Saturday, June 30, 2012
The difficulty of being religious …
… The Literature of Conversion — Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Have a look …
… Friday video: Samuel Beckett’s Nacht und Träume (1982) | Superfluities Redux. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It helps to know the Schubert Lied.
It helps to know the Schubert Lied.
FYI …
… Transmissions from a Lone Star: A Short History of Useful Idiots | Columnists | RIA Novosti.
It was Lenin who first identified the genus of Western intellectual known as “the useful idiot,” but it was Stalin who showed how incredibly easy it was to seduce them: a free holiday, dinner, a little flattery and wa-hey- the knickers are off! But then Stalin died, the USSR became much less violent and the useful idiots lost interest.
Good news …
… Archbishop Sheen decree a 'great day' for US Catholics :: Catholic News Agency (CNA). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Postponement …
… The Chattering Mind by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In the twentieth century this monstrously heightened consciousness meshes with the swelling background noise of modern life and we have the full-blown performing mind of modernist literature. It starts perhaps in that room where the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. Soon Leopold Bloom is diffusing his anxiety about Molly’s betrayal in the shop signs and newspaper advertisements of Dublin. In Mrs Dalloway’s London people muddle thoughts of their private lives with airborne advertisements for toffee, striking clocks, sandwich men, omnibuses, chauffeur-driven celebrities.
Thought for the day …
I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.
— Georges Duhamel, born on this date in 1884
Friday, June 29, 2012
Matters of debate...
...Martha Nussbaum and the new religious intolerance
She is full of praise for the Episcopal Church, for the gay bishop Gene Robinson, and its former presiding bishop, Frank Griswold, whom she knew as a teenager in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. "Our Episcopal Church has come a very long way as a force for social progress." But it was while working with the poor in India that she came to see the way in which the Christian teaching that all are made in the image and likeness of God can become a powerful political force for good.
FYI …
… Ancient text gives clue to mysterious radiation spike : Nature News and Comment. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thoughtfor the day …
A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born on this date in 1900
Art, meet finance...
...Buy the book
James Budden, Baillie Gifford’s director of marketing and distribution, says books match the personality of the money manager and its employees – who, in his words, are “a bit nerdy”. The company’s sponsorship of literary awards helps market it to a wider audience, he says: average literary festival-goers are in their fifties, educated to degree level and have typically earned enough money to need investment services.
Let's wish them luck...
“I see myself as a writer that is black rather than a black writer," he told me. “I’m not trying to play down the fact that I’m black, but when it comes to my audience I never want to write something for a black audience only. I can be talking about the blackest thing ever but that doesn’t mean it’s meant for a certain set of ears.”
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Friends …
… The Novelists - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… both have developed into authors of extraordinary range. O'Brien has expanded on her early portrayals of small-town Irish life to address issues such as sectarian violence and Irish abortion law. O'Hagan's first book, The Missing, was a nonfiction exploration of children in Britain who have disappeared; he went on to write novels marked by their variety, from an intergenerational story of a Scottish family, to an act of ventriloquism that saw him channel the voice of Marilyn Monroe's Maltese terrier. The two writers are, as he points out, members of the "O-apostrophe club," part of that great diaspora "deeply engaged with reinvention." And, of course, invention.
Perils of finding...
...The dream job
The B-school braggart will tell you: “An investment banker should only marry within his line of work or risk dying at his spouse’s hand.” It’s one of those in-house jokes B-schoolers laugh gratuitously over, leaving outsiders to question their sense of humour, among other things. But scratch the glib talk and one uncovers a grim reality: the big bucks indeed go to those who are willing to not just do their jobs, but become them.
Well worth remembering
… Oxford DNB: Lives of the week: J.B. Priestley. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Priestley's Literature and Western Man was of the most influential books in my life.
Priestley's Literature and Western Man was of the most influential books in my life.
