "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spells that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years." Lewis and Sinclair don't have a great deal in common: the evil enchanters with whom the older man contended (Victorian skeptics, literary modernists, Freudians) bear little resemblance to Sinclair's enemies (city planners and Tory politicians), and where Lewis wished to restore orthodox Christianity Sinclair advocates an older and darker magic. But both rail against what Max Weber called Entzauberung, the disenchantment or de-magicking of the world. Sinclair's walk was a way to rage against the dying of an ancient light, a light given off for millennia by a disturbingly magical city on the banks of the Thames.
The faithful embroiderer ...
... A Severed Wasp: Orwell - Woolf - Kierkegaard > David Wemyss.
These women were held in the highest esteem by Kierkegaard for their devotion and patience, but the last thing he was thinking about was that they might deserve rooms of their own - pace Virginia Woolf - or political emancipation. It wasn’t that he saw no point at all in trying to cure social inequalities between men and women, or to ameliorate the living conditions of the poor - that would just have been mean-minded - but he saw that the democratic movements of his time were already trading on resentment and relativism, and that soon enough people would be taken to be good or kindly only if they espoused the correct political views. He saw that it was relatively easy to stress the equality of the lowliest - if not to act on it - and that the truest test of neighbourly love might sometimes be to show an immediate sense of the equality of the highest.He issued a memorable set of early warnings against the redefinition of human sympathy in doctrinal terms.
Darkness at Noon
I've just finished Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon - a book which I hadn't intended to read, but which I'm thankful I did.
That the novel addresses Stalinism and the Stalinist purges of the 1930s is clear. That its reach extends beyond the tragedies of this period, though, is what makes it significant.
True, the novel sometimes veers toward an uncomfortably didactic tone; and true, its central character's story is not as complete as it might be.
But those concerns seem rather beside the point. For here is a book that achieves something quite rare: in its focus on the past, it anticipates the horrors of the future. And more, too: it presents an unyielding realism, an admission that "eternity shrugs" in the same way men, broken and incarcerated, do.
To capture that reality is an exceptional accomplishment, indeed.
Thought for the day ...
I guess my tendency is to think essentially that the new wrinkles won't do the job if the old major idea didn't, and so you have to try something different. Then maybe they can all be combined in some coherent piece.- Robert Nozick, born on this date in 1938
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Embedded in memory ...
... First Known When Lost: The Shadow: Three Variations On A Theme.
Being a Catholic of a particular kind - let us say Jesuit-trained - I have spent my life preparing for its ending. Unfortunately, the reality, when it arrives, is not as one expected. The prospect of death, it turns out, may well be the only certainty, but it is also quite unimaginable.
In case you wondered ...
... Best Fiction of 2011 | Kirkus Book Reviews | Kirkus Book Reviews. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Being and mystery ...
... POETRY: Song of the Blessed One: The Bhagavad-Gita, Canto 11 [1] | Wild River Review.
Of the ways suggested as to how to read this, I strongly recommend the first.
Of the ways suggested as to how to read this, I strongly recommend the first.
Q & A ...
... Books | Meet the magician behind Sherlock Holmes | Seattle Times Newspaper. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dave also sends along Sleuthing Through the Books: Five Questions for Author, Critic, and Sherlock Holmes Fan Michael Dirda.
Dave also sends along Sleuthing Through the Books: Five Questions for Author, Critic, and Sherlock Holmes Fan Michael Dirda.
Hmm ...
... Baron of Jesmond's Aphorisms: Humility cannot be a primary goal.
On the other hand:
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
On the other hand:
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
Thought for the day ...
Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute.- Franklin P. Adams, born on this date in 1881
Monday, November 14, 2011
The future of publishing ...
... Amazon E-Library Is Publishing’s Profit Model: Virginia Postrel - Bloomberg. (Hat tio, Dave Lull.)
Beyond short-term earnings ... the lending library is just the latest innovation to raise big questions about the whole publishing ecosystem. In an environment where books are increasingly digital, what’s the most effective way to create value for readers, for authors and for intermediaries? And -- the biggest question -- which intermediaries will survive the transition?
Hmm ...
... Humanity 2.0 - FT.com. (Hat tip, Vikram Johri.)
But, as Fuller has stated elsewhere, his priority is to say what he thinks needs to be said, not what he happens to believe is true.
To what extent does he think what needs to be said is true, I wonder.
The future of news ...
... Bryan Appleyard - Blog Archive - The Onion’s Psychotic Bitch. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also: Science Weekly podcast: The inscrutable brain.
So ... we now have the infuriating convention of the anchor interviewing the reporter in the field, a device that turns the reporter into a player in the drama, rather than a gatherer of information. It also wastes his time, which is why it is so often apparent that he knows next to nothing about the story and is forced to resort to cliché — “This tight-knit community is trying to come to terms with…” being the most irritating. Also, they can never challenge the anchor’s assumptions, so most of their responses begin with: “You’re absolutely right, George.”
ONN, of course, takes this to the limit by having Michael Falk, “the autistic reporter”, who can barely understand Alvarez’s questions, and whose main concern at the site where a man has died beneath a train is the wellbeing of the train. Do you, I ask Will Graham, ever get complaints on grounds of taste? “We get complaints on grounds of taste about everything we do.”
See also: Science Weekly podcast: The inscrutable brain.