Saturday, January 31, 2015
And prizes must have judges …
… Bryan Appleyard — Blog Archive — Books Must Have Prizes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Story Tellers...
The men are two of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood history, but both Lucas and Redford stressed that they saw themselves as rebels.
Positioning themselves outside of the studio system were the key to their most enduring successes — Lucas’ space fantasy “Star Wars” and Redford’s founding of Sundance, the indie gathering that marked its third decade this year. And both men stressed that they came of age during the hippie movement, a time when youth was king and no one trusted any authority figure over 30.
...
Lucas seemed more puzzled by the current state of culture. The man who took bigscreen fantasies to bold new worlds said he never could have predicted the smallness of popular entertainment options on platforms such as YouTube.
“I would never guess people would watch cats do stupid things all day long,” said Lucas.
Understanding suicide …
… A Review of Kate Schmitt’s Singing Bones | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
I have had an uncommon acquaintance with suicide throughout my life. My first direct experience of death occurred when I was about 11, when I discovered that the man in the car parked in front of our house (at the dead end of a gravel road) had committed suicide, attaching a vacuum cleaner hose to the exhaust pipe of the car and putting the other end into the driver's side window and rolling up the window. I still remember how bloated and purplish his face was. Then a dear friend, whom I had talked out of suicide several times, killed herself one Easter Sunday night, after having her family and mine over for dinner. Then, my stepdaughter Jennifer's husband killed himself in their basement some years ago, leaving behind two sons who are now in their teens.
And this is but a partial list.
Survival of the fittest …
… Good Poetry, Bad Poetry, and Good Poetry Read Badly > G. Kim Blank. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Likewise, although theoretically—and approach-inflected readings du jour attempt to chase down great poetry, they never catch it, themselves becoming dated, and often very quickly, and often because of the miscalculated inwardness of their idioms (a.k.a jargon) and their derivative expertise. Take three of the latest critical fads: environmental, neuroaesthetics, and evolutionary literary criticism. Beyond the obvious, they usually have little to say about form or literary worth, about how the work provokes us to feel, think, and imagine, even if what is happening in your anterior insula can be subcortically measured; they do not help us to profitably, richly, repeatedly read a poem. They only reveal that funneling poetry through some styles of literary criticism may have an insecure, market-driven side, a side often too eager to borrow from other disciplines it knows little about in order to sound like it knows something—well, something seemingly new. A good-enough name for this is over-reaching is trendism—a term William Deresiewicz recently used (and just before he left academia—or it left him): it is, he says, “the desperate search for anything sexy.” Raymond Tallis, in a critique of these “flaky” approaches (and “neuro-lit-crit” in particular), points to what results from such funneling: “the habit of the uncritical application of very general ideas to works of literature, whose distinctive features, deliberate intentions and calculated virtues are consequently lost.” The endgame, he writes, is “a grotesquely reductionist attitude to humanity.”
Something to think on …
By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.
— Kenzaburo Oe, born on this date in 1935
St Benedict...
...Benedict Cumberbatch on Cracking 'Imitation Game''s Code
"It suggests that what I'm doing falls under the category of 'work,'" he says, "when, if I'm being honest, what I'm doing with you right now — talking about a man whom I could not admire more — feels more like a privilege on my part. I have to go back to London in a few days to shoot the Sherlock Christmas special — that's work! This is practically like a holiday."
Friday, January 30, 2015
Hmm …
… The tyranny of suspense | William Landay. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I tended generally to be in agreement with David Myers, but in this case I have to demur. I have often enjoyed the thrill of reading as fast as I could to have the suspense resolved. Of course, I have a strong streak of vulgarity, which could explain that. Bad fiction for me is something like David Guterson's Ed King, which certainly lacked suspense.
I tended generally to be in agreement with David Myers, but in this case I have to demur. I have often enjoyed the thrill of reading as fast as I could to have the suspense resolved. Of course, I have a strong streak of vulgarity, which could explain that. Bad fiction for me is something like David Guterson's Ed King, which certainly lacked suspense.
Bloggus interruptus …
Sorry, folks. I had no cable, no telephone, and no internet service for a good part of today, because Verizon was fixing wiring that they say looked as if it has been chewed. Anyway, no complaint here about Verizon. I appreciate the work they did.
NFL officials will hold Brady's balls before Super Bowl
From Drudge for those following the football scandal. Anyone from Philadelphia or a fan or the Eagles of course hates New England for cheating it's way to a Super Bowl win over the Eagles back in 2003. It was called Spygate, and had to do with the New England team stealing signals from opposing teams:
My main reason I thought something was up at first wind of Spygate was the Patriots-Eagles Super Bowl. The Eagles had nine pro bowlers to the Patriots two. The Eagles were destroying the Patriots in the first half and Patriots had no answers offensively.
