Wednesday, May 31, 2017
Good idea …
… Informal Inquiries: Investing in the future: read Shakespeare.That's why, once upon a time, it was thought a good idea to be educated. Then colleges and universities turned into degree mills.
Blogging note …
I have to accompany my wife to a doctor's appointment. Blogging will resume later on.
The poet and a city …
… 'What a hole': Hull has embraced Philip Larkin – but did the love go both ways? | Cities | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… according to Chesters, Hull soon began to “work on Larkin”. The poet liked that it was unpretentious, with less “crap around” than London. He was free to produce some of his best work: the Whitsun Weddings, the Large Cool Store, Toads and, above all, Here, Larkin’s sweeping evocation of a city and its hinterland. With its “surprise of a large town”, its “spires and cranes” and “ships up streets”, Here shows how intimately Larkin had come to know his adopted home by 1961 – and how far he’d come from his early dismissal of it.
No mere victim …
… F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Shimmering Visions | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… while Fitzgerald read a bit in the major theorists of his time, including the fashionable prophets of doom, he was “extraordinarily little occupied with the general affairs of the world,” as Wilson reported in 1922. His thinking went chiefly into his craft; he prided himself on being “a worker in the arts.” Brown’s depiction of Fitzgerald as stern defender of a vanished age and grim diagnostician of “a larger cultural illness corrupting the West” encumbers a writer whose power of enchantment begins in swift movement and lightning observation, irradiated by delicious humor and also the dreamy moonglow of his charming, musical prose.
Something to think on …
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
— Walt Whitman, born on this date in 1819
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Hmm …
… Instapundit — GARY TAUBES FANS WILL NOT BE SHOCKED: Eat fat to lose weight? Scientists say it’s the smart thing…
I'll stick with a mix myself — lots of fruits, veggies, meat of course, and cheese. I tend to go easy on the bread and pasta, though.
I'll stick with a mix myself — lots of fruits, veggies, meat of course, and cheese. I tend to go easy on the bread and pasta, though.
Something new …
… Words Without Borders Campus.
Words Without Borders (WWB), the online magazine for international literature, announced today the public launch of its online education program, WWB Campus. The resource makes contemporary international literature in translation accessible for classroom study. Each piece of literature is paired with a virtual toolbox of multimedia materials that help students to engage with a text and educators to teach it. Through exposure to contemporary stories from around the world, WWB aims to inspire students to become readers of international literature and global citizens
Hmm …
Nearly 20 years ago, in an article in the New York Review of Books, Freeman Dyson pointed out that the U.S. could eliminate excess carbon emissions by increasing the topsoil by three-eighths of an inch.
I happen to have the aforementioned article. Here is an excerpt:
Post bumpedRoughly speaking, half of the contiguous United States, not including Alaska and Hawaii, consists of mountains and deserts and parking lots and highways and buildings, and the other half is covered with plants and topsoil. Just to see how important an unmeasurable increase of topsoil may be, let us imagine that the increased root-to-shoot ratio of plants might cause an average net increase of topsoil biomass of one tenth of an inch per year over half the area of the contiguous United States. A simple calculation shows that the amount of carbon transferred from the atmosphere to the topsoil would be five billion tons per year. This amount is considerably more than the measured four-billion-ton annual increase of carbon in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the entire earth could be canceled out by an increase of topsoil biomass of a tenth of an inch per year over half of the contiguous United States.
A tenth-of-an-inch-per-year increase of topsoil would be exceedingly difficult to measure. At present we do not even know whether the topsoil of the United States is increasing or decreasing. Over the rest of the world, because of large-scale deforestation and erosion, the topsoil reservoir is probably decreasing. We do not know whether intelligent land management could ensure a growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All that we can say for certain is that this is a theoretical possibility and ought to be seriously explored.
In the beginning was the Logos …
… The Idler | Why modern Stoicism misses the point. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Stoicism proper is about aligning your life to the Logos. The all-powerful God has its way anyway. Only the divine knows best. So give up your desire and desire what God determines. Then you will begin to perceive God in all things, in every tree, in every mountain, in other souls.
Even in the local newspaper …
… Philadelphia's music legacy is vast but hard to find | Charlotte Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So this is an AP story in the Charlotte Observer.
