Sunday, March 31, 2013
A thought for today …
In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
— John Fowles, born on this date in 1926
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Why the versus …
… First Known When Lost: "His Gains In Heaven Are What They Are".
I don't think, in Frost's case, it is a matter of either/or, but rather the elaborate free counterpoint of both/and. I am coming to think that the whole point of poetry — for reader and writer — has to do with learning to get along with mystery: Something is going on, not sure what exactly. Pretty sure about a few things, not so sure about most. Could be this, could be that. Or maybe something else altogether. Getting used to a fundamental uncertainty — and hoping for the best.
Want to learn how to write a multi-volume life of a writer?
… Book Review: Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Oh, goody. I must read this.
… Mr. Parker also believes that critics representing two mighty forces (academia and the New York intellectual world) are bent on destroying the kind of scholarship that he has practiced his whole career. "Despite its immense popularity, literary biography is under attack from subversive interlopers," he writes, and ticks off a literary enemies list of academic critics, mainstream book reviewers and "interpretive" biographers who scorn careful research while favoring their own pet theories and interpretations. In "Melville Biography," he wants to turn the tables on "agenda-driven reviewers" and "recidivist critics" who have written negatively about his own books or who, he believes, have recklessly distorted Melville's life and work. Unusually, he names names—critics like Edmund Wilson, James Wood and Andrew Delbanco and many other prominent intellectuals come in for rough treatment.
Oh, goody. I must read this.
Maybe we just need better understanding …
… Do we need a different Jesus? - Philosophy and Life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is an excellent piece, and do read the exchange at the bottom.
… perhaps there is a Jesus tradition that might speak, and is ready to be revived. It has had an awkward relationship to mainstream western Christianity because early on it got on the wrong side of the gnostic and Chalcedonian controversies. I'm thinking of the Jesus who is variously described as the hidden, wisdom or mystery Jesus. He might speak to a world that seems increasingly conscious of a lost spiritual dimension.
This is an excellent piece, and do read the exchange at the bottom.
Be very afraid …
… A Psychic Reveals His Greatest Trick. It's Actually Kind Of Terrifying. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Cosmic ambivalence …
… Jesus is not destroyed by our hatred | Giles Fraser | Comment is free | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Solitude and suffering, poetry and faith …
… 'My Bright Abyss" by Christian Wiman reviewed by Casey Cep | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The task of finding expression for that renewal, Wiman argues, is imperative. He suspects that the decline of faith might even be linked to the decay of language that can describe faith. “We need a poetics of belief,” Wiman writes of our age, “a language capacious enough to include a mystery that, ultimately, defeats it, and sufficiently intimate and inclusive to serve not only as individual expression but as communal need.”
A thought for today …
Only he who simply and wholly abandons himself to the object of his perception will experience it aesthetically.
— Erwin Panofsky, born on this date in 1892
Friday, March 29, 2013
Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje's English Patient is a book that I'd wanted to read for a while, but I admit that it had never made its way to the top of the pile.
Having finished it this evening, I wanted to offer a few comments:
1. This is a not a fast read. Ondaatje's prose, while not exactly precious, are not far off. Each chapter is an extended meditation, a dream about a story, contained within a novel.
2. I'll give Ondaatje credit for the ethereal quality that pervades this book. There's something about his writing that's almost fog-like, as if the reader is slowly making his way toward the core of the matter, toward a thing that's hidden.
3. This is a novel that bridges two worlds: the time before the Second World War and the period immediately after. What Ondaatje concludes is that, in the absence of bombs and fighting, there's silence. And this silence pervades the Italian villa where this story takes place. When bombs aren't exploding, Ondaatje's characters speak softly - some to the point of not being heard at all. That's the transition from war to peace, from 1945 to 1946.
The English Patient isn't a perfect book; sometimes I felt that Ondaatje was trying too hard to imitate Durrell. But, imitation aside, there's a quality to the book that resonates, that remains. Ultimately, I think that quality is simpler than we might imagine: it's the idea that four different people, speaking four very different languages, and coming from entirely different places, might still find a shared language.
And that language, Ondaatje seems to suggest, might not require words.
A sign of progress …
… How the Philly accent is changing — NewsWorks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I gather that I don't have one. Guess I owe that to the Society of the Sacred Heart and the Jesuits.
