Sunday, March 31, 2019

More about a classic series …

… Paul Davis On Crime: A Look Back At Rod Serling's Classic TV Series 'The Twilight Zone'.

Blogging note …

Debbie and I are heading out to a concert shortly, and after that are having dinner with friends. Blogging will resume whenever.

Anniversary …

… RT’s Marginalia : Octavio Paz — birthday and more.

Check this out …

 Replay: John Gielgud in Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version | About Last Night.

Finding his place …

… Isaac Babel in Black Mask Magazine – Boris Dralyuk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)

Hmm …

… Harold Bloom: Anti-Inkling? - Jewish Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As Bloom never clearly defines “Narcissism” or “Promethianism,” nor explains his assertions by offering examples from any of the authors concerned, it is not entirely clear what he means here. Evacuated of its gassiness, his argument amounts to a preference for romantic rebellion to religious tradition.

Pulling no punches …

… Canadian Poetry: A Long Way Down a Very Short Street > David Solway. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

With only a few notable exceptions, our scribbling classes favor talking over singing, replication rather than ceremony, kenosis in lieu of kerygma, mere dabbling over real innovation. Mirroring ordinary experience in commonplace diction, such work enacts a precise reversal of Stéphane Mallarmé’s celebrated quest for the crystallization of essence and nonreferential transcendence—his “l’absence de tous bouquets”—but it is too poorly armed to justify even in theory the mere reproduction of fact and the lexical trek to ostensible significance which it proposes. Moreover, whatever theory it draws on to justify its practice is invariably borrowed, from the Surrealists, Oulipo and the Imagists, from the New York School, from Black Mountain, from the Language School of the 1970s and Charles Bernstein’s A Poetics, or simply from the airy proclamations of the belletristic Zeitgeist. This derivativeness is the moving force and principle even among the putative avant-garde who profess to renew the idiom and renovate perception.


Inquirer reviews

… At age 100, Lawrence Ferlinghetti lets it rip in ‘Little Boy’.

… ‘First’: The principled, flinty, historic rise of Sandra Day O’Connor.

… ‘Fay Wray and Robert Riskin’: Lifelong love between ‘King Kong’ heroine and ‘It Happened One Night’ author.

Anniversary …

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on this date in 1685.

Something to think on …

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
— John Fowles, born on this date in 1926

Saturday, March 30, 2019

No mere courtroom drama …

… RT’s Marginalia : Tolkien’s Cautionary Tale.

Miraculous …

… How Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' Saved A Political Prisoner's Life In Somalia : Goats and Soda : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… one night, eight months into his prison sentence, as the guard is passing just out of earshot, an inmate in the next cell whispers to him. He says, "Learn ABC through the wall."
"I did not understand," says Mohamed. He looked at the wall between them. Then he heard some knocking.
It was a code.

Anna Karenina is more than 800 pages, about 350,000 words, nearly 2 million letters, each letter a set of taps. So the doctor wraps a bedsheet around his hand to protect it.
"So then I started knocking, and he started listening."

His one and only …

… Zealotry of Guerin: Narcissus (Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) Sonnet #450.

In case you wondered …

 ‘The Twilight Zone’: Here’s Why We Still Care - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Jon Caroulis.)

Sad and beautiful …

… Hell in a Bucket, Life in a Cup | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Something to think on …

Days begin and end in the dead of night. They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which lead to ends — arrow, road, man's life on earth. They are shaped round, in the manner of things eternal and stable — sun, world, God.
— Jean Giono, born on this date in 1895

Friday, March 29, 2019

Edvard Munch...

...A reassessment of the Scream

No lie there …

… It’s Not Just Ilhan Omar: Anti-Semitism Is Rife on the Left, and Left-Wing Jewish Groups Are Selling Out the Jewish Community and Israel by Ignoring It.

Maybe it’s because the left has become increasingly anti-Semitic. But I’m just an old-fashioned never-again Gentile.

Horse’s ass alert

… Nicolas Cage files for annulment after just four days of marriage | Film | The Guardian.

Well, I can certainly see why no woman in her right mind would want to have anything to do with this clown. 

Something to think on …

The concept, the label, is perpetually hiding from us all the nature of the real.
— Joyce Cary, who died on this date in 1957

Time for a chuckle …

… Paul Davis On Crime: A Little Humor: Delivering The Baby.

