Jacques, who described himself as “a European long immersed in all the rotten stuff of past events,” found obvious refreshment in a country which enjoyed a “deliverance” from history. Yet, in the perspective of this volume, even forty years ago the degradation of the American academy was well under way. Caroline Gordon writes that Maritain was “treated shamefully by Princeton University” in the early Fifties. The head of the philosophy department “urged him ‘not to give the boys so much Plato and Aristotle but more Bertrand Russell and Whitehead.’ He delivered the lectures which were finally published as Creative Intuition to a bunch of housewives.”
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Encounters by way of faith …
… Friendship & devotion by George Sim Johnston | The New Criterion.
A novel game …
… How Green Was My Valley – Notes on Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The most obvious thing to say about all this is that playing the narrative of a game like Stardew Valley is more like being in a novel than it is like reading one. And I’m surprised by how engrossing I find this. I’ve been playing Stardew Valley for a few months now, and I still feel a part of that world. A good novel is over too soon—you’ll blow through it in a day or two or three if you’re really into it—though of course you can read it again. A really good novel gives you a new experience each time you re-engage with it, but even still, the words are always static on the page. In real terms, no two people can have the exact same experience of a game like Stardew Valley. That is to say, it’s dynamic. There is a finite and fixed set of things that can happen—just like in real life? maybe. must return to this question another time—but depending on what you prioritize and how you spend your time, you will encounter things at different points than someone else will, which affects how you feel, influences the decisions you make, and gives shape to your experience.
Sound advice …
… A Student's Guide to Liberal Learning.
The best place to begin for any young man or woman today can be stated in two steps: 1) the step of self-discipline and 2) the step of a personal library; both of these together will yield that freedom which is necessary to escape academic dreariness and to discover the wonder of reality, of what is. Even at its best, of course, learning means we need a lot of help, even grace, but we are here talking about what we can do ourselves.
Something we could do without …
… The art of taking offence | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was brought up to believe that you should never give offence if you can avoid it; the new culture tells us that you should always take offence if you can. There are now experts in the art of taking offence, indeed whole academic subjects, such as ‘gender studies’, devoted to it. You may not know in advance what offence consists in – politely opening a door for a member of the opposite sex? Thinking of her sex as ‘opposite’? Thinking in terms of ‘sex’ rather than ‘gender’? Using the wrong pronoun? Who knows. We have encountered a new kind of predatory censorship, a desire to take offence that patrols the world for opportunities without knowing in advance what will best supply its venom. As with the puritans of the 17th century, the need to humiliate and to punish precedes any concrete sense of why.
Hmm …
… R.T.’s Commonplace Blog: Nathaniel Hawthorne on Death.
As a Catholic, I was taught to remind myself that each day could be my last. So thinking about death isn't new to me. But an experience I had last year, during an unexpected dustup with the Grim Reaper, has led me to think I have some idea of what happens when the curtain falls.
As a Catholic, I was taught to remind myself that each day could be my last. So thinking about death isn't new to me. But an experience I had last year, during an unexpected dustup with the Grim Reaper, has led me to think I have some idea of what happens when the curtain falls.
Look and listen …
… Beau Blue Presents - American Minutes - Poetry, Animations. (Hat tip Rus Bowden.)
Happy birthday …
… Humdinger: An Interview with Dr. Sam Pickering | Mercer University Press News.
See also: AGNI Online: End Papers by Sam Pickering.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also: AGNI Online: End Papers by Sam Pickering.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Life is difficult enough without Meryl Streep movies.
— Truman Capote, born on this date in 1924
Saturday, September 29, 2018
In case you wondered …
… Do we really still need Banned Books Week? - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The censoriousness of our time is growing,” LaRue warns. “It’s not just that we say we want to remove books; we don’t want people to voice in public opinions that someone else in the community might dislike.”
Father and son …
… Romance, regrets and notebooks in the freezer: Leonard Cohen’s son on his father’s final poems | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“He was a man on a quest, on a mission,” Adam says, describing his father’s increasing sense of purpose and dedication in his last months, which included sending “do not disturb” emails to friends and family so he could finish the project. “That probably bought him some time on Earth.”
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, born on this date in 1864
Friday, September 28, 2018
Belated blog post …
I had mucho things to do today, so have blogged little, and really won't do any now until tomorrow.
Recommended …
… Five Best: P.J. O’Rourke on Political Satires - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is my review of Lucky Bastard.
