Thursday, February 28, 2019
Blogging note …
I am, once again, in a doctor’s waiting room. Nothing serious. Just a follow-up on some minor surgery I has a few weeks ago. But I have things to do afterward, so blogging will resume whenever.
Q&A …
… Don Winslow: The Making of a Drug War Epic | CrimeReads. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I never started out to write The Power of the Dog. I was reading philosophy books, trying to get an answer to this question about human brutality. I then began reading the history of Mexico and drug trafficking; and the more I read, the angrier I got. I eventually typed out Dog.
Distracted from distraction by distraction …
… Our Own Devices - The Sun Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I don't have a smart phone and have no plans to get one.
The search ends …
… Meghan O'Rourke named editor of the The Yale Review | The Yale Review. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The future is his …
… David Cairns explains how we learned to love Berlioz | The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The future fascinated him as much as the past (the great writers of the grand siècle, Molière, Racine, Corneille, Boileau, the 18th-century composers of opéra-comique like Grétry and Dalayrac). One of his last newspaper articles, under the guise of reviewing the latest ephemeral opera, predicts air travel and imagines how it will be used to collect the musicians that, as a conductor, he needs.Here is my review of David Cairns's splendid biography of Berlioz.
Something to think on …
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
— Michel de Montaigne, born on this date in 1533
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Formal and natural …
… A Descent into the Maelström. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This collection includes many translations of other poets (Jorge Luis Borges, Luís de Camões) and interpretations of Biblical stories, but the majority of the poems are sonnets, mostly Shakespearean. Baer is a “formalist” poet; after all, he created The Formalist, the gold-standard journal dedicated to metrical poetry. But his unfailing ear also allows his own meter the frequent hiccup that adds aural spice to the line.
Appreciation ….
… Underrated: Shiva Naipaul | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He was too independent, had read too widely, thought too deeply, and possessed too keen an eye for the world as it actually is, to submit himself to any orthodoxy, whether of the Left or the Right. The journalist in a rush is forced to grab ready-made labels and opinions, for there is no time to develop, let alone explain to one’s editor and readers, a view of one’s own.
Appreciation ….
… Underrated: Shiva Naipaul | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He was too independent, had read too widely, thought too deeply, and possessed too keen an eye for the world as it actually is, to submit himself to any orthodoxy, whether of the Left or the Right. The journalist in a rush is forced to grab ready-made labels and opinions, for there is no time to develop, let alone explain to one’s editor and readers, a view of one’s own.
Appreciation ….
… Underrated: Shiva Naipaul | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He was too independent, had read too widely, thought too deeply, and possessed too keen an eye for the world as it actually is, to submit himself to any orthodoxy, whether of the Left or the Right. The journalist in a rush is forced to grab ready-made labels and opinions, for there is no time to develop, let alone explain to one’s editor and readers, a view of one’s own.
Thinking and playing around …
… The Pursuit of Intimacy, or Rationalism in Love – manwithoutqualities. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hard to imagine he didn’t leave some serious personal damage in his wake.
Authenticity …
… Review: The truth-telling poems of Frank Bidart | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Reading these poems is like reading the Marquis de Sade through the lens of Ignatius Loyola and John of the Cross (or vice versa). Here is a poem Bidart wrote at the age of 73, called, quite simply, “Queer.” “Lie to yourself about this and you will/ forever lie about everything,” he writes.
From bad to verse …
… 'We donte want to hurt anney one': Bonnie and Clyde's poetry revealed | Books | The Guardian.
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The year book also includes a 13-stanza poem, written across four pages, ostensibly by Barrow, which opens: “Bonnie s Just Written a poem / the Story of Bonnie & Clyde. So / I will try my hand at Poetry / With her riding by my side.”
Loving humanity, but manking — not so much …
… Christianity and Humanity—from a Distance | RealClearBooks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As the citizen’s love and loyalty attach less and less to those nearest to him and more and more to an abstract and idealized agglomeration of “humanity,” social bonds loosen and politics itself becomes meaningless. Political activity can only take place within defined groupings of people; there can be no negotiation or arbitration among members of an otherwise undefined humanity.Schiller, somewhere in Don Carlos, I believe, makes the point that the lovers of humanity often turn out to be the persecutors of mankind.
Firm but cordial disagreement …
… Auden on No-Platforming Pound | by Edward Mendelson | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As you say, the war is not over. This incident is only one sign—there are others and far graver ones—that there was more truth than one would like to believe in Huey Long’s cynical observation that if fascism came to the United States it would be called Anti-fascism. Needless to say, I am not suggesting that you desire any such thing—but I think your very natural abhorrence of Pound’s conduct has led you to take the first step which, if not protested now, will be followed by others which would horrify you.
Back to the U.S.S.R …
… Should Therapists Treat Climate Change Denial As A Psychological Disorder? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I like to refer people to this: Professor Valentina Zharkova Breaks Her Silence and CONFIRMS "Super" Grand Solar Minimum - Electroverse.
