Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Once again …
… I have to be out and about. So blogging will resume when I get back — which is likely to be fairly late.
Spooky …
… The Man Who Photographed Ghosts. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In “The Apparitionists,” Peter Manseau takes us on an expedition through the beginnings of photography and its deceptions. No sooner had people invented a way of creating photographic images (whether it was a daguerreotype, an ambrotype or a hallotype) than people found ways of altering the images — and, even more relevantly, of lying about their contents and how they were obtained. A photograph, as we well know, can’t talk back. It’s like a piece of taxidermy. It can’t say to us, “No, I’m not a picture of Abraham Lincoln.” And often the provenance of a photograph, its causal connection to the world, is hidden. All we’re left with is an image that, for all intents and purposes, could have been given to us by aliens. This is where Manseau comes in. In a world overcome with death and the horrible losses of the Civil War, people turned to photography hoping to be united with deceased loved ones in perpetuity. It’s that strange combination of desire, hope and the presence of an image that seems almost alive that makes us think we’re in contact with a timeless realm that transcends death.
Halloween slide show …
… all set in Philly: I Told You I Was Sick Photo by Shannon Hunt — National Geographic Your Shot. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Quantifying literature …
… Reading by the Numbers: When Big Data Meets Literature. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Someone tell him about the connection between math and white privilege.
Someone tell him about the connection between math and white privilege.
Denounce away, babycakes …
… I'm sticking with my masculinity: Prof declares that 'masculinity itself' is 'the problem'.
Wade concludes her essay by urging people to “call masculinity out as a hazardous ideology and denounce anyone who chooses to identify with it,” saying that doing so is crucial for “gender revolution.”
For Halloween …
… Apparitions in the archives: haunted libraries in the UK | OUPblog. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Something to think on …
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
— John Keats, born on this date in 1795
Monday, October 30, 2017
Something to think on …
An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels its votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next.
— Paul Valery, born on this date in 1871
Blogging note …
I have to head out to have some blood work done. Then I have other things to do before returning. So not much blogging on my part for a while.
Hmm …
… Is Atheism Irrational? | BQO.
This is a very interesting piece. I haven't got through it all yet, because it's rather long. I have more to say later.
This is a very interesting piece. I haven't got through it all yet, because it's rather long. I have more to say later.
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Hmm …
… Balkinization: Corrupting the National Book Award?
Committees sometimes make mistakes: after Michael Bellesiles won the Bancroft Prize for his book Arming America, the book was shown to be full of fabrications, the prize was rescinded, and Bellesiles resigned his Emory University professorship in disgrace. But the Bancroft committee did not know about the book’s defects when it made its decision. What excuse has the National Book Award committee?
Cri de coeur …
… The Reformation is over. Protestants won. So why are we still here? - The Washington Post.
In 1974, I interviewed for my job teaching theology at Notre Dame. Things were going well until a professor on the hiring committee asked what I wanted to teach graduate students. I said I would like to teach a seminar on Aristotle and Aquinas. The response was immediate: “Why would you, a Protestant, want to teach a course on a Catholic thinker?” Christianity did not begin in the 15th century, I replied. I argued that Aquinas was not a possession of Roman Catholics but a resource for all Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic.
Poetry and madness …
… Poet Robert Lowell’s ‘graced but damaged’ life | America Magazine. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
Religion seemed to offer Lowell a way to process his manic moods. Jamison notes, “Religious images and devotional practice were natural metaphors for Lowell, a way to make sense of his intense ecstasies and put them to use; the church provided a rich, ancient, and complex language.”
Profile in courage …
… Professors like me can’t stay silent about this extremist moment on campuses.
No one should have to pass someone else’s ideological purity test to be allowed to speak. University life — along with civic life — dies without the free exchange of ideas.
Three worth noting …
… Book World: Best new poetry: Mary Oliver, Nikki Giovanni and Maggie Smith - SFGate. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
Beyond the call of duty …
… Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I just had coffee at Anthony's in the Italian Market. Great coffee. Nothing notably existential occurred.
I just had coffee at Anthony's in the Italian Market. Great coffee. Nothing notably existential occurred.
Inquirer reviews …
… including this one by yours truly: Michael Antman's 'Everything Solid': Three women, music, and a dream.
… 'Lou Reed' by Anthony DeCurtis: Vivid, claims too much.
… 'Tales of the City' 's Armistead Maupin narrates his San Francisco roots in 'Logical Family'.
… Roz Chast's 'Going into Town': The ultimate N.Y. tourguide, with pictures to match.
… 'Lou Reed' by Anthony DeCurtis: Vivid, claims too much.
… 'Tales of the City' 's Armistead Maupin narrates his San Francisco roots in 'Logical Family'.
… Roz Chast's 'Going into Town': The ultimate N.Y. tourguide, with pictures to match.