I gather that I don't have one. Guess I owe that to the Society of the Sacred Heart and the Jesuits.
The man behind the name …
… Matthew Batt | Hello. My Name Is . . . Dinty Moore. | The Nervous Breakdown. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Neither mystery nor mathematics …
… "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" by A.E. Housman. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Textual criticism is a science, and, since it comprises recension and emendation, it is also an art. It is the science of discovering error in texts and the art of removing it. That is its definition, that is what the name denotes. But I must also say something about what it does and does not connote, what attributes it does and does not imply; because here also there are false impressions abroad.
No matter, never mind …
… Edward Feser: Nagel and his critics, Part VIII. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
From the concrete material objects of everyday life, Descartes and the moderns who have followed him derived two abstractions (as I discussed in an earlier post). First, they abstracted out those features that could be captured in exclusively quantitative terms, reified this abstraction, and called that reified abstraction “matter,” or “the physical,” or that which is “objective.” Second, they abstracted those qualitative features that would not fit the first, quantitative picture, reified that abstraction, and called it “the mental,” or that which is “subjective.” Once this move was made, there was never in principle going to be a way to get mind and matter together again, since they were in effect defined by contrast with one another.
Writing fiction and critiquing it …
… Nieman Reports | The Reviewer Reviewed. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
…as much as I appreciated my job as a critic, I was aware, in the back of my mind, of the distracting presence of a small tendril of dissatisfaction, unfurling just a tiny bit more each day. Because my original ambition had been quite different: I had dreamed of being a writer, not a critic. I wanted to produce my own books not evaluate other people’s books.
Taking exception (in part) ...
... Maverick Philosopher: Kimball on the Philistinism of the Nagel Bashers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reverting to native plainness …
… Anecdotal Evidence: `A True Minor Poet'.
I do not quite agree with Burton's judgment of Thomas, who I think was a true poet, period.
I do not quite agree with Burton's judgment of Thomas, who I think was a true poet, period.
Finding a voice for reflection ...
... In the Wilds of Leopardi by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… two problems arise as far as establishing a voice for translation is concerned. First, the book is almost two hundred years old; second, even if Leopardi might have imagined its being published it was certainly not written or prepared for publication and is full of elisions, abbreviations, notes to himself, rewrites, and cross-references. In fact, on his death in 1837 the huge wad of pages was dumped in a trunk by his friend Antonio Ranieri and was not published in its entirety until 1900. So, do I write in modern prose, or in an early nineteenth-century pastiche? Do I tidy up the very personal and unedited aspect of the text, or do preserve those qualities, if I can?
It's always come easily to me (just joking) ...
... Does Greatness Require Difficulty? — Mike Snider’s Formal Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being ... ultimate reality is what we call God.
— R. S. Thomas, born on this date in 1913
Thursday, March 28, 2013
A love story …
… WHY I WRITE by Barry Hannah :: Oxford American - The Southern Magazine of Good Writing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Writers and addicts …
… David Foster Wallace and Samuel Taylor Coleridge Had a Lot in Common — Helen Rittelmeyer | A First Things Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The last and most important similarity between DFW and STC is that they both became famous too early, before their thinking was fully formed. Early fame is always an invitation to drug addiction, but early literary fame more so than other kinds. On top of the basic child-star problem—which is essentially that you’ve satisfied your desire to be extraordinary and foreclosed the possibility of being ordinary, leaving nothing left but to kill time as efficiently as possible until you drop dead—early literary fame involves the added burden of guilt.
And the winner is …
… First world war poem wins National Poetry Competition 2013 | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, dave Lull.)
One more reason to read Emerson …
… David Brooks disapproves of him: “The Best American Essays 2012,” Edited By David Brooks - The Rumpus.net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The first essay is Benjamin Anastas’s “The Foul Reign of ‘Self-Reliance,’” in which he blames “Emerson’s tacit endorsement of a radically self-centered worldview” for the contemporary conservative movement’s refusal to confront inconvenient facts.One man's inconvenient facts, Ben, are often another's unproved assertions.
[David Foster] Wallace, [Jonathan] Franzen argues, took his own life after suffocating in the selfhood he explored so thoroughly and cultivated so memorably in prose.How come Montaigne didn't take his own life?
