Saturday, December 31, 2011
Neverending stories ...
... Nicholas Carr on E-Books - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
An e-book ... is far different from an old-fashioned printed one. The words in the latter stay put. In the former, the words can keep changing, at the whim of the author or anyone else with access to the source file. The endless malleability of digital writing promises to overturn a whole lot of our assumptions about publishing.
Transcendence ...
... Yule Blog 2011-12: Personal Meaning | Via Meadia.
For theists, the universe isn’t just a place with scattered bits of meaning in it. Meaning isn’t decoration or illusion, grace notes that accompany us on our meaningless way through the dark void. Existentialists and others who believe that the universe is ultimately meaningless but who still choose to act as if meaning was real are among the moral heroes of the world, but theists think there is more to life than the affirmation of meaningless ideals in the face of an uncaring void.
Ruthless clarity ...
... Book Review: All Our Worldly Goods - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The manuscript deserves a documentary of its own, smuggled from place to place as the girls kept eluding the gendarmes seeking to round up Jewish children. Denise, unable to look at the manuscript throughout most of her life, finally after 50 years to open it and discovered not the journal she expected, which explains her reluctance to delve into it, but two parts of what was originally intended to be a five-part novel of the Occupation of France. The manuscript was published in 2004 and became an international best seller, its panoply of characters and its portrait of a war-torn life drawing comparison to "War and Peace."
Coming out next year ...
... Katie's White Elephants | Independent Publishers Group. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.
- Henri Matisse, born on this date in 1869
Friday, December 30, 2011
Grim tale ...
... The Long Killing of Osip Mandelstam (1938) | | Bill PeschelBill Peschel.
By the way, Bill's Writers Gone Wild is a most entertaining book. I have it on my Kindle and it is my current bedtime reading.
Just a thought ...
Often, we cling to our ideas, not because they are sound, but simply because they are ours.
Tragical farcical ...
... P. G. Wodehouse, the writing-machine with a tragic twist | TLS.
... it was in Hollywood that there was the first major manifestation of Wodehouse’s besetting fault as a human being.
How does one define this? Tactlessness on a monumental scale? Innocent tactlessness? A breezy unconsciousness of the way the world works, or the way his words and actions would appear to that world? However you define the quality, you can see that it is the dark side of the coin which made him such a successful writer – that is, his capacity to see the world entirely on his own infantile terms, without realizing how those terms would impact on grown-ups. To this extent, he seems no more grown-up than Just William (in those Richmal Crompton stories which owe so much of their comedy to following Wodehousian formulas). The Hollywood blunder, endearing and comic as it was, was a foreshadowing of the major blunder which would overshadow the second half of Wodehouse’s life. While in Hollywood, he gave an interview to a journalist from the Los Angeles Times, in which he cheerfully admitted, “I have been paid $104,000 for loafing”. While on the MGM payroll, he had written “a novel and nine short stories . . . brushing up my golf, getting an attractive suntan and perfecting my Australian crawl”.
Thought for the day ...
It may be those who do most, dream most. - Stephen Leacock, born on this date in 1869
Thursday, December 29, 2011
When TV was a wasteland ...
Terry Teachout links to a:
Snapshot
The opening scene of a rare kinescope of a 1955 Ford Star Jubilee telecast of the original Broadway production of Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, directed by Charles Laughton and starring Lloyd Nolan as Captain Queeg.
Carpe diem ...
... BBC News - A Point of View: The endless obsession with what might be. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
European institutions have preserved the peace for more than a generation and presided over a steady growth in prosperity. The very idea that they could now break up challenges the prevailing belief in steady improvement, which is the faith of practical men and women who imagine they have no religion.
Glut ...
... A Mountain of Unread Writing - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Literature in America has become a fully subsidized market. Among literary scholars, in fact, the ideology of production is exactly the reverse of Dr. Johnson’s: no man but a blockhead writes for money. There is respect and honor in writing for specialized journals that no one reads, although every university library in the country subscribes to them. There is only compromise and superficiality in writing to be read. Scholars are judged on the bulk and prestige of their CV’s, not the originality and influence of their research and writing.
Hmm ...
... Bestselling books of 2011: the top 5,000 listed | News | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Power doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt power.
- William Gaddis, born on this date in 1922
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The religious imagination ...
... Bryan Appleyard - Christmas Signs and Wonders. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Eagle forgotten ...
