One of the best books I know of on this subject is Hans Sedlmayr’s Art in Crisis. In this greatly underappreciated work, Sedlmayr examines the disciplines of architecture, painting, and sculpture as they have developed over the last three centuries, and calls attention to a number of destructive trends emerging during this period. For a while, in artists like Goya or Daumier, these tendencies are checked or balanced by more traditional elements in their disciplines, elements that could be traced back to a residual belief in man’s grandeur. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, such considerations had lost all purchase on the imagination of most western artists, and all that was left was the destructive tendencies. Among these tendencies is the fact that the arts become increasingly isolated from one another and from any public function, making “pure art” or “absolute art” a novel – if altogether vain – pursuit. Art begins more and more to depict the nightmarish emanations of psychology – “whatever belongs to horror and to night, to disease, death and decay, whatever is crass, obscene and perverse, whatever is mechanical and a denial of the spirit.”[i] Architecture starts to demonstrate a loathing for nature through its inorganic shapes and materials; painting begins to demonstrate a loathing for human nature through its distortions of the human form. Taken together, all of these tendencies can best be understood as a loss of aesthetic equilibrium …What Sedlmayer calls "destructive trends" are the eventual characteristics of every style of art. And what he calls "traditional elements" are simply the result of artists of integrity exercising sound aesthetic judgment. As for those "destructive tendencies," if we are talking about the modernism of the '20s, it must be born in mind that these were artists chronicling a society laid waste by a war of unparalleled destruction. There was no tradition for this, and it is altogether possible to look at their work — Eliot's, for instance — and marvel over how much of the traditional they managed to retain.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Here we go again …
… The Continuing Tyranny of Modernism Mark Anthony Signorelli. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Preview …
… Margaret Atwood's Pandemic Prophecy: Novel Excerpt Part 5 - Speakeasy - WSJ.
All the excerpts can be linked from here.
All the excerpts can be linked from here.
No kidding …
… The Sovereign Double-Standard – The New Inquiry. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Nations conduct their foreign policy with an to their own advantage (though the current American administration seems to conduct everything with an eye to its own political advantage). Anyway, Machiavelli put it best when he said that the law among nations is the law of the jungle. That should surprise no one.
Hmm …
… Hard-Wired for Giving - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Monitoring brain activity is one thing. Attributing causality to what is being monitored is quite another.
Using tools like fMRI, scientists are identifying the precise circuits within the brain that control these nurturing social impulses. Where once there was only speculation about the origins of the human desire to help others, a body of data is starting to fill the gap, revealing key workings of the biological hardware that makes altruism possible.
Monitoring brain activity is one thing. Attributing causality to what is being monitored is quite another.
To review or not …
… the Literary Saloon at the complete review - Ruth Franklin Q & A. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I agree that if you're not going to review the book don't call what you write a book review. And there is a lot more art to a good book review than many seem to think.
I agree that if you're not going to review the book don't call what you write a book review. And there is a lot more art to a good book review than many seem to think.
A thought for today …
The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
— William Saroyan, born on this date in 1908
Friday, August 30, 2013
Eve Bad, Wimmen R Bad
Some of these misconceptions became the norm for Christianity and existed largely uncontested as late as the 1800s. In fact, it was often cited as the main reason for keeping women uneducated and unable to vote: as Eve proved, the argument went, women cannot be trusted with any measure of power or knowledge.
Similar misapprehensions about women exist still in today's church, with the same underlying convictions: Women's sexuality is dangerous. Women aren't to be trusted with power. Women are created to be subordinate. These arguments mark modern church politics, often coloring our convictions about women's role in the hierarchy of church leadership.
Keep on Writing, Writing, Writing ...
After Josh finishes, I send everybody to the bar for a break. We always take a break between readers, but today I really need to pause and grab a stiff one. The readers rarely send me into a vertigo of jealousy, but Josh has kicked off some real self-doubt. I have submitted half dozen stories to Ploughshares over the years, with predictable results.
