Typical befuddlement of debate...

...Verses and Versions of Power
The author bemoans Bellow's remark on Rushdie trying, unsuccessfully, to do an Ulysses on the Islamic world as Orientalism but that does not take away from the truth of Bellow's assertion. By claiming that Rushdie's pariah-like status has something to do with the West's supposedly blinkered view of Islam, the author does great disservice to the right of free speech. Rushdie is very much an "Indian" writer in the themes that he explores. His exile in the West is a necessity borne out of the vicious and threatening tirade against him. And to compare the Rushdie affair with the situation in Kashmir is patently laughable. Here is s country where an Arundhati Roy can foster secession by urging Kashmiris to "get azaadi (freedom) from bhookey nangey (impoverished) Hindustan" in the heart of Delhi. Forget violence, not an iota of trouble visits her.

Remember, his last was 'Foreskin's lament'!

The Driftwood Remains: My Search for A Bankable Title

A good idea ...

... Transterrestrial Musings - Time To Get Religion Out Of Science Classes.

I have a modest proposal. Instead of promulgating either the Christian religion, or the Green religion in our science classes, let’s get teachers who actually have degrees in science (as opposed to “education”), so they don’t need “teaching materials,” and teach kids how to do math (including statistics), think critically, and actually formulate testable and falsifiable hypotheses and test them, so that they will be inoculated to all religions, when it comes to learning science.

As good a picture ...

... as I've ever taken.

More dumbing down ...

... Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe: Did they take out the “J” word, too? | The Book Haven.

Where did we get the idea that all reading must be easy reading?

"A loose affair" ...

... The TLS blog: Happy-go-lucky Edward Thomas

Review ...

... PhanArt - Jambandbootleg by Paul Siegell.

FYI ...

... Ten Reasons Not to Sleep with an Essayist - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Congratulations ...

... Kudos to Fern G. Z. Carr, poet lawyer - The Globe and Mail. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

And two others ...

... The Pope’s Life of Jesus | TLS.

Benedict’s book ... is full of surprises. There is a welcome emphasis on the rootedness of Jesus and his followers in Israel’s Scriptures, something which older exegesis, both Protestant and Catholic, often passed over. The heart of the volume is an exposition of Jesus’s vocational understanding of his own death in terms of the Psalms and Isaiah, particularly the “servant songs” of Isaiah 42–53, leading to a clear statement of the cross as the moment of vicarious, substitutionary atonement. This, Benedict writes, “constitutes the most profound content of Jesus’ mission”. This is not a view that Protestants normally expect popes to hold. Some Roman theologians, I suspect, will be surprised as well.

Here we go again ...

... Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)

Franzen said he took comfort from knowing he will not be here in 50 years’ time to find out if books have become obsolete.

In even less time than that, I won't have to hear about a new Jonathan Franzen novel being  published. That's one good thing about being 70.

This won't change things...

...The Economist's Chinese competition

Inquirer news ...

... Philly newspapers boss responds to NYP story | JIMROMENESKO.COM. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

Continuing ...

... Why Geology Matters, Part 4 | Books and Culture.

Depends ...

... The self-epublishing bubble | Ewan Morrison | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

This may be so for those who take up writing in order to get rich. John Jakes once told me that the thing that was most surprising when he had his first best-seller is how many people he met who thought it was his first book. It was, in fact, his 26th. I think most people who write  do it for reasons other than becoming rich quick.

Thought for the day ...

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

- Thomas Merton, born on this date in 1915

Namelessness matters ...

... Bryan Appleyard - 4Chan and Anonymous. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

FYI ...

... Erika Dreifus’ Guide to Flash Nonfiction Markets - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Kicks and links ...

... Secret Dead Blog: Kickin' Out Some Updates.

Sectarian killers ...

... Detectives Beyond Borders: Resurrection Man.

And he paid for doing so ...

... He Told the Truth About China’s Tyranny by Simon Leys | The New York Review of Books.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 brought the name of Liu Xiaobo to the attention of the entire world. Yet well before that, he had already achieved considerable fame within China, as a fearless and clearsighted public intellectual and the author of some seventeen books, including collections of poetry and literary criticism as well as political essays.2 The Communist authorities unwittingly vouched for the uncompromising accuracy of his comments. They kept arresting him for his views—four times since the Tiananmen massacre in June 1989. Now he is again in jail, since December 2008; though in poor health, he is subjected to an especially severe regime.

For purists ...

... Issa's Untidy Hut: Walking the Dog: Issa's Sunday Service, #128.

Putting things in perspective ...

... Feel special, do I? Well... | Facebook.

In many respects, being gay has been the most fantastic thing in my life. It has enabled me to chart my own course of social and personal development without having to fit in to the dominant model peopled by straights.

Celebrating life ...

... The Art of the Obituary - Telegraph.

Birthday greetings ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: Authors Praise Joseph Wambaugh To Mark His 75th Birthday.

Fighting back ...

... The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - Boarish Behavior.