Then suddenly, after half time, enough time to show plenty of video, they had every answer for the Eagles defense. Hmm, coincidence? I think not. The Patriots have been considered a dynasty for all this time with far lesser talent than the opponents who have good coaches and staff themselves.
No kidding
… Wolf Hall is wrong: Thomas More was a funny, feminist Renaissance man | Art and design | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Lots of ex-Catholics are like Hilary Mantel. They doth protest too much. We should keep them in our prayers, poor dears.
Lots of ex-Catholics are like Hilary Mantel. They doth protest too much. We should keep them in our prayers, poor dears.
Something to think on …
For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.
— Barbara Tuchman, born on this date in 1912
Thursday, January 29, 2015
So was my family...
Andy Warhol's family was Byzantine-Ruthenian, and in the early 20th century they came to America, settling in a Catholic section of Pittsburgh. Warhol's mother Julia was deeply pious, attending St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. She took her children to Mass, and encouraged Andy, who was sick a lot as a child, to learn how to draw. Warhol drew pictures, went to church, and cut out magazine pictures of movie stars. In those three elements we find his entire life's work.
Hard to know where to begin …
… The Smart Set: From Poesy to Carrot Carnations - January 20, 2015.
This is such a bizarre pastiche of thoughts using at random the word "art," which term is employed rather oddly:
This is such a bizarre pastiche of thoughts using at random the word "art," which term is employed rather oddly:
… I came to realize that I had witnessed one extreme of the artistic spectrum. At one end of the spectrum are major arts, defined not in terms of cultural superiority but in terms of large audiences. At the other extreme are crafts like making carrot carnations. These are arts that have no audience, other than practitioners of the art itself. Another word for a craft is a hobby. In between the major arts and the crafts or hobbies are minor arts, which have a small audience whose members do not themselves aspire to practice the art.
The "major arts, defined … in terms of large audiences." So major means popular. But I thought we were talking about art. Art is defined — and valued — in terms of its practice in relation to the materials employed. In those terms a work can be major even if nobody appreciates it. Ballet is the epitome of dance, and dancers in particular honor it accordingly, and don't care whether anybody gets it. But wait. There are arts that have no audience except the people who practice them. So mass media is major because it's mass media. And ballet is minor because it is not. The viewpoint on display is, deductively, quite sound. But that is because it has defined its subject in a way that is different from the way it is commonly understood. It's Humpty-Dumptyism through and through. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
Literary detective work …
… Sappho's New Poems: The Tangled Tale of Their Discovery. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Indeed …
… God Is Not a Scientific Hypothesis — The Catholic ThingThe Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Looking for improbable occurrences in nature that cannot be accounted for by either chance or scientific laws, and then from those concluding that one has “made a case for God,” as Metaxas argues, confuses a question of natural science with a question of natural theology. God, in the classical tradition, is not in competition with the contingent universe He creates. He is its First Cause that is itself not contingent. But He is not first in the order of time, but first in the order of being. This means that the contingent universe remains in existence because it depends on Self-subsistent Being, whether or not the universe has always existed.
RIP...
...A Surreal End for an Unforgettable Queen: Pedro Lemebel, 1952-2015
When Lemebel’s characters call themselves and each other faggots and sissies, they perform their extravagant queerness for each other, heedless of a broader culture that would be more comfortable, and would allow them greater comforts, if they were better behaved, which is to say less visible. The same is true of Lemebel’s art: in celebrating melodrama, kitsch, extravagance, and vulgarity of all kinds, he reaffirmed the commitment he made in the title of his early “Manifesto.” In his crónicas, his performances, and his single, great novel, he speaks brilliantly for a difference that refuses to disappear.
An antidote to bombast …
… Reality, One Grain at a Time | PopMatters. (Hat tip, Christopher Guerin.)
… Aldous Huxley famously observed, “Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.”
These “secret doubts” are precisely what our mini-Menckens and assorted other polemicists ought to be confronting and exploring, rather than suppressing or insincerely rationalizing away as they too often do. “Truth,” as La Rochefoucauld pointed out in his Maxims, “does not do as much good in the world as the semblance of truth does evil.” It’s this persuasive simulacrum of truth that is the single-minded thinker’s greatest failing.
Something to think on …
Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
— Anton Chekhov, born on this date in 1860
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Oh, really …
… British and American verse. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Bryan didn't seem to have any trouble when he reviewed John Ashbery for The Inquirer some years ago.
