Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Good idea …
… Avoid these clichés like the plague - The Oldie. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
When such a thought occurs to one, it is imperative to find a fresh way of putting it.
A star is born …
… The cult of Mary Beard | News | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In public, in private and in her academic writing she is sceptical, wary of consensus, the kind of person who will turn any question back on itself and examine it from an unexpected angle. She is not afraid to take apart her own work: at that same conference in the early 1990s, she presented a paper that repudiated one of the scholarly articles that had helped make her name a decade earlier, an influential study of Rome’s Vestal Virgins. It was an extremely unusual thing for a scholar to do. “She doesn’t let herself off – she’s not one of those scholars who is building an unassailable monument of work to leave behind her,” Woolf said. “She is quite happy to go back to her earlier self and say, ‘Nah.’”
Worth remembering …
… Kenneth Fearing, Poet | The Neglected Books Page.
… the primary reason to take a look at Fearing’s poetry is that it is like almost no other American poetry I know (not that I am an expert). Fearing’s poetry drew its inspiration not from Keats, Whitman, or Eliot but from talkies, radio, tabloids, comic strips, and street talk.
Thoughts on Freud …
… Freud uncovered – Mark Vernon.
The world of the human psyche is still underexplored, by modern minds at least. It’s a little known fact that biological causes for mental health conditions have only been identified in about half a dozen cases, ones in which the brain is clearly deteriorating, like dementia. Psychotherapy is at the vanguard of this often troubling adventure. As Freeman Dyson has argued, it has a place alongside neuroscience and psychiatry because there are clearly aspects of the mental universe that are “too fluid and evanescent to fit within the rigid protocols of controlled scientific testing.”
A fine revival …
… About Last Night | Thornton Wilder tends the fire.
The Antrobuses, on whom the action is centered, appear to be Wilder’s version of a middle-class sitcom-type family (husband, housewife, two cute kids and a sexy maid). Within a few minutes, though, we learn that they’re all 5,000 years old and that the the play begins in the Ice Age, after which we move forward in time with vertiginous speed, first to the Great Flood and then to World War II. What we have here, in short, is a parable, a symbolic tale of how humankind copes with disaster. But “The Skin of Our Teeth” is also a screwball tragedy, one in which events of the gravest import are portrayed with a farce-flavored lightness of touch.
Mark thy calendar …
THE GREEN LINE
CAFÉ POETRY SERIES
& POETRY IN COMMON
CELEBRATE THE PUBLICATION
OF THE NEW BOOK, STEP LIGHTLY,
BY DONNA WOLF-PALACIO
WITH A BOOK SIGNING & READING
On TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2018, 7 PM
including
An INTRODUCTION & READING
BY LEONARD GONTAREK
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
PHILADELPHIA, PA
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
& POETRY IN COMMON
CELEBRATE THE PUBLICATION
OF THE NEW BOOK, STEP LIGHTLY,
BY DONNA WOLF-PALACIO
WITH A BOOK SIGNING & READING
On TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2018, 7 PM
including
An INTRODUCTION & READING
BY LEONARD GONTAREK
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
PHILADELPHIA, PA
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
Donna Wolf-Palacio is author of What I Don't Know The Other Side, and Step Lightly, published by Finishing Line Press. She taught a poetry workshop at the University of the Arts and was editor/consultant of the UARTS Poetry Review. She has published her writing in Poetry, The Pennsylvania Gazette, The Musehouse Journal, Intro, The Interpreter, Poems ftom the Heart: Poems about Adoption, and Voices .She has received grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Leeway Foundation, and the Pennsyvania Council for the Arts.
Poems of Donna Wolf-Palacio:
Step Lightly
You never seemed to get it right, the puzzle of your mother.
No god or therapy could free you from those wires she tugged
to keep the medicine flowing. So you read the masters for a sign,
Winnicott, Freud, the family people, stars so far away,
yet windows of hope for a real eternity.
Some days I see your eyes blink with disbelief
at their humane unwavering light.
Yet while you searched, your words and teaching
brought you to the source. Sometimes, you couldn't take it in.
There was so much rage in you. But other times you took it whole,
and what you made was personal, irreplaceable.
Hells and Hierarchies
“All hells and heirarchies are works of the imagination.”
Anthony Madrid
Could it be more true?
The past
a plate
we can't break.
Each piece has
a spot.
And there it is, outlay to the outlay.
Mind around it
in memory. The stone falls.
Maybe a small stone.
Still, a stone.
Poems of Donna Wolf-Palacio:
Step Lightly
You never seemed to get it right, the puzzle of your mother.
No god or therapy could free you from those wires she tugged
to keep the medicine flowing. So you read the masters for a sign,
Winnicott, Freud, the family people, stars so far away,
yet windows of hope for a real eternity.