... under the stone: The mystery of Vachel Lindsay - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What to teach?
... 20011: The School Board Member and the Standardized Test.
Well, I know I'd do poorly. Once I get past simple arithmetic, it's all downhill for me. Though I should mention that I have been reading a book about quantum physics in which there was an explanation of exponents and decimal placement that was so clear even I could grasp it.
Grand old chimp ...
... Light reading: Swingers.
Remember this? Me Cheeta, Chimp's Memoir, Among Contenders For Man Booker Prize.
Quite a chimp. Dave Lull sends along this: Just who is Cheeta the chimp, anyway?
Remember this? Me Cheeta, Chimp's Memoir, Among Contenders For Man Booker Prize.
Quite a chimp. Dave Lull sends along this: Just who is Cheeta the chimp, anyway?
Thought for the day ...
I wonder if most people ever ask themselves why love is connected with reproduction. And if they do ask themselves about this, I wonder what answer they give.
- Mortimer J. Adler, born on this date in 1902
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Many parts ...
... Great contradictions - FT.com.
The word “Dickensian” calls to mind not so much the man or the characters he created as the world those characters inhabit: on the one hand a scene of red-nosed comedy and zany good cheer, yet on the other a grimy, impoverished society full of abused children, wrangling lawyers, sadistic teachers and watchful effigies.
Companionable ...
... In the Words of E. B. White - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... unlike Ernest Hemingway, whom White famously parodied in "Across the Street and into the Grill," there is nothing austere about White's plainness. It is, rather, a vehicle for straight-faced, self-deprecating humor. "Writers...who take their literary selves with great seriousness are at considerable pains never to associate their name with anything funny or flippant or nonsensical or 'light,' " he writes.
A show that delivers ...
... Loving Leonardo. | Books and Culture.
Before this exhibit, Leonardo had only eighteen universally agreed upon portable paintings attributed to him. A newly discovered Leonardo, once part of King Charles I's art collection but then lost, also appears in this show, bringing the total to nineteen worldwide. Nine of them feature here.
Thought for the day ...
One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers. - Wilfrid Sheed, born on this date in 1930
Monday, December 26, 2011
Oh, those dark '50s ...
... Noah Greenberg’s Revolution - Commentary Magazine.
New York in 1953 was a cauldron of modernism, and never before or since has there been a moment when American intellectuals were more passionately interested in a wider range of nonliterary artistic activities, from cool jazz to Abstract Expressionist painting to the neo-classical dance of George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet.
I am listening to Noah Greenberg and the Pro Musica perform The Play of Herod, which is also no longer available except in used copies, I gather (but you can listen to it here). I found it gratifying to read that Greenberg conducted "amateur choruses consisting of members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union." That was my mother's union.
Who was first?
... A Literary History of Word Processing - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Uncovering a clean answer to the question “Who was the first novelist to use a word processor?” is a trickier business, though Mr. Kirschenbaum has promising leads. Through his agent he recently heard that the science-fiction writer Frank Herbert, the author of “Dune,” who died in 1986, may have submitted work to his publisher in the late 1970s on 8-inch floppy disks.
Preservation ...
... Fire in the Library - Technology Review.
[Jason] Scott is the top-hat-wearing impresario of the Archive Team, a loosely organized band of digital raiders who leap aboard failing websites just as they are about to go under and salvage whatever they can. After word of what was about to happen at Poetry.com reached the Archive Team, 25 volunteer members of the group logged in to Internet Relay Chat to plan a rescue. "We were like, well, screw that!" Scott recalls. When sites host users' content only to later abruptly close shop, he says, "it's like going into the library business and deciding, 'This is not working for us anymore,' and burning down the library."
Impasse ...
... The Library Alternative.
The economics of how libraries can offer free access to e-books is a legitimate question. But it’s also part of a larger issue, because the entire sales environment for books has been transformed; technological innovation permits companies to rethink established models of supply and revenue. If nothing else, Amazon’s creation and promotion of new library-style e-book lending programs is an excellent example of that.
The economics of how libraries can offer free access to e-books is a legitimate question. But it’s also part of a larger issue, because the entire sales environment for books has been transformed; technological innovation permits companies to rethink established models of supply and revenue. If nothing else, Amazon’s creation and promotion of new library-style e-book lending programs is an excellent example of that.
Small world...