The way it works …
… Good Art, Bad People - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The reason that question — “Can bad people create good art?” — is misleading is that badness and goodness in this formulation don’t refer to the same thing. In the case of the artist, badness or goodness is a moral quality or judgment; in the case of his art goodness and badness are terms of aesthetic merit, to which morality does not apply. The conductor Daniel Barenboim, a Jew, is a champion of Wagner’s music, for example, and has made a point of playing it in Israel, where it is hardly welcome. His defense is that while Wagner may have been reprehensible, his music is not. Barenboim likes to say that Wagner did not compose a single note that is anti-Semitic. And the disconnect between art and morality goes further than that: not only can a “bad” person write a good novel or paint a good picture, but a good picture or a good novel can depict a very bad thing. Think of Picasso’sGuernica or Nabokov’s Lolita , an exceptionally good novel about the sexual abuse of a minor, described in a way that makes the protagonist seem almost sympathetic.
FYI …
… well, actually, it was a couple of days ago: Poetry and Poets in Rags: News at Eleven: Today marks the start of the Poetry Parnassus.
Thought for the day …
Those who desire to rise as high as our human condition allows, must renounce intellectual pride, the omnipotence of clear thinking, belief in the absolute power of logic.
— Alexis Carrel, born on this date in 1873
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
A knowing joke …
… John Updike the Jew — www.tabletmag.com — Readability. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Levitation” can also be read as Ozick’s coded response to her contemporary John Updike, who six years earlier had published Bech: A Book, the first of what would become three collections of short stories devoted to the fictional American Jewish writer Henry Bech. The Bech books, which have just been reissued in paperback as part of Random House’s ongoing edition of Updike’s collected works, constitute a weird outlier in Updike’s enormous oeuvre. They are among his most personal, confessional works, dealing as they do with the inner life and professional misadventures of a novelist who in many ways resembles Updike himself. Often, reading the Bech stories, it is easy to imagine Updike drawing upon his own experiences and venting his own writerly spleen—about the fecklessness of publishers, the illusory nature of celebrity, the envy and resentment of rivals and critics. The sheer length of time Updike spent writing about Bech—Bech: A Book (1970) was followed by Bech Is Back(1982) and Bech at Bay (1998)—means that he occupied Updike’s imagination for as long, if never as deeply, as his greatest creation, Rabbit Angstrom.
How about that …
… Margaret Atwood joins story-sharing website Wattpad | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
A great many things which in times of lesser knowledge we imagined to be superstitious or useless, prove today on examination to have been of immense value to mankind.
— Lafcadio Hearn, born on this date in 1850
Farewell...
...NORA EPHRON: EVERYONE’S ARCH AND INSIGHTFUL NEW BEST FRIEND
“That’s how bourgeois I am: at the split second I picked up the pie to throw at Mark, at the split second I was about to do the bravest—albeit the most derivative—thing I had ever done in my life, I thought to myself: Thank God the floor is linoleum and can be wiped up.”
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Hmm …
… Evolution and Our Inner Conflict - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What seems lost on Wilson is that mankind identified the problem millennia ago by means of myth.
The eternal conflict is not God’s test of humanity. It is not a machination of Satan. It is just the way things worked out.
What seems lost on Wilson is that mankind identified the problem millennia ago by means of myth.
In case you wondered …
… What Makes Bad Writing | Dear Book Lover - WSJ.com.
It's impossible to define bad writing because no one would agree on a definition. We all know it when we see it, and we all see it subjectively. I remember going almost mad with irritation at how many times Carolyn Chute used the phrase "fox-color eyes" in her best-selling novel "The Beans of Egypt, Maine"—bad writing, I thought. On Amazon, other readers called it "brilliant."
Look out below …
… London prepares for poetry bombing | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Enthusiasm …
… Walking with Chatwin by Rory Stewart | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Songlines was one of the reasons that I left my job and spent a year and a half crossing parts of Asia, entirely on foot. Chatwin made me imagine that I could internalize a continuous unfolding line of footprints—stretching across six thousand miles—and perhaps even be able to call these steps back, and re-create the whole long journey in my memory. I tried to compose epic poems to the rhythm of my footfalls across the Iranian desert; in India I carried the Bhagavad Gita in my hand and read a line at a time; in Nepal I focused on breathing meditation. And I imagined I would arrive like some legendary wanderer with cloak and staff, to the marvel of the villagers.