Just so …
…Writer Fail: You Get What You Pay For With Free Editing | Bill Peschel.
Back in the '70s I was getting $25 an hour to copy edit books. That was good money then. But the fee today would be a lot more.
Back in the '70s I was getting $25 an hour to copy edit books. That was good money then. But the fee today would be a lot more.
Who knew?
… SPIEGEL Interview with Umberto Eco: 'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die' - SPIEGEL ONLINE. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The list doesn't destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists.
In case you wondered …
… Why Read Literature? | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Today, instead of Joseph Addison’s essays or Dr. Johnson’s lives of poets, we have hundreds of books like Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s—Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen(Chicago, 2012) or Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (Lexington, 2012). I have not read either book, so I can’t say anything about the quality of argument in each, though I can say rather confidently that neither was written for the general public, nor are either likely to increase interest in these authors and texts.
A thought for today …
Of all created comforts, God is the lender; you are the borrower, not the owner.
— Ernest Rutherford, born on this date in 1871
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Time to Move for Some ...
WASHINGTON -- The United States government took a historic step back from its long-running drug war on Thursday, when Attorney General Eric Holder informed the governors of Washington and Colorado that the Department of Justice would allow the states to create a regime that would regulate and implement the ballot initiatives that legalized the use of marijuana for adults.
The first great spy novel …
… The Riddle of the Sands - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Essentially Mysterious
The image of a cup running over is painful as well as ec-static, and this experience of being pulled outside oneself by “violent grace” was O’Connor’s mission as a communicator. If freaks phenomenalize – or make real to us – sin and guilt and limitation, it perhaps takes an equally gratuitous, or freakish, story to communicate forgiveness.
And for yet another (hilarious) example of O’Connor and the freakish, be sure to check out her first appearance in a movie at age 6, of which she reportedly said, “everything afterward has been anticlimax.”
Posthumous career …
… Film on Salinger Claims More Books Are Coming — NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Edward Champion.)
Conversation …
… Ozarks Values | Daniel Woodrell | Cultural Conversation by Allen Barra - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mr. Woodrell's highway led, when he was in his late 20s, to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. "The first time I submitted a story," he recalls, "a girl in the class said, 'Don't you think it's kind of cheap to open with a sentence that makes the reader want to keep reading?' I just stared at her and thought, 'Man, Herman Melville would have a tough time here.' There did seem to be an attitude that the more impenetrable your writing, the better it was.
Well, I suppose so …
… Dangers of traveling while female - Salon.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But it’s the reason, too, for more subtle variations in behavior. I’m no longer 15, and I am far more capable of turning away aggressive strangers than I was that ill-fated summer, but as a travel writer, I am painfully conscious of how easy it is for a moment’s lapse to turn me from an observer – an all-seeing eye, freely taking in a Tbilisi hilltop or a Turkish terrace – into a target.
Smart vs. brilliant …
… Snowden impersonated NSA officials, sources say - Investigations. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe, who notes, aptly enough, "This is the kind of intelligence organisation that is supposed to keep us safe?")
In case you wondered …
… How to Fit Every New Word in the Oxford Dictionary Into 1 Article - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic.
Lately, we've been feeling a bit of FOMO about all the buzzworthy verbiage orbiting outside our hallowed pages. While initially it seemed a bit dappy to add nonsense like LDR and other ghastly abbrevs just because teens don't have time to spell things out on Facebook Chat, the thing is, we can't have our blondie cake pop and eat it, too.
Restating the obvious …
… Comfort For Sad Souls | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Drury's scholarship is old school in all the best ways. He goes to archival material, unpicks palimpsests, brings experience to bear, and shares his findings with generosity and evident love for his subject. At times the structure is a little awkward to assimilate from the reader's point of view, yet forgiveable when taken as the hazard not only of marrying the scholarly with the commercial but also drawing the life out of the poetry, particularly when exact dates of poetical composition are hard to come by.