Hmm …
… Urban vegetation deters crime in Philadelphia. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I would never argue against vegetation. I have a garden. It's very small. But better that than no garden at all. Still, I think this study reveals, at best, some correlation, but nothing causative, i.e., a deterrent. I know this city pretty well, and I bet I could take the authors to some vegetative sections of town that would give pause before a stroll. That's why you're unlikely to see many — or any — people there at night. Parks may have a low crime rate just because people only go to them — and at the times when — they are well-lit and well-populated.
The environmentalist sermonette toward the end didn't help.
Living with haiku …
… or haiku: The Millions : 21st Century Butterfly, 19th Century Net: Fourteen Years in Haiku. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As the years pass, I have departed increasingly from the elementary-school form. First I dispensed with the obligation to include a seasonal reference in the poem. Then I jettisoned syllable counts for each line. Although since 1999 I’ve annually made a booklet of each year’s haiku and sent it to friends, most recently I’ve been sharing these poems daily on the internet. Facebook and Twitter made my line breaks look precious rather than effortless, which spurred me to let go of the requirement that a haiku be a three-line poem at all.This essay displays much wisdom..
Shakespeare and Bayes's theorem …
… Who wrote Shakespeare's plays? Stanford professor lets you decide. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A few years ago, Stephen D. Unwin wrote a book called The Probability of God, which applied Bayes's theorem to the question of God's existence.
A few years ago, Stephen D. Unwin wrote a book called The Probability of God, which applied Bayes's theorem to the question of God's existence.
Clothes make the man …
… What’s the Buzz, Buzz? | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
I think he should have thought twice about the outfit he is wearing in that photo.
I think he should have thought twice about the outfit he is wearing in that photo.
Glad over what they saw …
… 10 Authors Who Loved the Film Adaptations of Their Books – Flavorwire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If you look at the other list, though, of authors who didn't like the screen adaptations, one may conclude that David Mitchell is of two minds on the matter.
If you look at the other list, though, of authors who didn't like the screen adaptations, one may conclude that David Mitchell is of two minds on the matter.
But where life is, so is hope ..
… Literary Biography is on Life Support | Standpoint.
It is within the arena of specifically literary life-writing that the traditional narrative form of “cradle to grave” or “womb to tomb” is in a state of considerable uncertainty, if not, as some would say, terminal decline. We sensed a straw in the wind at the dinner for the award of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2004. One of the judges sidled up and said that John Clare: A Biography was a magnificent piece of research and writing, but it was insuffi- ciently experimental in form. The prize had to reward innovation, it could not be awarded to yet another traditional “doorstopper” like the Berlioz and Pushkin biographies that had won in previous years. And indeed the biographical enterprises that have won prizes and plaudits in this century have been those unafraid to take risks. James Shapiro’s 1599 approaches Shakespeare by way of a single year, Frances Wilson’s The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth refracts an entire life through a single day (the one when William Wordsworth got married and left his sister behind). For 50 years, would- be biographers of Ireland’s greatest novelist cowered in the shadow of Richard Ellmann’s mighty James Joyce, but now the prestigious Costa Biography Prize has been awarded to a graphic novel — the genre that used to be known as the comic — about Joyce’s relationship with his daughter Lucia.
Coming up short on reading comprehension …
… Ayn Rand Really, Really Hated C.S. Lewis — First Thoughts | A First Things Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is certainly difficult, and maybe impossible, to figure out how she arrived at her inferences.
It is certainly difficult, and maybe impossible, to figure out how she arrived at her inferences.
The Leviathan state is alive and well ...
… anarchristian: "Power Tends to Corrupt": A Reputation-Making Book. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
At the end of Part One, Lazarski asks: "Are not current Western governments aspiring to display the same fondness for specialist, experts, and jurists; a similar faith in rational schemes; and a corresponding disregard for moral considerations, much as did the enlightened government of ancient regime" that Acton excoriated (102)? To ask this rhetorical question is to answer it. The theoreticians of the modern welfare-warfare state do not recognize any limits to their scope of action. They are all Machiavellians now, out or closeted. But while this may make Acton a prophet, it does not recommend him as a political pathfinder, an estate to which he did not in any case aspire. Power is a moral hazard, he warned in so many words, so let's limit it. Let's try to have a "mature democracy," as they do in America. Easier said than done, for as Acton well knew, the battle is primarily against the libido dominandi, the insidious "enemy within."
