… National Book Critics Circle Award winners announced - latimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Refreshingly fresh, I would say.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
No pulled punches on view here, folks …
… Instapundit — PROFILES IN COURAGE: Richard Dawkins: Islam? What’s that?
Given the weakness of his arguments against what amounts to a straw-God (at least that it how it strikes this person of faith, who, whatever else may be said of me, is not uninformed on the subject of religion; I think I have a good idea of what I am talking about when I use the word "God" — as distinguished from the word "god"), and given as well Dawkins's rude manner of expression, it is hard not to entertain the notion that this all has something to do with Professor Dawkins's psyche, and little to do with either religion or science.
Hmm …
… Is, Ought, and Nature’s Laws | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It would be interesting to see what Bill Vallicella or Edward Feser think about this. What it implies regarding contemporary political discourse is disturbing.
To put the matter very simply, belief in natural law is inseparable from the idea of nature as a realm shaped by final causes, oriented in their totality toward a single transcendent moral Good: one whose dictates cannot simply be deduced from our experience of the natural order, but must be received as an apocalyptic interruption of our ordinary explanations that nevertheless, miraculously, makes the natural order intelligible to us as a reality that opens up to what is more than natural.
It would be interesting to see what Bill Vallicella or Edward Feser think about this. What it implies regarding contemporary political discourse is disturbing.
Taking Holmes to court …
… Lawsuit Seeks to Put Sherlock Holmes in the Public Domain. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Leave it to Katie …
… to put it all together: On Grandmothers, Drag Queens, and Mending Your Clothes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tracing a phrase …
… The Two Most Beautiful Words in the English Language Are “Check Enclosed”. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
More good advice …
… 'I Urge You to Drop E67-02': Course Syllabi by Famous Authors - Emily Temple - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
See also: W. H. Auden's syllabus will make your college courses look like a piece of cake. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Auden, of course, was classically educated.
See also: W. H. Auden's syllabus will make your college courses look like a piece of cake. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Auden, of course, was classically educated.
Back to square one …
… The Turn Against Nabokov : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
You would think the write would notice that the "rightward track" brings Russia back to where it was under the Soviet, who were never referred to as "rightward." Tyranny is tyranny. England may be said to have turned "rightward" under Margaret Thatcher , but nothing resembling tyranny followed. Such subtleties apparently escape The New Yorker's editors.
In January, three men jumped the play’s twenty-four-year-old producer, Anton Suslov, giving him two black eyes and a concussion while calling him a “pedophile”; a murky video of the beating was posted online. The same libel was slashed in spray paint across the walls of the Nabokov museum in St. Petersburg and the writer’s ancestral estate in Rozhdestveno, about fifty miles from the city. Anonymous activists had petitioned to have the play banned, the museum closed, and Nabokov’s books purged from stores. The author, whose novels thrum with ironic recurrences, might have been perversely pleased with this: thirty-six years after his death and twenty-two years after the fall of the Soviet Union with all its khudsovets, Vladimir Nabokov is, once again, controversial.
These events are some of the more alarming demonstrations of Russia’s rightward tack. Ever since the wave of urban protest that hit the country in late 2011, Vladimir Putin and his United Russia Party seem to have decided to cut their losses with the country’s finicky élites and focus on demonizing them as Western agents for the benefit of a poorer, older, more rural voter base.
You would think the write would notice that the "rightward track" brings Russia back to where it was under the Soviet, who were never referred to as "rightward." Tyranny is tyranny. England may be said to have turned "rightward" under Margaret Thatcher , but nothing resembling tyranny followed. Such subtleties apparently escape The New Yorker's editors.
Good advice …
… Put away the pills and listen to Tennessee Williams - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Back later …
I have some personal matters deal with this morning. Blogging will resume this afternoon.
FYI …
… Debunking the Bestseller - The Mystery of the Book Sales Spike | Leapfrogging Innovation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.
— Michel de Montaigne, born on this date in 1533
Today's must-read...
...Interview with a writer: John Gray
Well there is this notion in some intellectual circles that evil is a kind of error: that if you get more knowledge you won’t commit the error. People often say: if we get more knowledge for human psychology won’t that help? No. All knowledge is ambiguous in this way. The Nazis were very good at using their knowledge at mass psychology. Or if you were a Russian revolutionary like Lenin, you might use the knowledge of the causes of inflation to take control of the central bank, create hyper-inflation and bring about your revolutionary project. So knowledge can never eradicate the conflicts of the human world, or produce harmony where there are conflicting goals to start with. Because knowledge is used by human beings as a tool to achieve whatever it is they want to achieve.