A thought for today …
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, born on this date in 1809
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
The danger of too many cold ones …
… Man Steals Frost Bust, Blames ‘Beer Bongs’. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Audible's Founder ...
Although—a couple of years ago, I won this Entrepreneur of the Year Award because of what I do at Audible; I had to address this big, black-tie event in Jersey, and my reaction then is my reaction now. I told them: “Look, I’m proud to be Entrepreneur of the Year, but for twenty years before I started Audible, I was a freelance writer. I think I knew everyone in America who supported themselves as narrative nonfiction writers. There is nothing more entrepreneurial than a writer who makes a living in the United States of America.”
Drums and Showers ...
And yet the protestors who gathered in the actual Occupy encampments, like the young couple I met in New York, often stepped away from the classic forms of Anarchism by excising clear moral purposes from their protests. They typically took it as a point of pride, as a moral principle, that they would not specify exactly what they wanted—for "Demands imply condition, and we will never stop. Demands cannot reflect the time scale that we are working with." In doing so, they found themselves recapitulating not the history of anarchistic revolution but an old religious history of apocalyptic movements, aghast at the failure of God to bring an end to the mess, the evil, they thought they could perceive so clearly.
They didn't know this is what they were doing, of course, and given their extreme anti-Christianity, they would resist the explanation with all their strength.
A thought for today …
May I make a suggestion, hoping it is not an impertinence? Write it down: write down what you feel. It is sometimes a wonderful help in misery.
— Robertson Davies, born on this date in 1913
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
His father's son …
… BBC News — Elmore Leonard's son Peter to finish final novel. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In case you wondered
… Why Teach and Study English? : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
We should go back to the classical model and produce graduates who know how to think.
We should go back to the classical model and produce graduates who know how to think.
So true …
… Bryan Appleyard — One Cannot Live Quite Without Pity. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Having lately found myself increasingly called upon to care for certain individuals in need of care that only I can actually provide, I have been surprised to discover what a blessing this has been for me. I certainly understand better now what love is really about. One needs institutions to provide certain partculars connected with care, but care itself must be strictly personal.
What Is This? The Efffing Middle Ages?
I feel a pain deep inside. We Christians have always stayed silent: We’ve been taught since we were babies never to say anything, to keep quiet because we’re a minority. But I’m stubborn too and now I want to react, I want to defend my faith. I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with courage.
“I’m not going to convert. I believe in my religion and in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind? And why should it be me that converts instead of you?”
That’s when the hatred bursts from all side. All around me the women start screaming. One of them grabs my bowl and tips the berries into her own. Another one shoves and Musarat spits in my face with all the scorn she can manage. A foot lashes out and they push me. Even when I run home, I can still hear them complaining.
Five days later, I went to work fruit picking in another field. I’ve almost filled my bowl when I hear what sounds like a rioting crowd. I step back from my bush, wondering what’s going on, and in the distance I see dozens of men and women striding along towards our field, waving their arms in the air.
Appreciation …
… The Great Explainer | John Hollander | By Willard Spiegelman - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
God and Caesar …
… What is religion?, part 1: civil religion and the state | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | theguardian.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
What Bellah added to this was the point that the world of everyday, from which religion promises to deliver us, is not more real, or less constructed than the one we access through religious practices. Everyday life may involve different kinds of cognition, but the world we see through its mechanisms is just as much the product of wish fulfilment as heaven might be. Only the appetites being satisfied in there are different.
Summer Reading ...
The report found that instead of old books, most chosen works corresponded to current events and cultural issues: environmentalism, bioethics, social justice, information technology, urban poverty, animal rights, the war in Iraq, etc. Out of 309 colleges, only four assigned books qualified as classics. Only nine books were published before 1990.
A thought for today …
The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.
— Johann Georg Hamann, born on this date in 1730
Monday, August 26, 2013
Q & A …
… Making a life's work from words - Times Union. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
David is very good poet and a great guy.
David is very good poet and a great guy.