Bryan didn't seem to have any trouble when he reviewed John Ashbery for The Inquirer some years ago.
My friend Vikram wrote this about my people...
...This is the Hyderabad police we are talking about, part of India's Silicon Valley that houses the likes of Microsoft and Google. But then a transgender death is not a sexy story. It is a lesser tragedy, one of those minor incidents that make up the rotting corpse of overlooked cases. The transgender, after all, does not have a voice. We may welcome her when a child is born or have her bless our marriages but God help her if she gets murdered. That kind of stuff happens to other people, right, and who can be more other than the transgender? Her life and death are mere blips on a perfect social order that wants to have no truck with her. Worse, since she is so disposable, it is all right to use her and her kind to indulge our base perversions, as cases of police brutality reveal. I want to feel angry but I only feel numbed. Pravallika's death does not matter.I missed Vikram's story the other day, when he linked to it here. He perfectly captures the pain and sadness of all too many,
but then,
wonderfully and joyfully,
he refutes his own position, that Pravallika's death did not matter, that she died in vain. Vikram's story, about her and to her, and the others like her, will have a beautiful impact on all who read it, and so Pravallika, and her story, were not in vain. She suffered much, but not in vain.
Something to think on …
In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
— Colette, born on this date in 1873
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Amor vincit omnia …
… Gay and Catholic | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Other gay Catholics, of course, come to the same crossroad and are not so quick or able to equate the reasoning behind the church’s teaching on homosexuality with the “reasoning of God.” Tushnet never does present a compelling case for the teaching itself, but that is not the point of her inaugural book: “I lack the patience and academic temperament to do more than throw out suggestions, criticisms, and provocations.... I no longer think that a major part of my work as a queer Catholic is illuminating the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the church’s teaching on homosexuality.” Fair enough. Provoke, suggest, criticize—these are indeed her best moves. And who better suited than an adult convert to make them?
Today's music …
Wonderful. And sadly neglected.
I had listened to this for a while, but I first heard it when it was still new and I was still young. It thrilled me then, and thrills me now, but now I can discern beauties in it that the earliest thrills distracted me from.
I had listened to this for a while, but I first heard it when it was still new and I was still young. It thrilled me then, and thrills me now, but now I can discern beauties in it that the earliest thrills distracted me from.
The writing market …
… Many authors’ earnings fall below $500pa, survey finds | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Hmm …
… Review-a-Day - Why Poetry Matters by Jay Parini, reviewed by Harper's Magazine — Powell's Books. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I don't think much about poetry. I just read it, and try sometimes to write it. I think it is one of life's riches, but I doubt if it is the way to salvation.
I don't think much about poetry. I just read it, and try sometimes to write it. I think it is one of life's riches, but I doubt if it is the way to salvation.
For Holocaust Remembrance Day …
… Auschwitz Town Haunted by Death, Even 70 Years Later – Forward.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Bedesque …
… Why John Updike Loved Comics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
His tingling prose, where every idea and emotion is rooted in sensory experience, owes much to such modern masters as Joyce, Proust, and Nabokov, but it was also sparked by the cartoon images he saw in childhood, which trained his eyes to see visual forms as aesthetically pleasing. Indeed, the comparison with Nabokov is instructive since the Russian-born author of Lolita was also a cartoon fan. The critic Clarence Brown has coined the term bedesque (roughly translated as “comic strip-influenced”) to describe the cartoony quality of Nabokov’s fiction, including its antic loopiness, its quicksilver movement from scene to scene, and its visual intensity. I think one reason Updike felt an affinity for Nabokov is because they both wrote bedesque prose.
Something to think on …
Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.
— Lewis Carroll, born on this date in 1832
Monday, January 26, 2015
Wednesday night …
Moonstone Poetry
@ Fergie’s Pub
1214 Sansom Street.
Wednesday January 28, 2015 – 7pm
The Moonstone Press Presents its 2014 Authors
Steve Burke, Charles S. Carr, Leonard Gontarek, Ivan Taub
Steve Burke is the author of After the Harvest (The Moonstone Press, December 2014)
and two full-length unpublished manuscripts; lives in the Mount Airy section of
Philadelphia with wife-Giselle and daughter-Mariah. He has worked many years as a labor
and delivery nurse; has been writing poems for much longer than that.
Charles S. Carr is author of paradise, pennsylvania and Haitian Mud Pies and Other
Poems (The Moonstone Press, February 2014). Charles has worked in social and
community development services for 40 years and has been active in raising funds for
various missions and organizations serving the poorest of the poor In Haiti. In 2007
Charles was The Mad Poets Review First Prize Winner for his poem “Waiting To Come
North”. Charles’ poems have been published in various print and on-line local and national
poetry journals.
