Sunday, July 31, 2016
Cynthia Ozick responds to a critic …
… Letters to the Editor - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Useful reference …
… Best American Essays Project - Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… Solitary Praxis: Daniel Defoe, crimes (sedition), punishments (the pillory), Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and "great books".
I believe that the only legal limit placed upon free speech has to do with actually urging violence. The same holds true of freedom of assembly. One has the right to peaceably assemble, not the right to riot. I think such limits are reasonable.
As for public shaming, there are enough people doing shameful things in public on their own these days to make the idea risible.
I believe that the only legal limit placed upon free speech has to do with actually urging violence. The same holds true of freedom of assembly. One has the right to peaceably assemble, not the right to riot. I think such limits are reasonable.
As for public shaming, there are enough people doing shameful things in public on their own these days to make the idea risible.
Something to think on …
Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
— Milton Friedman, born on this date in 1912
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Hmm …
… Solitary Praxis: Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I by Peter Ackroyd.
In my view, the soundest reason to accept fictional renderings of real people in actual historical contexts is that it seems to have been accepted from the start as part of the territory of writing. After all, the record of events is necessarily incomplete. The drama is self-evident. One gets at that by applying that imaginative construct known as the hypothesis. And you proceed from there. Events are not impersonal, but the events themselves reveal little of the personalities involved in them. And yet it is the personal dimension of history that is crucial.
Indeed …
… Science is not a philosophy or a religion. It is a method—imperfect, yet powerful—of testing and accumulating knowledge. It’s not something you believe. You can believe that the scientific method is a good way of amassing knowledge. You can use that knowledge to shape policy.
Yet that’s not how American politics—especially in this election—talk about science. “When people say ‘Do you believe in climate change or global warming,’ that is the wrong framing,” says Cristine Russell, a veteran science reporter now at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “Science is not a belief system.”
My first success as a writer occurred when I was about 15 and won a contest sponsored by Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences for a paper about photomicrographs I had taken of life in a nearby pond. I claim only to be scientifically literate, butI have begun to notice that a lot of people are not even that.
Hear, hear …
… Paul Davis On Crime: Jason Bourne's Tough Guy Politics, Anti-Government Paranoia And Liberal Hypocrisy.
I'm a small government guy myself, who still buys into G. Washington's notion of avoiding entangling alliances, but one of the things one does expect from any government is sound national defense. Small wonder people in the country trust the military, and just about nothing else the government does.
I'm a small government guy myself, who still buys into G. Washington's notion of avoiding entangling alliances, but one of the things one does expect from any government is sound national defense. Small wonder people in the country trust the military, and just about nothing else the government does.
Portrait of the artist …
… The picture that captures why Jack Kerouac will last forever.
Here's the piece I wrote for the centenary of On the Road: Jack Kerouac's sound of America.
Here's the piece I wrote for the centenary of On the Road: Jack Kerouac's sound of America.
In case you wondered …
… How the cult of personality turns everyone into a liar | The Book Haven.
Dikötter noted that there were some excellent studies on the cult of personality, although in many cases scholarly efforts remain scattered. In the case of Germany, for instance, the first exhibition of cult objects about Hitler took place only five years ago. “It seems almost obscene to look at the shiny surfaces the state produces rather than at the horror it hides,” he said.
The way things are …
… Machiavelli Explains What Makes Republics Tick - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One can scarcely read Machiavelli’s “Discourses” without reflecting on their significance for our day. When he writes that “no kingdom can stand when two feeble princes follow in succession,” one thinks of recent American history and its string of poor presidents. His explanation of how good men were excluded from office, owing to the valuation of wealth over honor and the insidious influence of corruption, so that men of merit gave way to those with ambition merely, makes one think of current American politics.
Something to think on …
I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide.
— Emily Brontë, born on this date in 1818
You may be surprised …
… AttackingtheDemi-Puppets: Who’s Afraid of Ernest Hemingway?
… The Answers II! (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… The Answers II! (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Worth noting …
… The New Franklin Roosevelts - Reason.com.
The truth is, would-be presidents don't always care about the issues that turn out to be most important. How did Bush flip his foreign policy views so easily? By not having strong convictions on global affairs in the first place, allowing neoconservative advisers to fill the void after the 9/11 attacks. It's easy to imagine, say, John McCain doing something similar during an economic crisis, given that he has already radically reinvented his economic philosophy twice in the last decade, shifting leftwards in 2000 and back to the right in 2008.