Amen, brother …

… My Faith: What I learned from my 46-day beer-only fast – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The experience proved that the origin story of monks fasting on doppelbock was not only possible, but probable. It left me with the realization that the monks must have been keenly aware of their own humanity and imperfections. In order to refocus on God, they engaged this annual practice not only to endure sacrifice, but to stress and rediscover their own shortcomings in an effort to continually refine themselves.

This bears watching …

… Joel Weishaus "Leaving the Anthropocene: A Transdisciplinary Poetics of Late Style".

Leaving the Anthropocene, is a work of Digital Literary Art that begins with the premise that we didn’t enter the Anthropocene in 1950, as the International Union of Geological Sciences contends; or during the Industrial Revolution; or when the first nuclear device exploded; but during the Upper Paleolithic, when hominid culture ignited a “creative explosion” that accelerated its modification of the planet.

Hard truths …

 Paul Davis On Crime: My Washington Times Piece On Illegal Immigrants And The Criminals Who Prey On Them.

Anniversary …

… RT’s Marginalia : R. S. Thomas — birthday celebration.



Thomas is always worth reading. I do so regularly.

Some music …

William Walton was born on this date in 1902

Not what you might think …

… The Neo-Regionalist Moment: Hearing the Emerging Voices of the American Center - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The Midwestern studies wave, in other words, is building. O’Gieblyn, Smarsh, and Markley are riding it. The region, after a half-century of neglect, is having its moment. Even the coasts are starting to notice.

Thursday, March 28, 2019

A Passion...

...For poetry

Cultural Infrastructure...

...Of London

In case you wondered …

… Why good books could not deter bad leaders | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

What does this mean for our understanding of literature itself? At the very least, the fact that some of history’s worst mass murderers were avid bibliophiles should kill any lingering notion that there is something innately ennobling about the book. Literature is far too ambiguous for that. We take what we want from it and dictators are no different. When Lenin wrote his essay on the religious-vegetarian-pacifist Tolstoy, he focused on the prophet’s “pent-up hatred”. When Mussolini read Dante, he enjoyed the poet’s invective best of all. 

A fond wish …

I Don’t Want to Be a Spice Store,” by Christian Wiman | The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Grotesque villains …

… Paul Davis On Crime: My Washington Times Review Of 'Hunting LeRoux: The Inside Story Of The DEA Takedown Of A Criminal Genius And His Empire'.

The rustle of spring …

… RT’s Marginalia : William Wordsworth — Lines Written in Early Spring.

Eager to disappear …

… Elizabeth Jennings and the Poetry of Faith – Catholic World Report. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

More than Philip Larkin or even John Betjeman (both good popular poets), Jennings was the darling of the general reader, or what Samuel Johnson called the common reader, by whose “common sense… uncorrupted by literary prejudice… must finally be decided all poetical honours.” Certainly, Michael Schmidt was right to claim that his bestselling Carcanet author was “the most unconditionally loved writer” of her generation. Writing of the things that preoccupy most readers – family, faith, love, loss, illness, hope, atonement, redemption – she not only won her readers’ trust but their affection. In light of the many false reputations that disfigure our literary landscape, Jennings’ unfashionably popular work is tonic, especially since so much of its appeal derives from its Catholic character.

Something to think on …

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, born on this date in 1936

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Some music …

Vincent D'Indy was born on this date in 1851.

Good …

… New law gives Kentucky college students ‘broadest possible latitude’ for free speech - FIRE.

Titania the Great …

… Laughter the best medicine | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In the essay “Why I’m No Longer Taking to Men About Feminism,” McGrath drops feminist bombs all over the patriarchy: “I would rather be boiled alive in a giant crucible of yak’s piss than have a man look at me without my consent.” She bemoans the fact that “fourth-wave feminism has yet to eradicate male sexuality in its entirety.” (Give it time, Titania!) And she gets right to the heart of the matter — the most important tenet of the fourth wave, the commandment that all woke scolds must abide by: “I believe all women. All of them. Under all circumstances.” The very notion that one half (the superior half) of the human population would be capable of deceit is the most hateful and toxic idea that still gets disseminated through our culture. McGrath knows this. She is trying to save us from the tyranny of being sceptical and asking for evidence.

In case you wondered …

… The lasting worth of 'worthless' books | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… the more books we read, the clearer it becomes that there is no book, however bad or merely mediocre it may be, that has nothing to say to us, for every book tells us something. Thus reading a book may be a relative waste of time, for we might be doing something better or more useful than reading it, such as reading a better book. But it is never a waste of time in the absolute sense, at least for the inquisitive or reflective mind. For the uninquisitve or unreflective mind, of course, Armageddon itself would be dull and without interest or lessons.