Right around the corner from our house is St. Maron's, a Maronite church where the Mass is celebrated in Aramaic. Several of our neighbors are of Lebanese decent. The former pastor of St. Maron's, Monsignor Sharbell, who passed away earlier this year, was as saintly a man as it has been my privilege to know.
Thought for the day ...
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
- Henry Miller, born on this date in 1891
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Hear, hear ...
... zmkc: It's in the Name.
While I would never argue that anyone should have to go to church or pray or pretend they believe in Christianity, I think it is basic good manners to acknowledge the underlying reason that we are celebrating Christmas. We may well have got the date wrong, but everything we are doing - getting time off, giving presents, putting up trees - is done as a way of celebrating the birth of Christ. That's why it's called Christmas - the clue is there, in the first syllable of the holiday's name.
Everlasting legacy ...
... The Book of Books - What Literature Owes the Bible - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... the narrative method of the Bible ... assumes a steady march of history, the continuous unfolding of significant event, from the primordial quarrel of two brothers in a field to supper with a stranger at Emmaus. There is a cosmic irony in the veil of insignificance that obscures the new and wonderful. Moments of the highest import pass among people who are so marginal that conventional history would not have noticed them: aliens, the enslaved, people themselves utterly unaware that their lives would have consequence.
Hmm ...
... The accidental universe: Science's crisis of faith—By Alan P. Lightman (Harper's Magazine). (Hat tip, Vikram Johri.)
The point, however, is not whether one finds an explanation appealing, but whether it is the best explanation available.
Moreover, though the article makes much of dark energy, it says nothing about dark matter, of which there is vastly more than the matter we are familiar with. If both dark energy and dark matter preponderate in being (let's use that term instead of universe), the logical inference would seem to be that a purely materialist explanation of being is impossible to arrive at, since we cannot know the nature of the matter and energy that compose most of being.
Well, not only would we not be here if we had not drawn the right ticket, we also wouldn't have been anywhere to draw any ticket in the first place.
The problem I have with intelligent design theory is that the notion of God it posits seems to be that of an artificer. If there is a God, he would be a pure creator. For him, thought and being would be identical. He would not have a thought and then have to implement it (unless, of course, he wanted to; being God means being able to do whatever you want -- see Book of Job). In any event, the theist would argue that the universe is the way it is because it conforms to God's idea of it, not that he constructed it that way.
Intelligent design ... is an answer to fine-tuning that does not appeal to most scientists.
The point, however, is not whether one finds an explanation appealing, but whether it is the best explanation available.
Moreover, though the article makes much of dark energy, it says nothing about dark matter, of which there is vastly more than the matter we are familiar with. If both dark energy and dark matter preponderate in being (let's use that term instead of universe), the logical inference would seem to be that a purely materialist explanation of being is impossible to arrive at, since we cannot know the nature of the matter and energy that compose most of being.
Our particular universe is one of the universes with a small value, permitting the emergence of life. We are here, so our universe must be such a universe. We are an accident. From the cosmic lottery hat containing zillions of universes, we happened to draw a universe that allowed life. But then again, if we had not drawn such a ticket, we would not be here to ponder the odds.
Well, not only would we not be here if we had not drawn the right ticket, we also wouldn't have been anywhere to draw any ticket in the first place.
The problem I have with intelligent design theory is that the notion of God it posits seems to be that of an artificer. If there is a God, he would be a pure creator. For him, thought and being would be identical. He would not have a thought and then have to implement it (unless, of course, he wanted to; being God means being able to do whatever you want -- see Book of Job). In any event, the theist would argue that the universe is the way it is because it conforms to God's idea of it, not that he constructed it that way.
Q & A ...
... bookforum talks to alexander theroux - bookforum.com / interviews. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?- Matthew Arnold, born on this date in 1822
Friday, December 23, 2011
Recommendations ...
... Gift Books of Christian Wisdom: A Syllabus for Our Era | Crisis Magazine. (Hat tip, Joe of New York,)
Interesting ...
... My Daily Word – Dreams - Immortal Ink.
My own dreams are remarkable only for their astounding ordinariness.
My own dreams are remarkable only for their astounding ordinariness.
Suboptimal ...
... Maverick Philosopher: Beckwith, Hitch, and the Foundations of Morality. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Going strong at 94 ...
... New Poetry by Robert Conquest — Fred Agonistes | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Fitting farewell ...