Friday, July 29, 2016
More than just a meal …
… The Secret Meaning of Food in Art | Travel | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Q&A …
… Michael Orthofer on Why Fiction Matters — Conversations with Tyler — Medium. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ouch …
… Fear and Loathing in the Postmodern English Department. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Despite my own eager anticipation, The Hatred of Poetry is the worst book about poetry I have ever read. My assessment does not rely as much on disagreements with its arguments as on the fact that the book fails to articulate and defend meaningful statements about its subject matter. It is uneven in tone, self-indulgent, intellectually lazy, and bizarrely unfocused.
Listen in …
… Episode 178 – Arthur Lubow | Virtual Memories.
“Photography has never been made coequal to the other arts. Yet, you might say it’s superior, because it’s more dangerous.”
Something to think on …
Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age.
— Booth Tarkington, born on this date in 1869
Thursday, July 28, 2016
A poem …
In the Park
The pretty lady's shapely ass distracted
The old man sitting down upon his favorite
Bench — more an aesthetic than erotic
Thrill, flesh now weak in different ways from when
He begged embrace and more, and lived
To tell about it. Over there, a starling
Struts and sparkles when the sun alights. "Wow,"
He thinks, "Nice to see at last what all along
You mostly never looked at."
Portraits of Waugh …
… Evelyn Waugh by Ann Pasternak Slater and Evelyn Waugh by Philip Eade – review | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Admiration set to one side, however, it has to be said that Waugh is an imperfect novelist. My feeling is that the “chaotic life” versus “imperishable art” counterpoint that he imposed on himself often let him down. Pasternak Slater would not agree – she sees intricate, complex artistic patterns where I would see bolted-on “literary” themes. For me, A Handful of Dust is a sustained act of revenge against Waugh’s first wife, Evelyn Gardner, and her shocking desertion of him. Even the pretentious title can’t disguise the fact. Brideshead Revisited is thinly veiled nostalgic autobiography – at its best – not “the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters”, as Waugh himself intoned in the novel’s preface. The Sword of Honour trilogy is essentially Waugh’s war recounted, with all its absurdity, personal slights and bitterness, not some symbolic conflict between the values of Christendom and the atheistic impulses of Soviet Russia, and the shameful compromises of Britain’s wartime alliance with her.
I beg to differ. I don't know if there are any "perfect" novelists, but I think Waugh comes near perfection at times. And I think Waugh's description of Brideshead is quite correct. That is certainly how it struck me when I first read it in college.
Something to think on …
The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins, born on this date in 1844
Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is one of those books I must have missed in high school or college - because there it's been, for all those years since, tempting me to take it on.
Well, now I have - and I'm better for it. I think.
From the start, I found Catch surprisingly literary. By which I mean: for a novel that's attracted so much attention and praise, the experience of reading it was oddly challenging. The beginning of the novel, especially, lacked the scaffolding I'd expected. The narrative is frenetic and chaotic - perhaps deliberately so. The plot, too, is opaque, slow to materialize. The first one hundred pages of Catch are tough going, I thought: certainly tougher than I'd expected.
But as death mounts, and as war progresses, that complexity recedes, and Yossarian's struggles become more poignant. This, I thought, was one of Heller's great achievements: that complexity gives way to clarity, and that as character after character is exited from the script, the script itself becomes serene. The chaos of Heller's early narration is transformed into its components; the universe is reduced to two elements: survival and absurdity. But for the first time in the book, we as readers fully understand these terms; we recognize that in our quest for the former, we must inevitably confront the latter.
Catch-22 is big hulking book: a book about war and sacrifice, but also about folly and irrationality. Yossarian ends the novel walking to Sweden. And after all: why not? Why not have Yossarian walk to Sweden? Heller seems to ask. "There's nothing negative about running away to save my life," proclaims Yossarian. In the twisted world of war, who's to contradict him?
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Blogging note …
I have to run an emergency errand for a sick friend, so I won't be doing anymore blogging for bit.
Being and writing …
… The Millions : The Writer is Not Here: On Nihilism and the Writing Life - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think the daily act of sitting alone for hours and purposely conjuring up emotions and disturbing memories — precisely the kinds of things people use Percocet, vodka, food, and Netflix to forget — serves as the ideal petri dish for anxiety. Parks mentions that Barnes and Simenon also suffered from panic attacks. Without doing any real research, I can add the names David Foster Wallace,Philip Roth, Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck. These are all prose writers, of course. If we begin to add the names of the poets, the list gets real long, real fast.
Something to think on …
Man may […] be master of his fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.
— Hilaire Belloc, born on this date in 1870
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
FYI …
… The Millions : 50 Reasons Why You Should Read Joy Williams - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Back to school …
…Solitary Praxis: All I really need to know I learned (and must learn again) by studying William Shakespeare's plays and poems.