The future of journalism …
… So, You Want to Publish Your Own Magazine. Do It for Free. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
The Impossible Generalized Man today is the critic who believes in loving those unworthy of love as well as those worthy - yet believes this only insofar as no personal risk is entailed. Meaning he loves no one, worthy or no. This is what makes him impossible.
— Nelson Algren, born on this date in 1909
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Today's object of ridicule …
… Florida Atlantic University: New Addition to Core Curriculum: Stomp on the Name of Jesus | Intercollegiate Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I would object, by the way, if the name had been Buddha or Lao-tse or even his Secularness himself, Richard Dawkins. And I would have supported a devout atheist for refusing to disrespect Dawkins. As the piece points out, both the instructor and the administration don't even seem to have grasped the point of the exercise.
This just in: Florida Atlantic issues new groveling apology over Jesus-stomping [video].
This just in: Florida Atlantic issues new groveling apology over Jesus-stomping [video].
Post bumped.
Like, who cares?
… Full List | The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013 | TIME.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think tweeting could well become an art. But of the few of these that I looked at only Joyce Carol Oates's struck me as genuinely artful. None of the rest that I looked at came close; in fact, they weren't even interesting.
Of course, Time magazine is now terminally passé. If Time's editors encountered something genuinely original, they would probably reach for the Excedrin bottle. The tweet from Joyce Carol Oates must have slipped in by accident.
Of course, Time magazine is now terminally passé. If Time's editors encountered something genuinely original, they would probably reach for the Excedrin bottle. The tweet from Joyce Carol Oates must have slipped in by accident.
A preview …
… Trailer for Bill Kauffman's 'Copperhead' released, film opens June 28.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There's more to the story, I fear: File:~abe2.jpg.
File bumped because the link somehow got dropped.
What counts is the poetry …
… More Than a Curmudgeon | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… his style gradually matures to an igneous, prose-like register, puritanically stripped of anything that might suggest ease; a linguistic hairshirt that for all its discomfort remained inescapable. Thomas tells of the Welsh writer Saunders Lewis "taking my hand in both / his and soothing my quarrel / with my English muse with: / ‘But all art is born out of tension'." The poetry here, chronologically ordered, speaks arrestingly of the developing prominence of such tension in Thomas's style, and it is here that the volume's value comes to light.
A preparatory stroll ...
… A Walk from Manhattan to Sleepy Hollow.
This is a worthwhile project. Please consider making a contribution. I already have.
This is a worthwhile project. Please consider making a contribution. I already have.
A thought for today …
Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?
— Alfred de Vigny, born on this date in 1797
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Chastening the world's fools ...
... Looking Back at Bob and Ray : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It sure looks that way …
… To be sure, journalists love cliches - Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A cliché-free world is unattainable. After all, a phrase becomes a cliché because it contains — that's right! — a kernel of truth.
A cliché-free world is unattainable. After all, a phrase becomes a cliché because it contains — that's right! — a kernel of truth.
Does it matter?
… What's Willa's Pigeonhole? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I'm resolutely opposed to categorizing writers by gender, skin color, sexual orientation, etc. Good luck with that these days, eh? The last bookstore I went into had separate sections for Hispanic and Chicano-Tejano authors.
None dare call it absurd …
… Roger’s Rules — What Philistinism Looks Like. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
We know of no appearance — not even a mirage — that is not some degree real, nor anything real that does not in some way appear to be.W.H. Auden did not have the honor of helping to discover DNA, but when it comes to the reality of human experience, he is a much sounder guide than Francis Crick. “We seem to have reached a point,” Auden wrote in Secondary Worlds,where if the word “real” can be used at all, then the only world which is “real” for us, as in the world in which all of us, including scientists, are born, work, love, hate and die, is the primary phenomenal world as it is and always has been presented to us through our senses, a world in which the sun moves across the sky from east to west, the stars are hung like lamps in the vault of heaven, the measure of magnitude is the human body and objects are either in motion or at rest.