What was felt...
...Moscow under terror
Schlögel has grasped what a very different historian, G. M. Young, called “the real, central theme of History”—“not what happened, but what people felt about it when it was happening: in Philip Sidney’s phrase, ‘the affects, the whispering, the motions of the people.’ ”
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Looking ahead …
… The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It | Wired Opinion | Wired.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ho-hum …
… The crimes of the Catholic church: not in our names | Joanna Moorhead | Comment is free | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
How could an organisation that professes a direct link to Christ – "You are Peter," Jesus told the first bishop of Rome, "and on this rock I will build my church …" – have gone so far off the rails that it now seems a power-crazed, untrustworthy and corrupt institution, out to save its own skin at almost any cost?
I would suggest the writer check out some people named Borgia and Medici. I am as appalled as anyone by the recent sex scandals in the Church (I wrote about that here: Stop the bell, close the book, quench the candle ...), but the Church as an institution has been plagued by corruption throughout its long history. It is populated, after all, by sinners.
Mind and spirit at work …
… An Ancient Legacy of Form: Guardini on Mastery and Nearness | Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… “mastery” as Guardini uses it is not mastery as we usually think of it. He is not interested in the modern project of easing man’s estate and achieving what according to Bacon was truly lost in Eden: complete dominion over nature. Guardini neither flaunts modern credentials nor posits a state of nature such as Locke or Hobbes or Rousseau might recognize: “In nature ‘untouched,’ in the order in which animals live, we have no place.”
In case you wondered …
… Book Review: Is God Happy? - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
To those younger than 35, communism must seem like some ridiculous hoax. How could so many Western intellectuals have defended an ideology—and defended it into the late 1980s—that had never produced anything but economic devastation, cultural perversion and mass murder? And yet they did. In "Genocide and Ideology," from 1977, Kolakowski asked why Soviet communism attracted so many artists and intellectuals and Nazism so few. He pointed out that Nazism at least stated its aims straightforwardly: Nazis promoted Teutonic racial superiority and the conquest of Europe. Communism, on the other hand, "never preached conquest, only liberation from oppression; it never extolled the state as a value in itself, only stressed the necessity of reinforcing the state as an indispensable lever to destroy the enemies of freedom." All it took to gain the loyalty of influential writers and thinkers, in other words, was some heavy-handed rhetorical legerdemain.
The errors of rationalism …
… Oakeshott vs. America | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The rationalist’s or ideologist’s desire is to solve permanently the problems of political life and leave everything else to administration. Yet politics isn’t concerned with the search for truth. Instead, as Oakeshott noted, “it is concerned with the cultivation of what from time to time are accepted as the peaceable decencies of conduct among men who do not suffer from the Puritan-Jacobin illusion that in practical affairs there is an attainable condition of things called ‘truth’ or ‘perfection.’”
Teller of truth …
… Postscript: C. Everett Koop, 1916-2013 : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"But he had no public-health experience." That would seem to be a distinct advantage, inclining him to the view that the job was about health and not about bureaucracy. The writer might also havr noticed that Reagan never backed off from the appointment.
Surgeons General are usually confirmed quickly and forgotten at once. (How many can you name?) But liberals on Capitol Hill denounced Reagan’s choice for what it was: a blatant attempt to place ideology over the demands of public health.If the would take off his own ideological blinders, he would see the obvious, that it was simply very intelligent political move: Here's brilliant doctor whose political views and religious commitment a lot of people share, people who happen to vote for people like me.
"But he had no public-health experience." That would seem to be a distinct advantage, inclining him to the view that the job was about health and not about bureaucracy. The writer might also havr noticed that Reagan never backed off from the appointment.
Thought for the day …
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff — it is a palliative rather than a remedy.
— Peter De Vries, born on this date in 1910
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Why some of us are grateful …
… Pope Benedict and the Liturgy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Paul VI Mass sucks.
One of the goals of the Second Vatican Council reforms was to provide a liturgy that would clarify the distinction between the priest speaking to God and the priest speaking to the people. Instead, the priest says everything into a microphone facing the people, and the distinction is obliterated.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Paul VI Mass sucks.