Some days I see your eyes blink with disbelief
at their humane unwavering light.
Yet while you searched, your words and teaching
brought you to the source. Sometimes, you couldn't take it in.
There was so much rage in you. But other times you took it whole,
and what you made was personal, irreplaceable.
Hells and Hierarchies
“All hells and heirarchies are works of the imagination.”
Anthony Madrid
Could it be more true?
The past
a plate
we can't break.
Each piece has
a spot.
And there it is, outlay to the outlay.
Mind around it
in memory. The stone falls.
Maybe a small stone.
Still, a stone.
Something to think on …
There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
— Jean Giraudoux, who died on this date in 1944
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Something to think on …
It is the impulse of our century, with its nearly religious belief in magnitude, to fling an institution into every void.
— Shirley Hazzard, born on this date in 1931
In case you wondered …
… The Idler | Why Latin is an essential skill in the digital age. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“In today’s digital world, the language is more necessary than ever to teach us critical thinking and powerful expression… Being able to break down and rebuild sentences — that is, being able clearly to comprehend or construct a thought — is a skill that translates well into English. But my generation speaks a dialect of English that is native to the internet, and we are losing our ability to understand how our language works. English, mostly thanks to politics and social media, is being degraded tweet by tweet. We live in a world of hashtags, of broken sentences and fragments of ideas published on social media…” (Benjamin Auslin, high school student.)
No such thing as Alpha Males (in dogs or wolves ... )
The erroneous approach to canine social behavior known as dominance theory (two million-plus Google hits) is based on a study of captive zoo wolves conducted in the 1930s and 1940s by Swiss animal behaviorist Rudolph Schenkel, in which the scientist concluded that wolves in a pack fight to gain dominance, and the winner is the alpha wolf.
...What we know now, thanks to Mech and others, is that in the wild, a wolf pack is a family, consisting of a mated pair and their offspring of the past one to three years. Occasionally two or three families may group together.
Blogging note …
My wife is unwell, and I have to take her to an urgent care center (because we can't a doctor's appointment on such short notice). Blogging will resume later on sometime.
Listen in …
… Episode 254 – Ann Hulbert – The Virtual Memories Show.
“It’s so easy as a parent to project your own hopes and ambitions on your child, even when you think you’re not. Getting beyond that to see your kid as a person independent of you is the goal.”
Monday, January 29, 2018
Ooops ...
BEIRUT — An interactive map posted on the Internet that shows the whereabouts of people who use fitness devices such as Fitbit also reveals highly sensitive information about the locations and activities of soldiers at U.S. military bases, in what appears to be a major security oversight.
So you think you got troubles …
… Walking While Black | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Linda Lowe.)
Here's Harry Nilsson's cover of the Marvin Rainwater song alluded to above:
Here's Harry Nilsson's cover of the Marvin Rainwater song alluded to above:
Now this is interesting …
… The Libraries Bringing Small-Town News Back to Life - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Of course, what we have here is old-fashioned reporting, not the prognostication that tends to be cluttering newspapers these days.
Of course, what we have here is old-fashioned reporting, not the prognostication that tends to be cluttering newspapers these days.
This matter of Soul-making …
… First Known When Lost: How To Live, Part Twenty-Seven: Equanimity.
… as I have stated in the past, I do not believe that the purpose of poetry is to edify. A poet who sets out to write a poem aimed at teaching us something is doomed to failure. Thus, for instance, that contradiction in terms known as "political poetry": a soi-disant "poem" that purports to instruct us on the rightness or wrongness of a political belief (left, right, or Martian) does not, under any circumstances, qualify as poetry. Self-regarding propaganda, yes. Poetry, no.Indeed.
Meeting a need …
… Martin Amis, Style Supremacist | The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Closing in on seventy, he has by now spent decades outside Kingsley Amis’s fading shadow, but his literary psychology remains distinctly more fils than père. His deepest considerations and loyalties have all involved literary father figures. Most of those are now dead, but Amis, having sometimes reviewed their books while they lived, still tends and ponders their achievements through the posthumous appearance of letters or adaptations or previously unpublished works. By my count, adding up what’s in this new collection and three previous ones—“The Moronic Inferno” (1986), “Visiting Mrs. Nabokov” (1993), and “The War Against Cliché” (2001)—there are five takes on Philip Larkin; seven each on Saul Bellow and Philip Roth; nine apiece on J. G. Ballard and Updike; and ten on Vladimir Nabokov, the most baroque of all the statues in Amis’s personal pantheon.