Ooooo ...
In late July, Daniel Flynn, a conservative author and columnist, submitted an essay to the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review called “The War on Football,” which laid out the case against banning the sport at the youth level. Two days later, Flynn was informed that his piece had been turned down.
Two-and-a-half weeks later, on Aug. 17, Flynn went to the Journal’s website and found that the paper had published a column by another author, titled “In Defense of Football,” which included much of the same data presented in the same order and language similar to that presented in his own work.
Love of Money ...
The Gospels do not reveal whether the young man later changed his mind and followed Jesus’s instruction, or forever after agonized over his inability to follow the command to become perfect by divesting himself of all his possessions to give to the poor. That the issue remains painfully difficult for Christians to decide even today, two thousand years later, is witnessed by, to give only one recent example, the ongoing bitter dispute at Trinity Wall Street Church in New York, an Episcopal congregation, over whether it should sell more of its rich holdings to be able to donate more to the poor. It is a remarkable strength of Peter Brown’s book that its fair-minded arguments uncover how and why this unsettling moral uncertainty first came to be, provoking us to wonder, and perhaps worry, what Jesus would think of its abiding persistence.
Something my anonymous former reader should see …
… Noonan: 'A Nation of Sullen Paranoids' - WSJ.com.
… I heard this week from a respected former U.S. senator, a many-termed moderate conservative who was never known as the excitable type. He wrote in reaction to Nat Hentoff's warnings regarding the potentially corrosive effect of extreme surveillance on free speech. "All this scares me to death," the man wrote. "How many times do we have to watch government, with the best of intentions, I am sure (or almost so), do things 'for us'? Now 'security' and 'terrorism' argue for and justify the case for ever more intrusions—all in the name of protecting us. The truly frightening thing is that we are told we have to depend on government to police itself. Not a comforting thought, for we already have far too much evidence of the lack of such self-supervision. These actions, as Nat Hentoff said, will sooner than later curtail free speech."
Perhaps …
… The Preemptive Surrender of Jody Bottum.
I think it is true that "walking away from this fight will not gain the Church friends or placate her enemies." That doesn't make making the fight any less futile.Moreover, the fact remains that the sex sandals have greatly eroded the Church's authority on matters sexual. That is not going to be reclaimed quickly or easily.
As for re-enchantment, as long as the vulgar Pope Paul Mass prevails, you can pretty much kiss that good-bye. It is a liturgy devoid of enchantment. The Church is far from being what it was when I was born into it.
I think it is true that "walking away from this fight will not gain the Church friends or placate her enemies." That doesn't make making the fight any less futile.Moreover, the fact remains that the sex sandals have greatly eroded the Church's authority on matters sexual. That is not going to be reclaimed quickly or easily.
As for re-enchantment, as long as the vulgar Pope Paul Mass prevails, you can pretty much kiss that good-bye. It is a liturgy devoid of enchantment. The Church is far from being what it was when I was born into it.
A thought for today …
Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.
— Julio Cortázar, born on this date in 1914
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Rethinking economics …
… Surprise and Creativity | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
By identifying a capitalist economy as chiefly a knowledge system rather than a mechanistic incentive system, the new economics obviates all the concerns over greed and avarice as crucial to the creation of wealth. The enabling theory of telecommunications and the Internet, Information Theory offers a path to a new economics that places the surprising creations of entrepreneurs and innovators at the very center of the system rather than patching them in from the outside as “exogenous” inputs. Information Theory also shows that knowledge is not merely a source of wealth; it is wealth. Wealth is the accumulation of knowledge. As Thomas Sowell declared in 1971: All economic transactions are exchanges of differential knowledge, which is dispersed in human minds around the globe.
It's not so golden, either …
… Why Is the Golden Age of Television So Dark? - Bloomberg. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
The two grand tyrants of the Earth, Time and Chance.