One of the most memorable performances of Hamlet that I have seen was the one put on by my college's theater club. Jim Hayes, the Irishman who played the prince, was very good, very believable.
One of the most memorable performances of Hamlet that I have seen was the one put on by my college's theater club. Jim Hayes, the Irishman who played the prince, was very good, very believable.
Hmm …
… Technology changes how authors write, but the big impact isn't on their style - SFGate. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I write in my head, and then write it down. The great thing about the computer, for me, is that I can fix the typos more easily.
I write in my head, and then write it down. The great thing about the computer, for me, is that I can fix the typos more easily.
Something to think on …
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
— Carl Jung, born on this date in 1875
Monday, July 25, 2016
Blogging note …
Once again, I am on call for friends in need. Blogging on my part will not resume until tonight.
The correctness of romantic effusions …
… First Known When Lost: River.
I am one of those who believes that Stevens wrote his most moving, most human (and his best) poetry in the last five years of his life, between the publication of The Auroras of Autumn in September of 1950 and his death on August 2, 1955, at the age of 74. … Mind you, Stevens's essential theme never changed from beginning to end: the belief that the back-and-forth between the Imagination and Reality is the central element of what it means to be human.I am inclined to agree, though I think that back-and-forth had to do with faith, the search for it and, ultimately, the experience of it.
Courts and courtiers …
… The University Bookman: A Return to the Thought-Murders. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There’s a parallel between Grielescu and Ravelstein. They are men strangely removed from the killing fields. They—like the conservative movement, in our ongoing humiliation—are men who court power instead of noticing its victims. Ravelstein loves the “handful of human beings [who] have the imagination and the qualities of character to live by the true Eros,” the “great-souled”; the rest, the average American, he ignores.
I was — long ago, when I was young — much involved in the conservative movement (I identified with its libertarian branch). What passes for such now was long ago taken over by neo-conservatism. And that has devolved into the sour bloviation of the likes of George Will (currently in the most risible phase of his career). Bill Buckley's oft-quoted sentiment —"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."— is utterly alien to such people.
By the way, this is an excellent piece. The following paragraph is almost poetic:
By the way, this is an excellent piece. The following paragraph is almost poetic:
In after years, the people who had gathered around those tables dispersed like their cigarette smoke. They went into think tanks and academic departments and magazines; many went to law school. Two or three entered the armed services, our other dream factory, where power becomes suffering and suffering justifies power. None of us were people who could tell you what the President was thinking.
Appreciation …
… Clive James on the Poetry of Kingsley Amis | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I am not quite persuaded. Much that is quoted is entertaining. But I find only the reflection on his father's death moving. The religious bits seem frivolous and shallow.
I am not quite persuaded. Much that is quoted is entertaining. But I find only the reflection on his father's death moving. The religious bits seem frivolous and shallow.
Fancy free …
… Solitary Praxis: Carpe diem: "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick.
I love Herrick's poetry. When I was in college I read it over and over. A wonderful person shines through his verse. His Noble Numbers display true faith, in my view.
I love Herrick's poetry. When I was in college I read it over and over. A wonderful person shines through his verse. His Noble Numbers display true faith, in my view.
Something to think on …
It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.
— Eric Hoffer, born on this date in 1898
When the commentariat doesn't get it...
...The Long War on Terror
First, the bald fatalism of the piece--"since we can't do anything about terror, we might as well grin and bear it." Second, the idea that xenophobia, however bad that may be, is somehow a worse response than dying at the hands of teorrists. Third, carrying on with the canard that deprivation breeds terror, even though recent attacks, such as the one in Bangldesh, show again and again that there is little connection between the two.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Sounds like hit and miss …
… The Queen of the Thunderbolt - Washington Free Beacon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I found her opening essay on the need for criticism today, where she draws a hard line between criticism and review writing, particularly baffling. Not only does she overstate the function of criticism—what does it mean to “stimulate a living literary consciousness”?—but she also arbitrarily determines that the length and limits of a review (the focus on a single book) make them categorically different from the literary essay. “Critics,” Ozick writes, “belong to a wholly distinct phylum.”Well, if you're going to write a review of a book just out, it helps to have some critical skills — and a talent for verbal economy.
Keeper of the flame …
… My father Robert Graves, the war poet who cheated death.
Robert Graves was born on this date in 1895. Here is one of his finest poems:To Juan At The Winter Solstice.
Something to think on …
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
— Robert Graves, born on this date in 1895
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Hmm …
… Kerry: Air conditioners as big a threat as ISIS | Fox News.