The future of newspapers …
… The “barbell problem” in media: The ends are fine, but the middle is getting squeezed — paidContent. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The problem is that a barbell with no middle is no longer a barbell. The newspapers in the middle could prosper by striking out on their own and not trying to be a cheap imitation of the New York Times and Washington Post (both of which are nowhere near what they used to be).
Getting your terms straight …
… Atheists need to run an Alpha course of their own | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
There is a scientific approach possible to the problem of creationism. You ask what people mean by the word, both intellectually and emotionally; then you listen the answers carefully and try to translate them into terms both sides can accept. Only then is it possible to disentangle the social and philosophical uses of the term from its status as a quasi-scientific explanation and to promote, so far as possible, the scientific truth.
If Professor Dawkins doesn't know that belief in a creator does not necessarily equate with creationism, then he's an ignoramus. If he does know that, then he's intellectually dishonest. Either way, he is untrustworthy on the subject.
Getting the word out …
… Speculative Faith Features — Lars Walker: Beyond ‘Wannabe’ Fantasy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Craft-improvement is the first priority, if you’re a professional. Christians don’t sufficiently understand the idea of Christian “vocation” (my friend Gene Edward Veith has written extensively on this subject). If we understand that every day is God’s – not just Sunday – and that our work is part of our worship, then we’ll want to glorify God by working excellently. C. S. Lewis wrote about this too – what if the best book you could find on any subject turned out to be written by a Christian? This goes into the heart of theology – we believe in the Incarnation and the resurrection of the body. For Christians, there can be none of this nonsense about only “spiritual” things mattering. Everything we do with our physical bodies and minds is spiritual.
Living on other people's money …
… How Debt Ruins Systems - Reason.com.
Hear, hear!
Taleb doesn’t identify as a libertarian, but he often sounds like one. He supported Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential election and has cited the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek as an influence. He has called New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman “vile and harmful,” and he coined the phrase “Stiglitz Syndrome” after Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, referring to the phenomenon of public intellectuals being held utterly unaccountable for their bad predictions. The economists Paul Krugman and Paul Samuelson are among Taleb’s other Nobelist bêtes noire.
Hear, hear!
A thought for today …
If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second.
— Edward Bellamy, born on this date in 1850
Monday, March 25, 2013
Apparently I can …
… at least three times out of four: Can you spot a Charles Dickens sentence? | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I've never understood why people have got so down on Bulwer-Lytton because of that notorious sentence of his. What exactly is so bad about it? And imagine if you were a Victorian reader. I suspect it would have sucked you right in. Maybe we should all go out and read The Lat Days of Pompeii.
Please help …
Nichole and her husband, Mike, are my neighbors. I am this week caring for Radar, their cat, and Saturn, their guinea pig (both creatures got their monikers from their little son, Simon, who has been flirting with my wife since todlerhood). I've attended performances of Nichole's dance company. They have all been terrific. And none of us is constricted anymore by our latitudinal and logintudinal positions. Even if you live on a ranch in Montana, you can still dream of the dance and make a modest contribution. I contributed last week. And they're more than halfway there. It would be nice to see them fully funded.
You can learn more here from Nicole herself: The Garden.
A transitional moment that didn't take off …
… The University Bookman: The Left Bank in the Vieux Carré. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reed’s depiction of the circle is based on a small book privately published by William Faulkner and his apartment-mate, the illustrator William Spratling, entitled Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles. The book, notes Prof. Reed, was rather jokey—the title was a riff on a 1925 book entitled The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans and very few of the people chronicled by Spratling and Faulkner (least of all Ohio-native Sherwood Anderson) were Creoles as a New Orleanian would have understood that term.
A victim of faulty translation …
… Punxsutawney Phil's handler takes blame for faulty forecast | Fox News.
Just a glance at Phil's face makes plain that this is an honest rodent.
Just a glance at Phil's face makes plain that this is an honest rodent.
