To our readers, to our team of writers, and to the wider literary community -- a very happy new year. Wishing you health, happiness, and peace in 2018.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Inquirer reviews …
Once again, the geniuses at Philly.com have managed to post none of the reviews that are in the print edition online.
Hmm …
… The 100 best nonfiction books of all time: the full list | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The last time I checked, Waiting for Godot was a play, which is to say fiction. Swift's "Modest Proposal" is an essay, not a book. A good many of the choices seem bien pensant. And are people still reading Dr. Spock? I gather poetry is thought to be non-fiction, which would surprise Wallace Stevens. Still, there are many fine choices (e.g., Travels With a Donkey, The Varietoes of Religious Experience).
Reading through the news this morning...
...as I often do; philly.com, the New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Drudge Report, Memeorandum, the RealClear sites and other minor sources.
There was nothing I wanted, needed or had to post, except for this:
Happy New Year all! May this day, tomorrow and everyday bring you peace and love.
Something to think on …
Those who say they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear Him, do not in fact believe in Him but in those who have taught them that God exists. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, any anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-idea, not in God.
— Miguel de Unamuno, who died on this date in 1936
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Hmm …
… The influence of Oscar Wilde on Edith Wharton | Naomi Wolf. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Lord Henry Wotton speaks about the overarching value of individualism and impulse, when he argues that “Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval . . . . I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit”. These words appal the painter Basil Hallward: “But surely, if one lives merely for oneself, Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?”Doesn't the novel prove Hallward right and Lord Henry wrong? Huysman's novel is the one that Dorian Gray reads that lets him see all the sins of the world promenade before him. It was the start of Huysmans' journey toward faith.
FYI …
… China is 'World's Biggest Prison' For Journalists, Bloggers: Report.
See also — Person of the Week: Liu Xiaobo.
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
See also — Person of the Week: Liu Xiaobo.
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Something to think on …
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
— Alfred North Whitehead, who died on this date in 1947
Friday, December 29, 2017
Ziggy read a book...
Curator Geoffrey Marsh describes Bowie as "a voracious reader" who is reputed to read as much as "a book a day". Marsh went on to speak about Bowie's interest in the life of the mind and its power to transcend the rigid class barriers of postwar England, the era where Bowie honed the early versions of his musical and cultural persona.
Best of all, curators Marsh and Victoria Broackes have released a list of Bowie's favourite reads.
Changing times …
… When ‘All Thumbs’ Becomes a Compliment - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I noticed the teenager, who was sitting across from me, texting with blinding speed. As his thumbs danced over the tiny screen, I realized that “all thumbs” cannot much longer mean clumsy with one’s hands. And I realized how much I’m going to miss it. It has always seemed to me a way of noting a deficit without being vicious about it — a description of the bumbling sitcom dad who tries to fiddle with a circuit breaker and plunges the entire house into darkness. But how can that man be labeled all thumbs if the teenager sitting across from me can use his thumbs on his smartphone fast enough to take dictation from a cattle auctioneer?
Relax …
… Record Breaking Winter Cold? Don’t Worry, the Climate Explainers Have it Covered | Watts Up With That?
Global warming is an infinitely flexible, unscientific, unfalsifiable theory which can be stretched to accommodate any observation. Some Climate Scientists even shamelessly reject the very concept of scientific falsification with regard to the conduct of climate science.If you are scientifically literate, it's easy to see why.
Something to think on …
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart ... live in the question.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, who died on this date in 1926
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Poetry Collections...One good and one?
The publication of The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons (Norton) is one of the biggest literary events of this year. Edited by Robert M. West, the 966 poems in this two-volume set begin with the collection “Ommateum With Doxology,” which Ammons self-published in 1955, and end with “Bosh and Flapdoodle,” published posthumously in 2005. Despite his multiple awards — including two National Book Awards — Ammons, who died in 2001, never achieved the renown he deserved, in part because he was uncomfortable reading his work in public. '
Poetry meets activism in Bullets Into Bells (Beacon Press), a timely, vital book that addresses gun violence in the United States...From The Washington Post
On Broadway...