Something to think on …
I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.
— Jean Giraudoux, born on this date in 1882
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Tracking the decline …
…Yale ‘decolonizes’ English dept. after complaints studying white authors ‘actively harms’ students - The College Fix.
I guess these people don’t want to study English qua English. Hard to imagine being so dimwitted as to sign up for English, but insist on being spared Chaucer.
I guess these people don’t want to study English qua English. Hard to imagine being so dimwitted as to sign up for English, but insist on being spared Chaucer.
Recommended …
… History's Child by Charles M. Boyer.
The recommendation comes from my stepdaughter Gwendolyn, whose judgment I trust.
The recommendation comes from my stepdaughter Gwendolyn, whose judgment I trust.
Something to think on …
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
— Evelyn Waugh, born on this date in 1903
Friday, October 27, 2017
Tradition and innovation …
… The Craft and Verve of Aaron Poochigian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Despite being a respected classical translator (his version of Jason and the Argonauts is as superb as his Sappho), Poochigian's outstanding first book of original poetry, The Cosmic Purr, received little critical attention. Earlier this month Etruscan Press released his extraordinary verse novel, Mr Either/Or, which may be the catalyst for the critical attention he deserves.
The Puritan imagination …
…Why 'The Witch' is the scariest historical film ever. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… Poet Investigated For Insulting Atheists | The Daily Caller. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
Bring back dueling and let insulted and insulted deal with the matter on their own.
Source of inspiration …
… How a serious illness gave Eugene O’Neill his dark literary power | PBS NewsHour. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
Seven months after his release from Gaylord Farm, O’Neill wrote a note of appreciation to his physician David R. Lyman expressing a wish to visit the sanatorium: “If, as they say, it is sweet to visit the place one was born in, then it will be doubly sweet for me to visit the place I was reborn in—for my second birth was the only one which had my full approval.”
Decide for yourself …
… Stream Selections From Bob Dylan's 'Trouble No More – The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… deciding involves factors beyond simply the music. The news about his conversion to Christianity was enough to prompt some fans to get off the train before they heard a note. Then came word that he'd put his beloved older material into deep storage; in performance, he would focus on the parables and homilies he wrote for the 1979 studio
Something to think on …
I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort.
— James M. Cain, who died on this date in 1977
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Hmm …
… The universe shouldn’t exist, according to science | New York Post.
This is not a problem for the universe, but it is a problem for science.
This is not a problem for the universe, but it is a problem for science.
FYI …
… 8 Pieces of Modern Technology That Science Fiction Predicted…Or Invented. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Many works of science fiction involve technological speculation that bears remarkable resemblance to the pieces of technology woven into our lives today. This brings to mind an intriguing question of the role that speculative fiction (and especially science fiction) plays in driving technology by postulating future advancements — and sparking innovation.
Getting to know them …
… A Negative Freedom: Thirteen Poets on Formal Verse - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reading the interviews sequentially, the reader comes to appreciate that the New Formalists do not constitute a monolith. None is an ideologue. None believes a formal poem is automatically superior to its free verse cousin, and some write free verse themselves. But most agree that adherence to form enables them to express what they wish in the most efficient manner.
FYI …
… Cli-Fi.Net -- the world's largest online 'Cli-Fi' portal for Cli-Fi: In this powerful Q&A excerpt, Australian literary critic James Bradley completely demolishes Amitav Ghosh's argument against 'cli-fi' and sci-fi genre novels.
Of course, it helps if you know something about the science, especially the geologic dimension. As E. Kirsten Peters points out in The Whole Story of Climate, “For almost 200 years,” Peters writes, “geologists have studied the basic evidence of how climate has changed on our planet.” They work not with computer models but with “direct physical evidence left in the muck and rocks.”
A life in poetry …
… Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Wright ‘couldn’t be casual about anything’. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
Wright’s obsession with poetry remained throughout his life, though he frequently considered abandoning it, particularly in the early years of struggle and frustration. “By God,” he wrote in a 1947 letter, “I am going to keep myself from writing if I have to tape my fingers and thumbs together.” A decade later, his first book, “The Green Wall,” won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Yet he remained unhappy, both with his own work and with the state of American poetry, which he saw as excessively formal and staid, pervaded by the so-called New Criticism. “I have been depressed as hell,” he wrote Theodore Roethke in 1958. “My stuff stinks, and you know it.” The current situation, he went on to write, was “more than a literary vacuum — this is a catastrophe for human civilization.”
Something to think on …
Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, who died on this date in 1957
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Great writing …
Two paragraphs from Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark.