Civilizing words and music …
… The Golden Age Of American Song Was The Golden Age Of America - Forbes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The music of nineteenth-century American popular music, following familiar melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic patterns, was essentially free of surprise. The popular music of the 60s and afterwards would be increasingly harsh, dissonant, and aggressive. Both pre- and post-Golden Age popular song was generally simplistic in its melodies and harmonies, as well as in its lyrics. The Golden Age, by contrast to the periods that preceded and followed it, brought out a melodic invention, harmonic richness, and lyrical creativity that would not be seen before or afterwards. This, too, had its psychological effects.Here's some evidence:
Cormorants, cold water, and Sylvia Plath …
… Interview: Al Alvarez | New Writing | Granta Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
For novices and aficionados alike …
… BARZUN AND TAYLOR'S CLASSIC CRIME NOVELS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Poets on the road …
… Wilson and TImpane – Good Vibes at Ryerss | Fox Chase Review.
As for John and me, as you can see, we more or less behaved ourselves.
This was great fun. The open mic session that followed our reading was a special pleasure. Everyone who read was good and everything that was read was worth hearing. It prompted me to think that poetry is exerting a greater influence in the world these days than anyone suspects. People seem to have a yearning to shape their thoughts and feelings into precise verbal constructs that enable the listener or reader to know, not just those thoughts and feelings, but the exact person who thought and felt them.
As for John and me, as you can see, we more or less behaved ourselves.
The difficult vs. the uncomfortable …
… Who is the better poet? Dylan Thomas v RS Thomas - Books - Life and Style - WalesOnline. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No one who loves poetry could bear to be without either.
No one who loves poetry could bear to be without either.
A thought for today …
The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.
— Flannery O'Connor, born on this date in 1905
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Feeling what they write …
… American English Has Become Way More Emotional Than British English | Popular Science. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Without specific examples I find this difficult to grasp.
Without specific examples I find this difficult to grasp.
Filling that inner emptiness …
… Save Us From Political Saviours — New English Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A pro makes his picks …
… Ian Rankin: 10 Crime Novels I Love - Sabotage Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Uncensored at last …
… DH Lawrence's poetry 'ruined by censorship' | Books | The Observer. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
His poems took aim at politicians, the brutality of the first world war and English repression – but censorship and sloppy editing rendered them virtually meaningless, to the extent that the full extent of his poetic talent has been overlooked
The view from retirement …
… Author Interview: Philip Roth : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Roth says that now, when someone tells him a story, he no longer mines it for possible material, no longer takes notes or analyses the narrative. "It was a constant mental activity, really. And now I just listen, and it's quite nice. I go home and go to sleep," he laughs.
A thought for today …
People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.
— Malcolm Muggeridge, born on this date in 1903
Ideas man...
...Harvest time for Jim Crace as he signs off with a final novel
Even the way he says “life in publishing” is decidedly perverse, decidedly Crace. Why does he say “in publishing” instead of “writing fiction”? He laughs gleefully: “I’ve always said that. When people asked me what I did, I’d say ‘I work in publishing’, and when they then say: ‘What side of it?’, I say ‘supply’ – no doubt leaving them to think I drive the books around in a van and deliver them.”
Many worlds...
...Michael Frayn: Farce and the uncertainty principle
"It's not at all about human beings being helpless. It's about human beings being very pro-active in the world, and sometimes succeeding in understanding something about it. We try to understand the world by seeing it in terms of some kind of narrative, and I think most of my plays and books are about that process. But I think there are some things about which it's theoretically impossible to have precise knowledge – namely, other people's intentions and feelings and probably one's own as well."
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Depends what you mean by 'man' …
… A Commonplace Blog: A man’s a man for a’ that. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Being a man is sort of like being hip: If you have to think about it, you're not.
Being a man is sort of like being hip: If you have to think about it, you're not.
Panning the unread …
… Edward Feser: EvolutionBlog needs better Nagel critics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The process of creation …
… Capote's Co-conspirators in "In Cold Blood" : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The anatomy of abuse...
...Marc Fisher: A Sex-Abuse Scandal at Horace Mann
I find it highly disturbing that he got away with it for so long simply because he was so smooth.
Or perhaps the synergy of it …
… The paradox of self-publishing — latimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So ebook sales have flattened out at around 25 percent. Most people would settle for a quarter of a market that big. People imagine a world without print and start finding reasons why such a world must be emerging right now. The prudent prediction is that some mix will be arrived at.
Reading as a process of seduction ...
