Monday, June 30, 2014
Just a thought …
We seek certainty, not truth, failing to realize that certainty is not what truth is about.
Being, like climate, is a chaotic system, at least from our perspective. According to Aquinas, truth is the mind in conformity with reality. Well, reality comprises a good deal more than what we can be certain of. And what we can be certain of is often among the least interesting things we know.
Strange and worrisome …
… Sarah Weinman — It is so strange, how disconnected our...
Vikram linked to this piece this morning, and I posted the following comment:
Vikram linked to this piece this morning, and I posted the following comment:
The article says that Ed's piece is "immediately remarkable for its misogynist lens: he charges 'white women who are almost totally in the dark about their privilege, many bolstering a blinkered neoliberal feminism' with assaulting the very foundation of literature (as he understands it)." How is this misogynist? Would it have been misogynist if directed at oblivious privileged white women bolstering a blinkered conservative anti-feminism? (Are women obligated to be feminists? I have never felt an urge to be a masculinist, which I guess would mean basing an ideology of some sort on my evolution-given gender. I have more respect for Almighty Evolution than that.)
The question is, "Do such people exist or not, is Ed's taxonomy correct or not?"
But even if it were misogynist so what? Next thing you know, they'll be banning misanthropes. (I should have added that, judging from this piece, Emily Gould's own reaction has been fairly classy.)
Ignorant drivel …
… Libertarians Are the New Communists — Bloomberg View.
First, the phrase "radical libertarianism." Do these two know that "radical" derives from "radix," the Latin word for root. To think radically is to think down to the root of the matter. The equation of libertarianism with communism is ham-handed to say the least. I'll bet these guys have nothing good to say about the "communist witch hunts" of the '50s, though they have no problem starting a libertarian witch hunt for these days. They should read Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. Or Nock's Our Enemy, the State.
Hmm …
… About Last Night | A new face in the canon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I can’t count the number of Mr. Leonard’s novels that revolve around a divorced man of a certain age who falls hard for a wised-up younger woman. On the other hand, a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger. No matter how many you’ve eaten, you can usually make room for another one if it’s good, and Mr. Leonard wrote a lot of good books, “LaBrava,” “Maximum Bob” and “Tishomingo Blues” in particular.But one can take pleasure in any number of sonnets, even though they're all about thwarted love. Leonard, it seems to me, came up with a narrative technique largely derived from a momentum born of tempo. And his characters are quite well individuated. The bail bondsman in Rum Punch, for instance. On the other hand, I definitely second this:
I’d much rather see the LOA take note of such underappreciated American novelists as (say) James Gould Cozzens, Peter DeVries, or John P. Marquand—and perhaps they will someday.
In step :
… I Walk, Therefore I am | Carl Honore. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I can vouch for this. I have been a walker all of my life. Not even my recent knee problems have kept me from doing it.
I can vouch for this. I have been a walker all of my life. Not even my recent knee problems have kept me from doing it.
Bess Lovejoy
My interview with Bess Lovejoy, author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, is featured in this month's edition of Rain Taxi. Click here for a copy.
Grace and messes …
… The Millions : Mystery and Manners: On Teaching Flannery O’Connor. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Because her religion so profoundly formed her cultural and artistic senses, O’Connor is difficult for most students. In fact, many of the essential writers my students find the most difficult are Catholics: Thomas Pynchon, Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, James Joyce, and Toni Morrison. This is not to claim that their Catholicism makes them innately worthy of study — a claim that would be laughed away by O’Connor — rather, that their works speak to the diversity and complexity of sacramental visions of the world. In an educational sense, the extent of their religious practice is less important than the appropriation of Catholic iconography, symbolism, narrative tradition, and even the ritual language of Mass. Whether respectful or parodic of the Word, they all have been formed by it. O’Connor was the most publicly Catholic of the bunch, and, notwithstanding Pynchon’s eccentricities, the strangest on the page. Which, I think, makes her worth teaching.
A thought for today …
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
— Czeslaw Milosz, born on this date in 1911
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Prester John …
… The Snug: With Powys in New York. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is an account of Powys lecturing:
I have made a pilgrimage to Phudd Bottom, in Upstate New York, where Powys lived for some years.
Here is an account of Powys lecturing:
Once I heard him talk on Hardy for over two hours to an audience of over two thousand in a huge auditorium in the heart of Chicago's slums; throughout those one hundred and thirty odd minutes there was not a sound from his listeners save an occasional roar of applause or laughter; and when he had finished speaking we rose like one person to our feet, demanding more. The man was a great actor.(Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament)
I have made a pilgrimage to Phudd Bottom, in Upstate New York, where Powys lived for some years.
Cri de coeur …
… An Open Letter to Swarthmore's Board of Managers | RealClearPolitics.
… as a grateful graduate of Swarthmore, I can’t help but view the hiring of a new president as an opportunity for the school to rededicate itself to the true mission of liberal education, which is to prepare students for the rights and responsibilities of freedom by furnishing and refining their minds. Trepidation because I fear that Swarthmore’s next president will lead the college further down the path of politicized research and curriculum that has become the hallmark of our finest colleges and universities.
Just a thought …
In a review of Gaia Vince's Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made, Bryan Appleyard makes a most interesting point: "Humans do what humans do and our activities are as 'natural' as any other creature’s. We are pretty much incapable of saving anything — carbon emissions continue to soar and even the greatest nature reserve in the world, the Serengeti, is being squeezed and plundered — so it is best to assume the worst."