The bottom for the commercial play seems to have dropped out recently. A look at Broadway’s current offerings bears out this reality. Of the 31 productions running at the moment, 24 are musicals; only seven are straight dramas or comedies.
Sad news …
… Etymology gleanings for December 2017 | OUPblog. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Dictionary of American Regional English is a treasure trove of local words and pronunciations. Many entries also contain hints of etymology. Numerous maps enhance its value. Thousands of volunteers traveled all over the country recording the answers of the natives. Countless books, journals, and newspapers were read in search of regional words. DARE’s model was to a certain extent JosephWright’s English Dialect Dictionary, another work of permanent value. The five volumes of DARE read like thrillers. For more than half a century, several agencies and an army of individual sponsors have made the work of this great national monument possible. Now DARE has run out of funding. There is money for a picture that costs half a billion and for rewarding the winners of bizarre lawsuits, but not for the work that will stand as a permanent monument to the language of the richest country of the world. Read DARE, read about DARE, admire it, and tell your friends about it. The history of DARE is being written. The history of Joseph Wright’s dictionary was written by his wife. Not every dictionary has a wife, but enthusiastic scholars have not yet died out.
Q&A …
… The University Bookman: Great Minds and Humble Servants. (Hat tip, Dave lull.)
The reality is that there was as much light and shadow in the Middle Ages as there is in every other age. To be sure, Thomas Aquinas composed his Summa theologiae at a time of brutal wars and torture chambers. But what about the Enlightenment, which produced the Terror of the French Revolution? What about our own time of unprecedented technological progress, which nevertheless assaults human dignity in so many ways, from the insidious talk about “human resources” to the epidemic of abortion? Human nature is fallen.
Not recent, but timely …
… “To Her Husband for Beating Her” by Gwerful Mechain | Rattle: Poetry. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
RIP…
… Dick Allen, A Connecticut Poet Laureate, Dies At 78 - Hartford Courant. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.
— Arthur Eddington, born on this date in 1882
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
A literary adventure …
… A Graphic Literary Tourism Experience | Nigel Beale, Writer, Broadcaster.
There’s a good deal of the detective in a literary tourist, much of which is explained by the thrill of ferreting out connections that shed light on the life of authors and books and places. Intrigued by this local publishing phenomenon, I wanted to know more. What kind of books did they produce? Who was this ambitious young publisher named Miller? Where did he live and work? What did he look like? I couldn’t find a photograph of him anywhere. Nothing in the city archives. Nothing on the Internet. I had so many questions — almost as many as Andrew Sheer has for Justin Trudeau. The Graphic Publishers mystery, just like a political scandal, demanded solving, so I started to dig and after a good many twists and turns, eventually found much more than I’d originally bargained for.
Land craftsman …
… God's Garden. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Few Americans give much thought to English gardening. But to historian and conservation consultant Sarah Rutherford, “the English Landscape Garden is arguably the greatest contribution Britain has made to the visual arts worldwide.” As that art’s greatest practitioner, Brown deserves to be reinstated “at the heart of the Pantheon of British genius.” John Phibbs, a garden historian, and Steffie Shields, a photographer and lecturer, agree. All three published books to mark Brown’s 2016 tricentennary. For them, Brown was more than just a brilliant artist; his art captured the English spirit in landscape and helped form the sense of “Englishness” we still have.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Listen in …
… 2017 Year-End Bonus Mini-Episode – The Virtual Memories Show.
Until a couple of months ago, it meant something different to say, “I know I’m not going to be the next Charlie Rose,” but you know what I mean.
Something to think on …
We do not talk — we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
— Henry Miller, born on this date in 1891
Monday, December 25, 2017
Something to think on …
Of all sound of all bells ... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.
— Charles Lamb, who died on this date in 1834
Katherine Mansfield
I don't often read collections of short stories; there's something about them that frustrates, that feels incomplete. That was not, however, the case with the stories of Katherine Mansfield, which I've read over the past month.