Well, maybe …
… Enhanced ebooks are bad for children finds American study | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It's a pretty small sample, so these findings are distinctly preliminary.
It's a pretty small sample, so these findings are distinctly preliminary.
A stray review …
A few months ago, I wrote a review of Bernard Cornwell's The Death of Kings for The Inquirer. Unfortunately, there never seemed to be space to run it. So I've decided to post it here: The Death of Kings.
Gazing into nullity …
… The Puns and Detritus in James Joyce’s “Ulysses” : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Science and discourse …
… Bryan Appleyard — Blog Archive — Dawkins, Goldacre and the Lumbering Robots. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See this as well.
See this as well.
Ratcatchers' Day …
… a neglected event, to be sure: Of Rats, Pipers and Joy - The Barnes and Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
— Pearl Buck, born on this date in 1892
Monday, June 25, 2012
No surprise here …
… Political Scientists Are Lousy Forecasters - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)
Which, of course, won't stop the the NYT and other media outlets from citing their "expertise." To quote Pete Seeger, "When will they ever learn?"
Which, of course, won't stop the the NYT and other media outlets from citing their "expertise." To quote Pete Seeger, "When will they ever learn?"
Sad, but true …
… Catholicism: The Philadelphia Story | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here's something I had to say on the subject a while back: Stop the bell, close the book, quench the candle ...
Here's something I had to say on the subject a while back: Stop the bell, close the book, quench the candle ...
Mystery …
… PJ Lifestyle — A Divine Miracle For Skeptics Who Do Not Believe In Miracles. (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)
I actually met one of these priests, when he visited St. Joe's back when I was an undergraduate there. Can't remember his name, though.
I actually met one of these priests, when he visited St. Joe's back when I was an undergraduate there. Can't remember his name, though.
Utter nonsense indeed …
… Richard O'Dwyer: an unfair, absurd case | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
I just signed the petition.
More here: Richard O'Dwyer and the new internet war.
I just signed the petition.
More here: Richard O'Dwyer and the new internet war.
A decent list...
...Seven books based in Mumbai that you should read
Before I started living in Mumbai, I had read Maximum City and Love and Longing in Bombay. Both are very good, though I have a special fondness for the latter. (I reviewed Vikram Chandra's other book, Sacred Games, for Frank when he was books editor at Philly Inq.)
Before I started living in Mumbai, I had read Maximum City and Love and Longing in Bombay. Both are very good, though I have a special fondness for the latter. (I reviewed Vikram Chandra's other book, Sacred Games, for Frank when he was books editor at Philly Inq.)
He coulda been a critic …
… Yale U. Press Digitizes Stalin's Massive Personal Archive | Publishing Perspectives.
“The common perception is that Stalin was brutal, paranoiac and senseless. But if you read the notes he was making you can see that, yes he may have been brutal and paranoiac- but he was not stupid. For example, he was very keen on the arts as the most important vehicle for propaganda and he read every important play or screenplay offered by a theater or screenwriter. He read them carefully, and wrote long letters to the authors or producers with his comments. He also personally supervised and heavily revised the Short Course In The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This was one of the most important books in the USSR, and you can see that it went through many drafts and that Stalin essentially rewrote the entire volume completely.”
Un nouvel ami(s)...
...Literary Brooklyn Gets Its Leading Man
“But what happens — it’s already started happening to me — is that you turn 60 and there’s this: ‘This is going to turn out well. This can’t turn out well,’ ” he said. “But life grows in value because of your leave-taking with regard to it. Not very significant things suddenly look very poignant and charming. This particular period of my life is full of daily novelty. That turns out to be worth a great deal.”
Sounds familiar …
… In praise of folly: fake kings and ripping tales | The Book Haven.
This dizzying tale is told with insight and brio by Iberian scholar Ruth McKay in The Baker Who Pretended to Be King of Portugal(University of Chicago). As the Stanford-based author writes in her prologue: “The weather was terrible, the king was dying wars were going badly, and Spain’s fortunes were waning. So it was a time for grasping at straws. When the world appears to be collapsing, people cling to whatever they have at hand, to whatever seems likeliest to help. … This story of a false Sebastian has a great deal to teach us about news and politics and about how people manage to live among forces they might not understand.”