Meeting a need …
… Martin Amis, Style Supremacist | The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Closing in on seventy, he has by now spent decades outside Kingsley Amis’s fading shadow, but his literary psychology remains distinctly more fils than père. His deepest considerations and loyalties have all involved literary father figures. Most of those are now dead, but Amis, having sometimes reviewed their books while they lived, still tends and ponders their achievements through the posthumous appearance of letters or adaptations or previously unpublished works. By my count, adding up what’s in this new collection and three previous ones—“The Moronic Inferno” (1986), “Visiting Mrs. Nabokov” (1993), and “The War Against Cliché” (2001)—there are five takes on Philip Larkin; seven each on Saul Bellow and Philip Roth; nine apiece on J. G. Ballard and Updike; and ten on Vladimir Nabokov, the most baroque of all the statues in Amis’s personal pantheon.
Something to think on …
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
— Anton Chekhov, born on this date in 1860
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Our need for Plato …
… Rediscovering Plato’s Vision – Mark Vernon.
… It is said that he loathed the body for the drag it imposes on life. When it came to flesh, Plato is said to have been like the flapping bird who grumbled that flying would be so much easier if it weren’t for the syrupy air. Typically, people who interpret him in this way do so by highlighting a single line from his dialogue the Phaedo. “The body is the prison of the soul,” Plato has Socrates say there. Then people treat the phrase as a creedal statement of Platonic doctrine.However, isolating the line in this way is a hopeless reduction that conceals rather than reveals what Plato is driving at. For one thing, it ignores the other occasions on which, through Socrates, Plato discusses the beauty of the body, the health of the body, the light of the body, the care of the body. What’s lost by pulling out the prison line as if it’s a proof quote, is how, in the same dialogue, Socrates tousles Phaedo’s hair, enjoying its bounce and shine; how Socrates had loved to philosophize in locations like the gymnasium, where body, mind and soul exercised together; and how Plato had probably gained his pen name (his real name was Aristocles) as a pun on the Greek for ‘broad shoulders’. It was an apt moniker. History records that Plato trained with the wrestler Ariston of Argon, and was good enough to take part in the Isthmian Games, the warm-up for the Olympics. How ironic that today ‘Mr Physical’ is routinely taken to be only interested in the spiritual!
Something to think on …
Be happy. It's one way of being wise.
— Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, born on this date in 1873
Saturday, January 27, 2018
So true …
The poet Montale, whom I mentioned earlier, spoke not long before his recent death of the modern rejection of solitude and singularity, singularity, saying that “the wish to huddle in groups, to create noise, and to escape from thought is a sign of desperation and despair.” He said that the need to accept a group ideology and generational conformity is contrary to the nature of art and of poetry. Similarly, for the artist, Montale said that the subordination to a method of thinking that one has not worked toward oneself implies a surrender to uniformity, to officialism: “Only the man who lives in solitude can speak of the fatal isolation we all suffer under this inhuman, mass-produced communication. Being in fashion and famous now seems the only accepted role for the contemporary artist…. And I ask myself where this absurd absence of judgment will lead us.”
— Shirley Hazzard, “We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think”
Danilo Kis
It's not every day that I'm impressed -- I mean truly impressed -- by a collection of short stories. But that was most certainly the case with The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Danilo Kis's mesmerizing tales of European history, philosophy, and religion.
I'd read Kis's A Tomb for Boris Davidovich -- which was good; Encyclopedia, though, is in a league of its own. The collection really is a triumph. These are just my sort of stories: subtle, erudite, and focused on the past.
In the title story -- "The Encyclopedia of the Dead" -- Kis wrestles with the nature of history and historical writing: which events, he wonders, are worthy of narration, and which can be set aside? How many details are necessary before a history becomes overloaded with the mundane? I found these questions to be relevant to our own lives: which details, for instance, do we include when describing our days and which do we knowingly ignore? That decision is part of the historical process, but it is equally part of our own.
"To Die for One's Country is Glorious" makes a similar attempt to probe historical analysis: who writes history and after how long -- how many years -- does their narrative assume a sense of truth? Further, asks Kis, how do we know when we've properly identified motivation in history? How many revisions will it take for us to get this right? Profound questions lurk at every turn.
Finally, there's "The Book of Kings and Fools" which must be the most successful story of the collection. Here, Kis imagines the history of a book (one similar in content and consequence to the Elders of Zion). This story is as good as it gets: Kis focuses on the transformation of texts over time. Its a testament to Kis's success that the story he weaves sounds and feels plausible: the names Kis invents, the tales he develops are endowed with a sense not only of the plausible, but of the real. For those interested in the evolution of texts -- and the abuses committed in their name -- let me strongly suggest "The Book of Kings and Fools." This was something of a revelation.
Out of respect, the last word is reserved for Kis:
"The corrupt cannot imagine people different from themselves; they can only imagine people who have succeeded in hiding their true natures."