Here is my review of Lucky Bastard.
Something to think on …
What is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness?
— Herman Melville, who died on this date in 1891
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Hmm …
… Guy Davenport’s Translation of Mao. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Wonder if he likes Arthur Waley. Jack Kerouac, by the way, makes much the same point in The Dharma Bums.
Wonder if he likes Arthur Waley. Jack Kerouac, by the way, makes much the same point in The Dharma Bums.
Neat …
… Check Out the Costume Sketches From the Original Broadway Production of Fiddler on the Roof | Playbill. (Hat tip. Rus Bowden.)
Woof, woof …
… 'Update on Werewolves' A New Poem by Margaret Atwood | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The things she read …
… A Flannery O’Connor Reading List | Lapham’s Quarterly. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Change in diet …
… R.T.’s Commonplace Blog: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tales and Romances.
I don't think I could read the Holmes stories any more either. No more than I could revive my adolescence (which I would not want to do.)
Something to think on…
Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.
— Henri-Frédéric Amiel, born on this date 1821
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
In the beginning was the word …
… not the grunt: Words have soul: on the Romantic theory of language origin | Aeon Essays. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the origins of language are not rooted in grunt and sign references to objects. Instead, early words always were loaded with the inner and outer meanings that our ancestors detected in nature and consciously articulated when they first started to speak. They are the tokens of a prehistoric communion. The poles of meaning only subsequently split apart, when our very much more recent ancestors, on the cusp of a modern, scientific consciousness, stopped experiencing the world in the natural way, and imposed the modern dualism.
Elusive prey …
… Quiver and Other Poems by Paisley Rekdal | Narrative Magazine. (Hat tip, John Timpane.)
Hmm …
… R.T.’s Commonplace Blog: Jane Smiley, Doyle, and my reading choices.
I think Jane Smiley was an unusually perceptive 11-year-old.
And here's some more …
… The art of taking offence | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was brought up to believe that you should never give offence if you can avoid it; the new culture tells us that you should always take offence if you can. There are now experts in the art of taking offence, indeed whole academic subjects, such as ‘gender studies’, devoted to it. You may not know in advance what offence consists in – politely opening a door for a member of the opposite sex? Thinking of her sex as ‘opposite’? Thinking in terms of ‘sex’ rather than ‘gender’? Using the wrong pronoun? Who knows. We have encountered a new kind of predatory censorship, a desire to take offence that patrols the world for opportunities without knowing in advance what will best supply its venom. As with the puritans of the 17th century, the need to humiliate and to punish precedes any concrete sense of why.
Contrarian at work …
… Men should be mad about #MeToo | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
All of publishing is in danger of becoming one big fat safe space, poofy with beanbag chairs. Only one opinion on a range of subjects is allowed to air in mainstream media. This supine self-censorship goes way beyond political correctness, a shop-worn term too pallid for the profundity of the problem. Not only is expressing a view that deviates from progressive orthodoxy a crime, but so is merely providing a forum for that deviation.
Looking on …
… Poem of the week: Age and Creativity by Thomas McCarthy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have found that age isn't exactly what I expected it to be. I think that's the case with most of us.
I have found that age isn't exactly what I expected it to be. I think that's the case with most of us.
Something to think on …
The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women — of all classes — detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion — mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.
— T. S. Eliot, born on this date in 1888
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Fiction and truth …
… R.T.’s Commonplace Blog: Fiction is Truth’s elder sister — Rudyard Kipling.
I think that God is a poet and Being is his epic.
Listen in …
… Episode 288 – Ken Krimstein – The Virtual Memories Show.
“I think philosophers are all frustrated cartoonists and cartoonists are all frustrated philosophers.”
A strange poetic saint …
… God in the Trash Fire: Thomas Traherne Endures - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Traherne, it should be said, was a bit of a cracked saint, however. As Leah Marcus notes in her essay “Children of Light,” reprinted in the Norton Anthology Seventeenth-Century British Poetry: 1603-1660, Traherne may have “loved Anglicanism” but “he built a large body of thought quite independent of it.” Following the chaos of nonconformism which marked the years of civil war, Traherne’s theology exceeded even the relative tolerance afforded by the developing policy of “latitudinarianism.” Marcus explains that Traherne contradicted “many of the chief tenets of Anglicanism,” possibly believing in a borderline pantheistic sense of God’s immanence in the natural world. Traherne, Marcus writes, intuited that “Heaven, eternity, paradise… are not places. They are a state of mind.”Ultimately, one's faith is a dialogue between oneself and God, and all true saints, I suspect, are both strange and poetic.