Wikipedia has an excellent (and heart-breaking) list of the many historical abuses of psychiatry in countries such as China and the former Soviet Union to stifle political dissent by labeling unpopular views as “mental illness.”Nor is the United States immune to similar problems. Psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl has described how mental health practitioners in one hospital in the 1960’s “diagnose[d] African Americans with schizophrenia because of their civil rights ideas“ including the patients’ displays of “aggression” and “hostility.”
Rolling to the end …
… Donald Hall kept writing—and stayed interesting—until the very end. | City Journal. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)
Carnival of Losses amounts to a collection of paragraphs, some extended essays, and many short reminiscences about literary figures. Hall seems to have met just about everybody, from Ezra Pound to Robert Frost to Allen Ginsberg, but he liked to write about himself most. “No energy, bad legs, and I’m still smart as hell,” he wrote me in 2013. “There will be an essay book coming, maybe a year from now. Of course I don’t know whether I will be around to read it, but what the hell? Obituaries would probably sell the book.” I wrote him back: “Keep breathing. There’s a series in this.” Hall rollated along.
Something to think on …
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born on this date in 1807
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Mark thy calendar
… Monday Poets| Fran Baird & Nausheen Eusuf - Events - Free Library.
Here is my review of Nausheen Eusuf's Not Elegy, But Eros.
Here is my review of Nausheen Eusuf's Not Elegy, But Eros.
Death again …
… Who You See Before You Die: Hospice Documenting Patients’ Mysterious Dream Experiences – CBS Pittsburgh.
My brother said he was going to see Mom and Grandmom.
My brother said he was going to see Mom and Grandmom.
Hmm …
… No deadlines | Magazine editing and the passage of time. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Political magazines are never profitable in the United States, the losses absorbed by well-to-do owners looking for influence and amusement, and the Standard’s position was unusually precarious for being a conservative periodical opposed to a Republican president.I gather that many conservatives regarded it as neocon and accomodationist. Always good to remember your base.
Woe is he …
… The Travail Of Comments Sections | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I bring this all up after having just read Scott Alexander’s long explanation for why he stopped the Culture War thread, a subreddit affiliated with his popular Slate Star Codex blog. Alexander (a pseudonym) is a psychiatrist who is generally liberal in his politics and cultural outlook, but whose blog attracts all kinds of readers because it’s really smart and interesting. He had a far, far more difficult job moderating his comments section (and he had volunteer helpers!) than I do, but his explanation for why you have to moderate them is quite good, and I urge you to read it.
Something to think on …
Here's the point to be made - there are no synonyms. There are no two words that mean exactly the same thing.
— Theodore Sturgeon, born on this date in 1918
Monday, February 25, 2019
Another conviction...
...George Pell: cardinal found guilty of child sexual assault
Defenders of the faith have often said that the clergy is no different from the layman, and that we must all -- people of faith and those who lead us -- strive to fight the devil. While that is a noble sentiment, the spate of abuse allegations emerging from the Church makes one wonder if there is indeed something about the institution that lets sexual offenders operate with impunity for years. I have often argued against the requirement of celibacy that the Church places on the clergy, which I feel is unnatural and breeds disorders. But the depth of abuse in the Church has to emerge from other causes.
Encore …
… More interesting than a watchmaker.
Finding myself in agreement with someone writing 800 years earlier, I was reminded of something C. S. Lewis said: “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
Looking and engaging …
… AWP: Unbinding Our Eyes: Poetry as a Way of Seeing— The Writer's Notebook.
One thing that’s been important to me as a reader is learning to see through poetry, the way in which it teaches us to see, the way it organizes and directs our vision, and gives us the gift of sight. We tend to take vision for granted, and hence may not realize how little we really see. But a writer, a poet especially, must train his eyes to see.
Yes, good is good …
… An Ovidian Taste Test: The Old Verse Translations of Ovid’s 'Metamorphoses'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Indeed …
… Politics Ruins Poetry, and the Resistance Is Proof. Political Poetry Should Not Destroy the Beauty of Real Poems.
A recent and conspicuous instance of the lamentable fusion between poetry and politics comes from Michael Finch, chief operating officer of the dynamic conservative webzine FrontPage Magazine, whose first book of poetry, Finding Home, was released in July 2015. An attempt to recapture the essence and feeling of a lost America, the intention is noble but the poetry is moribund. True, the poems deal largely with landscape and reminiscence, but the meander is clearly political. Consider lines like “Accounts are kept, mercy not spared for the/Murdering Umma or the self-righteous West” and “a false god of equality and a radical/Creed that drove utopia hard and ended all free men,” among many others. This is not poetry—not even bad poetry—but prose assertion, dispatches from the culture wars. Prosody and metaphor have predictably succumbed to the didacticism of a political message.