Thought for the day …
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.
— George Orwell, born on this date in 1903
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Reinterpretation...
...The Eye of the Beholder
“I am often asked, ‘Who is your guru?’” Waswo said. “I say, ‘My barber’, and I am not being flip.” For all their daily worries and tribulations, Waswo feels that the humbler among us “keep a smile in their heart”.
FYI …
… FLP - Author Events - Author Events - Joshua Henkin | The World Without You.
This is the book I reviewed in today's Inquirer. Try to make it.
This is the book I reviewed in today's Inquirer. Try to make it.
Food fight ...
... Richard Dawkins in furious row with EO Wilson over theory of evolution | Science | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Wilson, of course, has actually done science -- you know, research and stuff -- unlike Dawkins, who really hasn't.
Wilson, of course, has actually done science -- you know, research and stuff -- unlike Dawkins, who really hasn't.
Thought for the day ...
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
- John Ciardi, born on this date in 1916
Saturday, June 23, 2012
So, there ...
... Journal: ‘Self-plagiarism’, repurposing, and other sins — l. lee lowe.
I confess to recycling my own words whenever the need arises. If I liked the way I said something ij the first place, I feel no need to come up with a variant. Of course, I make a point of not recycling other people's words sans attribution.
I confess to recycling my own words whenever the need arises. If I liked the way I said something ij the first place, I feel no need to come up with a variant. Of course, I make a point of not recycling other people's words sans attribution.
Interesting list ...
... Books That Shaped America - National Book Festival (Library of Congress). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
They do, right?
... People Matter by Bruce S. Thornton - City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man: “At some future period . . . the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.”That's not very nice.
Getting terms straight ...
... La Bocca della Verit: Andrew Sullivan Is Not Thinking This Through. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The best of friends ...
... People I’ve never laid eyes on - How Publishing Is Rigged. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm ...
... Technology - Daniel C. Dennett - 'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is, however, requisite that said machine be constructed. A machine is an artifact. An artifact requires an artificer. If you want to eliminate all talk of an artificer, you will have to come up with another metaphor. There are no machines in nature. Nature doesn't do machines.
In order to be a perfect and beautiful computing machine, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is.
It is, however, requisite that said machine be constructed. A machine is an artifact. An artifact requires an artificer. If you want to eliminate all talk of an artificer, you will have to come up with another metaphor. There are no machines in nature. Nature doesn't do machines.
The nature of discourse ...
... Why Libertarianism Doesn't Work, Part N - NYTimes.com.
I just happened to come upon this and was struck by the bizarre leap Krugman makes from "better politicians" to"incorruptible politicians." By his "logic," we should simply stand pat with the politicians we have and give them more and more power over more and more of our lives. Guess this proves that you can win a Nobel and still be a dope.
I just happened to come upon this and was struck by the bizarre leap Krugman makes from "better politicians" to"incorruptible politicians." By his "logic," we should simply stand pat with the politicians we have and give them more and more power over more and more of our lives. Guess this proves that you can win a Nobel and still be a dope.
Thought for the day ...
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.
- Jean Anouilh, born on this date in 1910
Friday, June 22, 2012
The end of gay fiction?
...From This Day Forward: Marriage in Gay and Lesbian Fiction
So marriage is already an important part of gay and lesbian fiction. Yet it is a provisional, homemade kind of marriage. Legal marriage will surely bring wedding planners and lawyers into the equation, but I don’t think it will change our stories as much as one might expect. Maybe we will finally see a couple of good, powerful, ugly gay divorce novels.
Affinities …
… Do Martin Amis and Katie Price write in a similar way? – Farm Lane Books Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A favorite …
… Mike Wallace reads Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” [Audio] - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Thought for the day …
I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.
— Octavia Butler, born on this date in 1947
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Joseph Brodsky
Talk about a talented writer. I don't know much about his background or flight from the Soviet Union, but Joseph Brodsky could weave a sentence. That's for sure.
I've spent the last few days making my way through his homage to Venice, Watermark. It's an unusual little book with flashes of Calvino speckled throughout. What I liked most about it was its structure: Brodsky uses short chapters to weave a colorful tapestry, one built on memory, observation, and history.