So this is an AP story in the Charlotte Observer.
Lionel nails it …
… Why agonise over things that will never happen? | Coffee House. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Q & A …
… "Being's self-gift to being:" James Matthew Wilson and the Encounter with Beauty - Seminarian CasualSeminarian Casual. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
…what makes something intrinsically good – in the sense that it’s not reducible to mere sensation or pleasure? Aristotle says quite explicitly that something good in itself is always done for the sake of beauty. So beauty transcends what is good and true not because it leaves them behind, but because it is what we see when we see truth and goodness realized in being.
Something to think on …
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
— Boris Pasternak, who died on this date in 1960
Listen in …
… Episode 220 – Seth | Virtual Memories.
“The world of the studio is where my interest is now. . . . It’s the world of exploring ideas you don’t have to show to anybody.”
Monday, May 29, 2017
Short 3-line pomes …
… The Taste of Rain – American Haiku by Jack Kerouac | Brief Poems. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
On MEMORIAL DAY...
Why I Love the Constitution.
From me, the National Constitution Center and AmLaw Journal TV
Haiku
The butterfly does not think
"I'm weak" or at all
and is beauty nonetheless
The person should not judge "I
am weak," or at all
and be beauty nonetheless
Blogging note …
It may be a holiday, but I have things to attend to that will take me away from my desk until later.
Cross-pollination …
… Literary fiction is borrowing the tools of the science fiction genre. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
George Orwell and Aldous Huxley wrote speculative fiction in the first half of the 20th century, and Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood wrote it in the second half. Nevertheless, in 1996, when David Foster Wallace published Infinite Jest, the fact that book was set in a not-too-distant future in which northern New England has been rendered a toxic waste dump was viewed as an eccentricity (as well as rather tiresomely broad satire). By the mid-2000s, dashes of dystopia had begun to appear in novels such as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, but it was Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road that made futurist fiction fully legit in MFA circles.
People's poet …
… Why Langston Hughes Still Reigns as a Poet for the Unchampioned | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
Native sounds …
… I Have Fallen in Love with American Names - The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In the 1927 poem whose famous final six words are “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee,” Stephen Vincent Benét had spoken as much for a Roosevelt-reared Jewish boy like me as for a wellborn Yale graduate like himself with the poem’s guilelessly Whitmanesque opening line: “I have fallen in love with American names.” It was precisely in the sounding of the names of the country’s distant places, in its spaciousness, in the dialects and the landscapes that were at once so American yet so unlike my own that a youngster with my susceptibilities found the most potent lyrical appeal. That was the heart of the fascination: as an American, one was a wisecracking, slang-speaking, in-the-know street kid of an unknowable colossus. Only locally could I be a savvy cosmopolite; out in the vastness of the country, adrift and at large, every American was a hick, with the undisguisable emotions of a hick, as defenseless as even a sophisticated littérateur like Benét was against the pleasurable sort of sentiment aroused by the mere mention of Spartanburg, Santa Cruz, or the Nantucket Light, as well as unassuming Skunktown Plain, or Lost Mule Flat, or the titillatingly named Little French Lick. There was the shaping paradox: our innate provincialism made us Americans, unhyphenated at that, in no need of an adjective, suspicious of any adjective that would narrow the implications of the imposingly all-inclusive noun that was—if only because of the galvanizing magnum opus called the Second World War—our birthright.
Q & A …
… Slight Exaggeration: An Interview with Adam Zagajewski - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… being an author yourself, you must know how big a role chance is playing while you compose the book. Chance and intuition; my ideal for such a book is somewhere midway between a closely knit structure and a chaotic ensemble of notes, observations, motifs. Some parts of the book were written orderly — I mean their order corresponds to the order or writing, but many were juxtaposed later. My idea is usually not to bring similar motifs together but to disperse them.
Something to think on …
It is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.
— G. K. Chesterton, born on this date in 1874
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Flying Z Ranch, Gallatin Gateway, MT
It's very libertarian out here. The bison even look tired and have red eyes...outstanding in their field.
Not for the faint-hearted …
… Why Lake Superior Is the Country's Most Overlooked Playground | Outside Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Famously cold and frighteningly massive, Lake Superior contains 10 percent of the world's surface freshwater, holds the remains of 6,000 shipwrecks, and offers a lifetime of adventure.