Writing for people …
… The Carrying by Ada Limòn review – from the heart, unvarnished | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
What is particularly unusual is that Limón finds an ardour in compromise, making her peace with childlessness and with life’s imperfection. It seems that this period of trying to conceive has pushed her poetry to its limit, that it exists on the frontier between something and nothing. It describes an effortful time that makes these apparently effortless, quick-release poems all the more merciful and beautiful. There is nothing self-indulgent here but there is humorous self-assertion. In Prey she advises: “Don’t be the mouse” – and she isn’t.
Well, maybe …
… Meet Your New Favorite Poet. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
James Thomson (1700–1748) is my private property. I keep him in my pocket and take him out and look at him sometimes. He always looks good. There are many James Thomson poems that I have never read. Consequently, those pieces do not exist. The ones I have read I have read many times. I’m talking about The Seasons, a 5,500-line poem that used to be approximately as famous as the Aeneid or whatever. It was translated into a bunch of different languages, Goethe revered it, it was imitated all over the place. People used to sit there, stunned or rocking back and forth, muttering “Oh man, oh man, oh man!” about The Seasons. These days, however—2019—the sun has quite gone down on this great poet.
Something to think on …
It is only too clear that man is not at home within this universe, and yet that he is not good enough to deserve a better.
— Perry Miller, born on this date in1905
Listen in …
… Episode 309 – Joe Ciardiello – The Virtual Memories Show.
“Everything Sergio Leone knew about Americans came from the movies, so he was let down when he saw American soldiers in Rome after the war. The heroic aspect was there, but he saw these guys for who they really were.”
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Amaster's methods …
… Nigeness: Thinking on Paper.
It's not an epoch-making exhibition, but for anyone with an interest in this aspect of Rembrandt's work – and a love of drawing and printmaking at their very best – it's a must. The drawings alone – quick, spontaneous, full of life – are ample evidence that this was an artist of phenomenal natural gifts.
People on the move …
… 20011: The Empire of the Steppes.
If you are not sure how the Hungarians and Bulgars ended up where they are, or about the travels of the Torguts, the fortunes of the Jenghiz-Khanites or the Timurids, this book will tell you. But I recommend that you read it with a good, large-scale map of Asia at hand.
Something to think on …
The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who died on this date in 1799
RIP …
… Donald Keene, lauded scholar of Japanese literature, dies at 96 | The Japan Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Minority report …
… The Puppet Master | B.D. McClay. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, actually, yes, even in life, though certainly in fiction, which is a take on life, not a reproduction of it. I haven't rad any of Williams's novels, though I have Stoner lying around somewhere and should read it, if for no other reason that I hear so much about it. Most of what I have heard is positive, though it's always nice to read a dissenting opinion. Guess I'll have to find out for myself.For the reader of the book, who can name the power that pushes Maxley hither and thither—i.e., John Williams—the suddenness which with things just happen can grate. On the first seven pages of Nothing But the Night, I counted seven “suddenly”s. To be fair, those pages recount a dream, in which things do tend to happen, well, suddenly. But after Maxley awakens and leaves his apartment to go out to a park, “quite suddenly, he knew that he would not go into the park.” He goes instead to a café, where “all at once he discovered he was becoming depressed,” and then walks back home, where his apartment building appears “so suddenly that he swerved in sharp surprise.” A thought comes to him “suddenly with an almost physical blow”; he understands things “with a sudden and rather amused clarity.” Two pages later, he is “suddenly ashamed.” Things happen suddenly in Stoner at least forty times; in Butcher’s Crossing, fifty-three.Can anything happen to a person quite so suddenly quite so much?
But still…
… Words Fall Short of Grief — Review: 'Where Reasons End' by Yiyun Li. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Make no mistake: Where Reasons End is a very good book about grief, lightly fictionalizing Li's actual experiences after the suicide of her 16-year-old son. If you're going to read just one piece of serious new literature this winter, Where Reasons End should be that book.
Remembering …
… Bright Star; a thanksgiving for John Keats | Malcolm Guite. (Hat tip, Dave lull.)
Keats is my favorite poet. Decades before the French symbolists thought to turn language into music, he had already dome precisely that. What an ear he had.
Much in what he says …
… Recovering from Cultural Dementia - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“But we do sing at Mass,” someone says. Yes and no. There are songs, but most of the congregation is silent or is murmuring, because the songs are for Mass entertainment, having been conceived in form and content after the patterns of mass entertainment.What is forgotten is that great literature and art give great and last pleasure, pleasure that forms character.No one remembers the words, because the poetry is bad or nonexistent, and no one remembers the melodies, because they are bad or because they never were written to be sung by an entire congregation and its full range of human voices.
Good idea …
… The value of public penance in the age of clerical abuse, mass incarceration and #MeToo | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Quite a few years ago, had some something to say that bears on this here.
Quite a few years ago, had some something to say that bears on this here.
Something to think on …
There is no God, cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values — is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.