Feral pigs have been devastating the American landscape since they were first introduced to this continent by European explorers in the 1500s. Some people call them razorbacks, or wild hogs—and, like the John Travolta movie of the same name, you will have trouble finding anyone with a good word to say about them. They ravage every ecosystem into which they’re introduced. They can grow to 500 pounds. They reproduce rapidly, and can begin breeding when they’re only eight months old. They’re violent and dirty and ugly and omnivorous—and they are everywhere.

Superhuman focus ...

... Dan Neil on the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Van Gogh Up Close - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It's not surprising that Van Gogh found transcendence in a "blade of grass"—an image he perhaps borrowed from the Calvinist critic Thomas Carlyle. And Van Gogh was not the only artist possessing a Zen-like zoom lens. Ms. Kienle might as easily have name-checked T.S. Eliot, who writes in "Four Quartets": "We must be still and still moving / Into another intensity / For a further union, a deeper communion."

A most useful pamphlet ...

... Transmissions from a Lone Star: Learn Japanese the World War II Way! | Columnists | RIA Novosti.

Lurching into the unknown ...

... Book Review: Alfred Jarry - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Despite, or because of, the riots the play was a great success. Jarry, however, proved unable to renew himself. Novels and plays, full of brilliant phrases and scenes poured out from him over the next decade, but these tended to rely on incidents in his own life made "Jarryesque" by crude satire and a liberal use of expletives. A huge play, based on the Renaissance satirist Rabelais, kept being rewritten, first for marionettes, then as an operetta. Nothing came of it.

The game of love ...

... Swithering: A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch.

Thought for the day ...

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.

- Barbara Tuchman, born on this date 1912

The Spies of Warsaw

I've just finished Alan Furst's The Spies of Warsaw, a work of historical fiction set between the wars.

My response to this book was mixed. On the one hand, you can't go wrong with the interwar period, particularly in Europe: it's the perfect backdrop for a novel involving espionage, diplomacy, and yes, romance.

To a certain extent, Furst is successful is his use of this backdrop: his characters are interesting (or interesting enough) and a few of them engage in meaningful musings on history and the events leading to 1939.

Despite the praise heaped on this book by critics like Jonathan Yardley, I ultimately found it to be a novel in search of itself. Furst follows a number of a plot twists toward something approaching a climax, but when this climax comes, it's doesn't pack the punch that we might expect after more than 200 pages of intrigue.

In addition, there was something, I felt, that was contrived about Furst's book: it's tricky work, I recognize, to successfully integrate historical realities into fiction, but there were moments in this novel that Furst's characters spoke in a way that was too didactic, too instructive - as if Furst were offering his readers the background they would need to fully appreciate the dialogue he'd constructed.

Perhaps this is necessary, but there are other writers - including Hilary Mantel, whose work immediately comes to mind here - who weave the past into their narratives in a manner far more effective (and seamless) than does Furst.

Still, this was a fun book to read, and I credit Furst with getting a least part of the way toward evoking the energy - and anxiety - of that tremendous period of global history.

Enter now ...

... The Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction -BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

The next level ...

... SinC25: Claudia Piñeiro, #7 post of expert challenge | Petrona.

Before the legend ...

... The Wilson Quarterly: Book Reviews: Papa's Beginnings by Michael Moynihan.

Continuing ...

... Democracy: Skepticism Versus Cynicism | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes.

Well, that should finish it ...

... First ever crime writing MA launched | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Be very scared ...

... Fear Itself: Books That Go Bump in the Night on AbeBooks.

No matter, never mind ...

... It's time for science to move on from materialism | Mark Vernon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... some scientists are proposing top-down, holistic explanations. Sheldrake's particular proposal is that such self-organising systems exist in fields of memory or habit. These contain the information required to make the structure.

This sounds to as if Sheldrake is trying to adapt quantum physics to biology, packets of information corresponding to packets of energy.

Nice to know ...

... 'There might be a God', says Sir David Attenborough | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Today's Inquirer reviews ...

Actually, in the print version of the paper (to which I loyally subscribe) there is a roundup of books to look forward to this spring. Unfortunately, this is all I can find online: Volumes to delight. This let's you see pictures of some book covers. If anyone can figure out how to link to the story, let me know.

Thought for the day ...

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow. - Romain  Rolland, born on  this date in 1866

Breaking stereotypes...

....Gilbert and George: the odd couple

"Even today the very educated ­papers still try to abuse us," says ­Gilbert. "Our art is capable of bringing out the bigot inside the liberal, and the liberal inside the bigot. A taxi driver who thinks that all modern art is ­rubbish will say to us, 'It's good what you do, guys.'"

"Both and" ...

or "either or": From Mark Twain to Ray Bradbury, Iconic Writers on Truth vs. Fiction - Maria Popova - Entertainment - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

Hmm ... hmmm ...

... FuturePundit: Intellectual Interests Genetically Predetermined?

A hallmark of the individual is the cultivation of personal interests, but for some people, their intellectual pursuits might actually be genetically predetermined. Survey results published by Princeton University researchers in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that a family history of psychiatric conditions such as autism and depression could influence the subjects a person finds engaging.

But your family history does not determine what you actually encounter in life. You might well go through all of life without suffering any of the cited psychopathologies if you never encountered one or another of them as a subject that engaged you. A good many people these days do not seem to know that a proposition has to be examined from different directions, especially from the one directly opposite, the contradictory, the one that, if true, demonstrates the falseness of the other. 