After first wondering if Gaia was Ms. Vince's given name, the thought came to me that there isn't any plausible naturalistic argument for any human obligation to take care of the world, except to the extent that doing so is conducive to survival. The founding principle of Darwinism is survival by means of natural selection. This is the principle from which any others must be derived. Which is to say all behavior must be reducible to explanation by means of the aforementioned first principle. Given that life, as actually experienced, offers a good deal more than mere survival, this seems an impoverished view of things, somewhat on the order of reducing literature to ink and paper (the pen is problematic because it interjects purpose, attention, and skill. Either those, or colossal good luck.
You are being watched...
...Facebook under fire over psychology study
"Helpful hint: whenever you watch TV, read a book, open a newspaper, or talk to another person, someone's manipulating your emotions!" he tweeted. "The entire Facebook system is designed to lead to positive posts and interactions."
Hmm …
… 'Nature's God' explores 'heretical origins' of religion in U.S. — Los Angeles Times.
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law establishing religion — because several states at the time had established churches. This is a pretty ignorant review.
… the more circumspect John Locke (careful to mask his iconoclasm with boilerplate declarations of conventional piety) ended up praised by historians as "the single greatest intellectual influence on America's revolutionaries."But consider this, from Edward Feser's recent review of Anthony Pagden's The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters:
But back to the article at hand:John Locke, critic of Scholasticism and hero of the Enlightenment, gave his doctrine of rights an explicitly theological basis. For Locke, human beings have a right not to be killed or enslaved only because they are God’s “workmanship,” and thus his “property” and his “servants… sent into the world by his order, and about his business.” It is, strictly speaking, God’s rights as our maker and owner that are violated when we harm each other. Say what you will about such a view, it is hardly an advance for the kind of multicultural, secular political morality Pagden celebrates.
As Copernicus and Galileo learned, discovering natural laws that contradicted Catholic dogma was a risky business …This would be news to Copernicus, who published his book at the insistence of his religious superior.
The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law establishing religion — because several states at the time had established churches. This is a pretty ignorant review.
A thought for today …
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born on this date in 1900
Saturday, June 28, 2014
A thought for today …
Shake yourself free from the manikin you create out of a false interpretation of what you do and what you feel, and you'll at once see that the manikin you make yourself is nothing at all like what you really are or what you really can be!
— Luigi Pirandello, born on this date in 1867
Friday, June 27, 2014
Tracking the decline …
… beyond eastrod: Cursive writing disappears from curricula -- the liberal progressive drumbeat gets more persistent -- and I need to reread George Orwell's cautionary tale . . .
Cursive script is something everyone should learn simply because it is an age-old practice that anyone can do half decently if taught properly. However ugly, one's signature is one's own. I have a rather good hand when I sit down and write seriously, though I scribble hastily a lot these days. My mother won a penmanship contest in grade school — statewide, I believe — and she taught me how to write. The nuns simply reinforced what I already knew.
I think there will be greater and greater competition mounted against the educational establishment, and that you are simply going to find a good number of people who have actually been educated and not simply trained. Such people have an advantage.
Saddle up …
…My South by Southwest – A Cast Iron Tempo Recollection by Elizabeth Stelling | Fox Chase Review.
This is a beautifully crafted review, a real gem on its own.
This is a beautifully crafted review, a real gem on its own.
The book that shook a tyranny …
… 'The Zhivago Affair': Dr. Zhivago’s CIA Connection and the Pope – Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
What made Doctor Zhivago such a bitter pill for Khrushchev’s regime to swallow? Unlike Solzhenitsyn’s book, which was a head-on indictment of Soviet crimes, Pasternak’s novel was a poetic and abstract work, most of whose literary energy goes into miraculously vivid descriptions of weather and nature. Indeed, Doctor Zhivago was Pasternak’s first and only novel; before he started writing it, in 1945, he had been famous as a lyric poet and translator of Shakespeare. It was partly Pasternak’s great stature as a poet—he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times on the strength of his verse alone—that made it difficult for the Soviet leadership to deal with him. If even Stalin, in his massacre of Soviet writers, had taken care to spare Pasternak, how could Khrushchev—who was supposed to be presiding over a “thaw” in Soviet cultural life—dare to silence or jail him?
FYI …
A POETRY WORKSHOP WITH LEONARD GONTAREK
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly, Nicole Finkbiner
Reserve a place in the class via: gontarek9@earthlink.net
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly, Nicole Finkbiner
Reserve a place in the class via: gontarek9@earthlink.net
The golden years …
I am sitting in a bay at Wills Eye Hospital, beside my wife, who is in a bed with an IV in her arm awaiting cataract surgery. The pleasures of maturity.
Hmm …
… Bryan Appleyard — Into the Anthropocene. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This book is about the multiple complexities implied by those two (and dozens of other) stories, and about the new epoch we have entered: the Anthropocene. The term was invented in the 1980s and has not yet been formally ratified, but it really should be. The previous epoch — the Holocene — began with human settlements about 13,000 years ago and is defined by the rise to worldwide ascendancy of our species. The new epoch began with the Industrial Revolution in the early 18th century and marks a period in which humans have begun to re-engineer the entire world.