Formidable ladies …
… Women Writing About the Wild: 25 Essential Authors | Outside Online. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Van Wyck Brooks thought highly of Mary Austin. My own favorite is Isak Dinesen, a wonderful writer, and if "some readers feel that a European arrogance appears at times in her writing," too bad for them.
Remembering a friend …
… Mikhail Baryshnikov finds the motion in the poetry of Joseph Brodsky | Toronto Star. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
“I can draw on my dance background, but this is more body language than dance,” says Baryshnikov. “Some of it is totally set, some improvised; little bridges between the poems, preludes and postscripts, but not illustrations. There is motion in poetry and this is a poetic journey, a kind of personal conversation.”
Love story …
… How I fell in love with L E Sissman | Tony Peyser | Opinion | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reading and Forgetting
Pamela Paul’s memories of reading are less about words and more about the experience. “I almost always remember where I was and I remember the book itself. I remember the physical object,” says Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, who reads, it is fair to say, a lot of books. “I remember the edition; I remember the cover; I usually remember where I bought it, or who gave it to me. What I don’t remember—and it’s terrible—is everything else.I'm okay with some of the article, it's from The Atlantic and about remembering what you read, and I recall a post I wrote on here about orality and memory, which the article touches on as well. But most of it no, and in another post I wrote about memories of books past where words brought a life flooding back.
Hmm …
… Instapundit — YESTERDAY: President Trump may be giving a speech to a empty room in Davos. TODAY: Speech Snub:…
If all we know is what we read in the newspapers, we may be in trouble.
If all we know is what we read in the newspapers, we may be in trouble.
Something to think on …
Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
— Lewis Carroll, born on this date in 1832
Friday, January 26, 2018
Reminiscence …
… My Last Conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Le Guin did not set out to write science fiction or create fantasy worlds. She simply did it because the forms did not restrict what was possible. “I wrote within the genre because I sold within the genre, but I also wrote what I wanted to write. I think I actually by writing in the genre I was freer than other writers who tried to be successful in the mainstream.”
Overview …
… Singing the Animal Soul: The Poetry of Galway Kinnell - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Judge appointed …
… Bilgere to judge Sidney Lanier Poetry Competition | The Tryon Daily Bulletin. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
Hmm …
… Women on Rikers Island use poetry as an escape, publish collective work | am New York. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
I find it interesting that we are never told anything about what got them in jail. But let's hope that poetry helps them.
I find it interesting that we are never told anything about what got them in jail. But let's hope that poetry helps them.
Tempest, meet teapot …
… Still battling over books | Poetry and literary fiction. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In short: we’ve been here before. Many times before. Hard to define, and apparently in decline, “literary fiction” is a reminder of past debates over literary snobbery: Thomas Bodley dismissing early modern drama as “baggage books”; novels as licentious little luxuries, a charge to which Jane Austen offered a cross-generic, unilateral rejoinder in Northanger Abbey. But it is also a debate encoded in the language itself, and in the name of this publication itself: the “literary” in Times Literary Supplement may be taken to indicate “relating to the writing, study, or content of literature” (OED) but also “esp. of the kind valued for quality of form” (OED again). Take your pick.
John Updike, for one, felt moved to dismay about the rise of the term “literary fiction” and how it denoted “a genre almost as rarefied and special and curious in its appeal, to contemporary Americans, as poetry”. That was in 2006, a few years before Updike died, but his remark occurs in a curious context: at the end of a brief interview, now available on the Poetry Foundation website, about the somewhat surprising popularity of his poem “Ex-Basketball Player”.
Narratives ...
1) The Top 30 most polarizing brands in America ...
2) Killing those Google Ads that follow you around ...
2) Killing those Google Ads that follow you around ...
If you've shopped online you know that whatever you bought—say, flowers or a ceiling fan—is likely to follow you all over the web.
Something to think on …
Youth is not entirely a time of life; it is a state of mind. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubts; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.
— Douglas MacArthur, born on this date in 1880
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Indeed …
A body of attitudes has developed that seeks to neutralize the very directness to life that is nurtured by art, and to sever the private bond, the immortal intimacy, that has existed between reader and writer. The great writers do not write as if through intermediaries. The new phenomenon is notably one of explication rather than comprehension—the concept of art as a discipline to be contained within consistent laws, the seductive promise of a technology to be mastered by those who will then be equipped to dictate and regiment taste. All this turns on what W. H. Auden called the inability of certain critics to acknowledge that works of art can be more important than anything critics can say about them. As an ominous result we are getting, in literature, an increasing response not to poems and novels but to interpretations. Not to the thing but to the self. While the students of such interpreters can—and do—expound their mentors’ views by the hour, it has become very rare to hear them spontaneously quote a line of poetry.