Going to the dogs …
… Dog of a dilemma: the rise of the predatory journal - MJA InSight 19, 22 May 2017 | doctorportal.
“What makes it even more bizarre is that one of these journals has actually asked Ollie to review an article. It’s entitled Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumours and their management. Some poor soul has actually written an article on this theme in good faith, and the journal has sent it to a dog to review.”
Maybe those recent demonstrations in support of science should have considered the extent to which science has some problems these days, instead of focusing on people who question certain views passed off as "settled" science.
Bridge to the world …
… Bringing idioms across oceans - Northwestern Now. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Cavanagh began translating in graduate school at Harvard University. Her professor, Stanislaw Baranczak, asked for help translating from Polish to English because Cavanagh’s English was superior to his. Almost immediately, Cavanagh was hooked. “We started and we couldn’t stop,” she says.
Inquirer reviews …
… 'Tree of Life': Turkish cookbook, storybook, sustainable friendships.
… Michael Crichton roars again in 'Dragon Teeth'.
… Tracy Chevalier's 'New Boy': Shakespeare on the playground.
… 'In Their Lives': Some good thoughts, and many not so good, on the Beatles.
Of course, three of the four are WaPo reviews.
… Michael Crichton roars again in 'Dragon Teeth'.
… Tracy Chevalier's 'New Boy': Shakespeare on the playground.
… 'In Their Lives': Some good thoughts, and many not so good, on the Beatles.
Of course, three of the four are WaPo reviews.
Something to think on …
I think it is impossible to explain faith. It is like trying to explain air, which one cannot do by dividing it into its component parts and labeling them scientifically. It must be breathed to be understood.
— Patrick White, born on this date in 1912
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Why one writer writes …
… Marly Youmans / The Palace at 2:00 a.m. / poems, stories, novels: To make or not to make--. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A strange part of all this leaning toward shapeliness is that a writer is also made, enlarged, changed and transformed. She may fly into ethereal realms or trudge through the underworld, may die on the phoenix pyre many times. She experiences redemption, loss, debasement, courage, all wax and wane--a whole gamut of ways of being. She loves the unloveable as well as the much-loved. Like a fantasy object, a writer becomes bigger on the inside through making poems and narratives.
RIP …
… Chana Bloch, Berkeley poet and Yehuda Amichai translator, dies at 77 – J. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
FYI …
… Turkey: A History of Banning Poetry and Targeting Poets | The Armenian Weekly. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Something to think on …
A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.
— Arnold Bennett, born on this date in 1867
And here is another …
… entirely too many pieces of unsolicited advice to young writer types. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Prophetic literature …
… This 1962 Novel Predicted Western Collapse and Islam's Takeover | The Stream. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One of the books mentioned, The Camp of the Saints, really does read as if it had been written last year.
One of the books mentioned, The Camp of the Saints, really does read as if it had been written last year.
Friday, May 26, 2017
Prufrock's centenary …
… Magic Lantern | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is only mentioned in passing here, but I have always been fond of Preludes. It awakened me to the poetry of the city.
It is only mentioned in passing here, but I have always been fond of Preludes. It awakened me to the poetry of the city.
Wondering …
… Informal Inquiries: Why do writers write?
I've always liked Dr. Johnson's explanation: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
I've always liked Dr. Johnson's explanation: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
Preview …
… Randy Newman's "Dark Matter" Due August 4 on Nonesuch; First Album of New Material Since 2008 | Nonesuch Records. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not sure what to think of "Putin." But I do find it odd that Putin seems to have become more of a bogeyman than Stalin ever did, at least in certain circles.
Not sure what to think of "Putin." But I do find it odd that Putin seems to have become more of a bogeyman than Stalin ever did, at least in certain circles.
Hmm …
… Informal Inquiries: Troublemakers in history.
Well, you have to wonder about a guy afraid of a thunderstorm. As for troublemakers, I prefer trouble enders.
Well, you have to wonder about a guy afraid of a thunderstorm. As for troublemakers, I prefer trouble enders.
Something to think on …
Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.