Leonard Gontarek’s poetry collections include contact (The Moonstone Press, April
2014), Déjà Vu Diner and He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs. His poems
have been featured in Joyful Noise: American Spiritual Poetry and in Best American
Poetry. He uses juxtaposition to explore themes of transformation and transcendence and
has described his poems as “equal parts political, erotic, and meditations on the world.”
Gontarek’s honors include five Pushcart Prize nominations and two fellowships from the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He coordinates Peace/Works: Poets and Writers for
Peace and teaches through the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership and Musehouse.
Ivan Taub is author of Speed Limit 225 (The Moonstone Press, December 2014) and
The Messenger. He has publication and artistic credits as a writer/editor, playwright,
author, poet, recording artist, record producer, band leader, performer, and as a presenter of
theatre, music, and dance. His play State of Grace was a finalist in the 18th Maxim
Mazumdar International Playwriting Competition, and his newest play The Show was
given a special workshop performance (November 2014) at the Luna Theatre in
Philadelphia. Taub is an assistant professor in the Intellectual Heritage Program at Temple
University.
Open Reading Follows, Suzan Jivan host
Moonstone Arts Center
110A S. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 735-9600; larry@moonstoneartscenter.org; www.moonstoneartscenter.org
@ Fergie’s Pub
1214 Sansom Street.
Wednesday January 28, 2015 – 7pm
The Moonstone Press Presents its 2014 Authors
Steve Burke, Charles S. Carr, Leonard Gontarek, Ivan Taub
Steve Burke is the author of After the Harvest (The Moonstone Press, December 2014)
and two full-length unpublished manuscripts; lives in the Mount Airy section of
Philadelphia with wife-Giselle and daughter-Mariah. He has worked many years as a labor
and delivery nurse; has been writing poems for much longer than that.
Charles S. Carr is author of paradise, pennsylvania and Haitian Mud Pies and Other
Poems (The Moonstone Press, February 2014). Charles has worked in social and
community development services for 40 years and has been active in raising funds for
various missions and organizations serving the poorest of the poor In Haiti. In 2007
Charles was The Mad Poets Review First Prize Winner for his poem “Waiting To Come
North”. Charles’ poems have been published in various print and on-line local and national
poetry journals.
Leonard Gontarek’s poetry collections include contact (The Moonstone Press, April
2014), Déjà Vu Diner and He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs. His poems
have been featured in Joyful Noise: American Spiritual Poetry and in Best American
Poetry. He uses juxtaposition to explore themes of transformation and transcendence and
has described his poems as “equal parts political, erotic, and meditations on the world.”
Gontarek’s honors include five Pushcart Prize nominations and two fellowships from the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He coordinates Peace/Works: Poets and Writers for
Peace and teaches through the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership and Musehouse.
Ivan Taub is author of Speed Limit 225 (The Moonstone Press, December 2014) and
The Messenger. He has publication and artistic credits as a writer/editor, playwright,
author, poet, recording artist, record producer, band leader, performer, and as a presenter of
theatre, music, and dance. His play State of Grace was a finalist in the 18th Maxim
Mazumdar International Playwriting Competition, and his newest play The Show was
given a special workshop performance (November 2014) at the Luna Theatre in
Philadelphia. Taub is an assistant professor in the Intellectual Heritage Program at Temple
University.
Open Reading Follows, Suzan Jivan host
Moonstone Arts Center
110A S. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 735-9600; larry@moonstoneartscenter.org; www.moonstoneartscenter.org
Modern love …
… Robert Pinsky looks back on “Cascando,” Samuel Beckett’s classic love poem. (hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Saying nothing badly …
… Bar Jester's Writing Seminar II; or, How to Write Like a Philosopher - Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The points being made in the examples given are so pedestrian that one can only conclude that the manner of their expression accurately reflects the vacuity of the writer's mind.
The points being made in the examples given are so pedestrian that one can only conclude that the manner of their expression accurately reflects the vacuity of the writer's mind.
That Pope!!! That Awesome, Lovely Pope!!!
A transgender man from Spain had a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Saturday.
Hoy, a newspaper in the Extremadura region of Spain, reported that Diego Neria Lejárraga and his fiancée had a private audience with the pontiff that took place at his official residence.
Neria told Francis in a letter that some of his fellow parishioners at the church he attends in the Spanish city of Plasencia rejected him after he underwent sex-reassignment surgery. He said a priest even called him “the devil’s daughter.”
Francis called Neria on Christmas Eve after receiving his letter.
The private audience took place a month later.