— Karl Jaspers, born on this date in 1883
Friday, February 22, 2019
Quite a tale …
… The Enslaved Girl Who Became America's First Poster Child | History | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
It was shrewd of Sumner to link the outrage stirred by the fictional Ida May to the plight of the real Mary—a brilliant piece of propaganda that turned Mary into America’s first poster child. But Mary hadn’t been kidnapped; she was born into slavery.
Celebration …
… Birthday party of the century: City Lights to celebrate Ferlinghetti's 100 years | Datebook. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
More here.
More here.
To Hell and back ….
… Gustave Doré's Haunting Illustrations of Dante's Divine Comedy | Open Culture. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Teaching and writing …
… If Wishes Were Horses | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
John Gardner, in one of his books about writing, warns the would-be writer against choosing to teach as a means of support and especially warns not to teach writing. Creative energy and teaching energy come from the same place, he wrote, and it is better to choose a mindless day job as a means of support. I recall reading that advice and knowing he was right. But I did it anyway. I became a high school English teacher, and I could not go back and change that, because teaching is also the reason I turned from visual arts to writing. I became a writer because I was teaching writing.
Getting his due …
… The dizzying fiction of Anthony Burgess | Margaret Drabble. (Hat tip Dave Lull.)
The latest batch of Foundation-approved Burgess titles is characteristically eccentric and eclectic. We have Puma, an end-of-the-world science fiction novel originating in 1975, in a project for the screenplay of a disaster movie, rescued from various Hollywood rewrites (and authorial procrastination) by this Irwell edition; Beard’s Roman Women, a novel originally published in Britain in 1977; Obscenity and the Arts, a collection of Maltese-oriented essays and musical scores and photographs (some amateur, by Liana) introduced by Burgess’s biographer Andrew Biswell; and The Black Prince, a historical novel by Adam Roberts adapted from an original script by Burgess, and published by the crowdfunded press Unbound, with warm acknowledgements to Biswell and the Foundation. These works give a sense of the dizzyingly wide range of Burgess’s fiction, which extends far beyond the better-known terrain of the social and verbal comedy to be found in the early Malayan trilogy and Enderby novels, the dangerous inventiveness of A Clockwork Orange (1962) and the ambition of his late masterpiece, Earthly Powers (1980).
Surprise, surprise …
… How criminals get illegal guns from other criminals - Washington Times.
Imagine that. Criminals are disinclined to obtain guns legally.
Fabulously gifted …
… The real Don Shirley | About Last Night.
… I never saw Don Shirley play again, and when I read about Green Book last fall, it was the first time I’d thought of him in years. I wish our paths had crossed in later life: I would have liked to tell him what it meant for me to see him perform in Smalltown in 1969. Perhaps it would have pleased him, for he died in semi-obscurity, his great talent all but forgotten.
An artist's eye …
… ‘Lock him in a motel and he’d do something astonishing’: Hockney on the genius of Van Gogh | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Photographs of those fields around Arles that Van Gogh painted wouldn’t interest us much. It’s a rather boring, flat landscape. Vincent makes us see a great deal more than the camera could. With a lot of his work, most people who actually saw the subject would think it was incredibly uninteresting. If you’d locked Van Gogh in the dullest motel room in America for a week, with some paints and canvases, he’d have come out with astonishing paintings and drawings of a rundown bathroom or a frayed carton. Somehow he’d be able to make something of it. I think Van Gogh could draw anything and make it enthralling…
Appreciation …
… Dana Gioia on Twitter: "In my opinion, Morten Lauridsen is the greatest living choral composer. I'm honored we've worked together as much as we have. Here is a video of my poem "Prayer", first recited as a poem and then performed as a song. https://t.co/oGo0Auq9L3", (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I like Morten Lauridsen's music, but I also like Harold Boatrite's. Here's some of his choral works:
I like Morten Lauridsen's music, but I also like Harold Boatrite's. Here's some of his choral works:
Something to think on …
A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that... he is going to be a beginner all his life.
— R. G. Collingwood, born on this date in 1889
Blogging note …
I have to take off shortly for a doctor's appointment, and this afternoon I have to take Debbie to one. So blogging promises to be spotty.
The language no one speaks …
… Poetry Daily: Silent Trades, by Cynthia Arrieu-King. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Happy birthday …
… Love by James Russell Lowell - Poems | Academy of American Poets. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Rus notes that today marks the bicentenary pf Lowell's birth.
Turns of phrase …
… ‘Wit’s End’ Review: You’ve Got to Be Kidding - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mr. Geary considers punning “at once the most profound and the most pedestrian example of wit at work.” In the eyes of its detractors, the pun is a means of derailing intelligent conversation—a dollop of glibness that stalls debate or the equivalent of a drunk friend certain that impudence is eloquence. But Mr. Geary is having none of this: “Puns point to the essence of all true wit—the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time.”