— Shirley Hazzard, “We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think”
Something to think on …
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
— W. Somerset Maugham, born on this date in 1874
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Listen in …
… Episode 253 – John Leland – The Virtual Memories Show.
“The wisdom of old age is something living with us right now.”
Bucking a trend …
… Erykah Badu Defends Hitler's Humanity | The Daily Caller.
And he was a vegetarian.“I’m not an anti-Semitic person. I (didn’t) even know what anti-Semitic was before I was called it. I’m a humanist. I see good in everybody. I saw something good in Hitler,” Badu said randomly as the Nazi leader had not been previously mentioned in the interview.“Come again?” the interview asked back.“Hitler was a wonderful painter,” she responded.
Hmm …
… Poetry world split over polemic attacking 'amateur' work by 'young female poets' | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If we are to foster the kind of intelligent critical culture required to combat the effects of populism in politics, we must stop celebrating amateurism and ignorance in our poetry.”
Heaven forfend that politics take into consideration the preferences and predilections of the populace. I guess the thesis here is that populist poetry is another cause of Donald Trump’s being elected President. Rather a stretch in my view. But then, I remain a latitudinarian when it comes to poetry. Poetry is what poets do, and there are a lot of different poets doing a lot of different things. Read what you like, and skip what you don’t.
Q&A …
… New Book: Eusuf — Mass Poetry.
I have read Not Elegy, But Eros, and my review of it is scheduled to run in The Inquirer on Feb. 4.
Winning at any cost ...
In pursuit of the perfect pout, a dozen camels have been disqualified from a camel beauty pageant in Saudi Arabia for receiving Botox injections.
Hmm …
… Why I don't believe in God - Marginal REVOLUTION.
I am frustrated by the lack of Bayesianism in most of the religious belief I observe. I’ve never met a believer who asserted: “I’m really not sure here. But I think Lutheranism is true with p = .018, and the next strongest contender comes in only at .014, so call me Lutheran.” The religious people I’ve known rebel against that manner of framing, even though during times of conversion they may act on such a basis.
Re-up...
...of my 'Call Me By Your Name' piece, now that the film has received 4 Oscar nominations
Book versus movie: Gay romance ‘Call Me By Your Name’ shimmers on the page and screen
Book versus movie: Gay romance ‘Call Me By Your Name’ shimmers on the page and screen
Dialogue …
… Ross Douthat on Narrative and Religion (Ep. 32) – Conversations with Tyler – Medium. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I think to the extent that I would defend my own instincts and my own approach — sometimes I say this to my children when I’m clumsily trying to indoctrinate them in my faith; I say “you are living inside a story, and God is the storyteller.” And again, this is not a thought original to me at all, but God is the storyteller and you are an actor within that story. And the difference is that in this story, God, Christians would say, God himself enters the story: he becomes a character in the play, which is a very difficult thing for a playwright to normally do.
Something to think on …
It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
— Pierre Beaumarchais, born on this date in 1732
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Note well …
I have said that language bears special responsibilities: The writer’s vigilance over language and attention to language are themselves an assumption of responsibility. When, with the Renaissance drama, men and women began to speak—through literature—with individual voices, rather than as types (as they had done in medieval morality plays), there was a humanistic assumption of personal accountability for what was uttered. And so we have continued, in theory at least, to regard it. Our words, whether in literature or in life, are accepted as a revelation of our private nature, and an index of the measure of responsibility we are prepared to assume for it.
— Shirley Hazzard, “We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think”
RIP …
… Ursula K. Le Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88 - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Iconoclast …
… Glenn Greenwald: Russia Investigation Is a Red Herring.
… critics note the irony that many who were critical of national-security abuses during the Bush and Obama years have now, in the name of defending the republic, put their faith in opaque intelligence agencies and retired generals. That uncomfortable alliance between liberals and the “deep state” is the Greenwald-Trumpworld relationship inverted; on Russia, the America Firsters in the White House share more with dovish lefties than with Washington’s centrist power elite. To borrow from the language of Brexit, the ideological split on the Russia question may be more “Leave” versus “Remain” than Republican versus Democrat. In other words, Establishment insiders versus skeptical outsiders.
Apologia pro vita sua
… Uncensored John Simon: Critics and Criticism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As my readers will recall, I have always inveighed against the bleary journalism practiced by newspaper reviewers, as opposed to the real criticism performed by, well, critics. The former are barely more often right than stopped watches managing it twice a day, or like that bore trying to justify himself to the great and witty French actor Lucien Guitry, by saying “I speak as I think.” “Yes,” agreed Lucien, “but more often.”I guess Simon distinguishes himself from newspaper reviewers because he wrote for New York magazine. My former colleague Cliff Ridley, however, was as fine a writer and sharp a critic as any.