Master of condolence …
… The Dark Interval: Letters for the Grieving Heart – review | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Rilke writes as a David facing Goliath. He knows that words, weak though they might seem, are strength and must be thrown in death’s path. His conviction was that we must not turn away from death. The focus must be absolute. But he also dwells on the way death throws life into sharper relief. We can, he believes, live more intensely because of it. “Death, especially the most completely felt and experienced death, has never remained an obstacle to life for a surviving individual, because its innermost essence is not contrary to us.” He sees death as the other half of life, sure as shadow.
Honoring …
… The Word and the words: a sonnet for Lancelot Andrewes | Malcolm Guite. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also: ANDREWES AND ELIOT.
See also: ANDREWES AND ELIOT.
Something to think on …
Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.
— William Faulkner, born on this date in 1897
Monday, September 24, 2018
Sizing things up …
… R.T.’s Commonplace Blog: Emily Dickinson on the Brain.
Syllable and sound are like love and marriage — you can't have one without the other.
Syllable and sound are like love and marriage — you can't have one without the other.
In case you wondered …
… How to write the perfect sentence | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The word “sentence” comes from the Latin sentire, to feel. A sentence must be felt by the reader, and a feeling is something that grows and fades like anything else that is alive. A line of words should unfold in space and time, not reveal itself all at once, for the simple reason that it cannot be read all at once.Well, sentire also means to think, perceive, understand. Think of the sense one has of something. Sentence more directly derives from sententia, which means thought, opinion, judgment, etc. I'm not sure we should set about trying to write perfect sentences. Good, clear ones will do.
Annotated noir …
… Revisiting an incorruptible knight in a corrupt world.
The editors note that in their annotated edition of “The Big Sleep” they trace the many veins of meaning into the intricate novel, which they call “a ripping good story.” The editors inform us that Raymond Chandler (July 23, 1888 March 26, 1959) did not think of himself as primarily a “mystery” writer, calling his novels and stories only “ostensibly” mysteries. But his work was confined within the limitations of genre fiction during his lifetime and many years after, even though he was lauded while he was alive by W.H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood.
Something to think on …
A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you.
— Françoise Sagan, who died on this date in 2004
Good Bye and there is no "other side" -- I am who I am
Frank posted on “transgenderism” which isn’t even a word. The rest of the article was filled with similar stupidity, including a lack of any understanding of the science as well as uninformed speculation. (For example, yes I knew I was trans when I was very young.) To make it very clear there isn't anything substantive and real in the article, rather it is about one man’s opinion who doesn’t like people like me. That makes it transphobic and hostile. Same thing as an uninformed article about people who are different religions, colors, sexual orientations, etc. etc.
I deal with this all the time in life and work, pure prejudice based on ignorance. I’m not dealing with it now here in Books Inq. where I was an invited blogger.
Crap. I just wanted/needed one place. This one came from nowhere and it hurt.
Take care all and good bye.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Against the grain …
… It’s not transphobic to question transgenderism | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So what sorts of, if you will, transgressive thoughts do acquaintances fear being overheard? They sometimes venture timidly that maybe, just maybe, telling three- and four-year-olds that they have to ‘decide’ what gender they are, before they’re old enough to entirely grasp what gender means, might be a little confusing. Or that perhaps adolescents whose brains are still developing should be discouraged from taking irreversible medical steps while they’re still figuring out who they are. Others might worry tentatively that swapping genders could seem to offer the troubled a cure for problems that are bound to survive surgery intact. Still others might puzzle over why so few gung-ho parents on those documentaries seem concerned about their kids’ capacity to reproduce.It does seem to be the sort of decision best left when you’ve got some experience under your belt.
Skywatching …
… Jennifer Reeser's CLOUD BANK OVER BROKEN ARROW | National Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Take a look around …
… Great American Read: John Updike’s Shillington | WITF | WITF. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… Edward Feser: Reply to Blackburn on Five Proofs. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Feser does a predictably fine job of defending himself, but I was taken by some other things Blackburn says.
"Functional explanations of the prevalence and survival of religions are not calculated to appeal to practitioners themselves …"
This would come as a surprise to Rudolf Otto, author of The Idea of the Holy. Otto was a practicing Lutheran."I suppose that later ages can always be said to have inherited something from the past, but otherwise this is a bit like supposing that republicanism is a vision inherited from monarchism."