In many ways, Brodsky functioned - in this book, at least - as a modern flaneur. He patrolled Venice, but without the self-consciousness of nineteenth-century writers. His goal was to fade into the city, to seek its core.
And while Brodsky acknowledges that he never quite reached the center (in some metaphysical sense), he clearly came very close.
God bless her …
… Susan Gubar on Writing Her Way Through Ovarian Cancer : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… Jed Perl: How Hilton Kramer Got Lost In The Culture Wars | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Rereading The Age of the Avant-Garde and The Revenge of the Philistines (what terrific titles!), I find myself wondering if the boldface simplifications of Hilton’s later polemics came out of his frustration at how little his most judicious judgments had done to affect the course of events. After years spent weighing the virtues of countless artists and exhibitions, he found all of his careful calculations swept away by the onslaught of Pop and the transformation of museums into funhouses. Who can wonder that Hilton lost his cool? Who can wonder that the complicator became a simplifier? I know I should not have been surprised. But I did find it strange to watch, beginning with the white-hot controversies around the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, as this extraordinarily subtle man stood shoulder to shoulder with right-wing ideologues who cared as little for Mondrian as they did for Mapplethorpe. Hilton may have imagined that his own taste was too fine to be compromised by their outrageous crudity. Despite all he knew about the dumbing-down of the media, he underestimated the power of the press to coarsen his own ideas.
Apparently, poor Jed is too young or too naive to know that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Also, Kramer was savvy enough to know that there isn't all that much difference between a right-wing ideologue and left-wing ideologue. Maybe some day Jed will pick up on that as well — if he ever shakes off being, well, a left-wing ideologue.
In case you wondered …
… Health - Hans Villarica - Study of the Day: Why Crowded Coffee Shops Fire Up Your Creativity - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was interviewed once in a crowded coffee shop. Otherwise, the only thing I've ever done in one is have coffee, chat, or read. Maybe I should try writing there sometime.
I was interviewed once in a crowded coffee shop. Otherwise, the only thing I've ever done in one is have coffee, chat, or read. Maybe I should try writing there sometime.
Message, meet medium …
… Recognizing a New Medium: the Kindle | News and Opinion | PCMag.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don't think anyone noticed that the Kindle is not just a different way of reading books or other publications. Rather, it is a completely new medium that psychologically changes the way we read.
Very brave and very sad …
… Clive James says he's lost his battle with cancer - Mirror Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
— Françoise Sagan, born on this date in 1935
… A look at Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse, and Jack Kerouac: Sex, Drugs and Literature.
… A look at Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse, and Jack Kerouac: Sex, Drugs and Literature.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Worrisome …
… Two-thirds of parents 'never read to their babies' | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Memory and landscape …
… The Bibliophilic Blogger: Robert MacFarlane: The Old Ways. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I haven't read this yet …
… because I only just finished reviewing the book myself this morning: Review: The Tyranny of Grief — Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Enter the clones …
… Apple Granted Patent to Create Identity Clones | News | The Mac Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And more news from Apple: Nerds of the World, Unite! iTunes U Just Got Interactive.
And more news from Apple: Nerds of the World, Unite! iTunes U Just Got Interactive.
Outsider's perspective …
… Paranormalia: Bad Spirituality. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think my stepdaughters will attest that the household they grew up in provided a wider than usual spectrum of spiritual, philosophical, and religious viewpoints. Maybe too wide.
I think my stepdaughters will attest that the household they grew up in provided a wider than usual spectrum of spiritual, philosophical, and religious viewpoints. Maybe too wide.
Terrible …
… Pen International – SUDAN – Poet reportedly sentenced to death, place of detention unknown. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The last Victorian …
… The American Scholar: An Unquenchable Gaiety of Mind - George Watson. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Diaster alert …
… Duluth overwhelmed by floodwaters after overnight deluge | kare11.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is Dave's neck of the woods. Be careful, my friend.
This is Dave's neck of the woods. Be careful, my friend.
Worth noting …
… Black Evangelical Shocks Upper West Side | Via Meadia.