Going hand in hand …
… How Being a Librarian Makes Me a Better Writer | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Bad writing is the stuff that changes words around to make an old subject seem novel, without doing any work to shift perspective or understanding. Good writing—truly controlled vocabularies—operates with the understanding that different words, and different sequences of words, should only be used to actually shift meaning. It’s the opposite of redundancy.
Something to think on …
There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.
— Northrup Frye, who died on this date in 1991
Monday, January 22, 2018
Blogging note …
Another week of having to be out and about. Will have iPad with me, so may be able to blog every now and then.
Prophet with honor …
… Milton's Morality | The Weekly Standard. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)
… Paradise Lost is an unabashedly religious work. Early readers, Poole reminds us, shared Milton’s belief “in the truth of his subject”—that is, of God, angels, and demons. Like many readers in the 17th and 18th centuries, John Wesley read the poem devotionally. He even published a religious commentary on it in 1763. Today, however, “the vast majority of readers, both those who defend and those who attack Milton’s project,” Poole writes, look at the work as merely a “technical masterpiece. . . . This is our view today, and Milton would not like it.”
Life's refrains …
… Forgotten Poems #36: "The Three Callers," by Charles Swain.
I went for a walk this afternoon as I was thinking about this poem, one of those urban winter dusk walks that Virginia Woolf wrote about in her essay "Street Haunting," with lights coming on in windows and the sense of countless lives going on around us. I noticed the color of the sky, the flashing or blinking lights on the fronts of bodegas and delis, the sound of sirens, a small excitable dog tied up outside a grocery store and barking its head off. I was also thinking about a concert I went to last night (Jonas Kaufmann, a tenor of whom I'm becoming a fan, singing Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin at Carnegie Hall), and about how my mind kept flitting back and forth: trying to see over the head of the tall man in front of me; getting caught up in the music; looking at the translations of the songs in my program; thinking I should learn German for music-appreciation purposes; being amazed that I was getting to hear a singer whose voice makes me quiver with emotion but who rarely comes to New York; getting caught up in the music again; etc. etc. etc. Maybe there's no getting away from perceiving yourself perceiving what's happening. Or maybe there's a constant tension between that and not perceiving.
A monster for the ages …
… The Book Haven | Cynthia Haven's blog for the written word.
“You wonder if this is a comment on all the Enlightenment ideas,” adds Pierson. “Victor says he’s an Enlightenment intellectual. He’s not afraid of graveyards, he doesn’t believe in ghosts, he’s doesn’t worry about God.” He attends the University of Ingolstadt, which was famous in its day for “natural philosophy – “that’s the 19th century term for STEM.” Victor is monomaniacally steeped in mathematics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology. The Creature is a humanist, however, and Mary Shelley gives him all the best books: he finds Paradise Lost, Sorrows of Young Werther and Plutarch’s Lives under a tree. Who, in the end, is more humane?
Something to think on …
A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer.
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, born on this date in 1729
Sunday, January 21, 2018
I think I got this from Frank some time ago, but it bears repeating ...
"One path to happiness is to want exactly what you have."
Something to think on …
Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.
— Alexander Herzen, who died on this date in 1870
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Confusing
In Oregon various groups are attempting to recreate the man-made savannas, created by Native Americans many years ago:
The savannas were not the natural ecosystem of the land.
For thousands of years, fires lit by indigenous peoples maintained oak savannas. Such forested grasslands were once abundant across the western US, but agriculture, lumber industry, and fire suppression have combined to bring them close to extinction. In Oregon's Willamette Valley, bringing them back is laborious work that sometimes involves sacrificing stands of other native trees.
The savannas were not the natural ecosystem of the land.
The dark side of romanticism …
… In Search of Mary Shelley review: A life of monsters and men. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Writer in waiting …
… [Readings] | Higher Yearning, by Flannery O'Connor | Harper's Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My glasses have undergone a metamorphosis. From a sickening pink shell, they have matured into a most intellectual horn-rim. The evolution of my shoes — hair — dress — mouth — all so slow. So unnatural. Am I just a brainy kid or am I a clever individual with refined, cultured, supersophisticated artistic potentialities? At times I act and react like a moron.
Learning experience …
… The things I learned when I became a bookseller: Guest opinion | OregonLive.com. (Hat tip, Virgini Kerr.)
Something to think on …
The root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian Church has suffered, has been because of the effort of men to earn, rather than receive their salvation; and the reason preaching is so commonly ineffective is, that it often calls on people to work for God rather than letting God work through them.