— Edmond de Goncourt, born on this date in 1822
Appreciation …
… The American Scholar: Brazil by Way of Bach - Sudip Bose. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
His most famous piece by its greatest interpreter:
It's come to this …
… Banning Lou Reed: The Cultural Revolution Eats Its Fathers | The Stream.
So let's hear it from (and for) Lou:
The post went viral, to vast ridicule. “I don’t know if Lou would be cracking up about this or crying because it’s just too stupid,” Reed’s producer Hal Willner told The Guardian.There really is something profoundly ludicrous about Lou Reed falling victim to PC nonsense.
So let's hear it from (and for) Lou:
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Much in what he says …
… Notes of a Reformed News Weasel: Understanding the Vacuity | Fred On Everything. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ask journalists when they were last in a truck stop on an Interstate, last in Boone, North Carolina or Barstow, California or any of thousands of such towns across the country. Ask whether they were in the military, whether they have ever talked to a cop or an ambulance crewman or a fireman. Ask whether they have a Mexican friend, when they last ate in a restaurant where a majority of the customers were black. Whether they know an enlisted man, or anyone in the armed services. Whether they have hitchhiked overnight, baited a hook, hunted, or fired a rifle. Whether they have ever worked washing dishes, harvesting crops, driving a delivery truck. Whether they have a blue-collar friend. Know what the Texas Two-Step is, have been in a biker bar.But what he says is not only true of journalists. And it used to not be true of journalists.
The way we are …
… Crime and Drugs @ Your Library — Annoyed Librarian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It’s pretty bleak stuff, too. In Philly overdoses and Narcan use are so common in the library that “They have been using the spray so often that they can tell the type of overdose simply by the sound coming from the lavatory: Heroin victims slide sluggishly into unconsciousness, the librarians have found, while victims of deadly fentanyl collapse instantly, with a thud that resonates through the entire building.”
The way we were …
… Tense photos capture the atmosphere as New Yorkers wait for news on D-Day. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
True love's unsmooth course …
… London man writes world's longest love poem at 2,400 words | Daily Mail Online. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Discovery …
… Unseen Sylvia Plath poems deciphered in carbon paper | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
A poet's travails …
… Gerard Manley Hopkins, a terrible teacher who hated UCD. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Of the 28 poems he wrote in Ireland, the six known as the Terrible Sonnets are the most arresting. For anyone who has known depression, the gut-wrenchingly bleak No worst, there is none, which ends with the crumb of comfort that “all life death does end and each day dies with sleep”, is the poetic equivalent of Munch’s The Scream. It’s hardly complimentary to his adopted home, and the best we can say is that Hopkins’ misery was literature’s gain.
Satirical leveling …
… Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Decline and Fall’: British TV Series Captures the Book’s Comedy | National Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The TV adaptation gets Waugh’s humor exactly right: pugnacious and genteel, shocking yet understated, viciously deadpan, awash with fondness and cruelty.
Q & A …
… 'Times' Book Review Editor Shares Her Love Of Reading In 'My Life With Bob' : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
The state incurs debts for politics, war, and other higher causes and 'progress'. . . . The assumption is that the future will honour this relationship in perpetuity. The state has learned from the merchants and industrialists how to exploit credit; it defies the nation ever to let it go into bankruptcy. Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.
— Jacob Burckhardt, born on this date in 1818
Get ready for some chuckles …
… Hilarious Winners of the First Annual ‘Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards’ – FLOW ART STATION. (Hat tips, Dave Lull and Rus Bowden.)
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Words and the Word …
… Sarah Ruden’s Rebellion Against Our ‘Just the Facts’ Bibles | Christianity Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Aesthetics, she says, seems to be the great factor disregarded by the modern mind. A close attentiveness to the original texts reveals that these words were carefully chosen and artfully deployed. So what would happen if we were to be just as careful and artful in the way we choose to present these words today? Ruden is asking translators to wrestle with more than meaning. She is making the case for doing the intense and challenging work of digging as deeply as possible into ancient worlds so we can once again feel the Bible, not just know things from it. Again and again she asks, “What was it like?”
Plus ça change …
… First Known When Lost: Present.