... Faster, Please! - Havel, Kafka and Us. (Do click on the video.)
Havel loved to write “absurdist” plays and poems. He was a true heir to Kafka. Like Kafka, he had an uncanny grasp of the dynamics and resulting horrors of bureaucracy. And, like Kafka, he was a Zionist.Unlike Kafka, he found a political vocation, showing once again that you never know how it’s going to turn out.
Thought for the day ...
One is always of his age and especially he who least appears so.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, born on the date in1804
Thursday, December 22, 2011
A better man than I ...
... Faster, Please! - Havel, Kafka and Us.
I have been, in my time, a pretty tough dude. I am nowhere near as tough a guy as Vaclav Havel was. I really do not think I am courageous enough to face what he faced. That's probably why I am not impressed by people who shoot their mouths off pretending they're speaking truth to power -- the Sean Penns of the world. Sean Penn isn't worthy to unfasten the sandal of someone like Havel. And the sad thing is that Penn will almost never grasp that.
More to it than you thought ...
... Book Review: A Case for Irony - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Irony today is thus a mixture of self-detachment and self-absorption: an unwillingness to take a stand and an eagerness to see the strange workings of fate in mere thwarted desire.
The anti-Sullivan ...
... Who Was Steve Jobs? by Sue Halpern | The New York Review of Books.
It was architect Louis Sullivan who wrote that "form ever follows function." I think Steve Jobs's insight was that Sullivan got it backward. For Jobs, function follows form. The aesthetic is not an add-on, least of all an epiphenomenon of function. To aim at the beautiful is necessarily to arrive at the functional, and the functional so arrived at is better.
It was architect Louis Sullivan who wrote that "form ever follows function." I think Steve Jobs's insight was that Sullivan got it backward. For Jobs, function follows form. The aesthetic is not an add-on, least of all an epiphenomenon of function. To aim at the beautiful is necessarily to arrive at the functional, and the functional so arrived at is better.
Thought for today ...
Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust. - Kenneth Rexroth, born on this date in 1905
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
This has it about right ...
Comment: Hitchens and Iraq : The New Yorker.
Note to the politically religious: This is not about the Iraq War and its attendant complications. So save those comments for some other blog.
He and I argued a lot about the war. We had both supported it, but as Iraq disintegrated, my criticisms of the policy struck him as weak-kneed and opportunistic, an effort to curry favor with bien-pensant liberals. In turn, his brave talk of sticking by his “comrades” in Baghdad rang false to me. Who were they, after all? Exiled politicians whose sectarian agendas helped take Iraq into a terrible civil war. The only comrades worthy of the name that I knew were those who had risked their lives for the American effort—the Iraqis who were betrayed by Bush, and have been betrayed again by Obama.Iraq led Hitchens to some of his worst indulgences—the propaganda trip to Iraq in Wolfowitz’s entourage, the pose of Byronic heroism. But perhaps the war and the enemies it made him helped give Hitchens the courage of his last years and months—the atheist in the foxhole. Hitchens was one of the very few people who could slash and burn you in print, then meet for drinks and talk in the true warmth of friendship, discussing a writer we both admired, garrulous to the very last. It was a sign of his essential decency that he didn’t make it personal.
Note to the politically religious: This is not about the Iraq War and its attendant complications. So save those comments for some other blog.
Look up ...
... A Don's Life: Juliet's balcony.
... the place has nothing to do with the non-existent Juliet at all, and was a clever invention of the 19th century, turned into a veritable tourist attraction in the 1930s. But overall it is as odd as the Colosseum, with the added tinge of slightly off-putting, slightly leering, slightly touching "romance".
Getting started ...
... Book Review: Dancing With Mrs. Dalloway - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Most readers will be aware that "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" began its life as a tale invented to amuse the three Liddell girls during a boat trip, but it may come as a revelation—or not, depending on your taste—to hear that J.R.R. Tolkien had to force-feed his children nightly installments of "The Hobbit." Tolkien's later claim that he wrote the book purely for the enjoyment of his offspring was a little disingenuous. One is reminded of the unmannerly exclamation, sometimes attributed to C.S. Lewis, that interrupted one of Tolkien's readings of "The Lord of the Rings" to his Oxford colleagues: "Oh no, not another f---ing elf!"
Ouch ...
... The Smart Set: The Eco Chamber - December 16, 2011.