Well, there is a connection between the two. See the history of the Roman Republic.
To say nothing of its devaluation …
… The coddling of American journalism | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Rick knows how this works. He’s become something of a bête noire for the #MeToo movement because his magazine runs controversial pieces and he refuses to apologise for them — even if it means upsetting some of his staff. Harper’s recently published another ‘confessions of male predator’ type piece from the disabled writer John Hockenberry, which was also deemed unacceptable. But Rick has stood by the piece and has weathered the Twitter storm, as he did last year when Harper’s ran a piece by Katie Roiphe that suggested the #MeToo movement was becoming unhinged.
Season of evanescence …
… First Known When Lost: Threshold.
We have seen this passing and vanishing before. But we never tire of it. Or we ought not to. If we ever do, our life may as well be over. This is the World we were made for.
...and the funnies...
Baffled as to how the potentially disastrous mistake could have gone unnoticed for so many years, White House sources confirmed Friday that roughly 417,225 hours of private presidential conversations were discovered immaculately preserved due to the fact that no one remembered to turn off Richard Nixon’s tape recorder. “Uh oh—it turns out that every single word that has been uttered in the Oval Office since the early 1970s has been perfectly recorded on this hidden device. This could be pretty bad,”
Something to think on …
Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.
— Walter Lippman, born on this date in 1889
May you live in interesting times...Sunday morning edition
"Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim
The wealthiest 1 percent of the world's population now owns more than half of the world's wealth, according a Credit Suisse report.And I just realized that latter statistic, which is symbolic of wealth inequality, has actually little historical data behind it, to give it context and show perspective. Has the balance aways been that the wealthiest 1 percent own more than half (despite the "now")? Or maybe even more tilted in the favor of the wealthy -- one would think Julius Caesar for example, would have had more than half of the world's wealth at his peak all by himself. And since there has been no other time where, I think, the average person in the world has been better off than now, which is a measure in part of wealth, it might well be that wealth is more spread out than even before...
Saturday, September 22, 2018
The little engine that continues …
… Jung at Heart — Reviewing Carl Jung's persistent hold on our attention. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There really is some heft to Jung, and he certainly cannot be blamed because others misunderstand him. Modern Man in Search of a Soul is well worth reading.
May we all be so brave …
… Occupation Gone | From The River in the Sky by Clive James. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.
— Lord Chesterfield, born on this date in 1694
Friday, September 21, 2018
Mark thy calendar …
AN OPEN POETRY READING presented by The Green Line Cafe Poetry Series & POETRY IN COMMON - 9/25/18 7PM
Inbox
| x |
THE GREEN LINE
CAFÉ POETRY SERIES &
P O E T R Y I N C O M M O N
PRESENT:
AN OPEN POETRY READING
Guest Host: JEN ANOLIK
Tuesday, September 25, 2018, 7 PM
Sign Up In Advance: jenanolik@gmail.com
Each Reader Has 5 Minutes
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
Coordinator: JEN ANOLIK
Series Coordinator: LEONARD GONTAREK
CAFÉ POETRY SERIES &
P O E T R Y I N C O M M O N
PRESENT:
AN OPEN POETRY READING
Guest Host: JEN ANOLIK
Tuesday, September 25, 2018, 7 PM
Sign Up In Advance: jenanolik@gmail.com
Each Reader Has 5 Minutes
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
Coordinator: JEN ANOLIK
Series Coordinator: LEONARD GONTAREK
This will not end well …
… Ian Buruma and the age of sexual McCarthyism | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Anyone who thinks this sort of thing does not invite pushback is at best naive.
I’m with Margaret Atwood: “I believe that in order to have civil and human rights for women there have to be civil and human rights, period, including the right to fundamental justice, just as for women to have the vote, there has to be a vote,” she wrote. In regard to the specifics of Galloway’s case, she added, “a fair-minded person would now withhold judgment as to guilt until the report and the evidence are available for us to see. We are grownups: We can make up our own minds, one way or the other.”There's also this:
Looks like fascism …
… sounds like fascism, I’ll bet it is fascism: Le Pen & The Sovietization Of France | The American Conservative.
… because she shared “images of Islamic State group atrocities … in response to a journalist who drew a comparison between IS and her party.”Doesn’t exactly sound insane to me, though I’m sure my progressive friends (notice I do not call them liberal) will correct me on the matter.