— John Ruskin, who died on this date in 1900
Friday, January 19, 2018
Blogging note …
Came home this afternoon to find my WiFi was down. Couldn’t deal with thatright away. But it is fixed now, thanks to a neghbor. But I won’t be blogging again until tomorrow.
Always look on the bright side ...
"BOSTON—Stressing the importance of looking on the bright side despite how things might seem right now, a tiny, pathetic voice reportedly squeaked, “At least the days are getting longer,” ...It's the Onion Friday!
I'm reading Suetonius ...
Twelve Caesars, which is my current fall asleep book - six pages and I'm out, and the next night I have to go back to reread the last three or four, because I forgot them as I was falling asleep, so net gain about 2-3 pages most nights. Plus a bump on my nose, where the iPad, my ebook reader, falls when I fall asleep.
The book is a history of Rome's emperors, starting with Julius Caesar and ending with Domitian, who ruled during Suetonius' life. Suetonius was known for being more gossipy and irrelevant than some other ancient historians, and his stories of the degeneracy of the emperors are really quite shocking, even in today's age.
Yet what I find amazing is how, on the other hand, there was an elaborate pretense of manners and morality, among the degeneracy (murdering someone in front of others, or the emperor taking a man's wife away from him into the bedroom right at a dinner.)
Today I saw the following juxtaposition on The Drudge Report:
Trump paid off porn star to shush her after sex, which occurred the year after he was married to Melanie, the First Lady;
and,
California Republican candidate's risque film roles have other republicans questioning his candidacy.
And what absolutely stunned me was this quote from one of the actor's primary opponents:
The book is a history of Rome's emperors, starting with Julius Caesar and ending with Domitian, who ruled during Suetonius' life. Suetonius was known for being more gossipy and irrelevant than some other ancient historians, and his stories of the degeneracy of the emperors are really quite shocking, even in today's age.
Yet what I find amazing is how, on the other hand, there was an elaborate pretense of manners and morality, among the degeneracy (murdering someone in front of others, or the emperor taking a man's wife away from him into the bedroom right at a dinner.)
Today I saw the following juxtaposition on The Drudge Report:
Trump paid off porn star to shush her after sex, which occurred the year after he was married to Melanie, the First Lady;
and,
California Republican candidate's risque film roles have other republicans questioning his candidacy.
And what absolutely stunned me was this quote from one of the actor's primary opponents:
Ret. Air Force Maj. Jeffrey Burum, another Republican in the race, deemed the movies “pornography” and called on Sabato to end his campaign.
“His behavior is inconsistent with anything I would want from a congressional leader. It’s also inconsistent with a party which has always favored traditional family values, which do not include porn,” Burum said.
RIP …
… Keorapetse Kgositsile, 79, South African Poet and Activist, Dies - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Hmm …
… Writers gonna write | On the BuzzFeed guide to style. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As for Evans, his reference to "climate-change deniers" along suggests he just wants people to agree with policies he favors. I'd like him to find someone who actually thinks that climate does not change (as opposed to thinking it doesn't change in his preferred direction).
Those kids who, thirty years ago, irked adults by saying “like” all the time are today saying “like” at board meetings, on national broadcasts, and to their own teenagers.And they still sound like they don't quite know what's on their minds.
What Favilla circles around is a striking proposal: eliminate formal English. If professional writing should read like an online message, and messaging is akin to conversation, there’s only one register. “Repeat after me”, she commands. “If we speak that way, it’s okay to write that way.”Maybe she should get a job like one I once had: Editing transcripts. Those would be exact records of what people said. None of those people would have wanted them published unedited. God forbid that people take the trouble to learn something.
As for Evans, his reference to "climate-change deniers" along suggests he just wants people to agree with policies he favors. I'd like him to find someone who actually thinks that climate does not change (as opposed to thinking it doesn't change in his preferred direction).
Something to think on …
A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.
— Jean-François Revel, born on this date in 1924
Thursday, January 18, 2018
But ever young …
… Winnie-the-Pooh: A.A. Milne's Beloved Bear at His 90th Anniversary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"Forget it. You're black (or whatever) and I think you are immoral."
How dumb is this?
The Trump administration on Thursday announced the creation of a new conscience and religious freedom division aimed at protecting doctors, nurses and other health-care workers who decline to participate in care that violates their moral or religious convictions.I can picture this scene. Julie gets hit by a car. EMT's show up. One of them says "It's a tranny. I ain't touching him. Goddamn freak." And I will die because he was allowed to discriminate. Because of his "morality."
More to the mind than mechanics …
… The way music moves us shows the mind is more than a machine | Aeon Essays. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I think that the lived reality of music puts pressure on philosophers to broaden their conception of what the mind is, how it works, and to embrace the diversity of ways in which we can begin to grapple with the world around us.