Reading (and writing about) E. Kirsten Peters's The Whole Story of Climate Change awhile back, Led me to suspect that the Holocene might just be another of those warm interruptions that punctuated the Pleistocene every 100,000 years or so. The Holocene has been a bit longer than those, which mostly lasted about 10,000 years, but maybe human activity (Peters notes that humans have been exerting an influence on climate since the dawn of agriculture) has extended its life. Other factors — solar activity, for instance — may eventually counter that.
Substitutes for thought …
… 15 Most Annoying Expressions in Politics | RealClearPolitics.
We're a long way from Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.
We're a long way from Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.
Hmm …
… In Defense of Teaching Poetry�|�Stephen Chiger. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I have my doubts about Common Core, or any other bureaucratic intrusion into education — is there anything of value we can keep government out of, by any chance? — but classic poetry should be taught, along with other literary classics, for obvious reasons. Want to get your kids interested in poetry? Make sure you introduce them to Mother Goose as early as possible. (The first poem to grab my imagination was "Hey Diddle Diddle," simply because of the sound of it.) Poe is great for teens (the sound again, and the creepiness). Oh, and try reading some aloud to them.
A thought for today …
Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.
— Krzysztof Kieslowski, born on this date in 1941
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Weigh in, folks …
… beyond eastrod: RT returns to work at Beyond Eastrod . . . but I need "marching orders" from you . . .
I like all of the topics, but certainly find No. 16 intriguing.
I like all of the topics, but certainly find No. 16 intriguing.
Nobodies and us …
… The Poems (We Think) We Know: Emily Dickinson | The Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Between the lines …
… The Fraught Friendship of T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As the Rock Man in Nilsson's The Point puts it, "Ya sees what ya want to see, and ya hears what ya want to hear. Ya dig?"
As the Rock Man in Nilsson's The Point puts it, "Ya sees what ya want to see, and ya hears what ya want to hear. Ya dig?"
Throwing giddy Molotovs …
… Emily Gould, Literary Narcissism, and the Middling Millennials | Reluctant Habits.
Ed evidently is not fond of Miss Emily. I can tell from the comments that this does not sit well with some people. I also knew nothing about Emily Gould before reading this. I am sure a defense of Gould can be mounted, but Ed does seem to present a fair amount of prima facie evidence to support his indictment. I don't agree with everything Ed says. I don't agree with anybody on everything. But I have to say I love it when he pulls out all the stops. Does he ever go overboard? Of course. But he also always manages to climb back on board to sail another day. In this day of rampant PC, how refreshing that seems.
A thought for today …
I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
— Pearl Buck, born on this date in 1892
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Richard Strauss at 150 …
… Boorish, venal but brilliant | Standpoint.
Death, he would say on his deathbed, "is just as I composed it in ‘Death and Transfiguration'". Strauss was a man who gave much and learned little. If he had emotional or intellectual depths they remain, after many biographies, well hidden.I confess to being partial to artists whose lives are undramatic.
Turns of phrase …
… Columbia University Press — An Interview with Jenny Davidson, author of Reading Style: A Life in Sentences. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
George Eliot is a good bad writer, and so is Lionel Shriver: in the case of each of these authors, there is a kind of muscular intellectual force that bludgeons you and impresses itself on you at one and the same time. The sentences are often slightly cringe-worthy, but it is in aid of a greater good.I wonder what Lionel would have to say about that.
Indeed …
… Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School — Jessica Lahey — The Atlantic.
Unscheduled, unsupervised, playtime is one of the most valuable educational opportunities we give our children. It is fertile ground; the place where children strengthen social bonds, build emotional maturity, develop cognitive skills, and shore up their physical health. The value of free play, daydreaming, risk-taking, and independent discovery have been much in the news this year, and a new study by psychologists at the University of Colorado reveals just how important these activities are in the development of children’s executive functioning.
The totalitarian supervision I see kids subjected to these days is one reason I am glad I am not a kid these days.
Symbiosis …
… Freedom and the Role of the Artist - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the artist must first of all be able to tell the truth as he sees it about the world he sees around him. That task can only be pursued to the fullest degree under the aspect of freedom. Where there is no freedom, there is no art, save at the risk of the artist's neck. And this freedom includes, among many other things, freedom from the paralyzing obligation to persuade.
The unbearable lightness of the Enlightenment …
… Perception Is Everything. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Pagden claims that Scholastic natural law theory was inadequate insofar as it rested on a dubious doctrine of “innate ideas,” and he devotes a few pages to criticizing the notion. This is embarrassingly incompetent. In fact, as good Aristotelians, Scholastic natural law theorists like Aquinas explicitly rejected the doctrine of innate ideas. (“There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses” is a famous Scholastic maxim.) And in fact, it was some of the heroes of the Enlightenment thinkers — rationalist philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz — who championed innate ideas.
A thought for today …
In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
— George Orwell, born on this date in 1903
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Careful what you wish for …
… Sohrab Ahmari: 'When People Choose, They Choose Wrong' — WSJ.
… The book's most memorable, and controversial, aspect is the community's casual disregard for the dignity of human life. Infants with disabilities, those who don't adjust well to their host families or meet certain height and weight criteria by a specified age, are "released." Any adult who wants to leave the community is also subject to "release," and the elderly, too, are routinely "released" after a ritual celebration. It won't take adults long to guess what "release" entails, but for young readers, encountering the horror of infanticide and euthanasia from Jonas's perspective can be an overpowering experience.