Begging letter increases in value …
… Jack Kerouac letter to mother recounts ‘On the Road’ adventures | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In a particularly tender line, Kerouac writes: “Gee, you can’t realise how much I miss you, and the house, and writing in my room. But I’ll be back in a few months and we’ll save some money.”
Something to think on …
The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.
— Bernard Williams, born on this date in 1929
Thursday, September 20, 2018
A poet on stage …
… Conjuring Pushkin | Peter Wood | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Leaf could have written Pushkin as a Byronic hero, given that Pushkin played his own life as if he had stepped out of one of Lord Byron’s romantic poems. Eugene Onegin is rich with mocking allusions to the English poet:
Lord Byron, with his shrewd caprices,
Dressed up a desperate egotism
To look like sad romanticism.
But what Pushkin mocked, he also envied.The philosopher René Girard would not have have been surprised.
Listen in …
… Episode 287 – Audrey Niffenegger – The Virtual Memories Show.
“The success of The Time-Traveler’s Wife didn’t change me as an artist, it changed me as a person who was able to control her own time.”
“A voice which has no fellow” …
… Revisiting a forgotten children’s book by one of the 20th century’s most distinctive writers - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is my review of Memoirs of a Midget.
Once upon a happier time, de la Mare’s most ambitious work of fiction, “Memoirs of a Midget” (1921), earned acclaim as one of the finest novels of the 20th century — which, incidentally, it is (see my 2004 Washington Post essay on the book) — while admirers of his exceptional animal fantasy “The Three Mulla-Mulgars” (1910) tended to agree with Richard Adams, who, when asked about its possible influence on “Watership Down,” declared: “To try to copy ‘The Three Mulla-Mulgars’ would be like trying to copy ‘King Lear.’ ”
Here is my review of Memoirs of a Midget.
More than just a writer …
… Victor Hugo Drawings on View at LA’s Hammer Museum Are Rarely Seen | Observer. (Hat tip, David Tothero.)
My Struggle
Sort of an anti-Knausgårdian exercise. Or not...
Last weekend I went to Provincetown, which is a town on Cape Cod, MA, to play flag football in a women's tournament. I got hurt by the mostly lesbian players -- at a tournament I have played in for years. The refs let me get beat up, never threw a flag, so much so that I limped off the field after getting hammered into the ground and just left because no one cared if I got hurt. It was incredibly lonely and sad to be in the middle of what was supposed to be a safe place with such palpable trans hate -- including from my own team.
After an afternoon and night of ice, I went into town, which really is pretty.
I ended up shopping, retail therapy in a jewelry store right? and overheard an (older) man and his sister looking for presents for the man's "friend". The conversation had a certain rhythm which I knew well and finally I broke in and said "Hey excuse me, I'm trans and it's ok if you are buying some nice things for yourself. You don't need a friend." ("friend" in airquotes)
The "sister" (wife?) looked a little surprised. He looked stunningly relieved. We chatted for a minute, nothing too heavy, they turned to finish their purchases and I looked around.
They left and I went up to the salesperson with my earrings. She was smiling. "They were paid for," she said and nodded out the door. The man had paid for my earrings.
Something to think on …
The Divine Thing that made itself the foundation of the Church does not seem, to judge by his comments on the religious leadership of his day, to have hoped much from officers of a church.
— Charles Williams, born on this date in 1886
A fugue of sorrow and anger …
… In Sylvia Plath’s final letters, Ted Hughes comes across as a monster.
See also: The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II: 1956-1963 – review.
See also: The Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume II: 1956-1963 – review.
Hughes … is not just her husband; he is her religion. “My marriage is the center of my being,” she admits, “I have given everything to it without reserve.”(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Unionpedia is a "concept" map...But Whose?
linking Wikipedia's data in ways like James Burke's old Connections series:
Someone somewhere has a reason for that. Creepy. And if you find me suddenly erased you now have a clue. It's like “Or All the Seas With Oysters”.
What is odd is there is no information about who it is at all. Nothing about its founders, organization etc. Nor can anything be found on google or facebook.
Someone somewhere has a reason for that. Creepy. And if you find me suddenly erased you now have a clue. It's like “Or All the Seas With Oysters”.
According to Psycholog(-y) (-ists)
these are the five basic personality traits. Previously I wrote somewhere about this test. I was 50-50 on four of the five but 85% percent agreeable, which no one really thinks...hmmm. And then there is the old Warren Harding saw: if he was a girl he would always be in trouble...double hmmm.