Something to think on …
When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
— Gerard de Nerval, who died on this date in 1855
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Aesthetic encounter …
This afternoon, Debbie and I and David Tothero attended a concert by the Curtis Orchestra, composed of students at the Curtis Institute. The principal conductor was Osmo Vänskä, but the opening work, Sibelius's Swan of Tuanela, was conducted by Kensho Watanabe, who graduated from Curtis in 2013, then returned later that same year as a conducting fellow. He delivered a magically sensitive performance, infused with insights only a young person could have, but few would have the skill to express. It reminded me of how that music caused me to feel when I was myself young.Vänskä then came on, and closed the first half of the concert with Witold Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra, which proved quite engaging, the sort of unfamiliar piece that you really do want to hear again. The performance certainly sounded good to me.The second half was taken up entirely with Sibelius's fifth symphony, which I am certainly familiar with, the piece having been an Ormandy standard. Now Ormandy was an outstanding Sibelius conductor, and his version of the fifth is the one that has stayed with me. It is clear, dignified, and lyrical, an accurate and precise rendering of the score. I would never be without it.But I would love to supplement it with what I heard today, which was, for my money, the best performance of the symphony that I have ever heard. It came at the work from another angle. Oh, the lyricism was there, and so was the clarity, but it was focused on the form of the piece, revealing the context of ruggedness and struggle underlying the songfulness. It sounded extraordinarily contemporary.
The NYT explains why it doesn't mean news if a lot of people die...
Such was the case earlier this month, when the Western news media, including The Times, was fixated on the attacks that left 17 victims and three gunmen dead in Paris. Coverage was wall to wall: In The Times, not a day went by, for 10 consecutive days, without at least one front-page story, usually two.
Meanwhile, in a much more remote part of the world, the radical group Boko Haram had devastated the town of Baga in rural Nigeria. Early reports said that as many as 2,000 had been slain.
The lesson? Buy cheap wine...
Napa cabernet sauvignon grapes are among the most valuable in the United States. A well-made cabernet from Lake County, which abuts Napa to the north, typically sells for $25 to $30 a bottle, while a bottle of Napa cab of equivalent quality often fetches $100 or more.
That price is based more on consumers’ belief in the superiority of the region’s grapes than in the inherent quality of the liquid in the bottle.
Emmanuel Kemiji, who owns Miura Vineyards in Novato, is a master sommelier, a level of wine expertise so difficult to achieve that only 220 people in the world hold the title. In an interview, he said that even top tasters like himself would find it nearly impossible to discern the true geographic origin of a well-made cabernet.
Dueling headlines, and more — I think …
… Language Log — The humanities in an alternate universe. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
— W. Somerset Maugham, born on this date in 1874
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Boyhood
Let me start by saying I don't watch many movies, and I don't often get around to the reviews - so I'm not sure whether this has been said or not, but Boyhood, for me, was as close to a novel as I've seen in a modern film. And I thought the movie, by the way, was fabulous: ambitious, regretful, enlivening - things all great films (and novels) should be.
It was an amazing experience watching Boyhood - largely because, as I say, I felt like I was reading a book. The movie's a character study, it's true, but it's a study of character evolution as well. The boy - played by Ellar Coltrane - grows over time, over circumstances and situations. It's as if he's a character in a novel, meeting and interacting with secondary characters along the way. (Again, just like a novel.)
Boyhood is a series of scenes, and in each, Coltrane matures, learns. We watch him on the screen; we sense his parents' sorrow; we come to know him as a three-dimensional character with strengths and flaws, ambitions and frustrations. He emerges as the sum of his experiences, both positive and negative.
I had the sense from friends that Boyhood lacked a plot, that it wasn't leading toward anything. I had the opposite sense: each scene was a story in itself, and the product of those stories was a novel charting a boy's growth over twelve years. To provide that sort of cinematic vision to audiences is a rare gift, indeed. It's a gift that literature provides, too.
A reminder …
On Sunday, January 25, at 2 PM, The Green Line Café on Locust
will present an open poetry reading to honor the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, editors and staff who were killed in Paris.
In the spirit of Charlie Hebdo, this will be a reading
of humorous and satirical poems.
The poems may be on any subject, including political content.
You may read original work or the work of another poet.
The Green Line Poetry Series extends its solidarity
and deep sympathy to the brave members of Charlie Hebdo
and to the people of Paris.
Please join us.
Reserve a place among the list of readers by contacting
Leonard Gontarek at gontarek9@earthlink.net or 215-808-9507.
The Green Line Café on Locust is located at 45th & Locust Streets
(southeast corner) in West Philadelphia.
will present an open poetry reading to honor the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, editors and staff who were killed in Paris.