Canon fire …
… [Criticism] | What Is Literature, by Arthur Krystal | Harper's Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… one may regard the canon as a convenient fiction, shaped in part by the material conditions under which writing is produced and consumed, while simultaneously recognizing the validity of hierarchical thinking and aesthetic criteria. Writers may not be able to “escape from contingency,” as the new historicists used to say, but those sensitive to their prisons can transform the walls that confine them — a transformation that requires an awareness of the great poets and novelists who preceded them. Artists look backward in order to move forward. Which is why hierarchical rankings of writers are as natural as those teeming lists of great boxers, tenors, composers, and cabinetmakers. The canon may be unfair and its proponents self-serving, but the fact that there is no set-in-stone syllabus or sacred inventory of Great Books does not mean there are no great books. This is something that seems to have gotten lost in the canon brawl — i.e., the distinction between a list of Great Books and the idea that some books are far better than others.
A guy walks into the Forum …
… Roman Jokers by Gregory Hays | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hear, hear …
… Sightings: Educating America - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
These are all good choices. But the choosing is the thing. When I was in high school, I read Will Durant's The Story of Philosopophy and quite a lot of his The Story of Civilization. I liked history. That's when I first read Herodotus. But when I has to read The Return of the Native as a class assignment, I found it rough going and Pride and Prejudice seemed well-nigh incomprehensible. I would never become a Janeite, in fact, but when read Hardy's novel in college, I loved it. I was ready for it by then. Let the girls read Jane and give the boys The Red Badge of Courage.
These are all good choices. But the choosing is the thing. When I was in high school, I read Will Durant's The Story of Philosopophy and quite a lot of his The Story of Civilization. I liked history. That's when I first read Herodotus. But when I has to read The Return of the Native as a class assignment, I found it rough going and Pride and Prejudice seemed well-nigh incomprehensible. I would never become a Janeite, in fact, but when read Hardy's novel in college, I loved it. I was ready for it by then. Let the girls read Jane and give the boys The Red Badge of Courage.
A thought for today …
In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.
— St. John of the Cross, born on this date in 1542
Monday, June 23, 2014
The weight of affliction …
… Simone Weil and “the mark of slavery” | The Book Haven.
Affliction is an uprooting of life, a more or less attenuated equivalent of death, made irresistibly present to the soul by the attack or immediate apprehension of physical pain. If there is complete absence of physical pain there is no affliction for the soul, because our thoughts can turn to any object. Thought flies from affliction as promptly and irresistibly as an animal flies from death. Here below, physical pain, and that alone, has the power to chain down our thoughts; on condition that we count as physical pain certain phenomena that, though difficult to describe, are bodily and exactly equivalent to it. Fear of physical pain is a notable example.
Putting the con in conceptual …
… Bryan Appleyard — Marina Abramovic: Nothing Into Everything. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is the heart of the matter. Abramovic has concluded that in the 21st century, art will not be made out of objects, but out of energy. “The future of art is about energy transmission, and that is what I am doing.”
By energy, she means the human energy that contemporary society crushes with its materiality and distraction. Her art has thus become explicitly therapeutic, an attempt, through long duration, to reinvent time — “We don’t have time any more, we have to create time in art” — and to make people fully aware of being in the present. This is why “nothing” is so important to her, and why she has nothing to say about the content of her show: the content is nothing. Like the mystics — indeed, like the scientists — she believes in nothing as the ultimate fullness.I love it.
Continuing …
… Chilean Judge Asks For More Tests In Pablo Neruda Death Probe | Fox News Latino. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Finding time for reading …
… more than 95 theses — Writing absorbs me, so I do it in the afternoons,... (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Wracked body, handsome countenance …
… The TLS blog: Alexander Pope: A poet in marble. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reynolds remembered him as being “about four feet six high; very humpbacked and deformed; he wore a black coat; and according to the fashion of that time, had on a little sword”. By that point in his life, only a couple of years before his death, Pope, a victim of Pott’s disease, would probably have been wearing a corset to support his weak, crooked spine, and he only rarely appeared in public. Perhaps the most striking thing about Pope, though, apart from his stunted height and the fact that everybody (“by a kind of enthusiastic impulse”, according to Boswell’s version of Reynolds’s anecdote) wanted to bow to him or shake his hand (depending on which source you prefer), was his face. Understandably, Reynolds, the future portrait-painter to the elite, thought it an extremely interesting one:“[Pope] had a large and very fine eye, and a long handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which always are found in the mouths of crooked persons; and the muscles which run across the cheek were so strongly marked as to appear like small cords.”
A thought for today …
Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.
— Jean Anouilh, born on this date in 1910
Laughing skeptic …
… Book Review: 'A Literary Education and Other Essays' by Joseph Epstein - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sunday, June 22, 2014
No matter, never mind …
… Philosophy, lit, etc.: Poetic Berkeley, prosaic Hume. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Certainly highly unlikely…
… A Miracle In Philadelphia | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“What happened was it started on the roof, the fire. But it’s still amazing that with the collapse and all, this stuff is not burned. They could take it right off the wall; a lot of the pictures are still on the wall, the glass isn’t broken or nothing. When it comes to fires, I’ve seen it all, but I’ve never seen nothing like this before.”
A thought for today …
A hospital alone shows what war is.
— Erich Maria Remarque, born on this date in 1898
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Oh, wow …
… This Is Your Brain on Writing — NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
All right, boys and girls, this gives an opportunity to just plain.