Unlike Godot, it will arrive …
… Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon is coming - latimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… A Sokal-style hoax by an anti-religious philosopher — Why Evolution Is True. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, one has to wonder why the people in charge of these theological conferences didn't do what I immediately thought to — check to see who Professor Maundy might be and whether there is a College of the Holy Cross in Reno. I would also have rejected the abstract simply on the basis of its incomprehensibility.
So theological conferences are as trapped in gobbledegook as so many other academic disciplines. That's about all that is demonstrated here. Of course, Coyne's reference to Alvin Plantinga as an "unctuous theologian" says more about Coyne than it does about Plantinga, who is an analytic philosopher.
Prophet of meaninglessness …
… The Silence of Animals by John Gray – review | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think the assertion that the world is meaningless is as dubious as the assertion that one has figured out what it means. What I think we have to accept is that the world has meaning that we don't know what that meaning is. We have — thanks to religion, art, and science — clues as to its meaning. But that is all.
[Gray] offers a negative dialectics that is wonderfully bracing if one is prepared to entertain it. "Accepting that the world is without meaning," he writes, "we are liberated from confinement in the meaning we have made. Knowing there is nothing of substance in our world may seem to rob that world of value. But this nothingness may be our most precious possession, since it opens to us the inexhaustible world that exists beyond ourselves."
I think the assertion that the world is meaningless is as dubious as the assertion that one has figured out what it means. What I think we have to accept is that the world has meaning that we don't know what that meaning is. We have — thanks to religion, art, and science — clues as to its meaning. But that is all.
Pioneer …
… Maxine Clarke and the Power of Book Blogging | Petrona Remembered. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Fervid, often inaccurate, and borderline libelous …
… Richard Seymour’s Tawdry Christopher Hitchens Bio - Newsweek and The Daily Beast. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What many saw as a rather straightforward argument between the right to publish and religious totalitarianism was in fact a far more nuanced “saga” that “was saturated with these meanings and could not be limited to the issue of free speech that Hitchens preferred to fight.” Seymour is either ignorant or lying when he writes that “the editorials and clerical bluster in Iran had yielded little.” Ignore, for a moment, their effect on Rushdie, forced into hiding for a decade merely because he wrote a book that angered an Iranian dictator, or the lasting, silencing effect that such a death sentence puts on all writers. Think instead of Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator who was stabbed to death; Ettore Capriolo, its Italian translator who was seriously wounded in a stabbing; William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher who was shot three times; or the 37 people killed in a 1993 bombing that targeted a Turkish writer who had translated and published portions of the book.
A sad tale …
… Capacities of Spirit | Books and Culture.
[David Foster] Wallace's genius emerged early. At five years old, an age when many still struggle with the alphabet, he penned:My mother works so hardAnd for bread she needs some lard.She bakes the bread. And makes the bed.And when she's threwShe feels she's dayd.Wallace's battle with mental illness also began early, he believed as early as nine or ten. In high school, he suffered from anxiety and crippling panic attacks. He was on the high school tennis team, and he took to carrying around a tennis racket and a towel; if he should break out in a panic-induced sweat, he could say he'd just come from tennis.
About time …
… Long Cloaked in Mystery, Owls Start Coming Into Their Own - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… researchers are tracking the lives of some of the rarer and more outlandishly proportioned owls, like the endangered Blakiston’s fish owl of Eurasia. Nearly a yard high, weighing up to 10 pounds and with a wingspan of six feet, Blakiston’s is the world’s largest owl, a bird so hulking it’s often mistaken for other things, according to Jonathan Slaght of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Russia program. It could easily look like a bear in a tree or a man on a bridge.Or maybe Ernest Hemingway. This powerful predator can pull from the river an adult salmon two, three or more times its own weight, sometimes grabbing onto a tree root with one talon to help make the haul.
Writing to entertain and engage …
… 50 unseen Kipling poems discovered | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tips, Rus Bowden and Dave Lull.)
An extraordinary job …
… Ford Madox Ford and unfilmable Modernism | OUPblog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Parade’s End (1924-28) has been dramatized for TV by Sir Tom Stoppard. It has to be one of the most challenging books to film; but Stoppard has the theatrical ingenuity, and experience, to bring it off. It’s a classic work of Modernism: with a non-linear time-scheme that can jump around in disconcerting ways; dense experimental writing that plays with styles and techniques. Though it includes some of the most brilliant conversations in the British novel, and its characters have a strong dramatic presence, much of it is inherently un-dramatic and, you might have thought, unfilmable: long interior monologues, descriptions of what characters see and feel; and — perhaps hardest of all to convey in drama — moments when they don’t say what they feel, or do what we might expect of them. Imagine T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, populated by Chekhovian characters, but set on the Western Front.