Panther Canyon was the home of innumerable swallows. They built nests in the wall far above the hollow groove in which Thea's own rock chamber lay. They seldom ventured above the rim of the canyon, to the flat, wind-swept tableland. Their world was the blue air-river between the canyon walls. In that blue gulf the arrow-shaped birds swam all day long, with only an occasional movement of the wings. The only sad thing about them was their timidity; the way in which they lived their lives between the echoing cliffs and never dared to rise out of the shadow of the canyon walls. As they swam past her door, Thea often felt how easy it would be to dream one's life out in some cleft in the world. From the ancient dwelling there came always a dignified, unobtrusive sadness; now stronger, now fainter,—like the aromatic smell which the dwarf cedars gave out in the sun,—but always present, a part of the air one breathed. At night, when Thea dreamed about the canyon,—or in the early morning when she hurried toward it, anticipating it,—her conception of it was of yellow rocks baking in sunlight, the swallows, the cedar smell, and that peculiar peculiar sadness—a voice out of the past, not very loud, that went on saying a few simple things to the solitude eternally.
Standing up in her lodge, Thea could with her thumb nail dislodge flakes of carbon from the rock roof—the cooking-smoke of the Ancient People. They were that near! A timid, nest-building folk, like the swallows. How often Thea remembered Ray Kennedy's moralizing about the cliff cities. He used to say that he never felt the hardness of the human struggle or the sadness of history as he felt it among those ruins. He used to say, too, that it made one feel an obligation to do one's best. On the first day that Thea climbed the water trail she began to have intuitions about the women who had worn the path, and who had spent so great a part of their lives going up and down it. She found herself trying to walk as they must have walked, with a feeling in her feet and knees and loins which she had never known before,—which must have come up to her out of the accustomed dust of that rocky trail. She could feel the weight of an Indian baby hanging to her back as she climbed.
Panther Canyon was the home of innumerable swallows. They built nests in the wall far above the hollow groove in which Thea's own rock chamber lay. They seldom ventured above the rim of the canyon, to the flat, wind-swept tableland. Their world was the blue air-river between the canyon walls. In that blue gulf the arrow-shaped birds swam all day long, with only an occasional movement of the wings. The only sad thing about them was their timidity; the way in which they lived their lives between the echoing cliffs and never dared to rise out of the shadow of the canyon walls. As they swam past her door, Thea often felt how easy it would be to dream one's life out in some cleft in the world. From the ancient dwelling there came always a dignified, unobtrusive sadness; now stronger, now fainter,—like the aromatic smell which the dwarf cedars gave out in the sun,—but always present, a part of the air one breathed. At night, when Thea dreamed about the canyon,—or in the early morning when she hurried toward it, anticipating it,—her conception of it was of yellow rocks baking in sunlight, the swallows, the cedar smell, and that peculiar peculiar sadness—a voice out of the past, not very loud, that went on saying a few simple things to the solitude eternally.
Standing up in her lodge, Thea could with her thumb nail dislodge flakes of carbon from the rock roof—the cooking-smoke of the Ancient People. They were that near! A timid, nest-building folk, like the swallows. How often Thea remembered Ray Kennedy's moralizing about the cliff cities. He used to say that he never felt the hardness of the human struggle or the sadness of history as he felt it among those ruins. He used to say, too, that it made one feel an obligation to do one's best. On the first day that Thea climbed the water trail she began to have intuitions about the women who had worn the path, and who had spent so great a part of their lives going up and down it. She found herself trying to walk as they must have walked, with a feeling in her feet and knees and loins which she had never known before,—which must have come up to her out of the accustomed dust of that rocky trail. She could feel the weight of an Indian baby hanging to her back as she climbed.
Hmm …
… Thinking Clearly With Alan Jacobs | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Last week I got a phone call from a fairly well-known journalist who wanted to talk with me about the book, and her first question was about those TV news debate shows — the Crossfire or McLaughlin Group genre (I don’t even know what their successors are). She had been watching a lot of them lately, and I suspect has been on a few, and she wanted to know what strategies of Good Thinking could be employed by someone participating in such a show. I was a bit taken aback by the question, because I knew exactly what you say above: that those shows are not for actual debate — nobody, and I bet literally nobody, has even been “broken on the floor” on a news debate show, and if that ever happened, you can be sure that the person so broken would never be invited back. In such an environment, thinking is effectively forbidden.I wonder. Bill Buckley once had Paul Goodman on Firing Line to debate whether the public school system should be abolished. Goodman thought it just as might well be and Buckley was pretty much for the defense. But as the show neared its end, Buckley told Goodman that they were running out of time, adding wryly and that he wanted to de-brief his son, who was in the audience. He was, in effect, admitting that Goodman had the better part in the debate.