Let's start with this:
All right, boys and girls, this gives an opportunity to just plain.
Let's start with this:
But Dr. Lotze also recognized a big limit of the study: His subjects had no previous experience in creative writing. Would the brains of full-time writers respond differently?
Well, that's sure nice, because that is something you just might want to check out before you go blabbing about it. It's called doing research that is thorough and comprehensive, not merely preliminary. Here's what we want to know: how does the brain activity of a Tolstoy at work compare to that of some literary Joe Doaks? There could well be no difference. Both are using their brains. Both are using, say, pen, ink, and paper. People doing carpentry use the same tools in much the same way. But the results are often quite different. How come the people who write articles like this seem to always take leave of their critical faculties?
The disappearing script …
… Vladimir Nabokov’s Unpublished ‘Lolita’ Screenplay Notes | VICE United States. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Q&A …
… John Searle: The Philosopher in the World by Tim Crane | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The claim that “every human being has a right to seek adequate housing,” or that there are particular jurisdictions where the British government, or the government of the State of California, can decide “we’re going to guarantee or give that right to all of our citizens”—that seems to me OK. But the idea that every human being, just in virtue of being a human being, has a right to adequate housing in a way that would impose an obligation on every other human being to provide that housing, that seems to me nonsense. So I say that you can make a good case for universal human rights of a negative kind, but that you cannot make the comparable case for universal human rights of a positive kind.
A thought for today …
I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
— Reinhold Niebuhr, born on this date in 1892
Worlds and times …
… Questions of Cosmology — The American Interest. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have for some years argued that the great dialogue to come is one that one should welcome: the dialogue between the great religious traditions of south and east Asia on one side, and the west Asian monotheisms on the other. If you will, it is the dialogue between Benares (now called Varanasi) and Jerusalem: the most sacred Hindu pilgrimage site where one can immerse oneself in the wonder-working waters of Mother Ganges, near where Gautama the Buddha preached his first sermon; and the city where the Temple of Solomon stood, where Jesus died and was resurrected, and from where Muhammad began his nocturnal journey to heaven. Some years ago I was asked in an interview what I had learned from Hinduism and Buddhism in this kind of dialogue. I answered spontaneously: the vastness of time and space. The interviewer stopped abruptly at that point, leaving my answer hanging in the air.
Friday, June 20, 2014
To the point …
… Flannery O'Connor: Friends Don't Let Friends Read Ayn Rand (1960) - | Open Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In case you wondered …
… What’s Wrong with Fiddler on the Roof — Mosaic Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What the Romans did for us …
… The arc of empire by Sarah Ruden — The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
In philosophy a single naïve question is sometimes enough to make an entire system come tumbling down.
— Don Colacho
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Atta boy...
...David Mitchell's webchat: 10 things we learned
No disrespect to Tim Parks who I know is a very clever man, but I think the death of the novel/of architecture/of painting/of fashion/of the serious film/of theatre/of any art form has been confidently pronounced too often over too many decades for me to take such pronouncements too seriously.
Sotto voce …
… Redefining Religious Fiction | Books and Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Neither Christopher Beha nor William Giraldi is a Catholic novelist in the simplistic sense of dressing up Catholic doctrine with what Paul Elie calls "the old power to persuade." Nor is either of them a Catholic apologist in any form. They are not trying to defend the Catholic religion nor even to make it plausible for readers likely to reject it. They are Catholic novelists for all that, however, with a literary project far more profound—to display religion as inextricably woven into human life, or what the great Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins would have described as its "inscape." They are nothing like each other, their religious convictions are nothing alike, but between them Beha and Giraldi are redefining how religious fiction, especially Catholic fiction, might be written by those with small need to shout.
A thought for today …
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
— Blaise Pascal, born on this date in 1623
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Looks like the old boss …
… Meet The New Boss | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog.
When he bought The Inquirer some years ago, Brian Tierney did a very smart thing: He acknowledged that he didn't know anything about running a newspaper. So he decided to consult with those he figured knew more than he did. Another good idea. Unfortunately, he consulted with the usual suspects, who persuaded him that the way forward was the way back. That didn't turn out so well. He might want to spend some time reading the online versions of the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Wall Street Journal.
When I was book editor, I once emailed him that I had noticed that Starbucks stocked the New York Times, but not The Inquirer. He wrote back that he knew that and was taking steps to see that it changed. I'm sure he did and as far as I know Starbucks now has The Inquirer on hand (I can't say for sure because I don't go to Starbucks very often. Anyway, mere access isn't enough. It is the quality of the product that counts. Bad though the Times has become, it still offers more than The Inquirer usually does. It would be very easy, and not at all expensive, for The Inquirer to have a book section that was fully competitive withe the Times's. They could probably even sell it to other papers around the country. Throw in some serious, imaginative features, and you just might see circulation grow. Don't hold your breath, though.
Pre-mortem …
… Will the internet kill the literary novel? Depends on who you ask | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, I spend a lot of time exploring the internet, but I still have plenty left over to read as I always. So I don't know what Parks's problem is.
Well, I spend a lot of time exploring the internet, but I still have plenty left over to read as I always. So I don't know what Parks's problem is.
A thought for today …
The time to make up your mind about people, is never.