I look forward to learning that he has ordered the State Department offices to do without air conditioning. And of course I presume he already forgoes it at home.
I look forward to learning that he has ordered the State Department offices to do without air conditioning. And of course I presume he already forgoes it at home.
Not what some say it is …
… Taking Back ‘Social Justice’ - Washington Free Beacon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Non-Catholic readers may be inclined to skim the chapters discussing the papal encyclicals that first used the term and concept of social justice. That would be a mistake—first because Novak’s writing is consistently lucid and instructive, and second because it’s only by following the development of Catholic thought on social justice is the reader able to see why the term “social justice” was needed in the first place. Briefly: Two pontiffs—Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891) and, forty years later, Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno (1931)—struggled to answer a question that in one form or another dominated Europe from the mid-19th century on: Would economic activity be governed by a centralized state, or not?I had courses in Catholic social justice in high school and college. They were formative.
Just when you thought the science was settled …
… How a Guy From a Montana Trailer Park Overturned 150 Years of Biology - The Atlantic.
Of course, only those who want to use science for political purpose use the phrase "settled science"
The undiscovered country …
… Jenny Diski’s Jisei: On Death Poems and In Gratitude | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
There is no one-size-fits-all in living. Which is why there isn't one in dying. Diski notes that she was never in the presence of someone when they died. I have been. And just a few weeks ago I saw my brother just an hour or so after he died. His body was there. He was not.
There is no one-size-fits-all in living. Which is why there isn't one in dying. Diski notes that she was never in the presence of someone when they died. I have been. And just a few weeks ago I saw my brother just an hour or so after he died. His body was there. He was not.
Bearing witness …
… Chris Hedges: Writing as Resistance - Truthdig. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dawid Graber hastily buried some of the archives in August 1942 as deportations in the ghetto were being accelerated—between July 22 and Sept. 12 some 300,000 Jews were driven out of the ghetto to the gas chambers at Treblinka. He wrote: “What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground. I would love to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and scream the truth at the world. So the world may know all.” He ends with the words: “We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest for us.”
Art and science …
… How William Burroughs's drug experiments helped neurology research | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
“Hallucinogenic molecules could open up frightening new vistas of exploration and if Burroughs was right, my trip to the Amazon would lead me to unimagined cures. I wanted to see whether yagé could infuse my monochromatic research canvas and open up vivid new scientific perspectives,” he writes in the memoir, which has just been published by Notting Hill Editions.
The author of this piece refers to yagé as a narcotic. I do not believe that is correct.
Very interesting …
… Hindus for Donald Trump | RealClearPolitics.
Some four million Hindus reside in the United States. As a group, we have a higher per capita income than any other group. We also have the highest average education levels, the highest proportion of people employed as managers, the highest number of entrepreneurs (one in seven), the largest donations to charity, and are the least dependent on government. Self-sufficiency is a given in our community, and we don’t spend more than we earn. Hindu-Americans pay almost $50 billion per year in taxes, and we expect the government to be as judicious with its income as we are as individuals.This does not surprise me. Only yesterday I had quite an interesting conversation with a cab driver from India. Not surprisingly, he supported immigration — as long as it was, as his had been, legal.
Something to think on …
An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.
— Raymond Chandler, born on this date in 1888
Friday, July 22, 2016
Hmm …
… Colonel McCormick: A softie behind the ego - Chicago Tribune.
… the standard view: Whatever It Is, I'm Against It.
… the standard view: Whatever It Is, I'm Against It.
The latter piece is a dreadful review. "The American intervention in Europe in 1917, McCormick believed, had claimed some 50,000 American lives yet had done nothing to redeem the hopelessly rivalrous Europeans." That happens to be true. Or has the reviewer never heard of World War II? I'd like to have heard more about the book under review and less about the reviewer's detestation of the book's subject. I doubt if I would have printed that review, but I doubt if I would have assigned the book to that reviewer.
Sorry about the blogging …
… or, rather, the lack thereof. There are a number people currently depending on my attention. People, obviously, are more important than blogging. I will get back on track as soon as I can.
Academic writing is mostly bad...and it's ok!
I’m not trying to impugn Pinker: Anyone can make a mistake, especially when writing a book like Better Angels of Our Nature, which attempts to synthesize a vast amount of information from a wide variety of fields. But that’s exactly the point. It’s not easy to communicate complicated data and ideas with precision, style, and a modicum of propulsive punch. Many professional writers stumble into infelicities and inaccuracies. Why should academics be any different?
Blogging note …
I have some serious responsibilities to attend to today. So blogging will not resume until later on.