In the spirit of Charlie Hebdo, this will be a reading
of humorous and satirical poems.
The poems may be on any subject, including political content.
You may read original work or the work of another poet.
The Green Line Poetry Series extends its solidarity
and deep sympathy to the brave members of Charlie Hebdo
and to the people of Paris.
Please join us.
Reserve a place among the list of readers by contacting
Leonard Gontarek at gontarek9@earthlink.net or 215-808-9507.
The Green Line Café on Locust is located at 45th & Locust Streets
(southeast corner) in West Philadelphia.
Hmm …
… René Girard on terrorism: “We have to radically change the way we think.” Have we? | The Book Haven.
Western rationalism operates like a myth: we always work harder to avoid seeing the catastrophe. We neither can nor want to see violence as it is. The only way we will be able to meet the terrorist challenge is by radically changing the way we think. Yet the clearer it is what is happening, the stronger our refusal to acknowledge it. This historical configuration is so new that we do not know how to deal with it. It is precisely a modality of what Pascal saw: the war between violence and truth. Think about the inadequacy of our recent avant-gardes that preached the non-existence of the real. …
Today's music …
I've long thought that one of Philadelphia's string bands ought to adapt this for use during the New Year's Day Mummers Parade. Pure fun.
E tu, California?
Song lyrics that glorify violence are hardly uncommon. But a prosecutor in California says one rapper's violent lyrics go beyond creative license to conspiracy.
San Diego-based rapper Tiny Doo has already spent eight months in prison, and faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted under a little-known California statute that makes it illegal to benefit from gang activities.The statute in question is California Penal Code 182.5. The code makes it a felony for anyone to participate in a criminal street gang, have knowledge that a street gang has engaged in criminal activity, or benefit from that activity.
Something to think on …
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
— Edith Wharton, born on this date in 1862
Friday, January 23, 2015
Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin is one of those books that'd been on my list for a while. Though I must admit, it wasn't that high. Pale Fire sort of scared me off.
That said, Pnin's a funny book, an engaging one, and it immediately pulls at you. Pnin, of course, is a sorrowful man, almost pathetic, but he's endearing, too. Oddly likable, I guess (for a faded academic).
For me, it's Nabokov who's the hero of the story. His prose cannot be beat: I mean, talk about a writer in command of his medium. Line by line, page by page, Pnin is the work of a master. As a stylist, Nabokov must be toward the top of the list; that much, I concede.
Pnin doesn't move much as a book - or at least its plot is less ambitious than I'd imagined. But the novel does come full circle in a sort of magical way, where the end meets the beginning, and Pnin's stories become the stuff of comedy and lore. Along the way, Nabokov subjects his characters (not just Pnin) to travails almost for the sake of extending himself as a writer, of trying his best - and succeeding - to describe their condition (part pathos, but idyllic).
As a treatment of academia, I prefer Lucky Jim; but as a treatment of character, it's Pnin.
Line of the book: "The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense." Which must be true.
The Hard Problem
Next week, the conundrum will move further into public awareness with the opening of Tom Stoppard’s new play, The Hard Problem, at the National Theatre – the first play Stoppard has written for the National since 2006, and the last that the theatre’s head, Nicholas Hytner, will direct before leaving his post in March. The 77-year-old playwright has revealed little about the play’s contents, except that it concerns the question of “what consciousness is and why it exists”, considered from the perspective of a young researcher played by Olivia Vinall.
Something to think on …
Only great minds can afford a simple style.
— Stendhal, born on this date in 1783
Today's music …
The title is taken from Browning and refers to Shelley: "Sun-treader, life and light be thine forever." This music is nothing if not authentic.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Passing strange …
… Dylan Does Sinatra | Ben Yagoda's blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Actually, I rather like it. And Bob sings more clearly on this than he did when I saw him in concert a couple of years ago.
Actually, I rather like it. And Bob sings more clearly on this than he did when I saw him in concert a couple of years ago.
Today's music …
I've loved Lou Harrison's music since I first heard the opening bars of his Four Strict Songs sometime around 1960. Decades later I even got the chance to interview him.
The Pitchforks are coming....
You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor.
Something to think on …
No law can give power to private persons; every law transfers power from private persons to government.
— Isabel Paterson, born on this date in 1886
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Respecting the Pope (ok that is sarcasm too)
In a Tuesday appearance on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show, former Sen. Rick Santorum lamented that it is “very difficult to listen” to Pope Francis from time to time. The former GOP candidate was responding to Pope Francis’s remark that Catholics shouldn’t be procreating like rabbits.