In this case, I think both propositions state a complementary truth. Together, they merely move the question back a step. For it is hard to think of the response prior to the stimulus. It is the satisfaction derived from the stimulus that would have to be predetermined.

This, by the way, is as far as I have got in reading this piece. I think it is worth reading because it lays out quite clearly a argument. But it is also worth reading slowly, taking time think about what it is being said.

Not really ...

... zmkc: In Praise of Censorship.

And then I thought, 'Do newspapers and reporters ever ask themselves what good it actually does, when they decide to tell us many of the things that they do decide to tell us, usually without ever being asked to tell us?' Do they wonder to themselves about what exact important purpose is served by providing us with all the prurient details of individual acts of gory madness?'

The post is not really about censorship, but about prudence and taste. And no, newspapers and reporters don't really ask such questions. You print what you think people want to read. And sensationalism has a wide appeal.

The value of fabricated truth ...

... Blog: The Misadventures of Marotta - Chillicothe, IL - Chillicothe Times-Bulletin. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Authors' lairs ...

... Writing is a life of poverty? Not. | The Book Haven.

Muddled psychologizing ...

... Siris: Baggini, "Subjective Experiences," and Suspicion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... it is at least as irrational to be suspicious of something for no good reason as it is to accept it for no good reason; and at least in principle they want their suspicions as well as their beliefs to be well-grounded. And the only skeptic I've ever come across who appealed to such a ridiculously broad consideration as Baggini has here is Julian Baggini. And suspicion is as much a subjective experience as anything else: it's one of the kinds of ways we feel that something might not be right.

Indeed ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: A Brit Looks At An American Crime Writer: Elmore Leonard - The Great American Novelist.

From Hensher's piece:

Leonard's work is a very long way from the average crime novel, with its sequence of atrocity, mystery, maverick investigator and solution. He is fascinated, for instance, with the mechanics of writing, and wants his readers to share that interest. Characters investigate the textures of dialogue – "'How come,' Raylan said, 'you can't answer a question without asking one?'" (Riding the Rap.) They discuss diction in intricate detail – Foley and Buddy reading a newspaper report in Out of Sight: "'They think you may "flee the country."' 'I've had to run like hell a few times,' Foley said, 'but I don't think I've done any fleeing. You ever flee?' 'Yeah. I read one time I fled the scene of a robbery.'"

I have written a couple of times that Leonard should get the Nobel. Like Dickens, he has created a world.

Worried thoughts ...

... Zealotry of Guerin: Wheat Field With Crows (Van Gogh).

Also born today ...

... Jackson Pollock 'transcends time and fashion' - Telegraph.

Thought for today ...

All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.

- Thomas Aquinas, born on this date in 1225

Hmm ...

... Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’ — By Frederick Turner — Book Review - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It grieves me to say it, but I think this is mostly crap. Henry/Val in the Tropics is not Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn, by the way, is a far better book than Tropic of Cancer). Bawdy humor seems to escape Winterson. The Miller in the books is a parody, a caricature. I reviewed a biography of him years ago. I foget the name of the book and the name of the author - a woman, and an admirably honest biographer. She admitted at the outset that she intended to do a job on Henry, but found out after meeting him that "Henry Miller was a very nice man." I believe hers is the book that relates how, when Miller learned that his wife Eve had died - and it had been a stormy marriage - he fell on his knees in his kitchen and just wept uncontrollably. As Somerset Maugham sagely observed, men are not of a piece. Blackguards can prove surprisingly sensitive at times, and genuine saints can often be mean and vicious.

Sorry, sort of ...

.. Literary Apes Anonymous - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Good advice ...

... Making Time For Study | The Jewish Week.

Let's you and him fight ...

... Alain de Botton reveals plans for 'temple to atheism' in heart of London | World news | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Back and forth ...

... Faith that is known first in the body | Mark Vernon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

... The modern believer is not suspicious enough.

A persistent pain is a pretty good indicator of the presence of bodily damage; the feeling that you have been touched by the Holy Spirit is only a good indicator that you have had a generic religious experience, shared by many the world over, and you have interpreted it according to the narratives and belief systems familiar to you.

Really? I should think "feeling that you have been touched by the Holy Spirit" would be rather an overwhelming experience. And experience trumps all theories. I would suggest that modern skeptics are not suspicious enough of pure reason.

More here: The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake - review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

We need a new mind-body paradigm, a map that acknowledges the many kinds of things there are in the world and the continuity of evolution. We must somehow find different, more realistic ways of understanding human beings – and indeed other animals – as the active wholes that they are, rather than pretending to see them as meaningless consignments of chemicals.

The value of secrecy ...

... CS Lewis Rejected Royal Honor | Via Meadia.

Hmm ...

... Curriculum Proposals at Stanford Focus on Critical Thinking - Curriculum - The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

How the hell does anyone manage to get admitted to Stanford - or any other college or university for that matter - without first displaying some acquaintance with "ways of thinking, ways of doing"?

Masculinity...

...and Henry Miller. A new book on the topic.