… many uninformed Americans, among which can be included a very large group of New York Times readers, have little contact with, knowledge about or respect for evangelicals of any color. “Evangelical = Republican = Racist” is one of the core pillars of the Upper West Side worldview.
Thought for the day …
When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
— Clifton Fadiman, who died on this date in 1999
Martin Amis
More on his ecstatic prose...
His father Kingsley said, “I wish he would just once write a sentence like, ‘Then they finished their drinks and left.’” Martin Amis would rather eat bees than risk being so boring. At 62 he is still the most exciting living British writer for anyone concerned with vivid prose. Ian McEwan can be more formally exact, Iain Sinclair more jaggedly musical, Salman Rushdie more wildly imaginative. But you settle into an Amis novel, or essay, confident that he’ll cut to the heart of the subject with withering intelligence. “He has a style”, wrote John Carey, Britain’s leading literary critic, “as quick and efficient as a flick-knife.”
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Indeed …
… Why use wooden spoons? They’re practical, have a rich history, and they last forever. - Slate Magazine.
The best soup spoon I have ever used was a Moroccan wooden spoon. Absolutely perfect.
The best soup spoon I have ever used was a Moroccan wooden spoon. Absolutely perfect.
Belated happy birthday …
… The Book Haven | Cynthia Haven's blog for the written word.
Geoffrey and I once exchanged some personal details at the 92d Street Y. The most important being that we are are both the sons of policemen. As Geoffrey put it to me, "It really is a brotherhood, isn't it?" It is indeed.
Bitter truth...
...The importance of being unpalatable
The essays are not written with an Indian perspective in mind; there is a British context, apart from the global. However, India does figure prominently in the essay on the global warming scam. “A study of the costs to the Indian poor of curbing carbon emissions has estimated that, over a thirty-year time horizon, with a 10 per cent annual emission restriction, the poor population increases by 21 per cent, even in the short run, and by nearly 50 per cent for a 30 per cent annual emission reduction.”
From Maxine …
… Book review: In Her Blood by Annie Hauxwell | Petrona.
Lots of other reviews there as well. So click on the main page and scroll.
Lots of other reviews there as well. So click on the main page and scroll.
Hmm …
… National - Robert Wright - Creationists vs. Evolutionists: An American Story - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
On the whole, I agree. Where I disagree is equating skepticism about global warming (let's drop weasel phrases like "climate change" — the climate is changing even as I write; that's what it does) with anti-scientism (come to think of it, there are plenty of good reasons to be anti-scientism; scientism and science are hardly the same things). Freeman Dyson is skeptical regarding global warming. He can hardly be regarded as anti-science (which is the term Wright should have used).
Joycean joys...
...Nilanjana S Roy: The happiest Bloomsday ever
I was bowled over by this piece. Much has been written about Bloomsday this year and the years past but I have never read a piece that does not gratuitously stress on what a tough read Ulysses is. Roy's love for the book shines through here. Her writing, as always, is a delight (eg "The first school spawned a rash of writers who turned out passages of the “Thrash, kick, bite. Thrash, kick, slap” sort under the impression that they were being Joycean. Which is a little dangerous, like assuming you bought madeleines at the bakery and can now write like Proust.")
Time I shed my ill-founded fears of the book and dipped myself in the ne plus ultra of one of modernism's finest practitioners.
Time I shed my ill-founded fears of the book and dipped myself in the ne plus ultra of one of modernism's finest practitioners.
Internecine strife …
… Edinburgh Book Festival: The war of the words - Features - Scotsman.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
- If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole
— Blaise Pascal, born on this date in 1623
Monday, June 18, 2012
Complex causation …
… Bryan Appleyard — Blog Archive — Not in Our Genes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Does this not amount to the inheritance of acquired characteristics?
The gene-centric view was that the gene produced a protein that went on to build an organism. In fact, we now know not only that some genes can produce several proteins, but also that this mechanism can be turned on and off by processes of which, not long ago, we knew nothing. The gene, in other words, is not the last word and may not even be the first. It is certainly not in complete control of anything.The implications are staggering. The first is that twins may not be identical because these processes (the most common is called methylation) could have happened to them in the womb. Second, the sins of the grandparents can be visited upon the grandchildren. Spector has cases of one generation’s starving and binge-eating during postwar austerity resulting in obesity two generations later. In other words, what you do in life may affect the genomes of your offspring.