— Johann Gottfried Herder, born on this date in 1744
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Ringside …
… Who is winning the information war: security services or the new disruptive journalists? | Charlie Beckett. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The problem here is that the government is using the security issue as a pretext for spying in general. The real reason seems strictly political. After all, the President is disdainful of phrases like "war on terror." But he has joked about IRS auditing.
In case you wondered …
… Best Baseball Books - The 20 Best Baseball Books Ever - Esquire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm indeed …
… The Things We Share | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… same-sex marriage might prove a small advance in chastity in a culture that has lost much sense of chastity. Same-sex marriage might prove a small advance in love in a civilization that no longer seems to know what love is for. Same-sex marriage might prove a small advance in the coherence of family life in a society in which the family is dissolving.
I once mentioned to Jody that some people thought that Mary should be declared co-redemptrix. He replied, without missing a beat, "Yes, they're called heretics." His remark struck this cradle Catholic as a bit extreme, but also as rather amusing. Anyway, I think he's on to something here. I think it was Aquinas who noted that, while the natural law is itself necessarily unchanging, man's understanding necessarily changes as more about nature comes to be known. The sex scandals alone should make the hierarchy cautious when it comes to pronouncements regarding sexual activity between consenting adults. The business of abortion is another matter. I oppose that for the same reason I have come to agree with Vice President Thomas Marshall's objection to capital punishment: "I do not believe it rests in human hands to say when a life shall cease."
A thought for today …
I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.
— A. S. Byatt, born on this date in 1936
Friday, August 23, 2013
Be very scared…
… The Real, Terrifying Reason Why British Authorities Detained David Miranda — Bruce Schneier - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This leaves one last possible explanation -- those in power were angry and impulsively acted on that anger. They're lashing out: sending a message and demonstrating that they're not to be messed with -- that the normal rules of polite conduct don't apply to people who screw with them. That's probably the scariest explanation of all. Both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence apparatuses have enormous money and power, and they have already demonstrated that they are willing to ignore their own laws. Once they start wielding that power unthinkingly, it could get really bad for everyone.
It Was a Dark And Stormy Night ...
Wretched Writing is organized along quasi-encyclopediclines, from “adjectives, excessive use of” to “zoological sexual encounters, politician-writers and” (more on this later). Other entries include “art writing, inartistic (and often incomprehensible),” “dialogue, deadly unromantic,” “impossibilities,” “legalese,” “overwrought writing about minor things,” “prose, preposterously Proustian,” “‘said’ synonyms” (enough to drive the late Elmore Leonard to despair), “thesaurus addiction,” and “words, wrong.” There are also headings under which the Petrases collect unintentionally funny snippets from writers dead and gone. I should mention that I did not much care for these. Poor Jane Austen: how could she have foreseen the changes in denotation that would make a straightforward description of her heroine, young Catherine Morland, who at age 15 “began to curl her hair and long for balls,” ridiculous? And surely Bram Stoker should not be taken to task for writing, in 1897, that “Dr. Van Helsing rushed into the room, ejaculating furiously,”
Inadvertently, of course …
… as our disingenuous caudillo might put it: NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies | World news | theguardian.com. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Hidden in plain sight …
… A Commonplace Blog: Nick Carraway’s fiction. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
David must be an outstanding teacher.
David must be an outstanding teacher.
Urban haiku …
Overcast Friday
Old man and ancient oak
Endgame companions
Sparrows in the dust
And a sudden quietness
Then a car passes
The profession of banality …
… Stanley Fish Careerism | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“What is really at stake” in the controversy over liberal education, Fish writes, are not large philosophical principles but “administrative judgment with respect to professional behavior and job performance.” What happened to the idea that liberal education is more than just skills and job performance? That it entails, as John Henry Newman put it in The Idea of a University, overcoming “narrowness of mind”? That it leads to comprehension, even enlightenment? Newman described the narrow mind this way: “Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Everything stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn.” Newman could be describing Fish’s educational ideal.
The foolishness of rationalism …
… AttackingtheDemi-Puppets: Carlyle and the Folly of Man.