A victim speaks up …
… My Rape Doesn’t Justify Punishing People Without Due Process.
There is also a moral and ethical obligation with recognizing what happened to you and the power you wield from your ability to accuse. If I stumbled upon the man who raped me, as I have often thought about, could I accuse him in public? Could I shout his name and the crime he committed against me that has redefined my concept of intimacy, autonomy, and lifelong health?
The why of poetry …
… Poetry Daily Prose Feature - Christian Wiman: He Held Radical Light. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Poetry itself—like life, like love, like any spiritual hunger—thrives on longings that can never be fulfilled, and dies when the poet thinks they have been. And what is true for the poem is true for the poet: "No layoff from this condensery," as Lorine Niedecker says, no respite from the calling that comes in the form of a question, no ultimate arrival at an answer that every arrangement of words is trying to be. Perhaps only bad poets become poets. The good ones, though they may wax vatic and oracular in public, and though they may even have full-fledged masterpieces behind them, know full well that they can never quite claim the name.
Something to think on …
Humans feel at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy and ill at ease in a world of existences, because to exist is an act, not a thing.
— Étienne Gilson, who died on this date in 1978
Wittgenstein’s confession
He thought it important.
From the comments:
When I was young wanted to be a philosopher, turning out abstruse tracts wrought from my brilliant intellection. Now that I'm at the other end of life, I can say with certainty that a handful of simple aphorisms carried me further in life than the greatest works of those esteemed thinkers.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Birds of many parts …
… The Ravens at the Tower of London Are More Than Symbols - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Skaife calls attention to the birds’ beautiful contradictions. In sunlight their dark feathers shine with the iridescence of oil on water. They can be friendly, curious, even loving. In the wild they’ll take turns sliding down snowbanks and make toys out of sticks. At the Tower they play games of KerPlunk, pulling the straws free from the tube to retrieve a dead mouse as their prize. Yet, as that special raven edition of KerPlunk suggests, they’re also birds of gothic darkness and gore, the birds that followed Viking raiders in quest of fresh corpses and that feasted on executed bodies hung from roadside gibbets. You might visit Skaife’s charges in the Tower and watch, entranced, as they gently preen each other’s nape feathers, murmuring in their soft raven idiolect—but you might also see them gang up to ambush a pigeon and eat it alive.
Unsung no more …
… Rediscovering a Founding Mother | History | Smithsonian.
While researching my new book, Rush: Revolution, Madness & the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, I managed to track down new and revealing correspondence to, from and about Benjamin, the misunderstood patriot, physician, writer and educator known as the “American Hippocrates.” But one of the biggest surprises was finding unpublished writing by and to Julia. The Rushes’ descendants hid much of the couple’s writing away, partly to shield the unvarnished opinions of Benjamin and his favorite correspondents, Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and partly to protect the career prospects of some of their sons. (Their son Richard served four presidents, as attorney general, secretary of the treasury and U.S. representative to Great Britain and France.)
Hmm …
… The Problem With All Those Liberal Professors - Bloomberg.
The comments unintentionally provide considerable evidence in support of his thesis.
The real problems arise in subjects like history, political science, philosophy and psychology, where the professor’s political perspective might well make a difference. (The same is true of law.)
The comments unintentionally provide considerable evidence in support of his thesis.
In case you wondered …
… How George V. Higgins Invented the Boston Crime Novel | CrimeReads. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The world of Higgins’s first three novels is where the Boston crime genre still largely resides in the popular imagination, but the author himself wasn’t content to keep exploring this one particular slice of the city. In the decades that followed, he chronicled cops (The Judgment of Deke Hunter), politicians (A Choice of Enemies), defense attorneys (the Jerry Kennedy quartet), and high society (Swan Boats at Four), expanding his Boston canvas far beyond the working-class Irish neighborhoods that spawned his memorable crooks. Though he would return to that world occasionally (Trust, The Rat on Fire), he disdained being known as a crime writer. Not all of the books hold up. At times the deadpan humor is lost and his thickets of dialogue become virtually impenetrable, providing camouflage to stories that unfold on an almost subliminal level.
Something to think on …
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
— Samuel Johnson, born on this date in 1709
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Well, I've made it: I've toured the seasons with Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Most recent was Summer, the final volume of his seasonal quartet. This installation was similar to the others in its tone and approach, but different, I felt, too.