Democratic vistas …
…John Ashbery on Jane Freilicher (1924–2014) - artforum.com / passages. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Together at last …
… Postmodernism, Vodka, and Catholic Letters: An Interview with Gregory Wolfe - Ethika Politika. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The same goes for the sort of postmodern literature and art that are imbued with this sensibility. This goes back to my point about contemporary writing that hears God in the “still, small voice.” One might say that the best writers of faith today—the ones whose faith is so deeply woven into their vision that there’s nothing obvious in the work that “shouts”—are practicing a deeply incarnational understanding—one in which grace comes to us through nature.This sounds about right to me.
Some music …
This is certainly one of the earliest, if not the earliest, example of jazz-influenced classical music.
One can only hope …
… Is Scholasticism Making a Comeback? - Crisis Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Feser is aware of many good philosophers who, like himself, are working their way through the modern mind. They discover, often surprising themselves, that their pursuit leads them to Aristotle, Aquinas, and the scholastic tradition. This tradition, newly reflected on, turns out, after having been downgraded by Catholic educators for decades, to be the newest thing on the block. David Warren recently mentioned the interest in St. Thomas that is found among, of all people, contemporary Chinese philosophers. Feser’s book on metaphysics is a dialogue with many analytic philosophers. Not a few of them, as he shows, begin to see points of contact with Aristotle and Aquinas because of the limits of their own system.I graduated from college with more credits in philosophy than in English literature, which was my major. Most of that philosophy was Scholastic philosophy. It turned out to be an immense asset to my so-called career.
Something to think on …
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
— George Orwell, who died on this date in 1950
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Instant Portable Translation...
Google this week released an updated version of its Google Translate app, with two major new features. The first lets you point your phone camera at a sign or piece of text and see a translation of it in real-time. The second instantly translates speech into different languages. All you have to do is press the microphone icon on the app's interface, select the two languages you want to bridge, and speak into the microphone on your device. The app will automatically recognize which of the two languages you're speaking, and a female voice will repeat it to you in the other language.Of course, it just lets Google track you that much more...
The cunning Miss Spark …
… “And She Went On Her Way Rejoicing” - The Rumpus.net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Spark’s relationship to Newman is key to understanding her literary motives. Because only aftershe converted did Spark start writing novels. Catholicism was the framework within which Spark could assess the anomalies of character and action, and the misguided ways in which people seek to shape their lives. Spark published her first book, The Comforters, in 1957, when she was 39 years old—four years after her conversion. She is not a psychological novelist. She is not interested in character development. Instead, she choreographs her tales around insular, hermetic communities: a nursing home, a wartime hostel for women, a convent, an expat enclave in Africa, a schmaltzy publishing house. In these little environments she can lay bare her characters’ generally atrocious conduct. But however ruthless she appears on the surface, Spark was deeply tuned into human suffering.
It is easier for a camel to pass through ...
On current trends, by next year the richest 1 percent of the world’s population will own more than the other 99 percent combined, according to a shock report by the anti-poverty charity Oxfam....Most of us can only dream of a jaw-dropping fortune but if you are wondering whether you qualify for the top 1 percent bracket, you will need a cool 2.3 million euros ($2.7 million) according to the average figure per adult, quoted by Oxfam.
Something to think on …
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
— John Ruskin, who died on this date in 1900
Monday, January 19, 2015
Hmm …
… 15 Unique Illnesses You Can Only Come Down With in German | Mental Floss. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Next thing you know, they'll be telling you that you can't suffer from Sehnsucht.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling you that you can't suffer from Sehnsucht.
Worth repeating...
...“Hate Speech” is not “Any Speech You Hate”
Mainly, though, I wonder whether the media and other assorted American liberals will ever get tired of pretending that ceaseless trolling of Christianity is “brave” and tough while even mild criticism of Islam on the merits is hateful and out of bounds. A pretty good example of this happened at Vanderbilt when Vanderbilt recently actually disbanded Christian groups for having the temerity to insist that their leadership consist of, you know, Christians, a decision which was met with absolutely zero protests that were fawned upon by the media.
Blogging note …
My godsons are off today. So I am taking them to a film and to dinner. Blogging will be minimal.
Some music …
I am bothered that so much great music that I heard while growing up no longer seems to be played either in the concert hall or on the radio. So I've decided to post some of it. Here's Wallingford Riegger's Dance Rhythms.
Something to think on …
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.
— Julian Barnes, born on this date in 1946
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Checking for the right words....