Of course, rationalists are usually devoid of common sense and practical experience.
Of course, rationalists are usually devoid of common sense and practical experience.
Tough broads …
… The women's touch — hardboiled and cold-blooded - latimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Critic and editor Sarah Weinman calls this fiction "domestic suspense," noting how its modern practitioners "color outside the lines, blur between categories and give readers a glimpse of the darkest impulses that pervade every part of contemporary society. Especially those impulses that begin at home."
Ours, too …
… Lavabit founder: 'My own tax dollars are being used to spy on me' | World news | theguardian.com. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
"We are entering a time of state-sponsored intrusion into our privacy that we haven't seen since the McCarthy era. And it's on a much broader scale," Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, told the Guardian. The emailservice was used by Snowden and is now at the center of a potentially historic legal battle over privacy rights in the digital age.
Actually, we didn't see it then, either, not remotely on this scale.
Sad anniversary …
… zmkc: Missing.
My wife's recent health problems have made me realize that, for all its achievements, modern medicine is not without its pitfalls. Diagnostics remains as much an art as a science.
My wife's recent health problems have made me realize that, for all its achievements, modern medicine is not without its pitfalls. Diagnostics remains as much an art as a science.
A thought for today …
Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true essayist is, in a literary sense, the friend of everybody.
— William Ernest Henley, born on this date in 1849
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Opening gambits …
… Elmore Leonard Wrote Great Opening Lines. Here Are All Of Them.. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Barbarism …
… A Coptic Monument to Survival, Destroyed | By Samuel Tadros - WSJ.com.
Thank God it wasn't a Koran.
Thank God it wasn't a Koran.
More Debussy …
… [FULL] Ken Russell at the BBC - The Debussy Film (1965) - YouTube.
Debussy is one of my favorite composers, and he played an early, but key role in my career as a journalist — though that is a story for another time.
Debussy is one of my favorite composers, and he played an early, but key role in my career as a journalist — though that is a story for another time.
Most interesting …
…Debussy plays Debussy Golliwogg's Cakewalk (1913) - YouTube.
Debussy was born on this date in 1862.
Debussy was born on this date in 1862.
Freedom and identity …
… Bryan Appleyard — Arianna, Anonymity and Freedom. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The thing that has struck me about anonymous commenters is how often they assume a tough-guy manner. I've known some genuinely tough guys. I can't think of one who talked tough. I once told a routinely insulting commenter on this blog that it was a bad idea to say anonymously online what would earn you a knuckle sandwich if said in person in, say, a bar. I don't think he ever again posted a comment here.
Ruling on rules …
… And the first rule of writers’ club is... there are no rules - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them - one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.
— Ray Bradbury, born on this date in 1920
Leonardland …
… The Dutch Accent: Elmore Leonard's Talk : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Once you hear the Dutch accent you can’t get it out of your head, and for innumerable readers it became a siren song. I fell prey to it in the mid-eighties. Leonard had a breakout, with “Glitz” (1985), and it led many of us to raid the back catalogue with glee. Some of the books weren’t easy to get hold of, and the hunt only sharpened our zeal. A friend and I ravened through whatever we could lay hands on; there is a strange, barely sane satisfaction in happening upon an author—or a painter or a band—and making it your mission to consume everything that he, she, or they ever produced. You rarely succeed, yet the urge for completeness is a kind of love, doomed to be outgrown but not forgotten. I have often pursued the dead in that fashion, but Leonard may be the only living writer who spurred me to such a cause.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Dutch on the range …
… Elmore Leonard, Cowboy by Steven Malanga - City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… A Commonplace Blog: J. F. Powers and Elmore Leonard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The difference I note regarding the passages David cites to contrast Leonard with Powers has to do with rhythm. Leonard's prose has a jazzy beat to it that you catch onto right way. Powers's is more stately and formal. I don't think one is better than the other, just different. And what would seem Leonard's imprecision and lack of concision is what I would call an improvisatory effect.