I liked Foucalt's Pendulum, and I even liked Baudolino. This doesn't sound good at all, and I trust Paula's judgment.
The Prague Cemetery ... is unique insofar as it takes the problem of the post-Name of the Rose books further, appending a morally repugnant aspect to Eco’s problems of prolixity and undeveloped characterization. Not only is the book stuffed with undigested historical, theological, and philosophical material that impedes any suspense, its protagonist is uninflectedly despicable. Moreover, this character is not just central to the plot, he is the voice of the novel; there is no voice, no character of any sort, to challenge him.
I liked Foucalt's Pendulum, and I even liked Baudolino. This doesn't sound good at all, and I trust Paula's judgment.
Thought for the day ...
Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.- Anthony Powell, born on this date in 1905
Operation Shylock
Just in time for the first night of Hanukkah, I've finished Philip Roth's Operation Shylock.
I've written about Roth before on this blog, but I'll say it again: for an author who has attracted so much popular and critical attention, I still maintain that he's underrated.
Three novels, in particular, have been overlooked in recent years: The Ghost Writer, The Counterlife, and (now I can confirm) Operation Shylock. At least part of this is a result, I concede, of the success of Roth's recent string of recent novels.
Nevertheless, the man is a master - in these three novels, in particular - of the double, of the politics of identity, and of the complexities of justice. I know Frank and I have discussed Roth and Frank has rightly labeled him a sort of "tribal" writer. And while that's undeniably true, there is more to Roth than an intimate - sometimes unwanted - vision of the Jewish people.
I think the trick when it comes to Roth is acknowledging that he's writing on behalf of America's many minorities. And so in that sense, he serves as an unexpected double for writers like Updike, whose books bore me precisely because they reach for too much: in their attempt to capture America, they proceed with a veiled self-assuredness that puts me off...
But enough about Updike; this post is about Roth. For the three novels alone that I mentioned above, he is worthy of our praise, and I am happy to extend it.
Roth is about so much more than wounded masculinity, Judaism, and Newark. His books are about the intersections of terribly complicated things - including history and the ways that we interact with it, experience it, inherit it.
After all, Roth seems to imply, the past is our own; it is alive, sorrowful, and everywhere. And yet, it is foreign and worse, inert. To relate to that dynamic, I think, is what it means to identify with Roth.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Take a look at this ...
My friend and former colleague Mike Schaffer's daughter, Faith, who is a freshman at the Rhode Island School of Design, took this shot inside St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. The effect is from light pouring through the stained glass windows. By the way, I have seen some of Faith's art work, and it is quite impressive. In fact, a self-portrait that she did I found extraordinary.
Encomium ...
.... The courage of Václav Havel - Telegraph.
Walesa and Mikhail Gorbachev were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their part in that upheaval. It was an honour that Havel richly deserved as well.No, he deserved something better than that.
Q & A ...
... Alvin Plantinga on Conflict Resolution with Science | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... some people seem to think that if science doesn't say something happened, what it's really saying is that that thing didn't happen. So if science doesn't say that God is guiding the process of evolution, then science is really saying that God is not guiding the process. But that's ridiculous. Science doesn't say anything about it one way or the other.
Thought for the day ...
A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.- Jean Racine, born on this date in 1639
Monday, December 19, 2011
Well, no one can say ...
... I'm not thorough: 3quarksdaily: Remembering the Foolish and Brilliant Christopher Hitchens. (Hat tip, Cynthia Haven.)
But to reiterate my original point about all this. Hitchens was not always right -- who is? He was often gratuitously nasty. I confess to having been such myself from time to time, especially when I was young. My wife thought I was gratuitously nasty in my recent review of Ed King.
That Hitchens had grievous faults does not give anyone warrant to emulate those faults regarding him now that he is dead, least of all if one calls oneself a Christian. Our obligation as Christians is to display charity, not malice.
But to reiterate my original point about all this. Hitchens was not always right -- who is? He was often gratuitously nasty. I confess to having been such myself from time to time, especially when I was young. My wife thought I was gratuitously nasty in my recent review of Ed King.
That Hitchens had grievous faults does not give anyone warrant to emulate those faults regarding him now that he is dead, least of all if one calls oneself a Christian. Our obligation as Christians is to display charity, not malice.
More on Christopher ...