Surroundings …
… What I want from modern architecture | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Our need for belonging is part of what we are and it is the true foundation of aesthetic judgment. Lose sight of it and we risk building an environment in which function triumphs over all other values, the aesthetic included. It is not that there is a war of styles — any style can prove acceptable if it generates a real settlement, and the point is recognized by a great range of contemporary architects, and not only by those committed to some traditional grammar. The issue is no longer about style wars but about a growing recognition of the deep truth that we build in order to belong. Many committed modernists begin from this truth — for example, Alain de Botton in The Architecture of Happiness and Rowan Moore in Why We Build. Among the new settlements that are proving popular there are as many built in polite modernist styles as there are in some kind of traditional vernacular. The important point is that all of us, the homeless and the disadvantaged as much as those who have invested their savings in a property, wish for a house that is also a home.
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Q&A …
… Mrs. ‘Stoner’ Speaks: An Interview with Nancy Gardner Williams. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He had a big voice. And when he was in high school, he got a job as a radio announcer. Then he took some further radio training, so when he enlisted in the Army Air Forces, they immediately sent him for more training, and he became a radio operator on a C-45, a trip and surveillance plane. So that’s what he did during the war, in China, Burma, and India. He was shot down. The plane was flying very low and zipped along the top of the trees, and finally, gravity brought it all the way down. And John found himself sitting outside the plane. He didn’t know whether he had taken himself out or been thrown out of the plane, but he and the two other men who had been in the front of the plane survived and the five men in the back died. That fact haunted him all his life. How come I lived and they died? When I first knew him, he had nightmares, he had recurrences of malaria, and that was fifteen years after the war. The nightmares subsided with time, but he still had occasional ones. It never went away. Two and a half years of killing, killing, and killing. It never went away.
Remembering …
… Mary Oliver obituary | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Here is a review I wrote of one of her collections.
Here is a review I wrote of one of her collections.
Torn asunder …
… Poem of the Week: ‘The Roman Villa’ – TheTLS. (Hat tips to Dave Lull and Rus Bowden.)
The triumph of the humorless …
… Gettysburg College trustee resigns over yearbook photo in Nazi costume.
Apparently, everyone has forgotten that Colonel Klink was played by Werner Klemperer, who was born into a Jewish family, as was John Banner, who played Sergeant Schultz. Werner Klemperer was the son of the conductor Otto Klemperer. Oh, and Hogan's Heroes was a comedy. It was quite popular in its day, and no one rubbing elbows with sanity could have taken it for being sympathetic to Nazism. Does anyone today study the past for any reason other than to determine that it was inferior to our wondrous times?
Something to think on …
You must be patient, you must wait for the eye of the soul to be formed in you. Religious truth is reached, not by reasoning, but by an inward perception. Anyone can reason; only disciplined, educated, formed minds can perceive.
— John Henry Newman, born on this date in 1801
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Listen in …
… Episode 308 – James Oseland – The Virtual Memories Show.
“I think of myself as a journalist first and foremost, someone who’s always reporting, always trying to find out what’s beneath that layer that we think is the final one.”
Mystery …
… R.T.’s Marginalia : King Lear — grappling with the ineffable.
I have long thought that the key to Lear is found in the words Kent utters near the very end:
I have long thought that the key to Lear is found in the words Kent utters near the very end:
| I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; | |
| My master calls me, I must not say no. |
Hmm …
… Dazzling essays from flyover country: A review of Meghan O'Gieblyn. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There are two conditions Meghan O'Gieblyn can't escape: Christianity and Midwesternness.I didn’t grow up in the Midwest, but I have spent a good of bit of time there and am very fond of it. But I have never felt “an existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still” while there. Also, my experience of Christianity is not that of an Evangelical. So I don’t quite get the reviewer’s enthusiasm.
Master of self-caricature …
… The Man Who Wasn’t Gershwin - Commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
To read about Levant is to be struck by how his seeming compulsion to blurt the details of his mental illnesses into the nearest microphone foreshadowed the modern-day “oversharers” who chronicle each twist and turn of their private lives. Even so, there was more to him than his madness, and the story of his career as a musician, sometime actor, and media figure avant la lettre will be of interest to anyone curious about what it meant to be famous in America at midcentury.I enjoyed watching him on the Paar show.
Hmm …
… Digging Up Diderot | The Hudson Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In a time of religious and political intolerance, it is easy to be grateful for the Enlightenment, even with its subsequent violent idealisms. Jefferson said every generation needs its revolution, but that puts a lot of strain on the world. We need a break from it all, and surely the intellectual brilliance of figures from Newton and Locke to Diderot shouldn’t be blamed for the Reign of Terror.True, up to a point. But ideas — even those born of intellectual brilliance — do have consequences. The problem with theology, for instance, is that it is not the same thing as faith.
Saving grace …
… Fierce Velleity: Poetry as Antidote to Acedia | Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The alternative to seeing the world as given, Wilbur goes on to suggest, is to agree with Satan, the father of lies, that it is a “prison.” Wilbur names Satan the “arch-negator,” thereby expressing his agreement with Augustine that evil is a privation or negation of the good. And while a fib told to make a social gathering more interesting seems a far cry from Satan’s lie that led to the banishment from Eden, both stem from a dissatisfaction, a sense that the world is tiresome. Yet Wilbur claims that what we perceive as “nothing” is in fact “something missed.”