... Straight Through the Heart - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Instead, each semester, I meet students who might be afraid of traditional English courses, but are drawn by the oddly warm and fuzzy phrase “creative writing.” In most academic work, we teach students to discuss other people’s ideas, before they attempt to formulate their own. We withhold the challenge of creation. But in creative writing, we read a few books and then we’re off. By semester’s end, a seeming mystery, I have a roomful of young people in love with reading stories and telling their own. Almost all of them write better sentences and cleaner paragraphs too.
Fully, albeit politely, engaged
… Two New Nabokov Books Reviewed by Alexander Nazaryan | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
— Friedrich von Hayek, who died on this date in 1992
Friday, March 22, 2013
Blogging hiatus …
I have some things to deal with all of a sudden that require I be away from the computer for a bit. Blogging will resume as soon as I can get around to it.
A master of understated power …
… Chapter and Verse: The Unknown Prose of a Great Poet - Benjamin Schwarz - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Elaborately precise, richly textured, densely allusive, Thomas’s prose reveals a mind minutely curious and a man of prodigious but easy learning and wry warmth. But somewhat incongruously, its style is at once Latinate in its intricate exactitude and, as Thomas himself described the style of one of his literary heroes, William Cobbett, “lean and hard and undecorated.”
Getting to know Willa …
… Willa Cather Letters to Be Published as an Anthology - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not dead yet …
… The novel resurgence of independent bookstores - CSMonitor.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A lovable nature's tragic arc ...
... Rodgers and Hart's Dysfunctional Partnership - Robert Gottlieb - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
While Hart’s career was inching forward, Rodgers was growing up. By the time he was nine he was composing melodies at the family piano—they just poured out of him. As a teenager, Dick was good-looking, athletic, sociable, interested in girls, and as conventional as the rest of his family. He provided tunes for a few amateur shows—fund-raisers for The Sun Tobacco Fund and the Infants Relief Society—and people were knocked out by his gifts. But he badly needed a writing partner, and in the spring of 1919 a friend had an inspiration: Larry Hart! He led Dick to the Hart ménage, and after a few awkward moments, Dick started to play some of his melodies, at which point, as Marmorstein (unfortunately) puts it, “Larry’s ears pricked up like a startled deer’s.”
The sad tale of an up-and-coming story …
… The New Yorker Rejects Itself: A Quasi-Scientific Analysis of Slush Piles | The Review Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As the rejections rolled in, I began to feel sorry for this story in the same way you pity a one-hit wonder who ends up on infomercials: two parts schadenfreude, one part authentic compassion. This poor story, like the sly dude chosen by the dance-floor starlet, thought he had it all. Here he was convinced that he could effortlessly charm the panties off of any university-based handout with “Review” in the title. What the hell happened?
Something we need to figure out soon …
… Schneier on Security: When Technology Overtakes Security. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not what you might think …
… Just What Is 'Gay Culture' In 2013? - Forbes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… if one could not precisely demarcate the limits of gay culture, there was no question that it existed. It was part of mainstream culture, and yet not. It had a long and noble heritage, reaching back to the likes of Michelangelo and Marlowe (if not to Shakespeare himself). It had flourished despite the reality of the closet, and indeed the closet itself played a key role in shaping its distinctive nature. The closet demanded subtlety, indirection; it required that an artist tell the truth, but tell it slant. By indirections, find directions out.
A thought for today …
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
— Louis L'Amour, born on this date in 1908
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Comprehensive account of a boring life …
… Book review: ‘Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life,’ by Jonathan Sperber | Dallasnews.com - News for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News.
… Marx emerges as a fairly typical 19th-century bourgeois hypocrite, less odious than some others. Well, maybe, but Sperber’s search for nuance in Marx’s anti-Semitic essay “On the Jewish Question” was, for this reader, less persuasive.
Q & A …
… Interview with Barbara Fister - Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A place of many parts …
… The American Scholar: City of Scholarly Love - Chloe Taft. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
America's most ridiculous mayor …
… Best of the Web Today: Nuts to Nutter - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Nutter's attempted assault on free expression is demagogic, impotent, ignorant, un-American and buffoonish. New Yorkers should feel grateful, for we no longer have the most ridiculous mayor in America. (Though to be sure, that one is a close call.)