My introduction to Mansfield comes by way of the Penguin edition of The Garden Party, which was originally published in 1922. I must say at the start that I'd only heard of Mansfield within the context of Woolf and Lawrence (with whom she interacted while living in Europe at the turn of the century).
No doubt, there are hints of both authors in The Garden Party: the inner lives of characters -- their thoughts and deliberations -- speak strongly, I think, to Woolf; meanwhile, the attention to class and to a burgeoning sexuality is reminiscent at points of Lawrence.
But I wouldn't say, having now completed The Garden Party, that Mansfield's work is entirely derivate. There's a style here that's decidedly her own, one that for me is characterized by a consistency of tone, a sensitivity to place, and a keen ability to chart emotion.
My favorite of Mansfield's stories are those in which characters are perfectly presented at a moment in time. This is the magic of Mansfield: her simultaneous ability to situate her readers and to bring her characters to life -- all within the space of no more than ten pages. I found these stories very effective (and often upsetting).
In the end, though, my favorite -- my absolute favorite -- of the stories collected here is the last: "The Lady's Maid." In it, Mansfield successfully experiments with form and syntax. But she does something else, too: she introduces very modern themes of gender, femininity, and intellectual life.
The final paragraph of the story in which the central character wonders if she "can't find anything better to do than to start thinking" read with a striking modernity to me. That paragraph, like so many of these stories, stood on the brink of something new and startling. Mansfield should be given credit for her contribution to that newness, to that moment in literary history.
In case you didn't know …
… Maverick Philosopher: Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished?
Jonathan Malesic, from whose Commonweal article the above quotation is taken, finds the traditional explanation "suspiciously pious." (My inclination is to say that his rejection of the traditional explanation is suspiciously post-modern.)
Having recently had what I shall call a quasi-mystical experience that seems to have initiated an ongoing process of change in me, I have little difficulty accepting the traditional explanation. Post-modernists' lack of imagination may be grounded in a lack of experience.
For Christmas …
Song
I choose white, but with
Red on it, like the snow
In winter with its few
Holly berries and the one
Robin, that is a fire
To warm by and like Christ
Comes to us in his weakness,
But with a sharp song.
R.S. Thomas, H'm (1972).
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… Was It "the Word" That Was Made Flesh -- Or Something Else? | Ricochet.
The Chinese translation of John's Gospel has it that "In the beginning was the Tao …" That also is better than Word. Heraclitus seems to have some sense of a universal logos, which would bear a certain resemblance to the Tao.
The Chinese translation of John's Gospel has it that "In the beginning was the Tao …" That also is better than Word. Heraclitus seems to have some sense of a universal logos, which would bear a certain resemblance to the Tao.
Something to think on …
The experience of death is going to get more and more painful, contrary to what many people believe. The forthcoming euthanasia will make it more rather than less painful because it will put the emphasis on personal decision in a way which was blissfully alien to the whole problem of dying in former times. It will make death even more subjectively intolerable, for people will feel responsible for their own deaths and morally obligated to rid their relatives of their unwanted presence. Euthanasia will further intensify all the problems its advocates think it will solve.
— René Girard, born on this date in 1923
Sunday, December 24, 2017
How different from today …
In those days there were many serious young men among the students who had come up to the university from the farms and the little towns scattered over the thinly settled state. Some of those boys came straight from the cornfields with only a summer’s wages in their pockets, hung on through the four years, shabby and underfed, and completed the course by really heroic self-sacrifice. Our instructors were oddly assorted; wandering pioneer school-teachers, stranded ministers of the Gospel, a few enthusiastic young men just out of graduate schools. There was an atmosphere of endeavour, of expectancy and bright hopefulness about the young college that had lifted its head from the prairie only a few years before.
— Willa Cather, My Ántonia
Inquirer reviews …
There are four book reviews in today's print edition of The Inquirer. But they have somehow not managed to make it on online yet. Should they ever, I will be sure to post links.