Secret masterpiece …
… B-Sides: Charles Portis’s “Gringos” | Public Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Evangelizing readers of Portis tend to come up with elevator-pitch analogies on the order of He’s like Mark Twain meets Cormac McCarthy! I will grant that if McCarthy had a sense of humor and Twain had lived long enough to write about sticky clutches and post-hippie drifters, together they might have come up with Jimmy’s comment on blasting an antagonist in the face at close range with two shotgun barrels of No. 2 goose shot: “I wasn’t used to seeing my will so little resisted, having been in sales for so long.” But such comparisons can do only partial justice to Portis.
The way we were …
… How Robert Frank’s Book The Americans Redefined American Photography | Widewalls. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden,)
Q&A …
… “A Strange Sort of Periscope”: John Freeman on Poetry and Politics - Los Angeles Review of Books. Hat tips, Dave Lull and Rus Bowden.)
Mark thy calendar …
Moveable Beats Reading Series
Leonard Gontarek & Carole Bernstein
Reading their poetry
(brief open to follow)
Sunday, November 12, 2017
6 PM to 7:30 PM
Good Karma Café
928 Pine St. Philadelphia PA
http://thegoodkarmacafe.com
Carole Bernstein has work forthcoming in Hanging Loose and in Supplement, a magazine published by Penn’s Kelly Writers House. She is the author of Familiar (Hanging Loose Press)—which J. D. McClatchy called “an exhilarating book”—and a chapbook, And Stepped Away From the Circle, winner of the 1994 Sow’s Ear Competition. Her poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Bridges, Button Jar, Chelsea, Light, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, and Yale Review. Her work has also been included in three anthologies: American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press), Unsettling America (Viking) and The Laurel Hill Poetry Anthology: 175 Years of Reflection (Laurel Hill Press). She is a member of Suppose an Eyes, a Philadelphia poetry group based at Kelly Writers
House.
Leonard Gontarek is the author of six books of poems, including, Take Your Hand
Out of My Pocket, Shiva (2016), nominated for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the
William Carlos William Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in American
Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and The Best American Poetry, among
others. He coordinates Poetry In Common, Peace/Works, Philly Poetry Day, The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, and hosts The Green Line Reading & Interview Series.
He has received Poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts,
the Mudfish Poetry Prize, the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community Service
Award, and was a Literary Death Match Champion. His poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges MotionPoems project in 2015,
and was the basis for the award-winning film by Lori Ersolmaz:
http://movingpoems.com/poet/
Leonard Gontarek & Carole Bernstein
Reading their poetry
(brief open to follow)
Sunday, November 12, 2017
6 PM to 7:30 PM
Good Karma Café
928 Pine St. Philadelphia PA
http://thegoodkarmacafe.com
Carole Bernstein has work forthcoming in Hanging Loose and in Supplement, a magazine published by Penn’s Kelly Writers House. She is the author of Familiar (Hanging Loose Press)—which J. D. McClatchy called “an exhilarating book”—and a chapbook, And Stepped Away From the Circle, winner of the 1994 Sow’s Ear Competition. Her poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Bridges, Button Jar, Chelsea, Light, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, and Yale Review. Her work has also been included in three anthologies: American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press), Unsettling America (Viking) and The Laurel Hill Poetry Anthology: 175 Years of Reflection (Laurel Hill Press). She is a member of Suppose an Eyes, a Philadelphia poetry group based at Kelly Writers
House.
Leonard Gontarek is the author of six books of poems, including, Take Your Hand
Out of My Pocket, Shiva (2016), nominated for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the
William Carlos William Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in American
Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and The Best American Poetry, among
others. He coordinates Poetry In Common, Peace/Works, Philly Poetry Day, The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, and hosts The Green Line Reading & Interview Series.
He has received Poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts,
the Mudfish Poetry Prize, the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community Service
Award, and was a Literary Death Match Champion. His poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges MotionPoems project in 2015,
and was the basis for the award-winning film by Lori Ersolmaz:
http://movingpoems.com/poet/
Vintage review …
… Conrad Aiken on The Waste Land: An Anatomy of Melancholy – The Sewanee Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
We are invited into a mind, a world, which is a “broken bundle of mirrors,” a “heap of broken images.” Isn’t it that Mr. Eliot, finding it “impossible to say just what he means”—to recapitulate, to enumerate all the events and discoveries and memories that make a consciousness—has emulated the “magic lantern” that throws “the nerves in pattern on a screen”? If we perceive the poem in this light, as a series of brilliant, brief, unrelated or dimly related pictures by which a consciousness empties itself of its characteristic contents, then we also perceive that, anomalously, though the dropping out of any one picture would not in the least affect the logic or ”meaning” of the whole, it would seriously detract from the value of the portrait.
Rumors of decease exaggerated …
… The Persistence of Print | Mark Bauerlein | First Things.