Doublethink …
… George Orwell, call your office | Washington Examiner.
"People here pride themselves on a kind of militant open-mindedness," Manjoo writes. "It is the kind of place that will severely punish any deviations from accepted schools of thought."Mr. Manjoo and his editor need to read what he writes more attentively.
Something to think on …
Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
— Stephen Vincent Benét, born on this date in 1898
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Zadie Smith writes...
...Fences: A Brexit Diary
While we loudly and rightly condemn the misguided racial attitudes that led to millions asking “them” to leave “us,” to get out of our jobs and public housing and hospitals and schools and country, we might also take a look at the last thirty years and ask ourselves what kind of attitudes have allowed a different class of people to discreetly maneuver, behind the scenes, to ensure that “them” and “us” never actually meet anywhere but in symbol. Wealthy London, whether red or blue, has always been able to pick and choose the nature of its multicultural and cross-class relations, to lecture the rest of the country on its narrow-mindedness while simultaneously fencing off its own discreet advantages. We may walk past “them” very often in the street and get into their cabs and eat their food in their ethnic restaurants, but the truth is that more often than not they are not in our schools, or in our social circles, and they very rarely enter our houses—unless they’ve come to work on our endlessly remodeled kitchens.
Something to think on…
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
— Ernest Hemingway, born on this date in 1899
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Listen in …
… The Golden Age of Young Adult Literature in Iowa | Iowa Public Radio. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
The debatable Mr. Twain …
… Solitary Praxis: Is Mark Twain's work excellent or execrable?
I, too, think Huckleberry Finn is overrated and structurally flawed. I think Tom Sawyer is wonderful.
Listen in …
… Episode 177 – MK Brown | Virtual Memories.
“I have a folder of work that I can never print, but you just have to get them out.”
Indeed …
… Joseph Conrad’s Relevance Today - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Conrad had a deep-rooted fear of social disorder, was sensitive to political movements and perceptive about the pathology of terrorists. People asked the same questions about terrorists then as they do now: What sort of people are they? Who organizes them? What are their motives? Though Conrad’s novel is based on the anarchist bomb plots of the turn of the 20th century, his political insights apply with equal force to our situation today. An adaptation of the novel is now airing on BBC One and the series will likely appear in America.
Something to think on …
A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him of ideas.
— Paul Valéry, who died on this date in 1945
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Writers writing to themselves …
… On the Journals of Famous Writers | Literary Hub.
… Over the past few months, I have lived within the journals of heroes and strangers, compared daily word counts with Virginia Woolf, trembled before Alma Mahler’s social calendar, pitied Kafka’s lovers. I’ve read pages and pages with interest and empathy, with boredom and more than a little shame (some entries are akin to seeing your favorite authors’ dirty underthings). But having traversed that stack of lives, what remains more than anything, tingling like a phantom limb, is a sensation of stillness: the journal as the eye of the writing life’s storm. More than ever, it seems to me a womb, a respite—and if that respite isn’t literature, I would argue it is literature’s wellspring.
Art in a time of barbarism …
… First Known When Lost: Alpine.
Each of us comes to a poem with our own unique set of feelings, thoughts, and circumstances, all of which influence how we react to the poem. This does not mean that we change the poem into what we want it to be. (This is where most modern "literary criticism" goes wrong.) Rather, the poem, which was a wholly personal act of imagination and preservation by the poet, now awakens a wholly personal response in each of us.
Meritocracy...
When an author caps two hundred pages of rhetorical fire with fifteen pages of platitudes or utopian fantasy, that is called “the last chapter problem.” When every author who takes up a question finds himself equally at a loss, that is something else. In this case, our authors fail as critics of meritocracy because they cannot get their heads outside of it. They are incapable of imagining what it would be like not to believe in it. They assume the validity of the very thing they should be questioning.
But what would it be like not to take meritocracy for granted? The basic idea—that we should rank candidates for power according to some desirable quality, then pick the best of them—seems too obvious to have needed inventing, but invented it was, and (at least in the West) not so long ago. If we go back to the occasion of its first appearance in the English-speaking world, we will find a group of men who opposed it, not just because they did not think it would work in practice, but because they disagreed with it in principle. Meritocracy had a beginning and a middle and may yet have an end, and the beginning is exactly where the man who coined the term said it was on the very first page of his book: the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of 1854
Something to think on …
A human life is a schooling for eternity.
— Gottfried Keller, born on this date in 1819
Monday, July 18, 2016
speaking out …
… Poetry Is Not a Crime: Nine Pulitzer-winners among 150 literary figures calling for Israel to release Palestinian poet – Mondoweiss. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
It is always impolitic to place a writer under arrest for writing something.