"But as to one result of this merely mechanical extending of an horizon I am clear, and clear that it is spiritually injurious to man. The growing tendency of a world where means of instantaneous communication and rapid transit and the ever-widening ramifications of commercial interests more and more make everybody's business everybody's business, is to breed a shallow and aimless cosmopolitanism in all of us at the expense of an exact and intimate growth in our knowledge of ourselves and our neighbours and the land of our birth."
Something to think on …
I believe in not quite knowing. A writer needs to be doubtful, questioning. I write out of curiosity and bewilderment.
— William Trevor, born on this date in 1928
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Listen in …
… Episode 219 – Keiler Roberts | Virtual Memories.
“My drawing is as close as it can be to my handwriting. It’s what comes out without too much thought.”
History as time travel …
… Informal Inquiries: Time-travel to the past in America. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.
— Henrik Ibsen, who died on this date in 1906
Picky eaters …
… The Anatomy of Finickiness: On Alexander Theroux’s “Einstein’s Beets: An Examination of Food Phobias” - Los Angeles Review of Book. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
From time to time I was reminded of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, similar in its baggy, overstuffed, eccentric, encyclopedic qualities, with the author by no means restricted to his alleged subject. Theroux’s book has something of the magnificent folly about it. He tells us Brief Lives, John Aubrey’s gorgeously chaotic collection of biographies, is one of his favorite books: no big surprise there.
Mystery man …
… How the Owner of the Greatest Mystery Bookstore Pulled the Genre Out of the Muck - Atlas Obscura. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mysteries have always been around and always been popular, but they haven’t always been respected. Otto Penzler has had a significant hand in that transformation. He’s probably the most important figure in the history of mystery fiction who’s never written a mystery story.
Monday, May 22, 2017
Blogging note …
I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow morning. So I won't be blogging until later in the day/
Falling on hard times …
… Sinners in the hands of an angry buddha. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The material in this collection trades in mature topics, no less serious than the death of a child. Intelligent teenagers are marooned without jobs or the means to attend college during the Great Depression, poverty sits next to great affluence in New York City, there is despair and divorce and premarital sex, when marriage thereafter began to collapse as a norm. But Fitzgerald’s precision and fineness, even at the depth of his powers, exceeds contemporary writers by miles. If Saunders thinks Trump is no Lincoln—and what president is a Lincoln?—George Saunders is no Scott Fitzgerald.
Philosophy and romance …
… Romance and Socialism in J. S. Mill - American Affairs Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mill’s nickname, given him by Gladstone, was “the Saint of Rationalism.” He had a reputation as England’s gentle philosopher, whose school, if it erred, did so only in assuming that the rest of mankind was as decent and benevolent as himself. But the more we examine him, the less plausible it is that Mill was too good for this world. Instead it begins to appear that Mill was unable to tell his readers how to become decent, benevolent people—because he wasn’t one himself.
Path to faith …
… The University Bookman: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Wallace Stevens. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mariani’s concluding chapters resonate with something different, something about that austere and ethical conscience: “… the figures in the street,” Stevens had written in his homage to Santayana, “Become the figures in heaven, the majestic movement / Of men growing small in the distances of space, / Singing, with smaller and still smaller sound, / Unintelligible absolution and an end.” There’s a celestial possibility being limned here, “happiness in the shape of Rome,” prefigures a soul waiting to be released. Meditating on Santayana, Stevens is reading his own mind near the end of his own life, and a peaceful and tranquil Catholic even in his own mind.
Something to think on …
As I grow to understand life less and less I grow to love it more and more.
— Jules Renard, who died on this date in 1910
Sunday, May 21, 2017
In case you wondered …
… What Anglicans get right about angels | CatholicHerald.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One of the silliest claims made by those who do not share my affection for them is that devotion to Michael and Gabriel, as with the Seven Dolours or poor neglected St Aloysius, smacks of grandmotherly piety. This is entirely true, and speaks very much in its favour. Heaven, one suspects, will be full of grandmothers, and angels keeping them company.The older I get, the simpler my piety becomes.