Wall Street Journal reported last week from the annual Frankfurt book fair, a large international gathering of publishers and booksellers, print revenue is up! From 2013 to 2016, print revenue climbed 5 percent, while e-book sales dropped 17 percent in 2016 alone. As the story put it, “Book publishers are giving an advance review of the industry’s future, and it looks a lot like the past.”
Something to think on …
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
— Geoffrey Chaucer, who died on this date in 1400
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Listen in …
… BBC Radio 4 - The Digital Human, Series 12, Protection.
About 16 minutes in, you hear Daniel Kalder begin his contribution.
Auspicious debut …
… How an Arlington author got a million-dollar book deal - The Boston Globe. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
There’s been an uptick in big-money deals for potential break-out fiction debuts. Publishing insiders suggest there’s pressure to find bestsellers amid flat sales for accomplished authors and a competitive environment for first-time novelists, writers unburdened by expectations based on previous books.
Who knew?
… Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege.
Wonder how she would explain my utter incompetence when it comes to math. Faced with math, not only do my eyes glaze over, but my entire pre-frontal lobe seems to shut down.
Refreshing the reader's spirit …
… Francis Spufford’s True Stories, reviewed. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Many luscious stylists (Martin Amis and Vladimir Nabokov come to mind) have a cold, glittering edge of superiority. But Spufford makes an affable companion, full of shrewd observations rooted in a healthy if ironic respect for human nature.
Something to think on …
Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.
— Denise Levertov, born on this date in 1923
Monday, October 23, 2017
The over-blownness …
… The Pure Pleasure of Reading Lolita's First 100 Pages | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Yes, Lolita is not a tidy or inert book. But a tidy and inert book is never going to be worth doing.
Q&A …
… Chesterton the Activist — An Interview with James O'Keefe | John M. Howting | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Chesterton was hailed as a journalist, but at heart he was an activist. At heart, every good journalist—in fact every good person—is an activist. Doing nothing is not an option. Some may object that nuns and monks don’t engage in activism. In fact, they are some of the greatest activists. They spend their entire days being active and for our sake and benefit. They are continually praying for change, a change in heart—or, in Latin, a conversion towards the Divine Light, towards God.
Something to think on …
It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.
— Ned Rorem, born on this date in 1923
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Sounds right to me …
… Is Henry David Thoreau a philosopher, too? Andrea Nightingale votes yes. | The Book Haven.
He was not a professor of philosophy. But how many professors of philosophy really are philosophers?
He was not a professor of philosophy. But how many professors of philosophy really are philosophers?
Destination: Repose …
… First Known When Lost: Bourne.
The potential pathways to a bourne of repose are innumerable: innumerable because of the uniqueness of each human soul. Still, because human nature has never changed (and will never change), we are not without guides. Poets and philosophers have preceded us. They provide us with clues to which we should attend. For instance, Epictetus tells us: "Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene." Epictetus (translated by W. A. Oldfather), The Enchiridion, Section 8. Variations on this bit of advice may be found in every part of the world, and at every point in the history of humanity. It is a finger pointing to the moon.
Hmm …
… The Theater of Trump | commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For playwrights, the obvious answer is to follow Shaw’s own example by allowing Trump (or a Trump-like character) to speak for himself in a way that is persuasive, even seductive. Shaw himself did so in Major Barbara (1905), whose central character is an arms manufacturer so engagingly urbane that he persuades his pacifist daughter to give up her position with the Salvation Army and embrace the gospel of high explosives. But the trouble with this approach is that it is hard to imagine a playwright willing to admit that Trump could be persuasive to anyone but the hated booboisie.
Inquirer reviews …
… Jennifer Egan's 'Manhattan Beach': Inspired, enthralling tale of a woman who dives deep.
… Lawrence O'Donnell's 'Playing with Fire': The election that ignited the future.
… Naomi Alderman's 'The Power' - The 'Handmaid's Tale' of our time.
… 'Admissions': Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh cuts himself down to size.
… Lawrence O'Donnell's 'Playing with Fire': The election that ignited the future.
… Naomi Alderman's 'The Power' - The 'Handmaid's Tale' of our time.
… 'Admissions': Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh cuts himself down to size.
Something to think on …
What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.
— Doris Lessing, born on this date in 1919
Saturday, October 21, 2017
The writer as prophet …
… Solzhenitsyn’s cathedrals by Gary Saul Morson | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In one memorable scene, Solzhenitsyn describes how a believing Jew shook his worldview. At the time he met him, Solzhenitsyn explains, “I was committed to that world outlook which is incapable of admitting any new fact or evaluating any new opinion before a label has been found for it . . . be it ‘the hesitant duplicity of the petty bourgeoisie,’ or the ‘militant nihilism of the déclassé intelligentsia.’ ” When someone mentioned a prayer spoken by President Roosevelt, Solzhenitsyn called it “hypocrisy, of course.” Gammerov, the Jew, demanded why he did not admit the possibility of a political leader sincerely believing in God. That was all, Solzhenitsyn remarks, but it was so shocking to hear such words from someone born in 1923 that it forced him to think. “I could have replied to him firmly, but prison had already undermined my certainty, and the principle thing was that some kind of clean, pure feeling does live within us, existing apart from all our convictions, and right then it dawned on me that I had not spoken out of conviction but because the idea had been implanted in me from outside.” He learns to question what he really believes and, still more important, to appreciate that basic human decency morally surpasses any “convictions.”