History nuggets …
"Manumission Monday." At the recent Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Conference, held in Cambridge., Md., two researchers for the Maryland State Archives gave a presentation about their work inventorying historic manumission (legal freedom) documents and related Certificates of Freedom for individual slaves. While I was down the hall at another talk, my wife attended that session and was impressed by the two young historians' methods and discoveries. Every Monday, one of them, Allison Seyler, posts a fresh manumission case on the Archive's Instagram account. To get a taste of their important work, go to instagram.com and type in #manumissionmonday. Here's the direct link.
"The Black Soldier: Hero to his People." That's the heading on a sample page of a children's book I came across three weeks ago. It was during a getaway to the lovely Hudson Valley. First stop on the trip was the West Point Museum, where a painting is displayed of a famous uphill charge by black troops at the Battle of Petersburg. Because six of the hometown soldiers I'm researching were part of that very charge, I wanted to examine the original canvas up-close. And then, at the gift shop, I noticed another wonderful thing: Black Soldiers in the Civil War--a children's coloring book! Seems the old U.S. Colored Troops have "arrived" after all these years, honored now in our Military Academy's official museum and even in the pantheon of coloring books. Below (and as an attachment) is that sample page I mentioned. Have kids in your life? You can order the coloring book online from Bellerophon Books. (You can also see the Petersburg battle painting at my author website,jimremsen.com.)
"The Black Soldier: Hero to his People." That's the heading on a sample page of a children's book I came across three weeks ago. It was during a getaway to the lovely Hudson Valley. First stop on the trip was the West Point Museum, where a painting is displayed of a famous uphill charge by black troops at the Battle of Petersburg. Because six of the hometown soldiers I'm researching were part of that very charge, I wanted to examine the original canvas up-close. And then, at the gift shop, I noticed another wonderful thing: Black Soldiers in the Civil War--a children's coloring book! Seems the old U.S. Colored Troops have "arrived" after all these years, honored now in our Military Academy's official museum and even in the pantheon of coloring books. Below (and as an attachment) is that sample page I mentioned. Have kids in your life? You can order the coloring book online from Bellerophon Books. (You can also see the Petersburg battle painting at my author website,jimremsen.com.)
Dave Eggers's New Novel
...Reviewed in the NYT.
Also, as a side note, I can't believe A Heartbreaking Work was published more than 16 years ago. That seems incredible to me.
Editors of note …
… Helen Gurley Brown, Terry McDonell, and the Glossy Glory Days of Magazines | Vanity Fair. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Boy, it sure takes Walcott long enough to get around to saying what little he does about Brown and McDonnell and the books under review.
Boy, it sure takes Walcott long enough to get around to saying what little he does about Brown and McDonnell and the books under review.
The importance of reading …
… Walter Mosley: You have to see yourself in the literature - On and Off The Shelves. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
Appreciation …
… The American Side of France’s Greatest Postwar Poet - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
Bonnefoy’s writing is made of these gentle disagreements—his lifelong project was the reconciliation of stubborn opposites. The child of a teacher and a railroad worker, he was born in Tours in 1923 and spent the war years studying mathematics and philosophy. With his celebrated début collection, in 1953 (“On the Motion and Immobility of Douve”), he began a truly polymathic literary career, publishing, along with free-verse poetry, short fiction, lyric essays, translations (notably of Shakespeare and Yeats), literary criticism, and art history. He devoted considerable attention to the visual arts. (His second marriage was to the American painter Lucy Vines; the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of his closest friends.) He travelled widely, and lectured in comparative literature both in France and abroad.
In case you wondered …
… When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism - The American Interest. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But rather than focusing on the nationalists as the people who need to be explained by experts, I’ll begin the story with the globalists. I’ll show how globalization and rising prosperity have changed the values and behavior of the urban elite, leading them to talk and act in ways that unwittingly activate authoritarian tendencies in a subset of the nationalists. I’ll show why immigration has been so central in nearly all right-wing populist movements. It’s not just the spark, it’s the explosive material, and those who dismiss anti-immigrant sentiment as mere racism have missed several important aspects of moral psychology related to the general human need to live in a stable and coherent moral order. Once moral psychology is brought into the story and added on to the economic and authoritarianism explanations, it becomes possible to offer some advice for reducing the intensity of the recent wave of conflicts.
Anniversary
… Paul Davis On Crime: Happy Birthday To The Late Gonzo Journalist And Author, Hunter S. Thompson.
Can't say I was much of a fan myself, but I'm just one guy.