Speaking of dissent ...

... Timothy Snyder: On dissent and “the stories people tell about themselves” | The Book Haven.

Dissenting opinion ...

... Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming - WSJ.com.

Also born today ...

... in 1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Defending Updike ...

... John Updike: The bizarre and misguided assault on his reputation. - Slate Magazine. (Hat tips, Dave Lull and Ed Champion.)

... his immense talent is part of what people seemed to find suspect about him in the years before his death. Critics and writers hold the fact that he writes beautiful sentences against him, as if his writing is too well crafted, too flamboyantly, extravagantly good. James Wood wrote a decade ago, “He is a prose writer of great beauty, but that prose confronts one with the question of whether beauty is enough, and whether beauty always conveys what a novelist must convey.” Here one has to wonder about that special handbook of “What a Novelist Must Convey,” and the rules and regulations contained therein.

Cold War thrillers ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: Book Review: 'Agent 6' By Tom Rob Smith.

Online now ...

... THE CRITICAL FLAME :: Issue 17, January 2012.

In this corner ...

... James Earl Jones v. Chris Walken: A poetic Poe-down - The Globe and Mail.

Drawn in ...

... When Falls the Coliseum - Lisa reads Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright.

A fresh approach ...

... Nonfiction Review: The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Cunning verbal music ...

... Robert Graves's "John Milton Muddles Through" | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The genius of the English language, whether transplanted to Wales, Scotland, Ireland or America, remains literal, logical, and anti-hypothetical. No sensitive poet or critic can accept without a blush Milton’s pastoral affectations ...

Thought for the day ...

One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

- Lewis Carroll, born on this date in 1832

Apologies ..

I am working on an article, the writing of which is not going well. I will - hack that I am - manage to deal with this eventually. But right now, things are not going well. I am annoyed with myself and the article. In other words, blogging will resume tomorrow. Writing, after all, is a job like any other.

Let us hope ...

... Has plagiarism met its match? | Drexel Publishing Group.

I will try to help ...

... Twitter / @BryanAppleyard: Ayn Rand is now a top app. ...

I wrote an article having something to do with this book a couple of years ago, so I had to read a good bit of it. Given the stilted dialogue (I think I am actually being kind) you would think it would have disappeared without a trace. But, like a good soap opera, the mechanics of the narrative are pretty well done. But the key point is that, when people read a book, if the book  catches them, they put themselves into it. And many people, deep down - maybe even Bryan, maybe even me - want to be John Galt - if only briefly - just to be able to cry halt to the world we live in. Ayn Rand may not have known how to write literature, but she did, on some instinctive level, know how to create myth.

More than metaphor ...

... Thinking Outside the Box — Literally - Ideas Market - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A must-read ...

... The Once and Future Liberalism - Walter Russell Mead - The American Interest Magazine.

One of the main reasons Americans have been so slow to recognize the collapse of the blue model is that the language we use to discuss and think about politics tends to disorganize our stock of understanding about our own society. Millions of Americans are conservatives and even reactionaries but think of themselves as “liberals”; at the same time, millions of genuine liberals and even radicals call themselves conservative. It’s an unholy mess that calls desperately for a language intervention.

Back-and-forth ...

... Ping-Pong with Mortimer Adler - gentle rereader. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Barzun concludes – after presenting varied, ample and humorous evidence – that “the great books here gathered with so much love and care and public spirit betray a high-minded axe-grinding in the direction of intellectualism.” The future author ofThe House of Intellect did indeed write those words, but only after regretting that the first edition of Great Books missed the opportunity to “unite a great variety of intellectual interests by choosing from the recent times not only Freud but Shaw.” Barzun considers the collection unbalanced in a rationalistic direction: “Shouldn’t we have had … Balzac and Henry James—instead of Hippocrates on Hemorrhoids and Archimedes on Spheroids?”

Read and enter ...

... A Story in Slang – and win a prize! - The Dabbler.

Dickensian reality ...

... The American Conservative - Hard Times Again. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The February bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, then, could hardly come at a more appropriate moment in economic history, for Dickens was the revealer, the scourge, the prose poet, of urban destitution—a destitution that, in our waking nightmares, we fear may yet return.

And the winner is ...

... Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' takes top app prize - CSMonitor.com.

Property rights ...

... Book Review: How to Fix Copyright - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Most reasonable people would agree that copyright terms are too long—70 years after the author's death, per a 1998 extension—and that some laws need to be re-examined for a digital world. But William Patry, a prolific and respected legal scholar who is now Google's senior copyright counsel, takes such a dim view of efforts to protect intellectual property that he seems somewhat uncomfortable with the very idea of a commercial market for creative work.

Thought for the day ...

It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.

- Gerard de Nerval, who died on this date in 1855

Truck with Death...

...Andrew Miller: my morbid obsession

RIP ...

... Nicol Williamson - Telegraph.

Birthday girl ...

... Virginia Woolf, Reading Over Dorothy Wordsworth’s Shoulder: A Birthday Tribute | Town Topics. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)

Chill ...

... The Slow and Mindful Reader - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In memoriam ...

... Anecdotal Evidence: `Eager to Share What He Deemed Best'.