Something to think on …
The modern state no longer has anything but rights; it does not recognize duties any more.
— Georges Bernanos, born on this date in 1888
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Master class …
… Hemingway's Writing Tip That Will Save You Time and Energy | Inc.com. (Hat tip, Jon Caroulis.)
Hmm …
… In Praise of the Long Sentence. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The quote from Pynchon reminds me of why I have always found Pynchon unreadable, but I don't get the author's argument that Kermode was wrong to call it a sentence. In the schools I went to a sentence was a complete thought with a subject and a predicate that began with a capital letter and ended with a period. There were simple sentences, compound sentences, and complex sentences. There were also run-on sentences, but I don't think Pynchon's falls into that category, since his punctuation and conjunctions seem in place.
I think sentences should be like the porridge in Goldilocks — just right.
The quote from Pynchon reminds me of why I have always found Pynchon unreadable, but I don't get the author's argument that Kermode was wrong to call it a sentence. In the schools I went to a sentence was a complete thought with a subject and a predicate that began with a capital letter and ended with a period. There were simple sentences, compound sentences, and complex sentences. There were also run-on sentences, but I don't think Pynchon's falls into that category, since his punctuation and conjunctions seem in place.
I think sentences should be like the porridge in Goldilocks — just right.
Both recommended, one highly…
… Siris: Charles Williams, War in Heaven; The Place of the Lion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
These are two I haven't read. I must find the time, while I still have time.
Icy perfection …
… Osip Mandelstam’s Selected Poems, Translated by Alistair Noon | Friday Pick | B O D Y. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Translators of Mandelstam tread on thin ice: any false step creates cracks. Noon’s method for avoiding this is to preserve the formal features of the poems rather than finding the exact corresponding expression. This does not mean that Noon’s translations are not precise. On the contrary, they are very precise, but in their own specific way. In most cases, Noon preserves the rhyme and the rhythm of the originals, but he himself is a poet, and often it seems that his own poetic sensibility stands behind certain choices. A translator is always an active interpreter of the poet translated.
In case you wondered …
… Do We Write Differently on a Screen? | The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I write with whatever is at hand. I usually have a notebook and pen with me when I go out. I usually have my iPad with me as well.I'm glad I don't have to use a typewriter and Wite-Out anymore. I do my writing in my head.
I write with whatever is at hand. I usually have a notebook and pen with me when I go out. I usually have my iPad with me as well.I'm glad I don't have to use a typewriter and Wite-Out anymore. I do my writing in my head.
Hear, hear …
… Not Merely the Finest TV Documentary Series Ever Made - Issue 7: Waste - Nautilus. (Hat tip, dave Lull.)
If you want to know how bison, chimpanzees, or birds lived 10,000 years ago you need only study how they live now (in the wild). But for humans, you would learn nothing by that method. Ten thousand years ago we lived in very different surroundings, made a living in different ways, had quite different economic and family relationships, and pursued different objectives. In all these respects, we were worse off—in some of them brutally, almost unimaginably worse2—than we are now. In another thousand years, or even a hundred, we may have changed as much again. If we then look back to try to understand the changes, we shall not find the explanation written in our genes.
Things to lighten your mood …
… 75 of the Greatest P.G. Wodehouse Quotes to Lighten Your Mood. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.
— André Gide, who died on this date in 1951
Monday, February 18, 2019
Mark thy calendar ….
… Annual Bryn Mawr Wellesley Book Sale set for March 15-19 - Planet Princeton. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr, who notes, “Started in 1931 — at 80,000 volumes, still going strong.”)
Favorites …
… Uncensored John Simon: Great Performances. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As I look back, I encounter what may be the most often lauded performance by an American actress in all time, Laurette Taylor’s as Amanda Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie” (1944). As it happens, I saw it and liked it, but was perhaps too young to sufficiently appreciate it, or able to recall it now. The role certainly boasts writing good enough to attract fine actresses, but none other has achieved comparable glory in it, adulation even on hearsay from persons who weren’t there. And let us not forget that Julie Haydon, as daughter Laura, was pretty great too, but is not half so often cited.
Not what you might think …
… Forgotten Poems # 56: "The Voice of Spring," by Felicia Hemans.
Mortality baffles Spring in this poem, because what can the season of rebirth know about death? And that's surprising and interesting because the poem has initially led us to imagine Spring as human-like, with feet and a voice. We might expect human emotions and human sympathy to go along with all the personification. And yet Spring can't grasp the human interlocutors' grief for "the loved who have left," taking several stanzas to even realize that "Ye have look'd on death since ye met me last!" and then abruptly leaving as soon as that realization sinks in: "For me, I depart to a brighter shore, / Ye are mark'd by care, ye are mine no more." Even the poem's gestures toward a vision of heaven — "a land where there falls no blight" — ring a bit hollow, since Spring can go there at will but the grieving humans can't.