Does this not amount to the inheritance of acquired characteristics?
Worth noting …
… The Silence of St. Thomas (Josef Pieper) — Quantum Est In Rebus Inane. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Pieper's The Silence f St. Thomas is an excellent book.
Pieper's The Silence f St. Thomas is an excellent book.
FYI …
… Coming this fall, 'Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany' | Rock Candy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In case you wondered …
… The complete critic’s qualifications | Superfluities Redux. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Happily, I'm just a reviewer.
Happily, I'm just a reviewer.
Classic review …
… New Statesman - Ulysses. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Modern fiction, in so far as it is adventurous, tends to become more and more rhapsodical, episodic, and psychological. The importance of Ulysses lies in its carrying these tendencies to the very last limit.
Thought for the day …
It is a trick among the dishonest to offer sacrifices that are not needed, or not possible, to avoid making those that are required.
— Ivan Goncharov, born on this date in 1812
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Listen in …
… to an interview with Christian Wiman: Poetry: Past, Present and... | To the best of our KNOWLEDGE. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Savoring failure …
… Happiness is a glass half empty | Oliver Burkeman | Life and style | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Failure is everywhere. It's just that most of the time we'd rather avoid confronting that fact.
Men with knives …
… Finger-Steepling and Sharks: Ian McEwan Reconsidered. (Hat tip, Ed Champion.)
Things that were overrated tend to end up being underrated, and vice versa. It's not unfashionable to deride McEwan these days, but it tends to be for the wrong reasons. An inept piece in the New Statesman by Ziauddin Sardar lamented the rise of "Blitcon", by which he meant the supposedly conservative politics of the three leading British novelists, McEwan, Amis and Rushdie (which amounted to their opposition to the invasion of Iraq being accompanied by reservations). Like the (admittedly not unfounded) attacks on Amis by Ronan Bennett and Terry Eagleton, and the attacks on McEwan for not boycotting Israel, they invite one's sympathy for the beseiged novelist to some extent, because they seem to demand a rigid, orthodox political and social outlook which is anathema to literature. Would Evelyn Waugh, had he lived in this age, have established himself as one of the greatest craftsmen of English prose, or would he have been hounded away from it because he said nasty things? The extraordinary writer and prose stylist James Ellroy is on record as saying he loves Bill O'Reilly, believes the Rodney King incident was blown out of proportion by the liberal media and that he shook Kenneth Starr by the hand to congratulate him on his role in exposing Clinton; while Ben Elton describes himself as a believer in the politics of Clement Attlee. Obviously Elton's politics are greatly preferable to me, while Ellroy's comments make my teeth grind, but whose novels have we truly benefited from? Do we really require nice, calm, sensible orthodox beliefs from novelists?
All downhill …
… A Short History Of Book Reviewing’s Long Decline | The Awl. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Happily, no one booed me off the stage the other night at the Library when I admitted to having wasted nearly half-a-century writing book reviews.
As we approached 2000, with newspapers shrinking and the Internet swelling, reports on the state of book reviewing become markedly bleak. I would call these pieces Manifestos, if they weren’t so despondent in tone. In "The Amazing Disappearing Book Review Section," a 2001 piece for Salon, Kevin Berger examined the San Francisco Chronicle’s decision to do away with its pullout, 12-page book section (while also moving book reviews to the back of its Sunday entertainment section), finding it illustrative of a wider move to replace book criticism with other forms of pop culture observation. A dour mood is struck at the beginning of the piece when one of the paper's editors, leading Berger to the department, admits, "I’ve actually never been down there." The department's out-of-sight, out-of-mind location mirrored its exile to the newspaper’s back pages: "A sign on a far wall said ‘Book Review,’ followed by an arrow." At this millennial mark, entering the realm of book reviewing had become akin to placing yourself in a horror film.
Happily, no one booed me off the stage the other night at the Library when I admitted to having wasted nearly half-a-century writing book reviews.
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