Come one, come all.

... Dante and crowds | The Book Haven.

You're invited ...

... Wrap-up Wednesday - The Globe and Mail.

Characteristically Andrew ...

... which is to say, at turns obsessive and crazy, then brilliantly insightful: Ask Me Anything: What Do I Think Of The Book Publishing Industry? - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Usual suspects ...

... Best American Opinion Page Essays? - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Have a look ...

... dustingrella.com.

Hmm ...

... The Danger of Ebooks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

While it is true that you can go into a bookstore and buy a book with cash anonymously, you are just as likely to buy one from Amazon, thereby identifying yourself as the purchaser. Even in a bookstore, you are quite likely to buy the book with your credit card. 

I'm as concerned over government intrusion as anyone, but I am not so sure that ebooks should be singled out for concern.

Rising above principle ...

... The Breathtaking Hypocrisy of Julian Assange, Kremlin Pawn - Forbes.

Verse vs. versus ...

... ‘Verse’ as a verb | Drexel Publishing Group.

Verse and versus do, in fact, derive from the same Latin verb: vertere, to turn. But they have quite different meanings, and shouldn't really be confused.

And the nomines are ...

... 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.

And the winner is ...

... Costa book award: Andrew Miller wins for sixth novel, Pure | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Dave also sends along this: Short stories win their own Costa award.

Hmm ...

... I Hate Religion Too - Strange Herring. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The problem with the Church as an institution is that its ministers are often more concerned with the Church as an institution than with the Church as a vehicle of faith.

Other people's quips ...

... Two Great British ‘Quote Magnets’ - Ideas Market - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Not so fast ...

... E-Book Bummer: Growth Slower Than Thought—‘Incremental, Not Exponential’ | paidContent. (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)

FYI ...

... Educational news.

Thought for the day ...

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

- W. Somerset Maugham, born on this date in 1874

Worth reading ...

... Excerptation | The End Of The Pier Show.

Choices ...

... Respect.

Oddly, I think it is self-respect - not respect for others - that is likely to keep people from stealing. Thanks to the Religious of the Sacred Heart, there are all sorts of things I would never think to do simply because gentlemen and ladies don't do those sorts of things. It is self-respect - or, if you will, self-regard -- that keeps me from even thinking of doing them

Proposals wanted ...

... Project Areas - Triple Canopy.

Triple plays ...

... AbeBooks: Omnibus Editions: Three (or More) Titles in One Volume.

Piece work ...

... The Millions : Fragmentary: Writing in a Digital Age. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In case you wondered ...

... Transmissions from a Lone Star: Scotland’s Bid for Independence Explained! | Columnists | RIA Novosti.

A surfeit of volumes ...

... Books, books everywhere… | Drexel Publishing Group.

FYI ...

... Adrian Mole recommends books for would-be writers - Telegraph.

Dr. Johnson at his best ...

... The University Bookman: A New ‘Rasselas’. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Rasselas appeared at almost the same time as Candide, and for that reason, and because they are superficially alike in form and message, they have often been compared. Yet, as Boswell said, “though the proposition illustrated by both these works was the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than good, the intention of the writers was very different.” They indeed differ markedly in the effect they have upon the reader. “No good man is the better for having read Candide,” wrote Hilaire Belloc, “but every man is the better for having read Rasselas.”

A welcome development ...

... Edward Feser: Maudlin on the philosophy of cosmology. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The claim that physics has shown that change is illusory is in any event seriously problematic. As Karl Popper noted, Einstein, as interpreted by Minkowski, recapitulates Parmenides. (See the essay “Beyond the Search for Invariants” in Popper’s book The World of Parmenides.) And that means that relativity, if interpreted as entailing the illusoriness of all change, would inherit all the problems with Parmenides’ position.

Take a look ...

... at Claude Monet At Work | The New Republic.

Weigh in, folks ...

... Monday MuseSplashes - The Globe and Mail.

Who, in your opinion, would you consider the English-language speaking world's top poetic dog? Stay with me, please, since the question's a little more germane and a tad less superficial than it might first appear to be.

Honored today

... January 24 is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists, who said,
"Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly."

Thought for the day ...

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

- Edith Wharton, born on this date in 1862

RIP ...

... Pierre Sudreau - Telegraph.

He inspired The Little Prince.

Reading Henry Adams ...

... Democracy: A Funny Town for a Woman | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes.

A new way of seeing ...

... Bryan Appleyard - Fox Talbot’s Dream Square. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A vintage review ...

... Théophile Gautier's My Fantoms: Then and Now, 1976 | TLS.

Belmont vs. Fishtown ...

... Charles Murray on the New American Divide - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The primary indicator of the erosion of industriousness in the working class is the increase of prime-age males with no more than a high school education who say they are not available for work—they are "out of the labor force." That percentage went from a low of 3% in 1968 to 12% in 2008. Twelve percent may not sound like much until you think about the men we're talking about: in the prime of their working lives, their 30s and 40s, when, according to hallowed American tradition, every American man is working or looking for work. Almost one out of eight now aren't. Meanwhile, not much has changed among males with college educations. Only 3% were out of the labor force in 2008.