Unintended consequences …
… Racist History Books Led To Today's Black History Education (VIDEO). (Hat tip, Rs Bowden.)
Something to think on …
Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. 2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. 3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, born on this date in 1883
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Locked from the inside
… Review: To hell and back | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In a 1999 address, Pope John Paul II said hell “is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life.” Hell is the “state of those who definitively reject the Father’s mercy
Q&A …
… Mary Beard interview: ‘Feelings of anxiety tend to make you shout very loud,’ says the classicist. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… with populism, I think one has to be a bit careful of always saying that’s a bad thing. You can also say populism is democracy and it’s a very elite term. But you can see how, within cultures with very strongly entrenched elites, the populist leader manages to find a way around. And you can see that in Trump’s use of Twitter, [which] has striking similarities with Julius Caesar’s direct appeal to the Roman people.
Hmm …
… Sam Harris, the new atheist with a spiritual side | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Its uniqueness is a selling point of the book, which is subtitled: The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution. That may be a little hyperbolic, but it’s true that the gathering has gained a certain historical significance, not to mention mythology. The four men – or should we, in the era of identity politics, say the four white, heterosexual men – have become heroes, less to an atheist movement than to an outspokenly rationalist one.
Well, rationalism also involves an act of faith, since one cannot use reason to prove that reason is the only way of arriving at truth. Belief can be a problem, that's for sure, but there's no way of getting around the need for faith of some sort. I myself do not have sufficient to faith to think that being is a fortuitous contraption.
Take the test …
… Would you pass the U.S. citizenship test?
I got one wrong. I picked when the Constitution was adopted instead of when it was written. Dumb.
I got one wrong. I picked when the Constitution was adopted instead of when it was written. Dumb.
Well, maybe …
… Muscle by Alan Trotter review – a new take on noir | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
When a writer enters this literary territory, they are instantly going toe-to-toe with Raymond Chandler. You need strength, then technique, but you also need grace. The first part of the noir sentence is easy enough to pull off: it gets action done minimally but elegantly. It’s the set-up punch: “His moustache twitched …” Any writer can write that. But then you get to the pivotal word “like”. After this, you’re on your own. You have to deliver the follow-through. Trotter’s moustache-twitching sentence continues, “… like a car veering into oncoming traffic”. It’s balanced, light on its toes – a sweet punch. Chandler might win on points, but this fight could go the distance.I don't know. I have a hard time visualizing a mustache twitching like a car, because I have a hard time visualizing a car twitching like a mustache. But that may just be me.
Something to think on …
To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.
— Michael Novak, who died on this date in 2017
Inquirer reviews …
… ‘People Kissing’: The history of the kiss in photos, or vice versa.
… ‘I Am God’ by Giacomo Sartori: A cranky, vulnerable deity not above a little slapstick.
… ‘Bowlaway’ by Elizabeth McCracken: The subject is love, because the subject is bowling.
… ‘Fryderyk Chopin’ by Alan Walker: Best bio yet of ‘the poet of sweet sound’.
… ‘I Am God’ by Giacomo Sartori: A cranky, vulnerable deity not above a little slapstick.
… ‘Bowlaway’ by Elizabeth McCracken: The subject is love, because the subject is bowling.
… ‘Fryderyk Chopin’ by Alan Walker: Best bio yet of ‘the poet of sweet sound’.
Saturday, February 16, 2019
An event like no other …
… High Lonesome: A Dispatch from the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… cowboy poetry is more contemporary than it wants you to believe. Hal Cannon—folklorist, cowboy poetry anthologist, and one of the Gathering’s founders—tells attendees in his keynote, “National Cowboy Gathering, here’s to the next 35. Even as we count the years, you exist outside of time.”
Here is my account of a visit there some years back.
Hmm …
… Peter Jackson’s Cartoon War. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, I am sufficiently literate historically to know that the Great War was anything but, except in terms of its unprecedented scale. But I don't think that is any reason for not seeing Jackson's film. We all know the original films were produced by the British military. (Recall the reaction to John Singer Sargent's painting Gassed.) To bring the world and the life recorded therein into vivid color seems to me to make the participants less distant, both in time and place, and that means to make them more human. Of course, war is horrible. No news there. And World War I was particularly horrible. But to deny that there nothing noble happens during war is as purblind as the myth Hedges is denouncing. The real tragedy is that, sometimes, war is necessary. Should World War II not have been fought?