... Regarding Christopher | The Nation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So far, most of the eulogies of Christopher have come from men, and there’s a reason for that. He moved in a masculine world, and for someone who prided himself on his wide-ranging interests, he had virtually no interest in women’s writing or women’s lives or perspectives. I never got the impression from anything he wrote about women that he had bothered to do the most basic kinds of reading and thinking, let alone interviewing or reporting—the sort of workup he would do before writing about, say, G.K. Chesterton, or Scientology or Kurdistan. ... It wasn’t just the position itself, it was his lordly condescending assumption that he could sort this whole thing out for the ladies in 1,000 words that probably took him twenty minutes to write. “Anyone who has ever seen a sonogram or has spent even an hour with a textbook on embryology knows” that pro-life women are on to something when they recoil at the idea of the “disposable fetus.” Hmmmm… that must be why most OB-GYNs are pro-choice and why most women who have abortions are mothers. Those doctors just need to spend an hour with a medical textbook; those mothers must never have seen a sonogram. Interestingly, although he promised to address the counterarguments made by the many women who wrote in to the magazine, including those on the staff, he never did. For a man with a reputation for courage, it certainly failed him then. (Years later, when he took up the question of abortion again in Vanity Fair, he said basically the exact same things, using the same straw-women arguments. Time taught him nothing, because he didn’t want to learn.)
We won't go into the boilerplate crap that precedes this about Hitchens's drinking.
"I never got the impression ..." And never bothered to ask or investigate. "... that must be why most OB-GYNs are pro-choice and why most women who have abortions are mothers." I don't know about the latter assertion. I haven't seen statistics to that effect. Either way, it still comes down to an argument from authority vs. an assertion (Hitchens's) based on data.
It is odd that I find myself defending a fellow I didn't agree with on the most fundamental issue -- whether or not there is a God -- and whose writing often infuriated me. I wonder why these people didn't take on Hitchens while he was alive. And yet "he was my colleague for twenty years." How did she manage to work with him?
For all us lesser primates ...
... Amazon.com: Best-Selling Books of 2011: Customer Favorites.
This morning's thought for today will explain the lead-in.
This morning's thought for today will explain the lead-in.
Messiah ...
Last night, Debbie and I went to see the Philadelphia Orchestra perform Handel's Messiah. The conductor was Jane Glover, and the orchestra was reduced to a minimum: strings, two oboes, two trumpets, bassoon, timpani, organ, and harpsichord. We both thought the performance was outstanding. I was so impressed with Glover that I just downloaded a Mozart recording of hers from the iTunes store. I'm listening to the overture The Marriage of Figaro, and it's a s good as I suspected it might be.
Psst ...
... Everything You Know About Education Is Wrong - Jordan Weissmann - Business - The Atlantic.
Fryer found that class size, per-pupil spending, and the number of teachers with certifications or advanced degrees had nothing to do with student test scores in language and math.
Hangover cure ...
... Ireland’s Diaspora, Yet Again - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don't think it is memory that magnifies. The fact is, when we are small, everything looks bigger. To revisit the house where one spent one's earliest childhood is always a shock, because it turns out to be so much smalleer than it seemed when we lived there.
Memory magnifies, and the vessel I recall is the size of an ocean liner, its sheer flank beetling over the dock, its mighty smokestacks puffing out great gray cumuli and its hooter shaking the air with its deep-throated bellowings.
I don't think it is memory that magnifies. The fact is, when we are small, everything looks bigger. To revisit the house where one spent one's earliest childhood is always a shock, because it turns out to be so much smalleer than it seemed when we lived there.
Thought for the day ...
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of Ten Best.- H. Allen Smith, born on this date in 1907
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Hmm ...
... Belmont Club - David casts his stone.
Cameron argued that religion, far from being a spent force, was actually a rising force in the world. More was the pity then that Christianity, which had done the most to lay the foundations for freedom and prosperity, not simply in religious but historical terms, had seen fit to cover its light under a bushel-basket.
That anthology ...
... Friday on the NewsHour: Rita Dove | Art Beat | PBS NewsHour | PBS. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The mother of us all ...