Can't say I was much of a fan myself, but I'm just one guy.
Blogging note …
Yesterday having been a dies horribilis for me, I am behind things today. I will resume blogging this afternoon.
Something to think on …
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
— Jessamyn West, born on this date in 1902
Sunday, July 17, 2016
A problem with bears
… The Bears Who Came to Town and Would Not Go Away | Outside Online. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Maybe they should tried what farmers used to do with crows ravaging corn fields. Shoot a few and hang up their carcasses where the other bears could notice.
Maybe …
… Loneliness Belongs to the Photographer - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Laing includes performers in her study—poignantly, Klaus Nomi, the countertenor and lonesome bird of the late-nineteen-seventies East Village art scene—but spends the majority of her time discussing the acknowledged masters of modern despondency: Edward Hopper, of course, with his crayon-ish greens and reds and neon chiaroscuro; Andy Warhol, isolated and protected by his layers of sartorial artifice; and David Wojnarowicz, the leader of his own crew of lost boys.I don't see any despondency in Hopper. Some of my happiest times have been spent wandering alone in strange cities, deliciously alone, almost as if I had arrived from another planet. Being alone and feeling lonely are two quite different things. I love the one. I'm not sure I've ever experienced the other.
Shoring up …
… Zealotry of Guerin: LOFT (Michael Antman), Sonnet #306.
This should have been posted yesterday. I became distracted by obligations.
This should have been posted yesterday. I became distracted by obligations.
Hear, hear …
… Undernews: The virtues of decentralizing government. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Imagine if abolition, labor unions, women’s and minority rights, or the ecology movement had all been forced to wait until a congressional investigation or presidential candidate found them interesting enough to hold hearings. Doing things at the grassroots – whether as citizens, businesses or as local government – has been what has repeatedly moved American forward.
Something to think on …
Charm is a cunning self-forgetfulness.
— Christina Stead, born on this date in 1902
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Endgame …
… Solitary Praxis: Dickinson reminds me that Death will not be denied . . .
I was taught to think about death every day.
I was taught to think about death every day.
Sounds about right …
… No More | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The time for shock is over. The time for heaping up flowers and candles and stuffed animals at the sites of atrocities is over. The lies and ignorance and cravenness must end, and the simple facts must be faced. The free, civilized West has, for years now, been the target of a war of conquest—a war waged in many forms (of which terrorism is only one) by Islamist adherents preaching submission, intolerance, and brutality, and our leaders and media, with few exceptions, continue to play a game whose fatuity, fecklessness, and pusillanimity have become increasingly clear. After Nice, no more.Of course, if a society becomes gutless …
More sad news …
Just got an email from Diane Sahms-Guarieri and G.E. Reutter:
Here is a profile.Marty Esworthy of the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel has informed us that Philadelphia native and Hummelstown Poet Jack Veasey passed on suddenly yesterday. Jack was a fine man and an excellent poet. In recent years there has been a resurgence in publication of books and most recently with: Jack Veasey. The Dance That Begins And Begins: Selected Poems 1973-2013 released by Poet's Press. AUPC of Harrisburg will be planning a memorial service sometime in the future. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.
See also:
Something to think on…
We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.
— Anatole Broyard, born on this date in 1920
Friday, July 15, 2016
More than just a precursor …
… Getty exhibition makes a case for the enduring power of Theodore Rousseau - LA Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden,)
I've sat long and long in front of some of Rousseau's works.
I've sat long and long in front of some of Rousseau's works.
Speaking to a different Harvard …
… Solitary Praxis: The heresy of wisdom and "a pagan, suckled in a creed outworn": Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks to Harvard class on July 15, 1838.
I will return to this later today, when I have more time.
I will return to this later today, when I have more time.
Focus on the media …
… moviemorlocks.com – The Whole World is Watching: Medium Cool (1969). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Continuing …
… God is a Verb | Catholic Theological Union.
While all the qualities of personhood are in God, rather than thinking about God as just some kind of “person” “up there” or “out there,” I’ve begun to think about God as a Movement, an Embrace, a Flow—moving through the cosmos and history, embracing wounded and suffering creation, flowing through the smallest subatomic particle as well as the most complex organisms.This, of course, quite aptly describes the Logos – or the Tao.
Something to think on …
Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.
— Iris Murdoch, born on this date in 1919
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Horrible …
… At least 73 dead and 100 injured as lorry crashes into crowd of revellers celebrating in France ‘terror attack’ – The Sun.
Let us pray for the victims and their families. For those who don't pray, your good will would be honored.
Let us pray for the victims and their families. For those who don't pray, your good will would be honored.