The difference I note regarding the passages David cites to contrast Leonard with Powers has to do with rhythm. Leonard's prose has a jazzy beat to it that you catch onto right way. Powers's is more stately and formal. I don't think one is better than the other, just different. And what would seem Leonard's imprecision and lack of concision is what I would call an improvisatory effect.
Or maybe whither …
… Wither Physical Space? A Bookstore Mystery | the contextual life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Looking the right way …
… On Bukowski's Birthday Weekend, His Ode to 'The Railroad Yard' - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
There were railroad yards near where I spent the first eight years of my life. I have never forgotten them.
There were railroad yards near where I spent the first eight years of my life. I have never forgotten them.
What's behind a name …
… A new theory could solve the mystery of ‘Mark Twain’ - KansasCity.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Selling Poems on Craigslist? :o
On July 31, Aaron Belz -- author of three volumes of poems and editor of "Curator Magazine" -- posted the following ad on Craigslist: "Poet available to begin work immediately. Capable in rhyme and meter, fluent in traditional and contemporary forms. Quotidian observations available at standard rate of $15/hour; occasional verse at slightly higher rate of $17/hour. Incomprehensible garbage $25/hour. Angst extra."
A thought for today …
Be who you are and be that well.
— Saint Francis de Sales, born on this date in 1567
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Favorites …
… Ivan Doig’s Book Bag: Five Favorite Books on the American West - The Daily Beast. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sad, sad news …
… Author Elmore Leonard dies at 87.
Dutch was maybe the coolest guy I ever met.
Dave Lull sends along this: American novelist Elmore Leonard has died.
Dutch was maybe the coolest guy I ever met.
Dave Lull sends along this: American novelist Elmore Leonard has died.
A patient thinker …
… Bryan Appleyard — Thomas Nagel: A Man with a Fine Chest. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Welcome to Stasiland …
… David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face | Alan Rusbridger | Comment is free | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments – while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden – are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance. That perception is right.
A thought for today …
Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
— Paul Tillich, born on this date in 1886
Deconstructing Texts
One Friday evening in March, I took the train to Columbia University and walked into one of the strangest and most interesting classes I’d ever seen. It was the Laboratory of Literary Architecture, part of the Mellon Visiting Artists and Thinkers Program at Columbia University School of the Arts, and a multimedia workshop in which writing students, quite literally, create architectural models of literary texts.
Crowd Funding For Writers ...
The Wattpad fan-funding program is launching with three projects from writers; Brittany Geragotelis (Ki$$ and $ell), Jordan Lynde (A Proscriptive Relationship) and Tara Sampson (Catch My Breath).
Monday, August 19, 2013
RIP …
… John Hollander, Poet at Ease With Intellectualism and Wit, Dies at 83 - NYTimes.com.
Dave Lull sends along this: Caran d'ache.
Dave Lull sends along this: Caran d'ache.
To be is to act …
… How Ludwig Wittgenstein helped me get over my teenage angst | Giles Fraser | Comment is free | The Guardian.
As a 19-year-old, this argument had effects far beyond its original intention. All that angsty existentialist bollocks about our inner lives, so appealing to teenagers, was rapidly replaced by a priority of the social, the communitarian and the political. We comes before I. It is philosophically prior. This was the end of my pimple-popping fascination with the uniqueness of any sort of inner life. The most important thing is what you do not who you are "inside". It's a big part of the reason why I prefer the unfashionable idea of religion, with all its practises and public liturgies, to that nebulous language of spirituality that prioritises the inner life and the idea of feeling. Meaning is use. "In the beginning is the deed," as Goethe put it.
Of names and morons …
…A Commonplace Blog: Casual slander and reckless clichés.
The schools and the NCAA sure in hell profit enough off the athletes.
The schools and the NCAA sure in hell profit enough off the athletes.