Something to think on …
Writing is storytelling. No matter how you slice it, you're saying, 'Once upon a time.' That's what writing is all about.
— Mary Higgins Clark, born on this date in 1927
Saturday, December 23, 2017
A vintage review
… by George Orwell: Childlike kingdom of slogan – TheTLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think Orwell might have thought otherwise of Kenneth Patchen had he heard Patchen read his verse. Then the cadences of the American vernacular would have come through. I also beg to differ regarding Henry Miller. I think Tropic of Capricorn is better than Tropic of Cancer.
I think Orwell might have thought otherwise of Kenneth Patchen had he heard Patchen read his verse. Then the cadences of the American vernacular would have come through. I also beg to differ regarding Henry Miller. I think Tropic of Capricorn is better than Tropic of Cancer.
Something to think on …
As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.
— Robert Bly, born on this date in 1926
Friday, December 22, 2017
We went out to see if we could get to the North Pole....
...after all, we are not far away here in Montana, but the elves have closed the access road already...time is getting short!
May you have a Merry Christmas! He shall reign forever and ever.
May you have a Merry Christmas! He shall reign forever and ever.
News you can use …
… especially when you're my age: How the music of Bach can teach us how to die | Coffee House. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A friend mentioned A Farewell To Arms...
... in a context when I wanted to Google the book, to see if what I remembered was true. I found a review by Percy Hutchison in The New York Times, dated September 29, 1929, which said:
I then looked up Mr. Hutchinson, and found his obituary in The Times, dated May 15, 1952:
The chief result is a sort of enamel lustre imparted to the story as a whole, not precisely an iridescence, but a white light, rather, that pales and flashes, but never warms. And because it never warms, or never seems to warm, the really human in Hemingway (and there is a great deal in Hemingway that is human) fails of its due. It is not impossible that Ernest Hemingway has developed his style to the extreme to which he carries it because in it he finds a sort of protective covering for a nature more sensitive than he would have one know. A Victorian telling the story of Henry and Catherine would have waxed sentimental; he would have sought the tears of his reader. And he would surely himself have shed tears as he wrote. We do not attempt to say how much Mr. Hemingway may have been affected by his narrative; but it is certain he has no desire to see his readers weep. Mr. Hemingway's manner does not seem to be quite an enduring thing, any more than was Victorian heaviness enduring. But the Hemingway manner is arresting purely as craftsmanship. And if its extreme naturalism borders dangerously on unnaturalism, for the reason that the effect of the printed pages must be, perforce, different from the effect of speech, then it behooves other craftsmen to find the proper modification. Yet it expresses the spirit of the moment admirably. In fact, seldom has a literary style so precisely jumped with the time.I think about Hemingway like that too, and I found fascinating Mr. Huchison's speculation that Hemingway had adopted his style in part because he is too sensitive, or more sensitive than he would have the reader know.
I then looked up Mr. Hutchinson, and found his obituary in The Times, dated May 15, 1952:
Percy Hutchison served this news paper in a surprising range of positions for more than thirty years. In his early career here he wrote on yachting and boating. Later for many years he did book reviews, with a particular interest in the sea and about ships. Finally, he became poetry editor and to him fell the task of selecting from a great many poems submitted the one poem that would be published each day on the editorial page. Poetry-loving readers of THE TIMES will perhaps recognize his taste in the poems that have appeared here. He was never a radical in poetry or in any other field, but he had an instinct for selecting the best and he was by no means unsympathetic to modern movements. In his leisure moments he wrote articles, some fiction and some verse of his own. The latter part of his life, after a brief interlude as a foreign correspondent in Mexico, was tranquil.An editor selecting material for publication never knows how far his influence goes. Mr. Hutchison may have wondered about that. There is no doubt, however, that he stood for honest thoughts and emotions expressed in the poetic form and for good and careful workmanship. In his later years Mr. Hutchison, though always an engaging companion, was not as active as he had been. But to the last he read a great deal of submitted poetry and sorted out what he took to be the best. In that capacity and in his personal relationships he will be widely missed.
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