Fishtown these days looks to be gentrifying (as is my own neighborhood). I come from the same social milieu that, in this essay, "Fishtown" is meant to represent.

Catching up ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: Belated Happy Birthday To Joseph Wambaugh.

Look and listen ...

... S.J. Perelman On Everything | The New Republic.

Doing and talking ...

... and education: Chapter 7 Recall... | Facebook. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A closer look ...

... Anis Shivani: Can Creative Writing Be Taught? Therapy For The Disaffected Masses.

I just noticed that this essay appears in the current issue of Boulevard. I can't at the moment lay my hands on my copy of that issue, but the question posed is the subject of that issue's Symposium, to which I also contributed. And while my contribution wasn't as acerbic as Shivani's, I did arrive at a similar conclusion. I will not undercut Boulevard by posting what I wrote in its entirety, but here is an excerpt:

You can learn a lot from studying how your favorite writers do what they do. But you must never do it yourself. It is perfectly all right to be influenced by them, but the manner of the influence must be indirect, downright subterranean, in fact. The perfect example of what I mean is provided by Dostoevsky, who modeled his novels on those of his own favorite novelist — Charles Dickens. It is not hard to see what the two have in common, bizarrely vivid characterization for one. But to get what Dostoyevsky got out of Dickens requires that one uniquely original sensibility genuinely encounter another. It is the sort of thing that cannot be taught in a classroom or workshop. ... There are things only life can teach you, and that you can only learn on your own. Someone else can teach you how to write like somebody else. But nobody can teach you how to write like yourself.

In the meantime, the debate continues: Rebutting Shivani.

  

Interesting and moving ...

Maverick Philosopher: Michael Sudduth Converts to Vaishnava Vedanta! (Hat tip, Dave Lull).

I should add, and I think this is very important, that I felt I was experiencing the same God that I had experienced on many occasions throughout my Christian life. However, I felt like this being was showing me a different face, side, or aspect to Himself, or – better yet – a different mode of my relationship to Him. I felt a certain validation of my spiritual journey, both past and present. I had gone so far in my Christian faith, but it was now necessary for me to relate to God as Lord Krishna.

I think that one can nourish one's faith with insights and practices from others. I also think that anything that helps one to sense God's love for us and that inspires us to requite as best we can is necessarily good.
Bill Vallicella has more on this here: Belief Change.

Thought for the day ...

You don't have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., born on this date in 1923

Sorry for the interruption ...

Debbie and I had to take off to Mauricetown, N.J., yesterday afternoon to attend a dinner made the Colonial way in a large, open-hearth fireplace (more about that tomorrow). Anyway, what with the snow that had to be cleaned off the sidewalk and the car, and some shopping that had to be done, I had no time yesterday to mention here that I wasn't going to be posting for a while.
I've done a bit of blogging for today, but I am signing off until tomorrow.

Shameful void ...

... Forgotten Writers: Dorothy Uhnak.

Maxine's been busy again ...

... so just keep scrolling: Petrona | Mainly about reading with an accent on crime fiction from around the world.

Worth noting ...

... 25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore - jlsathre - Open Salon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Genre-jumper ...

Bryan Appleyard - Geoff Dyer: The Hatchet Man. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... everything Dyer writes is a bit odd. He is a genre-jumper, pri­marily because he doesn’t believe in genres. He says, for example, that his ostensibly nonfiction book on photography, The Ongoing Moment (superb), “was much more of a novel than many of the books eligible for tthe Booker prize that year”. And he dislikes the typical nonfiction book that ­publishers love.

Still going strong ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: Charles Dickens: A Tale Of Two Centuries.

And the nominees are ...

... National Book Critics Circle: National Book Critics Circle Announces Finalists for Publishing Year 2011 - Critical Mass Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Today's Inquirer reviews ...

... Susan Balée reviews the latest Jo Nesbø: Evil afoot again in Norway.

... and Katie reviews Richard Burgin's latest: The scary spaces twixt men, women.

... 'Red State Religion': Why Kansas became so conservative.

Thought for the day ...

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

- Francis Bacon, born on this date in 1561

Albert Einstein

My recent piece in the Portland Book Review addressing Josef Eisinger's Einstein on the Road has been posted online. Here's a link.

Where I live ...

... The GOP’s Philadelphia Story | The Weekly Standard.

The author of this piece, Kevin Ferris, is a friend and former colleague.

In case you wondered ...

... Why Geology Matters, Part 3 | Books and Culture.

Sounds prudent to me ...

... Salman Rushdie Cancels Festival Appearance In India Due To Threats.

I agree ...

... The best composer you've never heard of. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


He's certainly one of the best, though I can think of some others. Harold Boatrite, for instance.


More here: A good day's work.

Please help ...

... Would someone give Anis Shivani a nice warm cup of milk? -BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Good advice ...

... 20011: You've Seen the Movie, Now Read the Book.

Worlds ...

... Zealotry of Guerin: Cafe Terrace at Night (Van Gogh).

Life imitating art ...