Thought for the day …
Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.
— Theodore Sturgeon, born on this date in 1918
Monday, February 25, 2013
Voluble narrative …
… on Stealing History, essays by Gerald Stern (Trinity University Press) | On the Seawall: A Literary Website by Ron Slate (GD). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I confess to having read only the start of this, because I'm writing a review of it myself. But Ron's stuff is always good. So here it is.
I confess to having read only the start of this, because I'm writing a review of it myself. But Ron's stuff is always good. So here it is.
Together at last …
… Tolkien and Yiddischkeit: Opus D | The End Of The Pier Show. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Covered …
… Roz Chast's New Yorker cover and her strategy for visiting art museums : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A new poem …
… Billy Collins’ “The Deep” | Arts and Culture | Smithsonian Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Unseen and startling images …
… A Pioneering Work that Brings Shakespeare Studies and the Authorship Question into Alignment and Sheds New Light — New English Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I just bought the Kindle version.
I just bought the Kindle version.
Accents …
… Phillyspeak. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Some years ago, when my wife and I were in Chicago, someone commented on her Philadelphia accent. Which was odd, because she started her life in New Jersey, and then her family moved to Norristown, and from there to Bluebell. The same fellow wondered where I was from. I guess the nuns of the Society of the Sacred Heart gave me a different accent. Certainly none of them spoke Philly.
Hmm …
… The Story of How An Artist Created a Genetic Hybrid of Himself and a Petunia | Collage of Arts and Sciences. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I'm not sure what to make of this. Petunias seemed to be doing before Kac came along. And the glowing bunny? Seems more like gimmickry than art to me.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Petunias seemed to be doing before Kac came along. And the glowing bunny? Seems more like gimmickry than art to me.
Weighed in the balance …
… and not found wanting: Literary Caucus: Assessing Philip Roth’s Career — Vulture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Garry Wills, too …
… Gary Wills, Sigh | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Apart from the typo, this is on target. Wills is free to think and argue as he chooses, but no one should regard him as expressing anything resembling orthodox Catholicism.
Apart from the typo, this is on target. Wills is free to think and argue as he chooses, but no one should regard him as expressing anything resembling orthodox Catholicism.
Thought for the day ...
If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.
— Anthony Burgess, born on this date in 1917
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Query and discovery …
… thought not in that order: Detectives Beyond Borders: The real Horace, plus a question for readers.
Sin of omission …
… The Neglected Books Page — Charley Smith’s Girl, by Helen Bevington. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A mess of contradictions …
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Warlike Thoughts and Fear and Smart'.
Very elegant prose, that.One sympathizes and is appalled. Bad manners can never be excused – though one is tempted. In a social world erected on mushy-headed sentiment, where the unspoken orthodoxies are self-serving cant, one quietly admires Smith’s brassiness. How often we’re tempted to shake our heads and – but we bite our tongues.
Q & A …
… Interview with a writer: John Gray — Spectator Blogs. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don’t belong to a religion. In fact I would have to be described as an atheist. But I’m friendly to religion on the grounds that it seems to me to be distinctively human, and it has produced many good things. But you see these humanists or rationalists who seem to hate this distinctively human feature. This to me seems to me very odd. These evangelical atheists say things such as: religion is like child abuse, that if you had no religious education, there would be no religion. It’s completely absurd.
In case you wondered …
… The qualities the next pope will need.
One of the most important changes in the papacy may be how the new pope connects to the world "outside the bubble of the Apostolic Palace," [Rocco] Palmo says. "There is going to be for the first time in the Catholic Church, the world's great bastion of tradition, a pope with a computer on his desk and a smartphone in his pocket. . . . He'll be informed without a filter . . . and that visibly will impact how he governs.A very good point. Thanks to technology, the Pope is no longer any sort of prisoner in the Vatican.
Others think all Catholics should have a say in who runs the church. "I should be involved in some substantive way in decisions affecting my life," says Leonard Swidler, professor of Catholic thought and interreligious dialogue at Temple University. "If we are adults, then we should participate in decisions that substantively affect our lives."