Best just read …
… Leave Novelists Out of Fiction | by Tim Parks | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
To attempt … to present [Samuel Beckett] as the hero of a traditional realist novel with an omniscient narrator who moves effortlessly in and out of the most intimate thoughts of both Beckett and his partner, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, when they’re enjoying or failing to enjoy love-making, fleeing the Germans, or simply drinking with friends, inevitably suggests an abyss between the sensibilities of Baker and her hero. She ably describes a lanky, diffident, disconnected man who looks like the Beckett of the photographs and behaves as Beckett is described as behaving in the biographies, but the moment we become privy to his thoughts, it is very hard to imagine we are reading about Beckett at all. “How easy,” wrote Emil Cioran, “to imagine [Beckett], some centuries back, in a naked cell, undisturbed by the least decoration, not even a crucifix.” How much more difficult to think of him worrying that Suzanne will be upset if he stays out for another whisky or two.
Something to think on …
I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born on this date in 1772
Friday, October 20, 2017
Downward mobility …
… Review: ‘Schlesinger,’ From JFK’s Historian to Hagiographer - WSJ.
Few young men could have seemed more promising than the younger Schlesinger, until he met a Waterloo named the Kennedys. Once that fatal encounter occurred, Schlesinger went from boundlessly promising brilliant historian—with three volumes of an anticipated five of his never-finished Franklin Delano Roosevelt biography already completed—to a man variously called “a servant,” “a stooge,” a “poodle” and “a hagiographer.”
Hear, hear …
… There’s No Virtue in Joining an Angry Mob - WSJ.
The Weinstein case has its correlative in the political arena. On both sides of the political spectrum, we seem driven by a need for dramatic outrage that masquerades as virtue. Once a case has been made in the public sphere, on whichever side, the case gets made again and again in increasingly simplistic terms. Any attempt to see around or outside the established scenario means that you are a bad person. The deadening, coercive nature of this kind of thinking is disturbing.
For some perhaps …
… The Most Important Philosophy Books Ever Written | The Reading Lists. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Aristotle and Plato for sure, but no Thomas Aquinas? I got through Nausea easily enough, but found it ridiculous — e.g., that scene where Roquentin freaks out over a tree (as I remember it). I'd go with Gabriel Marcel's Homo Viator and Creative Fidelity.
Aristotle and Plato for sure, but no Thomas Aquinas? I got through Nausea easily enough, but found it ridiculous — e.g., that scene where Roquentin freaks out over a tree (as I remember it). I'd go with Gabriel Marcel's Homo Viator and Creative Fidelity.
Always out of place …
… The Witty, Wistful Films of Whit Stillman | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Though certainly a contemporary filmmaker and not in any sense a stranded nostalgist, Stillman nevertheless displays qualities that, while once common, are now so rare that they put him in stark relief against nearly all of his contemporaries. Perhaps most pronounced is his distinctive affection for his uniformly well-born characters. If revulsion for bourgeois hypocrisy seems an obligatory quality in American independent filmmaking these days, Stillman will have none of it. He offers instead a gentle satire of his characters’ foibles combined with a frank sympathy for their principles. While quite natural in Austen novels and RKO comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, this is rare today. Thus is it all the more striking that Stillman continues to receive critical acclaim from disparate publications and institutions, from a Vanity Fair photo spread for the 25th anniversary of Metropolitan to a volume of effusive essays from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Thank God!
Responding to concerns about the safety of the celestial domain, a spokesperson for God confirmed Monday that guardrails were being added along the perimeter of the Kingdom of Heaven after a fifth angel plunged over its edge in as many months.
Blogging note …
I must take off shortly for a date with my cardiologist. (No big deal, just a routine follow-up.) Blogging will resume later on.
Filling in the gaps …
… The Loneliness of Elizabeth Bishop | The Nation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast, the new biography by Megan Marshall (whose previous book, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, won the Pulitzer Prize), helps to fill in for devotees of Bishop’s work much of what couldn’t fit into one of her painstakingly perfected poems. And what we learn from Marshall’s book—informed by a mother lode of newly discovered letters—is that none of Bishop’s accomplishments could ever ease the pain of her loneliness.
Something to think on …
Broke is a temporary condition, poor is a state of mind.
— Richard Francis Burton, who died on this date in 1890
Fun!