... Book Review: As If - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In "As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality," a historical and cultural study of fiction fandom, Mr. Saler counterpunches vigorously against the whole edifice of literary snobbery. What he has to say is so self-evidently right that the fact he has to say it makes one wonder how the critical profession has managed, for so long, to cultivate such a large blind spot. His book should be essential reading in every graduate school of the humanities. But it's much more fun than that recommendation suggests.

On the wing ...

... AbeBooks: Books of a Feather: The Best Bird Books.

Two pieces I missed ...

... An empathetic pen.

... Ben Marcus' hot novel, The Flame Alphabet,' explores a nightmare about communication.

Second link is now fixed. Thanks to Dave Lull for alerting me.

Thought for the day ...

Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.                                                          - Blaise Cendrars, who died on this date in 1961

Good choice, it would seem...

...Why I sent Oxford a rejection letter!

Review ...

... Poetry column: W.S. Di Piero's 'Only in Things' | OregonLive.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Worth pondering ...

... Real Leadership | The Jewish Week.

Ben Jonson - A Life

Jonson and Shakespeare

The two-tier approach ...

... Book review: Below Stairs - WSJ.com.

Margaret Powell's sharply observed memoir, "Below Stairs," first printed in Britain 50 years ago and only now being published in America, has been hailed by Julian Fellowes, the creator of "Downton Abbey," as one of his inspirations for the television drama. The book stands out in the tradition of literature about servants for being a true account of a life spent in domestic service, although the incidents it relates are as vividly entertaining and disturbing as anything found in fiction.

Have a look ...

... The Friday Poem Special: TS Eliot Prize Preview. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Truly compendious

... Enhanced E-Books: Blowing Up the Book - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Enhanced e-books—which have multimedia features such as audio, video, pop-up graphics, 3-D images and animation—are being touted as the next frontier in the digital-books landscape. The explosive growth of e-book sales, coupled with the rapid adoption of iPads, Nook Tablets and Kindle Fires, has prompted publishers to experiment with new types of interactive books. Many in the industry will be watching closely to see whether "Chopsticks" becomes a literary trailblazer that ushers in a new species of e-book, or a cautionary tale of an elaborate flop.

Words that kill ...

... Fiction, Fiction, Burning Bright—or Maybe Just Smoldering - Commentary Magazine.

Before long ... it becomes clear that all children — not merely Jewish children — are causing adults to fall sick by speech and writing. As an authority theorizes, “Language happens to be a toxin we are very good at producing, but not so good at absorbing.” People begin to die.

Masters ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: Elmore Leonard And T.Jefferson Parker: Two Crime Writers At The Top of Their Game.

Well, well ...

... Apple Enters the Textbook, Self-Publishing Market.

... make no mistake, while this is a breakthrough in transforming how textbooks are created and distributed, the iBooks 2 format (and iBooks authoring tool) can and will be used to create any kind of media enriched book along with the ability to instantly publish it to the iPad platform. Indeed the Apple spokesperson demoing the new product said, "Anyone who has ever been involved in creating an e-book knows that this is now incredibly easy."

So you think you know baseball ...

... Presenting . . . The George Bowering Baseball Trivia Quiz - The Globe and Mail.

Good for him ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: Former NYPD Detective Edward Conlon Nominated For Best First Novel By Mystery Writers Of America.

Thought for the day ...

Ours is a big country and we are a people possessing a multitude of different origins. If composers will increasingly strive to perfect themselves in the art of music and will follow only paths of expression that would seem to take them the true way, the matter of a national school will take care of itself.

- Walter Piston, born on this date in 1894

God and time ...

... Maverick Philosopher: The God of Philosophy and the God of Religion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Poet on wheels ...

... Motorcycles in winter | Drexel Publishing Group.

Words, words, words ...

... On idiocy and pronunciation | Drexel Publishing Group.

Turn, turn ...

... Anecdotal Evidence: `The Something That You Say'.

Welcome ...

My friend Vikram Johri has agreed to be a member of this blog, as you can see from something he just posted. Good to have him on board.

What think you?

... Elmore Leonard’s Raylan: Justified fan fiction - Slate Magazine:FX’s Justified understands Elmore Leonard’s greatest character better than Leonard does.

Somewhat surprising ...

... What are your most-quoted lines of poetry? | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The new Rushdie affair

For a moment of statesmanship

"Christopher Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, in 2009, recounting the days after the fatwa to kill Rushdie was issued: ‘In the hot days immediately after the fatwa, with Salman himself on the run and the TV screens filled with images of burning books and writhing mustaches, I was stopped by a female Muslim interviewer and her camera crew and asked an ancient question: “Is nothing sacred?” I can’t remember quite what I answered then, but I know what I would say now. No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn’t be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well.’"

Variations ...

... Laudator Temporis Acti: A Greek Botanical Catalogue.

And he really is one ...

... A hero emerges in Italy’s ship drama - BostonHerald.com.

"But why is someone who does his job and sticks to the rules suddenly a hero in Italy?" one Internet commentator wondered.

I am reminded of something J.B. Priestley says about Joseph Conrad in Literature and Western Man, namely, that Conrad is "the novelist ... of men who find themselves hard-pressed and try to do their duty."

Where does anyone get the idea that doing your duty and following the rules under the most trying circumstances is not genuinely heroic?