A pretty dumb comment, evidence that we should be glad that Professor Swidler will not get his wish. The Church is not a democracy or a republic and is unlikely ever to be. It certainly isn't going to become one by Friday.
RIP …
… Wolfgang Sawallisch, 1923-2013.
He was a great conductor, and his years here were years of great music.
He was a great conductor, and his years here were years of great music.
Inquirer reviews …
… Winning over people to win the war.
… Jamaica Kincaid's latest: Time flies, cleverly, in 'See Now Then'.
… Reviewing Palin's days as Alaska's governor.
… Jamaica Kincaid's latest: Time flies, cleverly, in 'See Now Then'.
… Reviewing Palin's days as Alaska's governor.
Here's a thought …
… Paul Davis On Crime: Elmore Leonard Wants A Dude Like His Dad For Pope.
Unlikely — though not prohibited — that they would elect a layman (St. Ambrose was a layman when he was elected bishop of Milan), but they could choose someone who was not a member of the college of cardinals.
Unlikely — though not prohibited — that they would elect a layman (St. Ambrose was a layman when he was elected bishop of Milan), but they could choose someone who was not a member of the college of cardinals.
Thought for the day …
One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who died on this date in 1799
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Guess not …
… Unwise to bring up the royal body - FT.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The argument’s finer points were lost on most of the media, which seized on a handful of phrases deployed to describe the plight of the Duchess of Cambridge as she negotiates the trap-laden path that is royal womanhood. She “appeared to have been designed by a committee ... with a perfect plastic smile”. She was “as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities”. She seems, in contrast with Diana, Princess of Wales, “precision-made, machine-made ... capable of going from perfect bride to perfect mother, with no messy deviation”.Well, this strikes me as pretty personal, pretty subjective, and pretty insulting.
And then there were five …
… Bryan Appleyard — Grayling: The Fifth Horseman Rides. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If you do accept at least some version of the adaptive argument – or, indeed, if you are a believer – then the study of religion itself becomes an obligation. Religious faith is not remotely like the belief in fairies, it is a series of stories of immense political, poetic and historical power that is – again, like it or not – deeply embedded in human nature. Seen in that light, to dismiss all religious discourse as immature or meaningless is to embrace ignorance or, more alarmingly, to advocate suppression. It will also make it impossible for you to understand the St Matthew Passion, Chartres Cathedral and the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.
Thought for the day …
Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.
— Karl Jaspers, born on this date in 1883
Friday, February 22, 2013
Another birthday …
… Paris Review – Happy Birthday, Edward Gorey, Clare Fentress. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And the nominees are …
… Nominations for Best Film About a Writer - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But will it top the Baseball Hall of Fame?
… American Writers Museum Will Open In Chicago In 2015. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, that's for sure …
… Correction: Sam Tanenhaus is not a long-time conservative | Capital New York. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I reviewed his biography of Whittaker Chambers, and it is indeed excellent.
I reviewed his biography of Whittaker Chambers, and it is indeed excellent.
Living from hand to mouth …
… Ink Desk | St. Austin Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The purpose of education should not be this. But this is what it has become; and so our young, supremely self-righteous, self-centered and self-indulgent, can see nothing beyond themselves. They may be the perfect specimens of the new species of man, homo consumens, but he can never be fully alive.
School days …
… Sylvia Plath's Wellesley years - Wellesley, Massachusetts - The Wellesley Townsman. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Force for social cohesion...
...Connoisseur of the collective life
Durkheim’s most famous work, Suicide: A Sociological Study, was published in 1897. In it, he sought to explore the most individual and private act possible from a sociological standpoint. Durkheim established empirically that the rate of suicide is a social phenomenon that is typically both stable (over long periods in a given society) and variable (from one society to another). A socially integrated society is a powerful bulwark against suicide. Religion, he found, had a moderating influence on suicide, primarily because it is a force for social cohesion. Domesticity and a feeling of common goals with others have the same protective effect. Durkheim’s keen insights on suicide, a malaise of modernity, remain highly pertinent.