Ben Franklin, creative borrower …
… Do As Poor Richard Says, Not As He Does – The Awl. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As a citizen of a British colony, [Franklin]took immense pride in the comedic sensibilities of his motherland. More importantly, as an eighteenth-century publisher, he considered the inclusion of unattributed knowledge well within the bounds of fair use. “Writers [back then] didn’t have the modern sense of plagiarism that today’s professors pound into the heads of our students,” says George Boudreau, history professor at La Salle University. “There was certainly no shame in lifting someone else’s words or ideas, whether it was for a personal letter, a newspaper article, or a government document.”
Inquirer reviews …
… Amy Goldstein's 'Janesville': Superb, heart-wrenching account on whatever happened to Wisconsin.
… Colm Tóibín's 'House of Names': A furious, contemporary Clytemnestra.
… Mary Gordon's 'There Your Heart Lies': Hackneyed and soggy.
… 'Since We Fell': Lehane back in New England with chilling love tale.
… Colm Tóibín's 'House of Names': A furious, contemporary Clytemnestra.
… Mary Gordon's 'There Your Heart Lies': Hackneyed and soggy.
… 'Since We Fell': Lehane back in New England with chilling love tale.
A most humane human …
… Celebrating the Philosopher of Beauty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home. We also come to understanding our own nature as spiritual beings,” Scruton says in the documentary.
Something to think on …
Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
— Alexander Pope, born on this date in 1688
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Hmm …
… America’s Rich Literary Past Gets Its Own Museum. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
Isn't every library a writers' museum?
Isn't every library a writers' museum?
Something to think on …
The more one judges, the less one loves.
— Honoré de Balzac, born on this date in 1799
Friday, May 19, 2017
Innovation …
… Cool! Penn State Libraries, Short Edition Partner for First University Collaboration | LJ INFOdocket. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Let's hope the writing measures up.
Let's hope the writing measures up.
Postmodern politics …
… Post Truth by Matthew D’Ancona and Post-Truth by Evan Davis review – is this really a new era of politics? | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One of the implications of his analysis is that bullshit can be found across the political spectrum. He devotes remarkably little attention to the fact, but liberals engage in bullshit as much as populists. While leave campaigners may have exaggerated Britain’s financial contribution to the EU, as he shows at length, remainers launched “Project Fear” – a naked appeal to the emotions deploying unverifiable figures about the economic consequences of leaving the EU that were plucked from the air. Few voters can have imagined they were making their decision on the basis of brute facts. In the event counter-productive, Project Fear was an example of incompetent bullshit – a larger category of discourse than Davis seems to think. Most voters made their decision on the basis of what was most important to them – in other words, they were guided by their values.
Something to think on …
Never be afraid to sit a while and think.
— Lorraine Hansberry, born on this date in 1930
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Definitely worth missing, apparently …
… Embittered Spinster - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
— William Saroyan, who dies on this date in1981
Listen in …
… Episode 218 – RO Blechman | Virtual Memories.
“Time may have taught me things, but I don’t think I learned anything."
“Time may have taught me things, but I don’t think I learned anything."
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Blogging note …
I have to head out early today and won't resume blogging until I get back, and I;m not sure when that will be.
How the Bible means …
… Informal Inquiries: The Bible's beauty and meaning: a book review.
I have become a fan of Ronald Knox's translation.
What is needed is the commitment to establishing a kind of literary relationship with those who gave us the Scriptures—as Ruden describes it, “a relationship with them as clever and imaginative people.” This is precisely what she doesn’t see in so many of our contemporary Bible renderings. Ruden is kicking the tires of these versions and finding them seriously deflated—flat presentations filled with predictable phrasings and anemic construals.
I have become a fan of Ronald Knox's translation.
Something to think on …
Seek truth and you will find a path.
— Frank G. Slaughter, who died on this date in 2001
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Writer in trouble …
… Informal Inquiries: Voltaire goes to prison (and others should be next).
Voltaire was imprisoned because, in some satirical verse, he accused the French Regent of incest with with his own daughter, which sounds as if he could have been charged with libel, which is a crime. The best commentary on Voltaire in my view is Joseph de Maistre's: "Voltaire, who touched upon every subject, without ever penetrating the surface of any …"
Voltaire was imprisoned because, in some satirical verse, he accused the French Regent of incest with with his own daughter, which sounds as if he could have been charged with libel, which is a crime. The best commentary on Voltaire in my view is Joseph de Maistre's: "Voltaire, who touched upon every subject, without ever penetrating the surface of any …"
Fact-checking …
… Sharecropper Emma Woods on Meeting James Agee | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well worth hearing …
… Lou Harrison Centennial Celebration | Trinity Church. (Hat tip, Jeff Mauvais.)