Master of Wasp vernacular …
… Whit Stillman | Full Stop. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
You didn’t like Howards End? The book?I quite agree: Only connect! But to what?
I couldn’t stand it. It felt so tendentious and one-sided. And obvious and unfair…I think the movie was much fairer to the bad people. And more beautiful, visually beautiful. It’s one of my favorite movies.
Man Booker Winner writes a book on How to Write a Novel...
I think literature exists to bridge the gap between how things are supposed to work, and that feeling we all have that they're not fucking working that way at all. In life, a lot of our time—especially a lot of our unconscious time—is spent glossing over and making up for some serious fucking gaps between what we have been told should happen and what actually does happen. That and the gap between what people think they are like and what they are actually like is the stuff of life. Books are specifically about filling and explaining these gaps.
...As soon as you get a few pages in, the thing inside of you that needs to be said will start coming to the surface. The characters that appear, the situations that happen, the dynamics that are created, will already be there, whether you've realized it or not. I get this feeling that our own stories aren't always tellable, but they catch a ride, they hitchhike. If we have something to say, it will come out.DBC Pierre
'Twas ever thus...
“We would take people, put a small boat in the river and bless them right there in the middle,” said 69-year-old Mr. Yerezian, the director of real estate at the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem. “It was easier then.”
Such free access to the site where St. John the Baptist is said to have baptized Jesus more than 2,000 years ago has been rare in the 50 years since Mr. Yerezian was a teenage clergyman.
Slings and arrows …
… Helen DeWitt, America’s Great Unlucky Novelist -- Vulture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Last Samurai was a sensation even before it appeared. The toast of the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1999, with rights sold to more than a dozen countries, the novel came out in 2000 to wide acclaim, sold in excess of 100,000 copies in English, and was nominated for several prizes. But for DeWitt, this was the beginning of a long phase of turmoil that still hasn’t abated. The book’s success was marred by an epic battle with a copy editor involving large amounts of Wite-Out; typesetting nightmares having to do with the book’s use of foreign scripts; what she describes as “an accounting error” that resulted in her owing the publisher $75,000 when she thought the publisher owed her $80,000; the agonies of obtaining permissions for the many outside works quoted in the novel, including Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai — which was the title of The Last Samurai until it was deemed legally impossible. Her second novel, Lightning Rods, finished in July 1999, was then stuck in limbo after her publisher, Talk Miramax, folded. When it did finally appear, from New Directions in 2011, it garnered a legion of devoted readers too young to have read The Last Samurai before it went out of print. (The best and funniest satire of capitalism I’ve ever read, Lightning Rods concerns a firm that provides corporations with undercover prostitutes for their male employees in order to relieve them of urges that might cause them to commit sexual harassment.)I was under the impression that titles could not be copyrighted. There have been a number of novels called The Devil's Advocate, the one by Morris L. West, and another by Taylor Caldwell. The title of the Kurosawa film, by the way, is Seven Samurai. (You can take the copy editor away from the copy desk etc.)
Hmm …
… Solitary Praxis: Seditious speech and unwelcomed aliens in the U.S.
I don't think many people are inclined these days to defend the Alien and Sedition Acts. Certainly to equate dissent with sedition is unacceptable. If you give a speech inciting violence or treason, well there are riot acts. Basically, it's best to let people sound off and let the public make up its mind.
I don't think many people are inclined these days to defend the Alien and Sedition Acts. Certainly to equate dissent with sedition is unacceptable. If you give a speech inciting violence or treason, well there are riot acts. Basically, it's best to let people sound off and let the public make up its mind.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Poets …
… Solitary Praxis: Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, and lyrical poets in America.
I am a big Wordsworth fan myself. Like him, I was once a great walker. But I don't think there is much point to comparing poets. It isn't whether one poet is better than another. It is whether one is a poet or not.
Something to think on …
No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.
— Thomas Berger, who died on this date in 2014
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Something to think on …
God is a verb, not a noun.
— Buckminster Fuller, born on this date in 1895
I had so much to do yesterday, I forgot to post this. I had the privilege once of chatting with Fuller.
FYI …
… 'Avoiding the sun is as dangerous as smoking' - The Local.
I never bought into this BS. And at this time of year I actually am a redneck.
I never bought into this BS. And at this time of year I actually am a redneck.
And another …
… Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage: How to get teenagers reading poetry | Children's books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
In The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald writes: “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store in his ghostly heart”. I’m starting to think of poems as little pieces of “fire or freshness” which we can carry around with us, or as candles you light and renew with a prayer, or, if you’re secular-minded like me, a thought of the rest of humanity.
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