A sense of the tragic …
… Reviewed: The Silence of Animals by John Gray. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Gray wants us to reclaim the stories we have told ourselves and to understand their true nature. What angers him is that today’s secularists refuse to acknowledge that they also live by their myths. The secular myth he most despises is the idea of progress and the belief that by purging ourselves of religion and committing ourselves to optimistic rationality, we will rescue ourselves from tragedy
Thought for the day …
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
— James Russell Lowell, born on this date in 1819
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Poet at work …
… NYSL Library Notes: W. H. Auden - At Work in the Library - Edward Mendelson (1997). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
RIP …
… Barnaby Conrad: Bullfighter, author, saloonkeeper to stars - Los Angeles Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And the nominees are …
… Announcing the 2012 L.A. Times Book Prize finalists - latimes.com. (Hat tip, dave Lull.)
The so-called Catholic …
… Questioning Garry Wills | America Magazine.
How someone who denies the Real Presence can consider himself a Catholic escapes me. I certainly don't think he ought to be regarded as a spokesman for things Catholic.
How someone who denies the Real Presence can consider himself a Catholic escapes me. I certainly don't think he ought to be regarded as a spokesman for things Catholic.
Plath for the day …
… What Sylvia Plath Loved- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios and More. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
So you think you got troubles …
… break — Elberry's Ghost.
Elberry's obviously going through a rough patch, so let's keep him in our prayers.
Elberry's obviously going through a rough patch, so let's keep him in our prayers.
I loved that show …
… The Nat “King” Cole Show: pioneer of music television | OUPblog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My white working-class family never missed that show. And there had to be plenty of others like us. I think Cole was the best crooner of them all, and I'm old enough to remember hearing the King Cole Trio on the radio in the '40s.
Thought for the day …
If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.
— John Henry Newman, born on this date 1801
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Have a listen …
… William Butler Yeats on Modern Poetry: A Rare 1936 BBC Recording | Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A sad tale …
… New History: How Anti-Judaism Is at the Heart of Western Culture – Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Waugh and Wilder …
… The Dawn of Sunset Boulevard - Taki's Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
That Waugh’s The Loved One kick-started Sunset Boulevard wasn’t originally a secret. Although an extensive Google search finds almost no mention of the connection in recent years, Sunset Boulevard‘s cinematographer John Seitz told film historian Kevin Brownlow of Waugh’s influence on the movie, saying that Wilder and producer Charles Brackett “had wanted to do The Loved One, but couldn’t obtain the rights.”
In case you wondered …
… Hilary Mantel: why novelists are deliberately misunderstood | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mantel was attacking the paper doll in which newspapers have imprisoned the real Kate Middleton. That can't be acknowledged without admitting the idea that there's a gap between this paper doll and the real person – that the Kate of your own front page is a brutal and sentimental fiction maintained for ease and profit. The point of Mantel's piece was necessarily invisible to parsing in a Daily Mail news story. So a story had to be made – because here was a famous writer writing about a subject of intense interest to the paper – by missing the point.
Thought for the day …
It is the perpetual dread of fear, the fear of fear, that shapes the face of a brave man.
— Georges Bernanos, born on this date in 1888
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
A bleak assessment …
… Zadie Smith's London by Theodore Dalrymple - City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Arresting time …
… The Quest for Permanent Novelty - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Over the past two centuries, Romantic and post-Romantic writers have discovered in the peculiar temporal structure of first impressions a strategy for pursuing Keats's and Augustine's paradoxical goal. The effort to counter neurobiological time finds expression in an effort to achieve two experientially related but conceptually distinct states. The first is the felt slowing or stopping of time that accompanies an intensely vivid perception. The second is the persistence of this perceptual intensity across chronological time.
An excellent piece …
… Dragoncave: Identities.
A century later literature has become all about that hall of mirrors: imitation and self-referentiality. Narcissism, which is confused with literary referencing, and is mo longer about finding new ways to depict the evolving workings of consciousness. That psychological insight was new to the artists of a century ago, and they found ways to make their art new thereby. Now that their methods have become the mainstream, there's a lot of flailing around, some of it admittedly better than others, but it mostly repeats the now-familiar. As always seems to happen, the avant-garde becomes established.
The compulsion to explain …
… Just-So Stories | Books and Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the argument about the adaptiveness of stories, in Pinker, Gottschall, and Boyd alike, goes something like this: we are evolutionarily wired to be receptive to stories because receptiveness to stories gave our ancestors reproductive advantages. Those who could think narratively had a fund of virtual experience that they could use to anticipate problems, or to respond more constructively to them when they arrived unexpectedly. This led to longer lives and more offspring, offspring who inherited whatever cognitive equipment is associated with story-sensitivity, which over several thousand years produced our cultural environment, positively awash in every kind of narrative.