As I understand it (and my understanding is a few kilobytes short of a megabyte), when Schmidt fires up the Anachronism Machine and feeds a script into it, it maps the script’s words and phrases against a Google database consisting of the full texts of six million books and spits out a graphical rendering of the likely anachronisms the script is guilty of. The machine isn’t perfect—it doesn’t catch everything, it yields a certain amount of false positives, and it requires human interpretation. But so does a CT scan.
Words are all we've got...or are they?
They are, for better or worse, our only means of making transmissions, however indistinct, out of our various solitudes; they are basically all we’ve got. Except that they are not all we’ve got, not really. This is something I didn’t know six months ago, but which I know now, because the profoundest, truest communication I’ve ever experienced has been with my son, who can’t yet speak, and who can’t yet understand anything I say to him in words.
Listen in …
… The Power of Storytelling to Help Us Try to Better Understand Our World & Our Own Humanity - Daniel Grotta & Sally Wiener Grotta.
Sally Wiener Grotta will be speaking (and reading from The Winter Boy) this Friday (Jan. 23) at 9 PM at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, at The International House, 3701 Chestnut Street.
Sally Wiener Grotta will be speaking (and reading from The Winter Boy) this Friday (Jan. 23) at 9 PM at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, at The International House, 3701 Chestnut Street.
Something to think on …
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
— Charles de Montesquieu, born on this date in 1689
Saturday, January 17, 2015
"Humanist" College "Chaplins" and Their Assemblies Without God
Bart Campolo is the new Humanist Chaplain at the University of Southern California. A former evangelical Christian leader with a national profile in his own right, he is the son of Tony Campolo, the famous evangelical preacher best known as the personal spiritual mentor to President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair. Steadily, over a period of decades, Bart's credulity in evanglical doctrine eroded away until his wife convinced him that he was theologically past the point of no return...
A few weeks ago, I watched Bart in action at the Sunday night monthly dinner of the new "humanist" community he is forming on campus. The students attracted to this event were initially drawn to it in search of a support network for other students rejecting or recovering from affiliation with organized religion. But "rah-rah, we aren't religious but we're okay" is not much of a fight song for a strong campus club at any university. Bart understands this, and so he's offering an entirely positive reason for them to get them together: to create a community where people care deeply about each other.
Just wondering …
Sam Harris argues in his book Waking Up that the self is an illusion. That would include his self as well as yours and mine. But what exactly does it mean for an illusion to tell other illusions that they are illusory?
Something to think on …
A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.
— Anton Chekhov, born on this date in 1860
Friday, January 16, 2015
The issue is freedom …
… The Limits of Satire by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Charlie Hebdo is gratuitously offensive and fails as satire. Its manners are atrocious. All that should be allowed. One may take offense, and even respond — proportionately. Take them to court. Offend them somehow. Murder is not a proportionate response and obviously represents a far greater threat to society.
Charlie Hebdo is gratuitously offensive and fails as satire. Its manners are atrocious. All that should be allowed. One may take offense, and even respond — proportionately. Take them to court. Offend them somehow. Murder is not a proportionate response and obviously represents a far greater threat to society.
More on Science, Mistakes, and the Pope!
That human beings can be mistaken in anything they think or do is a proposition known as fallibilism. Stated abstractly like that, it is seldom contradicted. Yet few people have ever seriously believed it, either.
On the other hand...
After the administration’s noticeable lack of presence in post-attack Paris events, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in France this week, bringing with him a “big hug” and a serenade from soft rock singer James Taylor.
"Sorry 17 people died. On the other hand, don't forget 'you've got a friend.'" James?"
A dreadful unity …
… On Edgar Allan Poe by Marilynne Robinson | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Poe’s great tales turn on guilt concealed or denied, then abruptly and shockingly exposed. He has always been reviled or celebrated for the absence of moral content in his work, despite the fact that these tales are all straightforward moral parables. For a writer so intrigued by the operations of the mind as Poe was, an interest in conscience leads to an interest in concealment and self-deception, things that are secretive and highly individual and at the same time so universal that they shape civilizations. In Pymand after it Poe explores the thought that reality is of a kind to break through the enthralling dream of innocence or of effective concealment and confront us—horrify us—with truth.
The conjured world …
… Boston College Magazine � Fall 2014 � Features � Astonished by love. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It’s a simple enough formula (miraculous in its simplicity, when you stop to think about it): The writer—in the silence of her composing room—puts her mind, her language, her experience, her aspirations and observations, even her own will, at the service of her narrator. The narrator speaks and creates a world. The reader, in turn, lends his inner voice, the voice with which he speaks to himself, to the narrator, and thus that created world comes into vivid existence. Eliminate one part of this particular trinity and the novel—the story, the poem, literature itself—disappears.
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