In defense of isolation …
… What Happens When Authors Are Afraid to Stand Alone — The Walrus. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Asked recently which three writers she would invite to a “literary dinner party,” the prose stylist Fran Lebowitz offered the definitive desert island list: “None. I would never do it. My idea of a great literary dinner party is Fran, eating alone, reading a book. That’s my idea of a literary dinner party.”
Transcribing memories...
...In the Footsteps of Marcel Proust
The present occupant was distinguished, well dressed, friendly and bemused by my pilgrimage. He was well aware of the former famous tenant and apologetic that the room no longer reflected his taste.
Something to think on …
The goal is the same: life itself; and the price is the same; life itself.
— James Agee, who died on thia date in 1955
Monday, May 15, 2017
America and the Great War …
… The Disasters of War | by James Fenton | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… How Cool Was That? | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A larger, more complex question that Dinerstein's book raises is: How cool is cool itself? Is the phenomenon of cool at all significant in our day? Was it ever? For Joel Dinerstein, cool is an apotheosis, elevating those who possess it to the secular equivalent of near-divine status. The major figures in his cool pantheon are the jazz musicians Lester Young, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker; the film noir actors Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd, and Robert Mitchum; the writers Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, and Ralph Ellison; the existentialist thinkers Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir; the singers and actors Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and Elvis Presley; and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, whose career, for Dinerstein, in some ways marks the end of postwar cool.
Well, Blossom Dearie, who sang "I'm Hip," knew what she was singing about, and she sure seemed cool the one, brief time I met her. And existentialism has some philosophical heft when done by the likes of Kierkegaard or Gabriel Marcel, to say nothing of Nicolas Berdyaev or Leon Shestov. Of course, they are all Christian existentialists, individual existence being central to Christianity.
It was the atheistic existentialism that was thought hip, since it involved "creating" yourself,
though to model yourself on movie stars and pop singers acting hip and cool is a sure sign you're neither, no matter how much you may aspire to be, because aspiring to be hip or cool is itself neither hip nor cool.
I would suggest that a college course in cool is among the least cool things imaginable. Epstein's conclusion, though, is spot on: "courage, kindness, generosity, and natural refinement are the things that are, and always have been, truly cool."It was the atheistic existentialism that was thought hip, since it involved "creating" yourself,
though to model yourself on movie stars and pop singers acting hip and cool is a sure sign you're neither, no matter how much you may aspire to be, because aspiring to be hip or cool is itself neither hip nor cool.
Something to think on …
It was formerly a terrifying view to me that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that Nature has provided pleasures for every state.
— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, born on this date in 1689
Exodus...
...Christians, in an Epochal Shift, Are Leaving the Middle East
By 2025, Christians are expected to represent just over 3% of the Mideast’s population, down from 4.2% in 2010, according to Todd Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, Mass. A century before, in 1910, the figure was 13.6%. The accelerating decline stems mostly from emigration, Mr. Johnson says, though higher Muslim birthrates also contribute.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Worth seeing …
… For Black Photographers, the Camera Records Stories of Joy and Struggle | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Too bad the article doesn't show many of the photos.
Too bad the article doesn't show many of the photos.
My heavens, how the Atlantic has fallen … …
… Church Militant: A right-wing Media Empire in-the-Making - Michael Voris, The Atlantic - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So far as I can tell, these are just orthodox Catholics. My heavens, I went with some friends from my parish last night to hear a lecture on Our Lady of Fatima at the National Shrine of the Miraculous Medal. Does that make me a radical Catholic? I guess so, if you take radical in its etymological sense of going to the root of the matter.
So far as I can tell, these are just orthodox Catholics. My heavens, I went with some friends from my parish last night to hear a lecture on Our Lady of Fatima at the National Shrine of the Miraculous Medal. Does that make me a radical Catholic? I guess so, if you take radical in its etymological sense of going to the root of the matter.