Adding up ...

... Ian Stewart's top 10 popular mathematics books | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A watercolor ...

... by Debbie.

Man of honor ...

... Michael Murray’s biography, ‘Jacques Barzun: Portrait of a Mind,’ reviewed by Michael Dirda - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Two reviews and more ...

... Some Programming Notes | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes.

Still wondering ...

I am very much impressed by Rus Bowden's response to this post of mine, but I'd still like to hear from others as well.

Who knew ...

... The Medieval Origins of the Bathroom Reader (Mmm… Marginalia #90) — Got Medieval.

Thought for the day ...

I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.

- Patricia Highsmith, born on this date in 1921

Compare and contrast ...

... Dame Eleanor Hull: Winter Writing Workshop report.

Endgame ...

... “The final dwarf of you”: late-life poems of Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and Czesław Miłosz | The Book Haven.

The subject of the poet’s approaching winter holds an increasing fascination for me … well, we are all growing older. But growing older has been a great surprise – the psychological landscape and vantage points of late summer and autumn are not at all what I had been told or had been expecting.

The final quotation from Milosz is astounding.

Q & A ...

... Boston Review — Sawnie Morris: Odd One Out (Joan Houlihan).


... from Ay.

Going dark ...

... Sneaky slippery slopes | Drexel Publishing Group.

Teasing out a moment ...

... Robert Vivian’s Thoughts On The Meditative Essay - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

In case you wondered ...

... So Why Read (Fiction) Any More? - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Every written text belongs to its author, not to you. This proposition, I realize, is sadly anachronistic. It sounds like an admonition to thrift and chastity. It paddles against the current of the times. Michel Foucault has taught us, after all, that the author is an impediment to freedom — that he is not really a person at all (who is owed respect), but merely a “certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses. . . .” Remove the author, Roland Barthes urges, and you remove all limitations upon the text.

Let us hope ...

... Do the Classics Have a Future? by Mary Beard | The New York Review of Books.

Rattigan is doing more here than exploring the tortured psyches of the British upper-middle class (and it’s not just another “school story,” which Americans often think a quirky fixation of British writers). Well classically trained himself, he is also raising central questions about the classics, the classical tradition, and our modern engagement with it. How far can the ancient world help us to understand our own? What limits should we place on our reinterpretation and reappropriation of it? (When Aeschylus wrote “God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master,” he certainly did not have a schoolmaster in mind, but a military conqueror; in fact, the phrase—and this too, I guess, was part of Rattigan’s point—was one of the last spoken by Agamemnon to Clytemnestra before she took him inside to kill him.)

Pretty grim ...

... Monopolizing the Master | Michael Anesko | Review by The Spectator.

Review ...

... BOOK BOUND: ‘Images of Being’ reflects light amid darkness - Entertainment - Montgomery News.

Cemetery watch ...

... A Midnight Dreary for Those Who Seek Tell-Tale Signs of Poe's Elusive 'Toaster' - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Look and listen ...

... Culture Desk: Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home” : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A question ...

Given that God is eternal, which is to say outside of time, and that he creates the world by virtue of his thinking of it, does it not follow that the world and everything in it is in some sense eternal as well? In fact, how could he have begun to think of it, given that the term begun - like every other temporal term - has no meaning in an eternal context?

Any thoughts?

A while back, Andrew Kenneally posted a piece relevant to this: God, Time, Idolatry.

RIP ...

... Gustav Leonhardt - Telegraph.

The Razor's Edge

It's a rare pleasure to read a book that's been recommended to you years ago, and to find that it's lived up to its praise.

That's what's happened to me recently with W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor Edge, a novel that I've been meaning to read for - perhaps I'd better not admit this - almost a decade.

I must say, I really enjoyed this book. I found the story captivating, Maugham's style refreshing, and the novel's narration compelling. True, there are faults here (including an extended meditation toward the end of the novel on Hinduism and Buddhism), but they are outweighed by Maugham's subtle pursuit of two themes: first, the idea of success and how it is best defined; and second, the idea of patience, of emotional deferment.

For me, the second theme was most satisfying, and it's clear that Maugham's narrator plays a vital role in our understanding (which evolves over the course of the novel) of what goals are worthy of patient pursuit and which are temporary, ephemeral.

As I suggest, The Razor's Edge is not without its faults (nor its moments that Maugham's readers must suspend their disbelief in terms of narrative omniscience), but in the end, I found this book worthy of the praise its garnered over the years, and feel, as a stylist, that Maugham should be up there on our list of twentieth-century greats.

In case you wondered ...

... Works and Days - So Why Read Anymore?

Thought for the day ...

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

- Charles de Montesquieu, born on this date in 1689

Just a thought ...

An empty bar and an empty church share an atmosphere.

From Maxine ...

... Book review: Dead in the Water by Aline Templeton | Petrona.

Indeed ...

... Gimme a brick! The T. S. Eliot Prize controversy that shouldn't have been - The Globe and Mail.

Has the widow Eliot forgotten that her husband once worked in a bank?

My apologies to Mrs. Eliot. As Maxine points out in her comment, Valerie Eliot has no part in this controversy. My mistake.