Hmm …
… He Lives: Prayer is a way more difficult subject that Quantum Mechanics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think what is said here about prayer — that it is a privilege, etc. — is quite good. But I don't see the objection to Qaoud's notion that God may answer every prayer, but sometimes may say "no." That happens in life all the time. Someone asks you for something and you decline to give it to them. Prayer is the lifting up of the mind and heart to God. That is good in itself. Our perspective on things may often not align with God's. So He may not be able to grant exactly what we ask for. But I have no doubt that his grace is dispensed to us anyway. And that is what we most want and need from God: His grace. Of course, I am not burdened with any Calvinistic notions of God.
Something to think on …
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
— Jacob Bronowski, born on this date in 1908
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Untranslatably cool …
… In the Flow: On Charles J. Rzepka’s “Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard” - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I just happened to come across what I said when I introduced Elmore Leonard at the Free Library some years ago. It is commendably brief:
Good writing is like a person’s signature: It doesn’t look like anybody else’s. No one would mistake Chekhov for Dostoyevsky or Graham Greene for Evelyn Waugh. Read any page of any good writer and, right away, you know where you are and who you’re with.
Case in point: “They put Foley and the Cuban together in the backseat of the van and took them from the Palm Beach County jail on Gun Club to Glades Correctional, the old redbrick prison at the south end of Lake Okeechobee.”
That sentence, which happens to be the first one in Road Dogs, will signal to any reader who’s been there before that he is once again entering Elmoreland, a region whose inhabitants speak a language not taught in the schools: American.
Once you find yourself in Elmoreland, you also find yourself hanging on those inhabitants’ every word. You just can’t help noticing that what they say and the way they say it is smooth and tangy, like good bourbon. These are people who say things like, “I’m an ordained minister of the Spiritualist Assembly of Waco, Texas, but I started out doing nails.”
When you come upon a sentence like that, you realize that when language is alive it packs a wallop. You don’t have to take my word for any of this. The man who discovered Elmoreland and who has been exploring its environs lo these many years is with us tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elmore Leonard.
Listen in …
… Episode 252 – Seymour Chwast & Ann Rivera – The Virtual Memories Show.
“What’s easier now is that I know the approach I need to take. What’s harder is coming up with ideas.”
Worth pondering …
The single most compelling new poem is probably “The Middletown Murder,” a 93-line narrative written in 1928. The poem presents an adulterous affair that ends in a grotesque shooting. Written in rhymed couplets (rarely a secure measure for Frost’s serious poems), the narrative wavers unsuccessfully between psychological realism and black comedy, but the story and characters are memorable. The total effect seems un-Frostian, which is to say that the poem shows Frost exploring new territory—more explicitly sexual, more provocatively violent, less densely textured, and almost cinematically fast. Frost knew the experiment didn’t work, but it is fascinating to imagine him successfully hammering out this new mode.
"The Middletown Murder" by Robert Frost, The Saturday Review, Saturday, October 13th, 1928.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull. — Actually, this is all Dave's. I just copied his email.)
Something to think on …
The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.
— George Bancroft, who died on this date in 1891
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
News you can use …
… Suppressing a sneeze can be dangerous, doctors warn.
Robert Benchley was onto this years ago:
Robert Benchley was onto this years ago:
"I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life’s sensational pleasures."I myself have always taken great pleasure in a good sneeze. Or three.
More about the FIS …
… Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Mark this date on your calendar ....
… Top ten failed intellectuals. (Ah, the dear Maxine.)
… Top ten failed intellectuals. (Ah, the dear Maxine.)
Honest writer …
… ‘Brideshead’ Revisited & Revised | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Since Waugh was out of touch with most of his sources of gossip, he relied on Nancy Mitford, a fellow writer and close friend, to collect and transmit comments about what she termed a “Great English Classic,” or “MO GEC.” Mitford, centrally located in Heywood Hill’s bookshop in London, was eager to provide information and as a fellow writer ideally positioned to respond to the book. She had one correction—diamond clips weren’t invented until 1930, so Julia would have worn an arrow instead, an alteration which Waugh made in corrected proof. She wondered if Waugh were on Lady Marchmain’s side and if Ryder “might have a little more glamour” because “he seemed to me a tiny bit dim.” This was the sort of response Waugh wanted, and he explained that Ryder was dim because “it is not his story,” though he admitted that if he were too dim to justify Julia’s reaction to him the novel had failed. Then he added, for Mitford’s eyes only: “He was as bad at painting as Osbert [Sitwell] is at writing.” As for Lady Marchmain, “No I am not on her side, but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God.”Any writer is entitled to have reservations about his work, and usually will, but Brideshead is, for me, an unqualified masterwork.
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