As with the other volumes, Summer offers brief mediations on a range of seemingly banal topics: everything from clothing and bicycles, to dogs and wasps. In almost all of these essays, Knausgaard manages to derive some unexpected meaning, some sort of aphoristic conclusion.
I must say, I came to enjoy these meditations: not just in Summer, but in the other volumes as well. Sure, they're delicate, and they can be a bit contrived. But they served, for me, as a reminder of the beauty that surrounds us. In this sense, I found them inspiring: they ask us to look, and look again, and to embrace the mundane: for in it, Knausgaard seems to imply, there must be a spark.
Where Summer differs from the other volumes is in two extended sections which include Knausgaard's journal entries. These, I felt, were less effective, and could be rather self-indulgent. The second of these sections, though, does include an interesting -- if not fully evolved -- fictional rendering of a love story from the Second World War. The story seemed oddly placed among Knausgaard's diary entries, but did serve, I suppose, as a welcome interlude.
All told, I'm really pleased with Knausgaard's seasonal quartet. As I say, there's a quality to each volume that inspires, that asks readers to reconsider their lives and the objects surrounding them. I found this refreshing, and refreshingly hopeful. No doubt, the diary sections of Summer, especially, can be a little trying, but that doesn't cloud the rest of the collection, which includes a number of thoughtful observations on the world around us.
Monday, September 17, 2018
Mark thy calendar …
… EVENTS - NARBERTH BOOKSHOP.
THURS., SEPT. 20 @ 7PM: NATHANIEL POPKIN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR OF HIDDEN CITY DAILY AND AUTHOR OF PHILADELPHIA: FINDING THE HIDDEN CITY, READS FROM HIS NOVEL EVERYTHING IS BORROWED AND DISCUSSES IT WITH JOURNALIST AND FICTION WRITER EMMA EISENBERG. THE NOVEL, ABOUT AN ARCHITECT WHOSE LIFE STRANGELY PARALLELS THAT OF A 19TH-CENTURY MAN WITH A SIMILAR NAME, IS A MEDITATION ON CRUELTY AND REGRET, A DREAMLIKE TOUR OF A CITY THROUGH TIME, AND AN EVOCATIVE PORTRAIT OF RADICAL JEWISH LIFE OF ANOTHER AGE. POPKIN AND EISENBERG WILL EXPLORE THE BOOK’S MANY THEMES: THE HISTORY LIVING WITHIN US, THE DESIRE TO LIVE A JUSTIFIED LIFE, AND THE WAYS WE DEAL WITH MISTAKES AND REMORSE.
Q&A …
… The Magazine Interview: William Boyd on his Gordonstoun years with Prince Charles, and why novels can best explain humanity | The Sunday Times Magazine | The Sunday Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He certainly inserts writers into everything he does. Even describing how he found and bought his Chelsea house requires the assistance of John le Carré. Thirty years ago, Boyd and his wife, Susan, decided they needed a larger house than the one they had in Fulham. It had to be end-of-terrace to minimise the risk of neighbour noise. They were offered this one — it was cheap for Chelsea. This was because it was, in his mind, written by le Carré at his seediest. “It was,” says Boyd, “very Smiley’s People. There was a woman who rented rooms to gentlemen from the Ministry of Defence. There were Ascot water heaters and socks drying on radiators.”
Present at the creation …
… Clarence H. White & His World: Exhibit of Photography as Early Art | National Review. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
“Lyrical” is the word most often used to describe his work, but that’s too glib and dismissive in that it suggests a reassuring beauty, almost a mild sedative. Yes, he did many photographs of young women, psychologically absent, as allegories of spring, and Spring in Triptych from 1898 is the best known. They’re beautiful, and I have no quibble with beauty, but in White’s case they’re daring and new. He used low light to reduce shadows, creating a limited, consistent tone and flattening space but only as much as he wanted. He made contact prints from his negative, cut and cropped, and moved bits around. He found a composite pose of the figure and distribution of foliage he liked and arranged the puzzle pieces in a Renaissance-style triptych. Drops of Rain from 1902 is an abstract, offbeat play of forms — the glass orb became a favorite prop — juxtaposed against the drops of rain. His son was the model. Like the boy’s youth, it’s about transience and fragility.
Something to think on …
Sometimes I find myself thinking, rather wistfully, about Lao Tzu's famous dictum: 'Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.' All around me I see something very different, let us say — a number of angry dwarfs trying to grill a whale.
— William Carlos Williams, born on this date in 1883