... The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, explored by Adam Kirsch | Harvard Magazine Jan-Feb 2012. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The great literary scholar Ernst Robert Curtius reflected on this absence in his 1948 magnum opus, European Literature and the Middle Ages. “What strikes me most is this: The American mind might go back to Puritanism or to William Penn, but it lacked that which preceded them; it lacked the Middle Ages,” Curtius wrote. “It was in the position of a man who has never known his mother.” Yet he saw this lack as an opportunity for American scholarship. “The American conquest of the Middle Ages,” he observed, “has something of that romantic glamor and of that deep sentimental urge which we might expect in a man who should set out to find his lost mother.” That “conquest” began, in his view, with the “cult of Dante” that sprang up among the New England poets of the nineteenth century, above all Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who translated the Divine Comedy.
No fictional arguments ...
... The Protagoras problem. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The entire body of Plato’s works contrasts sophistry, the art of the argument,with philosophy “love of wisdom” —and if it was said that philosophy was born with Socrates, it had to be in these dialogues marking the dissimilarity between the argumentative Athenian and the famous sophists such as Gorgias, Protagoras, and others. Sophists were disliked and distrusted inAthens, for making money and getting rich out of arguments, in a way just like academics are distrusted today, and some people had portrayed Socrates as just another sophist. So it looks like Plato wanted to propound an image of Socrates that is different from that of the sophists —a genuine man.
Have a look ...
... Roadie - Movie Trailers - iTunes.
Michael Downey, the son of my friend and former colleague, Sally Downey, has produced a film that has garnered both praise and prizes. The link is to some trailers.
Michael Downey, the son of my friend and former colleague, Sally Downey, has produced a film that has garnered both praise and prizes. The link is to some trailers.
World War I - Excellent Review
Richard Evans' recent review in the LRB of David Stevenson's history of the closing stages of the First World War is superb - not only in its organization and insight, but in its ability to account for the reasons that the German Empire, so close to victory in 1917, sued for peace less than two years later at Versailles. Here's a link.
Amazing ...
... Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011 | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/17/2011.
In a radically different assessment, journalist and political analyst Chris Hedges, who had taken on Mr. Hitchens in a public debate, described him as a man who squandered his talent in exchange for fame."The tragedy of Hitchens was that he had the intellect to do something great, but he used his creative gifts for self-promotion throughout his career," Hedges, author of Death of the Liberal Class, said. "He sacrificed nuance for the sound bite."Adds Hedges, "I don't think he contributed anything to the nation's intellectual life."
Gee, thanks, Chris for providing the rest of us irrefutable proof that you are, if nothing else, utterly lacking in manners and possibly even common decency.
Postscript: Lincoln Hunter notes that Terry Teachout wrote somewhat unflatteringly of Johnny Carson when Carson died. Here is what Terry had to say afterward: Thumper's lament (I can't find the original article). "... I didn't call him stupid or offensive or evil--in fact, I didn't say anything personal about him at all. My point was that his comedy was inoffensive and ephemeral, and that I suspected it wouldn't be remembered for very long."
I think the maxim about not speaking ill of the dead has to do with etiquette. Terry was merely reiterating a view of Carson's work that, presumably, he had long held. He did not suggest, as Hedges does about Hitchens, that Carson's work -- and by extension his life -- was fundamentally inauthentic. Hedges took the occasion of Hitchens's death to pass moral judgment on the deceased, something one should always hesitate to do: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Post bumped.
Postscript: Lincoln Hunter notes that Terry Teachout wrote somewhat unflatteringly of Johnny Carson when Carson died. Here is what Terry had to say afterward: Thumper's lament (I can't find the original article). "... I didn't call him stupid or offensive or evil--in fact, I didn't say anything personal about him at all. My point was that his comedy was inoffensive and ephemeral, and that I suspected it wouldn't be remembered for very long."
I think the maxim about not speaking ill of the dead has to do with etiquette. Terry was merely reiterating a view of Carson's work that, presumably, he had long held. He did not suggest, as Hedges does about Hitchens, that Carson's work -- and by extension his life -- was fundamentally inauthentic. Hedges took the occasion of Hitchens's death to pass moral judgment on the deceased, something one should always hesitate to do: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Post bumped.
Thought for the day ...
Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're stillborn.- H. H. Munro (Saki), born on this date in 1870
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Outstandingly average ...
... Julian Barnes and the Diminishing of the English Novel - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ever since he left school, Tony reliably informs us, he has been “average”: “Average at university and work; average in friendship, loyalty, love; average, no doubt, at sex. There was a survey of British motorists a few years ago which showed that 95 percent of those polled thought they were ‘better than average’ drivers. But by the law of averages, we’re most of us bound to be average.”
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