PostScript: I just came from seeing Jackson's film and, in my view, Hedges's article is a crock. I think They Shall Not Grow Old may well be the most terrifying film I have ever seen. Yes, the voices of the veterans at the beginning do record the enthusiasm they felt before their enlistment, and yes, they seem to have felt that what they did in some way proved worthwhile. But maybe Hedges should have stuck around for the rest of the movie. Guess he missed one of those voices near the end talking about the pointlessness of war. Jackson's film takes World War I out of the history books and makes it a real live experience. I would like to have Hedges explain just what is so jingoistic about the ghastly shots of the dead and wounded, and the incessant pounding of the guns. Talk about letting your ideological viewpoint get in the way of your eyesight.
The more people who see Jackson's film the better, I think.
The more people who see Jackson's film the better, I think.
Post bumped.
Blogging note …
I'm taking one of my step-grandsons to see They Shall Not Grow Old this afternoon. Blogging will resume whenever I get back.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes …
… Generation next: the rise – and rise – of the new poets | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The world is changing; mediums are evolving; and the language and content of poetry is shifting, too, to accommodate this. So why the anxiety? Well, to paraphrase William Gibson, the future may be here, but it’s not evenly distributed. For all the talk of a poetry boom, this appears to be confined primarily to poetry’s new wave; the traditional market remains challenging. Although Paterson reports a rise in poetry sales across the board at Picador, he acknowledges “it hasn’t quite been the tide that’s lifted all boats”. At Carcanet, meanwhile, director Michael Schmidt believes “the ‘boom’ is based largely on poetry which originates in the social media, where would-be writers develop a substantial following”.
If you say so …
… Book World: The 23 most unforgettable last sentences in fiction - Alton Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
They know enough who know how to learn.
— Henry Adams, born on this date in 1838
Who knew?
… Donald Westlake's Spiritual Side | CrimeReads. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is not a book that will end with the monks becoming an itinerant mendicant order. The latter, though, is far from obvious, and in resolving it Westlake shows that he takes seriously the idea of Benedict’s vocation. From a world of structure and calm, Benedict finds himself thrust into a realm of almost infinite possibilities, with all the temptations and terror that implies. His journey through it, while never presented with the seriousness of a proper dark night of the soul, is handled with grace, care, and a convincing understanding of the rewards and costs of seclusion and devotion.
Reviewing a review …
… Rybczynski reviews Dystopia | Architecture Here and There. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)It may be understandable, given the intense pressure on critics, to parrot the conventional wisdom about modern architecture. Maybe that explains why Rybczynski’s rebuttal to Dystopia‘s powerful but rarely heard explanation for the rise of modern architecture is so lame. But he makes up for it, big-time, by returning, in the last segment of his review, to the most vital truth: that traditional architecture’s replacement by modern architecture was very bad for the world. That took courage. Read the review.
Philadelphia, of course, boasts one of modern architecture's successes: The PSFS Building.
Friday, February 15, 2019
Bad career move …
… Disgraced South Korean poet Ko Un loses defamation suit - Channel NewsAsia. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Poetry and war games …
… In 'Kill Class,' A Poet Aims To Map The Distance Between Perspectives : NPR. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The idea is to combine a nonfiction writer's practice of reportage and analysis with a lyric poet's first-person subjectivity. It's a tough balance to strike, and one that calls into questions the kinds of truth-telling to which poetry is suited.
Hmm …
… On Belief Without Faith.
It is my contention that a large proportion of our clergy, and of our laity, at every level, have undertaken to believe in things they have no faith in. What is the proportion I do not know – the gathering of statistics for what cannot be counted is another sign of the times.
Blogging note …
I have to take my wife to a doctor's appointment. I may be able to do some blogging in the waiting room. We shall see.
Tracking the decline …
… How a Dispute Over the N-Word Became a Dispiriting Farce - The Chronicle of Higher Education.
This is not a case of a professor calling someone "nigger." This is a case of a professor exploring the thinking and expression of a writer who voiced the word to challenge racism. This is not a case of a professor negligently throwing about a term that’s long been deployed to terrorize, shame, and denigrate African-Americans. This is a case of a professor who, attentive to the sensibilities of his students, sought to encourage reflection about their anxieties and beliefs.
Texting and fiction …
… “Closer to poetry”: the art of texting in novels | Prospect Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In an interview with Bookforum about Leaving the Atocha Station, Ben Lerner said: “in a way [digital] chat is closer to poetry than prose in so far as the fragmentation of syntax bears an emotional charge”. This is a striking suggestion. When you think of modernist poetry, with its shards of speech and broken lines, the similarities are hard to deny.
Life in snow country …
… Sam Cook column: Survival in the season of deep white | Duluth News Tribune. (Hat tip, Dave Lull — who lives there.)
Amazingly, for all our whimpering, this isn't anything like a record snowfall year — yet. As of Wednesday, we were at just under 68 inches for the season, and average is 58 inches at this point. We average 86 inches of snow per winter in Duluth, with a record of 135.4 inches in the winter of 1995-96. Raise your hand if you remember that winter of 1995-96. Oh — you can't raise your hand because of an old shoveling injury to your rotator cuff that year? Sorry.
Something to think on …
Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it.
— Alfred North Whitehead, born on this date in 1861