Sign of the times …
… The Evolution of the Hot Take: A Brief History of Bad Sports Writing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A recent apex example of the form came via Jeff Passan, the lead baseball columnist forYahoo! Sports. The easy target was Ryan Braun, an all-star and MVP outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers who was suspended 65 games by Major League Baseball for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal. The extent and specifics of Braun’s presumed cheating remain, at best, vague, but Passan still wrote about him with the same level of humanity Hunter S. Thompson afforded his obituary of Richard Nixon.
At least it's getting air time …
… Orange Is the New Black on Road Less Traveled: Show gets Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken" right.. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I actually didn't know what Orange Is the New Black was. I just don't watch that much TV anymore.
I actually didn't know what Orange Is the New Black was. I just don't watch that much TV anymore.
HA! The Answer...It's That New Math Self Esteem Thing
Counterintuitively, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that praising people for their intelligence rather than their effort can actually make people perform drastically worse over time, avoid future challenges and form negative attitudes to learning and towards themselves.
"It's Not Just Amazon Reviewers, Most Readers Are That Way"
I should say that any anecdotal conclusions I draw here came from a conversation I had with another writer of literary fiction about our shared frustration that most people (perhaps increasingly) don’t seem to be drawn to fiction that offers more questions than answers.
A thought for today …
The politician is an acrobat. He keeps his balance by saying the opposite of what he does.
— Maurice Barrès, born on this date in 1862
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Unexpected obstacle …
… For hikers, no clean laundry in Kent - NewsTimes. (Hat tip, Anthony Gregory, who is hiking the trail.)
Saint G.K.? Or Saint Gilbert? Hmmm ...
Admirers of G.K. Chesterton had reason to rejoice this week at news that an English Catholic bishop is seeking to open an investigation into whether GKC should be declared a saint.
Chesterton himself would have laughed heartily at the idea. The odiferous, 300-pound, cigar-chomping journalist was far from the stereotypical idea of a saint. Then again saints are often distinguished by their differences, their exceptional qualities, whether it be their ability to fly, be in two places at once, or sit atop pillars for decades. There are no run-of-the-mill saints.See also: Three Acres and A Cow:
"UNDER the pressure of certain upper-class philosophies (or in other words, under the pressure of Hudge and Gudge) the average man has really become bewildered about the goal of his efforts; and his efforts, therefore, grow feebler and feebler..."
On Line Dictionaries...
Dictionaries change: This is literally the end of the English languageThe linked article discusses the changing meaning of "literally," in online dictionaries. Which got me thinking. Is the online dictionary meaning world different than the old days? Not professors and madmen engaging in leisurely correspondence over years, but I envision slackers and programmers, in the midst of pizza boxes and coke cans, deciding on meaning:
"Dude, like I am literally dead from those brownies."
"Wait, dude we've got to update some new definitions before you crash."
"Dude, like really? I am literally gonna barf if I look at one more word."
"Hey wait dude I've got an idea..."
Is it a good thing or bad that online dictionaries now are probably updated more frequently that in years past? After all, if the meanings are changing at a faster rate, shouldn't the tool to track meaning be accelerated as well?
When I googled (new word!) "how do online dictionaries get their definitions?" for insight, I found this article.
Conversations with the dead …
… Review: Giacomo Leopardi’s ‘Zibaldone’ - FT.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
— John Henry Newman
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Elusive dame …
… In search of Shakespeare's dark lady | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
English History
I'm reading two great books at the moment on the drama of English history. The first, written by Patrick Collinson, offers a readable take on the Reformation era, starting with early reform movements of the 14th century and landing somewhere toward the start of the 17th. For students of this revolutionary period, it's a riveting account.
The second is a book that's just been released by Simon Thurley focused on Britain's remarkable inventory of history monuments and buildings. The book charts the growth - beginning largely in the 19th century - of public works programs dedicated to historic preservation. The pictures alone are worth the price of admission: from the Tower, to Stonehenge, to Hampton Court and more, Thurley brings to life England's gradual - and then rapid - turn toward its past.
I'm enjoying both.
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