— Philip Barry, born on this date in 1896
RIP …
… Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon's sad, sweet genius | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Holy dying …
…The Mercy of Sickness before Death. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What once might have seemed like wastes of time—a solitaire game, a television show you would never have admitted to watching, the idle poking around for useless information—may become unexpected sources of joy, the low-key celebrations of being alive. The difference is that when you are conscious of choosing how to spend your time, and when you discover that you enjoy your choices, they take on a meaning they could never have had before.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Asking the dumb questions …
… Why Are So Many Poets Laureate Old, White And Male? The Library Of Congress Responds | ThinkProgress. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I have nothing against any of America's poets laureate. I've met seven of them, and knew one of them, Dan Hoffman, tolerably well. But think of all those who didn't get the nod. Kenneth Patchen, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Wallace Stevens, H. D., Denise Levertov, Marianne Moore — and those are just off the top of my head. The sex of the poet or the race of the poet and lots of other things are irrelevant. In fact, the only thing that's relevant is the poetry. Skip thinking progress. Try just thinking.
Hmm …
… The Poetic Species: Legendary Sociobiologist E.O. Wilson in Conversation with Poet Laureate Robert Hass on Science and Poetry | Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the interplay of science and poetry in the pursuit of human knowledge is far from obvious, let alone celebrated, in today’s culture.Maybe in today's culture. But, according to Plutarch, Thales wrote his treatises in verse. Parmenides' On Nature is a poem.
Indeed, one need only look at Galileo’s troubles to appreciate the poignancy of this observation and to be reminded that ignorance, not knowledge, drives science.
Actually, if one really does look at Galileo's troubles carefully, one discovers he wasn't quite the scientific hero he is made out to be. He coarsely denounced Kepler when the latter proved Copernicus was right by demonstrating celestial orbits were elliptical, not circular. Galileo insisted they were circular, even though he knew, as did Copernicus, that the mathematics of circular orbits and heliocentrism did not jell.
This piece has an aura of sentimentalism, which neither poetry nor science needs.
A thought for today …
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
— Igor Stravinsky, born on this date in 1882
Monday, June 16, 2014
The sound of silence …
… Edward Feser on John Gray: Silence Speaks.
This is an outstanding review, if only because of the fairness and precision with which summarizes views he obviously does not share. Consider this:
Skepticism was a key element of Gray’s thought even in his right-wing period, and it made for an interesting variation on Reagan- and Thatcher-era conservatism. In his important book Hayek on Liberty (1984), which was praised by Friedrich Hayek himself, Gray sympathetically set out Hayek’s position that there are limitations in principle on our ability to understand the function served by inherited social rules, so that we ought to be very wary of tampering with these rules in a large-scale way after the fashion of economic planners and social engineers. Gray would go on to argue in Enlightenment’s Wake (1995) that contemporary conservatives’ warm embrace of modern capitalism has led them to overlook the ways in which market forces, like leftist planners, can undermine inherited social rules and traditional communities, and have thereby fostered subjectivist and antinomian tendencies within modern Western society. Like socialist utopianism, the fusionist synthesis of traditional morality and the free market is in Gray’s view a rationalist fantasy.
What a marvelous prècis. As it happens, Feser's objections notwithstanding, I find myself more in sympathy with Gray. I honor reason as a wondrous faculty. I employ it all the time. I simply no longer think it is the arbiter of truth its advocates claim. Insofar as language can give expression to what I have come to think of as the transcendent ambiguity of being, it is by means of the synergy provided by poetry. Thought figures, of course. But we are dependent on revelation to get at the heart of things.
Words' worth...
...Is the name ‘lesbian and gay’ right for our diverse film festival?
Do we need an alphabet soup which is decipherable only to the few? Should we name each section of the community we want to support in a London LGBTQQICCAPPPGA Film Festival (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, celibate, curious, asexual, polyamorous, polymorphous, perverse, genderqueer, and allies)? Or should we go for a word like Pink or Purple, Rainbow, Pride, or Diversity?
Light and dark …
… Patrick Kurp reviews Accepting the Disaster by Joshua Mehigan | Quarterly Conversation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Lost and found …
… Anthony Burgess on James Joyce: the lost introduction - Book News | Literature & Book Reviews & Headlines |The Irish Times - Sat, Jun 14, 2014. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If he had borrowed the doctrine of purgation from Aristotle’s Poetics he had taken from the magisterial Aquinas the bones of a theory of aesthetics that, in the novelStephen Hero and its reworking as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, he fleshes out with a system of his own. And from the church itself he took the term epiphany, which stands for the feast of the visitation of the Magi but which he restored to its secular meaning of a “showing forth”.
Literary thirst …
… 'Every hour a glass of wine' – the female writers who drank | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… are their reasons for drinking different?No. People drink because they like to. If they like it a lot, they drink a lot.
In case you're still wondering
…Paris Review – Bloomsday Explained, Jonathan Goldman. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The answer lies in the celebrity and cultural capital of the Joyce brand, the result of Joyce’s machinations and the way he’s been taken up in mainstream U.S. culture. When Joyce started work on Ulysses a hundred years ago, he was a rather cultish figure, having recently published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners, after many roadblocks for both. This limited but fervid devotion played into Joyce’s career: through the efforts of Ezra Pound, Ulysses and its author became something of a cause célèbre for modernist coteries. Pound secured Joyce patronage (largely from women—Joyce’s career is unthinkable without the interventions of Harriet Shaw Weaver, among others), enabling him to leave off teaching to write (the dream of many). A series of public legal incidents catapulted the novel into wider public consciousness: the seizure of copies ofThe Little Review that contained the “Nausikaaa” chapter, Joyce’s campaign to prevent Samuel Roth from selling a pirated edition, and the 1933 case “The United States of America v. One Book Called ‘Ulysses,’” in which Judge John Woolsey determined thatUlysses was art, not smut. In the 1930s, Joyce appeared on the cover of Time and Stalin’s list of banned authors, and generally became famous as the epitome of literary difficulty and elitism.