Bizarre …
… Maverick Philosopher: Prudential Anti-Natalism.
I suppose those that think otherwise are doing evolution's work by not procreating, since lacking a sense of life's value would seem counterproductive to survival to at least some extent. Why they continue to put up with what they claim is a valueless existence escapes me, as does why they are taken seriously. As Orwell said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Extreme anti-natalism is the view espoused by David Benatar according to which "it would be better if there were no more humans" (David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation, Oxford UP 2015, 13) from which axiological thesis there follows the deontic conclusion that "all procreation is wrong." (12) A moderate anti-natalist could hold that most procreation is wrong.I assume that it is only human life that such people think has no value. Otherwise they would be opposed to all life. I guess they think it's OK for plants and animals to flourish and multiply. I happen to think that human life does have value. I think it is better to be alive than never to have been. I have often expressed agreement with John Hall Wheelock — "to have lived / Even if once only, once and no more, / Will have been – oh, how truly — worth it."
I suppose those that think otherwise are doing evolution's work by not procreating, since lacking a sense of life's value would seem counterproductive to survival to at least some extent. Why they continue to put up with what they claim is a valueless existence escapes me, as does why they are taken seriously. As Orwell said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Hmm …
… King Charles the Third language - why are they speaking like that? What is blank verse? What is unrhymed iambic pentameter? Why is King Charles III written like Shakespeare's poetry? BBC2 and PBS Masterpiece in the US. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I am somewhat amazed that so much space is spent explaining blank verse and iambic pentameter. And not exactly correctly. A"special use of syllables and rhythm common to many of Shakespeare’s plays … one syllable expressed normally and one emphasised." Actually, one syllable is naturally unstressed and the other is naturally stressed. The word incumbent, for example, is correctly and naturally pronounced with an accent on the second syllable. Iambic pentameter is, in fact, the commonest meter in English poetry.
I am somewhat amazed that so much space is spent explaining blank verse and iambic pentameter. And not exactly correctly. A"special use of syllables and rhythm common to many of Shakespeare’s plays … one syllable expressed normally and one emphasised." Actually, one syllable is naturally unstressed and the other is naturally stressed. The word incumbent, for example, is correctly and naturally pronounced with an accent on the second syllable. Iambic pentameter is, in fact, the commonest meter in English poetry.
Something to think on …
The most dangerous tendency of the modern world is the way in which bogus theories are given the force of dogma.
— Jean Daniélou, born on this date in 1905
Saturday, May 13, 2017
In case you wondered …
… How J.J. Abrams Reinvented the Written Word with 'S.' (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
On stage soon …
You Are What You See
The stage play, written and produced by Philly resident . Kismet Henderson
Description: stage play that focusses on real life issues that everyone can relate to. Join us as we perform a story about Love/ depression/ abortion and complications to abortion/ mimicking behaviors and deception.
This production is friendly to all ages...children, teens, parents and grandparents.
Date: May 28th
Time: 6pm
Hmm …
… BWW REVIEW: Jonathan Leaf's DECONSTRUCTION Bravely and Brilliantly Delves Into The Difficulties of Truth. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This gets at one of my biggest pet peeves (as a former student of then-Yale professor Carol Rovane): the failure of the National Review set, most of whom lack relevant philosophical training, to specify which type of relativism they abhor. Also, relativism, as a doctrine Analytic philosophers discuss, has precious little to do either with deconstruction orpostmodernism. Do these men (and yes, for whatever reason they do tend to be men) not understand that Donald Davidson or Bernard Williams, Paul De Man, and Jean-Francois Lyotard inhabit distinct intellectual planets, not to mention academic departments?
Well, that may well be, but it would be nice if at some point the writer had explained just what it is we should admire about deconstruction and what kind of relativism we should not abhor.
The practice of faith …
… Singing Aquinas in L.A. by Dana Gioia | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My particular affection for the hymn probably originates in a combination of personal and impersonal factors. First, there was the resonant beauty of Aquinas’s verse set to the stately eighteenth-century tune by Samuel Webbe. Second, there was my personal experience of singing the words repeatedly for years with my friends in the first grand space I had ever seen. Finally, there was the mystery of the Eucharist, which I first understood not from theological instruction but through the beauty of song.