But this semi-regular scavenger hunt, which treated this entire strange world as its playground, was not the greatest content called “Queries and Answers” in the New York Times. That distinction goes to the similarly named if far more specifically inclined section that ran weekly in the Book Review for over half a century. It was basically Shazam, but for poetry. Instead of an app with terabytes of data at its beck and call, all it had was millions of Times readers, superheroes armed with a jumbled mass of verses memorized in the sixth-grade, and the ability to acquire an endless number of stamps. Readers would send in snippets they remembered from their school days or ran across in their day-to-day lives in the hopes that another fellow Times lover would return it to them whole a few weeks later. And amazingly, they often did. Dozens of people from all over the country would send an envelope to Manhattan with the lost bit of verse, creating a Shop Around the Corner in which the Timesacted as mediator, an epistolary romance in which those involved fell in love with literature instead of each other. Hazel Felleman took over the column in 1923, and continued doing so until her retirement in 1951. She was the first line in the Times’ literary Pinkerton agency, consulting the archives to see if a request had already been answered (If the quote was from “Evolution,” by Langdon Smith, it had already been answered dozens of times, please stop sending it in), if it could be found in her collection of reference books, or if a librarian or academic knew the answer. If those methods didn’t work, the quotation would appear in the paper under the headline “Appeals to Readers.” In 1936, she published a book titled, The Best Loved Poems of the American People, featuring the poems that readers kept writing in to find.
Let The New York Times Google That For You
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Honoring their father …
… A Colorful Black-and-White Life | Chapter 16. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Orbison’s sons recount an incident from the mid-1980s when British rock star and producer Jeff Lynne visited Orbison’s lakeside home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, to discuss recording an album with him. While Lynne waited for Orbison, the boys continued their teenage horseplay, eventually nailing the visiting producer with wet paper towels in the crossfire: “Dad sure wasn’t pleased, but Jeff took it in stride, and after we made our apologies, everything went back to normal and Dad and Jeff disappeared to talk shop.” Such moments give The Authorized Roy Orbison a distinctly personal cast, elevating what might have been a routine illustrated biography—generous with photos but lacking narrative detail—into a unique portrait of Orbison’s life.
At Cambridge no less …
… Cambridge University students given trigger warnings for Shakespeare plays | The Independent.
David Crilly, artistic director at The Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, said: "If a student of English Literature doesn't know that Titus Andronicus contains scenes of violence they shouldn't be on the course."Precisely.
Just the start …
… What Sylvia Plath’s letters reveal about the poet we thought we knew. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Listen in …
… Episode 240 – John Crowley and Michael Meyer – The Virtual Memories Show.
“Writing has made people feel unsafe and uncomfortable since, oh, the Bible.”
Making the rounds …
… BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Every County in the State of California. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Experience and philosophy …
… Maverick Philosopher: Grace. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Still, the experience was what it was, and could not be doubted a few moments ago, nor now in its afterglow. It is in such experiences that we find the phenomenological roots of the theology of grace which, growing from such roots, cannot be dismissed as empty speculation or projection or wish-fulfillment or anything else the naturalist may urge for its dismissal.Indeed.
House of memories …
… How Gaston Bachelard gave the emotions of home a philosophy | Aeon Essays. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dave also sends along this: More a poem than a house …
It is odd that a philosopher who so tenaciously excluded the harsh environments and hard circumstances of the exterior world, in mass culture, politics or architecture, was so welcomed in the modernist late-1960s while writing, essentially, about a nostalgic version of rustic Mediterranean peasant living.
Dave also sends along this: More a poem than a house …
Something to think on …
Forcible ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them.
— Thomas Browne, born on this date in 1605
Chris Wickham
I've written on the blog before about my recent efforts to learn more about Europe's medieval past. Over the past few weeks, I've read chapters in Chris Wickham's history of that period, aptly titled Medieval Europe. For me, the most interesting parts of the book focus on the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. So many questions emerge: What came after the collapse? Who held power, and how was it exercised? When did the first nations appear? Wickham argues that the fifth century was a turning point: it was then that "army leaders from the frontier...began to call themselves kings." At the same time, he continues, "the whole economic basis for political action shifted, from taxation to landowning." The Roman network of self-governing cities collapsed, and in its place vague notions of regional affiliation emerged. As Wickham writes: Romans began to "see themselves" as Gauls or Franks. The story here is a complex one, and no doubt, I've simplified it. But for an overview of that critical period between 500 and 800, I do suggest Wickham's analysis. Understanding what came between the collapse of Rome and rise of Charlemagne remains, for me at least, a topic of unending interest.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Who knew
… Harvard classicist Richard Thomas on Bob Dylan | Harvard Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In truth, though, the Lane professor of the classics—whose freshman seminar “Bob Dylan” always fills up fall-semester classrooms—has been working on this book for a very long time. In 2001, he listened to Love and Theft a few days after the album was released and heard Virgil’s words singing back to him in Dylan’s voice. “I’m gonna spare the defeated—I’m gonna speak to the crowd,” Dylan rasps in “Lonesome Day Blues,” the fifth track. “I’m gonna teach peace to the conquered, I’m gonna tame the proud.” This was the Aeneid. The language was unmistakable. Virgil’s lines, translated from book six of his epic, read like this: “Remember Roman, these will be your arts: / to teach the ways of peace to those you conquer, / to spare the defeated peoples, tame the proud.” It turned out that Thomas’s two lifelong obsessions—Bob Dylan and the classics—were intertwined.