Happy Bloomsday!
The intrepid Dave Lull has graciously tracked down the articles I wrote for the centenary of Bloomsday 10 years ago. They seem to be still readable. So here they are. Thanks, Dave.
…Philadelphia Inquirer | 06/13/2004 | Changed, but still Joycean at its core.
… Hero of Joyce's gem gets his 100-year due.
…Philadelphia Inquirer | 06/13/2004 | Changed, but still Joycean at its core.
… Hero of Joyce's gem gets his 100-year due.
… Who's afraid of James Joyce? A guide to reading 'Ulysses'.
And here is John Timpane's article about the centenary of Dubliners, which I also linked to yesterday:
A thought for today …
Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?
— Joseph Butler, who died on this date in 1752
Sunday, June 15, 2014
The art of writing …
… and more: Forging the Future with the Tip of a Pen | This Is Our City | Christianity Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One man's anti-intellect …
… may be another's healthy skeptic: Opinion: Bowdoin College case reflects new campus 'thought police' - CNN.com.
There is, indeed, a bias against conservative Christians on campuses. And there are some reasons for this, as certain strains of conservative religious practice have been fiercely discriminatory over the past couple of centuries in the United States. There has also been an unfortunate anti-intellectual strain in the more fundamentalist groups of Christians, one that pervades American society as a whole, and creates problems for the practice of science, for instance, when it comes to subjects such as evolution and climate change.
The Christians referred to are usually "fundamentalist" only in it's looser and largely useless sense, though it is true that there is a minority who not only object to Neo-Darwinism, but have adopted positions largely at odds with the consensus the rest of us soundly regard as reality. As for the "fiercely discriminatory over the past couple of centuries," well, the whole was more fiercely discriminatory during that period. But to link these things to skepticism regarding "climate change" suggests that one may be more scientifically uninformed than one thinks. First of all, "climate change" is a weasel phrase. The term "climate" refers to a state of being characterized by continuous change. What is being referred to, in fact, is an hypothesis regarding the direction that change is likely to take over, say, the next century. In particular, it refers to those who claim the change is in the direction of higher temperatures. No one questions the scientific credentials of Freeman Dyson or Richard Lindzen, neither of whom subscribes to the warming hypothesis. It is a good idea to make sure your political prejudices are kept at a safe difference, not only from your faith, but also from science.
Of course, I agree with point of the article. But I have grown tired of seeing ignorant talking points creeping into what is supposed to be careful discourse.
Hmm …
… Poetry: Who Needs It? - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sometime in the early '60s, if memory serves — I was still in college, I'm pretty sure — one of the Big Three TV networks broadcast during prime time one Sunday a special in which various actors performed poetry. The one I remember best was Hurd Hatfield (who played Dorian Gray in the classic 1945 film) performing "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," dressed in white tie and tails and making his way among the women in the drawing room. His delivery was perfect.
A thought for today …
The world of dewis the world of dew,And yet, and yet...
— Kobayashi Issa, born on this date in 1763
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Oh, this is bracing …
… Leon Wieseltier Responds to Alain de Botton's Attack on Twitter | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
De Botton is the celebrated author of a series of books that flatten great literature into self-help literature and philosophy into tasty little homilies for the haute bourgeoisie. He is what Oprah Winfrey would have been if she had read The World as Will and Representation. His books may be the most complacent books I have ever read. In his many accounts of the struggle for existence there is no evidence of the struggle, not a shred. Instead there is a TED-like self-congratulation: a brush with an idea followed by an overwhelming sensation of coolness and depth. In London he has established an institution called the School of Life, which offers its paying students the opportunity to feel as lovely and as psychologically integrated as its founder. Its website must be seen to be believed. Woody Allen’s people would have graduated from the School of Life with honors.Ouch.
About that airbrushed progress …
… IGNORANCE, DISHONESTY AND JOHN GRAY | Pandaemonium. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gray claims that I airbrush the fact that ‘TH Huxley, praised by Malik for his criticism of evolutionary ethics, developed a detailed classification of racial types’. What I actually write is that the late nineteenth century was ‘an age in which even staunch liberals, such as Darwin and Huxley, took racial hierarchies as natural and racial struggle as a given’ (p 307). Gray implies that I ignore Aristotle’s views about women, slaves and barbarians. In fact, I deal with those issues more than once, and describe the ‘Golden Age of Athens’ as one ‘in which barbarians were regarded as fit for enslavement, and in which Aristotle defended slavery on the grounds that some people were naturally created to be enslaved’ (p 51). Gray claims that I fail to see that the Greeks did not have ‘the same conception of morality as we do’. Why, then, do I write of the Iliad that ‘it describes an alien moral world, not simply because its moral rules are so different from those of our world but also because its very notion of what constitutes a moral rule is alien to us’ (p 6)?