In case you wondered …
… A Day in the Life of a Freelancer | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was a freelancer for some years, but a lot of what I did was editing, which paid better. The articles I got published were the cherries on the sundaes. That said, it is an iffy business.
I was a freelancer for some years, but a lot of what I did was editing, which paid better. The articles I got published were the cherries on the sundaes. That said, it is an iffy business.
i·ro·ny
From a recent exchange on Facebook...
PART 1
PART II
PART III
Note: "TF" means "the fuck"
PART IV
And the nominees are …
… 2017 Finalists – Parsec Awards.
Among the finalists:
Best Speculative Fiction Story: Small Cast (Novella Form) — The Gray Area by Edward Champion.
A reading marathon …
… Finnegans Wake (Modern Library #77) – Reluctant Habits.
Finnegans Wake is a young man’s game. I would recommend attempting it before the age of forty, when there is still the time and the hunger to unravel the arcane wisecracking. Perhaps my mistake was reading this book on both sides of forty, with one foot steeped in bountiful possibility and the other more aware of mortality and the grave.I have missed the opportunity by some 36 years.
The best swordsman in the world fears the amateur, not the one who is second best...
To get unstuck, I must let go of my “career” as an established writer and begin again as a novice. In truth, I am a novice in every new moment of the day, each of which presents possibilities unknown and untried. Why not embrace that fact and see what happens? As Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said:
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”In practical terms, what does it mean to begin again? I was afraid you’d ask. The truth is, I’m clueless, which may prove, mirable dictu, that I’m actually practicing beginner’s mind. If I’d waited for an answer, I wouldn’t have written this little piece — and writing it may help me get unstuck as a person, as a writer, as a citizen of the world. Simply pecking away at it over the past few days has already taken me to a place that feels less stagnant and more alive. At very least, I’ve been reminded that such a place exists.
Something to think on …
Names are changed more readily than doctrines, and doctrines more readily than ceremonies.
— Thomas Love Peacock, born on this date in 1785
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Well-deserved …
… Imprisoned Palestinian Poet Ashraf Fayadh wins PEN Canada One Humanity Award. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Fayadh was released, but re-arrested on January 1, 2014 on charges of illicit relations with women, and several blasphemy-related charges including insulting the Prophet Muhammad, spreading atheism, refuting the Quran, and insulting the King and the Kingdom. Evidence against Fayadh included poems from Instructions Within, which was later banned from circulation in Saudi Arabia, and photographs of Fayadh and female colleagues taken at an art exhibition.
Cultivating amnesia …
… Forgetfulness: the dangers of a modern culture that wages war on its own past. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
O’Gorman does not make the point, but the current fad for destroying statues (of Confederate generals in the US or imperial figures in the UK) is also a rite of penitence and purification. Yet history never does stop or begin anew. The French Revolution gave the world the Terror, the Napoleonic Wars and the restoration of monarchy. Similarly, destroying statues will not correct past or present wrongs, only polarise society and exacerbate social conflict. The iconoclasts perform the ritual to impress on themselves and the world their superior righteousness.The business about early Christianity could use a bit of nuance. Christianity took over a lot pagan feast days, and churches were often built on the site of pagan temples.
After being attacked by a mob no less …
… Kirkus withdraws starred review after criticism. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
… American Heartwon’t be published until January, but it has already attracted the ire of the fierce group of online YA readers that journalist Kat Rosenfield has referred to as “culture cops.” To them, it was an irredeemable problem that Moriarty’s novel, which was inspired in part by Huckleberry Finn, centers on a white teenager who gradually—too gradually—comes to terms with the racism around her. On Goodreads, the book’s top “community review,” posted in September, begins, “fuck your white savior narratives”; other early commenters on Goodreads accused Moriarty of “profiting off people’s pain” and said “a white writer should not have tackled this story, and neither should a white character be the center of it.”What exactly does "white" have to do with any of this. Tens of millions of Muslims are Caucasian. The character Sadaf is from Iran. Ancient Persians referred to themselves as Aryans. The ones complaining sound like the racists.
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