The view from below …
… is often unnervingly sharp: The Sultan of Sewers — Reason.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Burroughs was no conventional conservative. As a bisexual, a drug user, and a writer whose work was regularly damned as "obscene," he came to regard the right as a gang of bigots and busybodies. But he was no conventional radical either. His anti-authoritarian vision cut across the normal categories of left and right. "At the present time," he said in The Job, "we are all confined in concentration camps called nations. We are forced to obey laws to which we have not consented, and to pay exorbitant taxes to maintain the prisons in which we are confined." As an alternative, he called for consensual communities that "break down national borders."
The wages of ignorance …
… It's Urgent To Put The Liberal Arts Back At The Center Of Education - Forbes.
… when a bunch of people, whose job is to write about politics, who presumably have nice-sounding educations, who have editors, don’t know one of the very basics of the political thought that gave us the world we live in, the hour is very late indeed.
Airbrushed progress …
… New Statesman | John Gray: “Humanity is a figment of the imagination”. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
You would never know, from reading Malik’s account, that the Renaissance was a time when belief in magic thrived at the highest levels of the state, with Elizabeth I regularly consulting spirit-seers. You would have no idea that Kepler (a prototypical Renaissance figure Malik doesn’t discuss) was as devoted to horoscope-making as he was to astronomy, or that Machiavelli (another archetypal Renaissance figure who doesn’t even appear in the book’s index) posed fundamental questions about the role of ethics in politics.
The meeting of knowledge and imagination …
… Masterpiece: Nabokov Looks Back at Life Before 'Lolita' - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"Speak, Memory" is not without its longueurs. A lengthy section is given over to lepidoptery; another to the composition of chess problems. Odd that so great a writer is unable to generate passion in his readers for what were two among his own greatest passions, but it is so. Both, though, touch on his artistic life. Rare butterflies show up in several of his novels and stories. In "The Defense" he wrote one of the great novels about chess, a book whose true theme is obsession.
Father and daughters …
… Zealotry of Guerin: The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (John Singer Sargent), Sonnet #183.
I helped raise three girls. A challenge, to be sure. But such a privilege.
I helped raise three girls. A challenge, to be sure. But such a privilege.
A thought for today …
I couldn't claim that I have never felt the urge to explore evil, but when you descend into hell you have to be very careful
— Kathleen Raine, born on this date in 1908
Friday, June 13, 2014
They've got a secret …
… Cult writers | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The arcane – from Latin arca, signifying a chest in which something is locked away – describes both esoteric knowledge and the closed, clandestine groups that guard it, and it has intrigued writers and their audiences from the age of Greek tragedy to modern conspiracy thrillers.
About time …
… New Statesman | Bryan Appleyard: in defence of the British suburbs. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Suburb-bashing is one of the more tiresome clichés of our cliché-ridden era. When I was covering the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, some years ago, I was invited to Sunday by a couple living in a development outside town. The view from their front door was of the snow-capped Ruby Range. I asked the husband what he thought about the notion, encountered in contemporary fiction, that suburban was largely empty and meaningless.His reply was priceless: "Guess I'm enjoying myself to notice how empty my life is."
Suburb-bashing is one of the more tiresome clichés of our cliché-ridden era. When I was covering the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, some years ago, I was invited to Sunday by a couple living in a development outside town. The view from their front door was of the snow-capped Ruby Range. I asked the husband what he thought about the notion, encountered in contemporary fiction, that suburban was largely empty and meaningless.His reply was priceless: "Guess I'm enjoying myself to notice how empty my life is."
'Dubliners' turns 100 …
… The Smart Set: Old People, Young People, and Priests - May 30, 2014. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“I call the series Dubliners,” wrote James Joyce, “to betray the soul of that... paralysis which many consider a city.” Dubliners, he argued in a letter to a publisher who eventually declined to take on the manuscript, was written for the benefit of Irish civilization, for in his stories, wrote James, the Irish people would get “one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking glass.” In the looking glass, Dubliners would see a people frozen in time. They would see themselves existing in the grey zone between paralysis and freedom.
A thought for today …
Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
— Fernando Pessoa, born on this date in 1888
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Manifold blessing …
… Relief by Kay Ryan | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Chiswickbuzz.net - Chiswickbuzz.net
… Bryan talks about Bedford Park — Chiswickbuzz.net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Perhaps someone should alert Brian Leiter to this.
Perhaps someone should alert Brian Leiter to this.
Tabloid scholarship …
… Joyce, ‘Ulysses’ and obscenity viewed in page-turner style - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… “The Most Dangerous Book” could represent a trend: Rising young scholars may be over-correcting for the excesses of recent academese by adopting a supercharged, snazzily cinematic style of writing.Not such a bad idea, actually, but not that easy to pull off, especially by an academic.
The progress of plagiarism …
… Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Winner, a Lefty Hero, & a Plagiarist. | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The plagiarism at Harper’s was not an isolated incident. Hedges has a history of lifting material from other writers that goes back at least to his first book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, published in 2002. He has echoed language from Nation authorsauthors Naomi Klein. He has lifted lines from radical social critic Neil Postman. He has even purloined lines from Ernest Hemingway.
A thought for today …
The capitalist and other classes of ancient origin had in fact been destroyed, but a new class, previously unknown to history, had been formed…. This new class is the bureaucracy, or more accurately the political bureaucracy.
— Milovan Djilas, born on this date in 1911
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Memory gives way to history …
… Bryan Appleyard — D-Day: The Last Parade. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… this time there is one big difference — the vets are ono longer old, they are very old, many desperately frail. Their successors in arms handle them like sacred objects.