Some kind of magic …

… Nigeness: Cather: What's to Say? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… the transition from the one Thea Kronborg to the other seemed to me entirely believable: the seeds of what she was to become – the fierce determination, the ability to harden her heart, the romantic urges, the soaring aspirations – were all present in the young girl. The later Thea is certainly at times unsympathetic, but that, for me, is one of the strengths of Cather's heroines, that they are always portrayed in the round, with all their faults – and yet they are in the end quite extraordinarily lovable.
I read The Song of the Lark last year and I completely agree. I read a couple of other Cather novels last year as well. I think she is the great American novelist.

Appreciation

… Charles McCarry, "Poet Laureate” of American Spy Writers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Bearing witness …

… Medieval Eucharistic Piety, And My Own: They Recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread | Eve Tushnet. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

For me these are among the strongest points of the Catholic claim: God coming to us physically, because the body is beautiful and made for union; God’s rescue coming even when we sin, even when we are betrayed by sinful leaders; God’s rescue coming because we can’t rescue ourselves, as any fule kno. (The latter two aspects of the Eucharist render subordinate the claims of all human authorities, including priests and people believed to be holy.)
Again, I must repeat what Karl Rahner said,  "What Christ gives us is quite explicit if his own words are interpreted according to their Aramaic meaning. The expression ‘This is my Body’ means this is myself."

I have written something about this myself:

Emmaus

And it came to pass, whilst he was at table with them, he took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight. 

He appeared to us that day to disappear 
The moment that he broke the bread,
A moment still encompassing our lives,
Drawing to itself, like a magnet at once
Minute and infinitely strong, our present,
Past and future, so that the choking dust
Along the road, the splinters on the benches
At the inn, the glare and scorching of the sun 
That afternoon have shaped and shaded
Every moment ever since. He disappeared
Into the moment, into the bread, into us,
Nourishing time with its absence

Ah, yes …

… The Tyranny of the Present – A Sunday of Liberty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

What it is …

… RT’s Marginalia — Americn Poetry.

Something to think on …

Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.
— Shusako Endo, born on this date in 1923

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Sad news …

… RT’s Marginalia : Endgame — no curtain call.

Good news …

… I’m still here | About Last Night

It happens that I’d never been in an auto accident before. What surprised me most about the experience was how loud it was. The crunching sound that you hear when another car runs into you is really quite overwhelming.
I’ve only been  in one myself, and I don’t remember the sound, probably because I was too busy putting my head through the windscreen of the Austin-Healy I was in. Very good to know Terry’s OK.

I hope they sue …

… Instapundit — “EVERYONE IS WELCOME! EXCEPT YOU…”: San Antonio has decided to ban Chick-fil-A from its airport.

Appreciation …

… RT’s Marginalia : Robert Frost —a birthday, a poem, and an invitation.

Wondrous …

… Nigeness: 'A fact as eerie as a dream...' (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Something to think on …

If you call 'religious' a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.
— Viktor Frankl, born on this date in 1905

In case you wondered …

… What happens after rich kids bribe their way into college? I teach them | Anonymous | US news | The Guardian.

Every unqualified student admitted to an elite university ends up devouring hugely disproportionate amounts of faculty time and resources that rightfully belong to all the students in class. By monopolizing faculty time to help compensate for their lack of necessary academic skills, unqualified students can also derail faculty research that could benefit everyone, outside the university as well as within it. To save themselves and their careers, many of my colleagues have decided that it is no longer worth it to uphold high expectations in the classroom. “Lower your standards,” they advise new colleagues. “The fight isn’t worth it, and the administration won’t back you up if you try.”

Blogging note …

I have to take Debbie to a doctor's appointment. So blogging will once again be spotty for awhile.

Faith and form …

… Formal Salutations: New & Selected Poems by William Baer - Angelus News - Multimedia Catholic News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Baer has even identified a particularly religious element to his devotion to form over free verse. “There are laws that underpin everything,” he has said, “and I’ve always felt that formal poetry is a beautiful reflection of God’s universe.” 

Remembering …

… Fire and Ice by Robert Frost - Poems | Academy of American Poets. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)



Robert Frost was born on this date in 1874.

And the winners are …

… Winning Poems for January 2019: IBPC.



The Judge's Page.



(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Listen in …

 The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: James King on one of Canada's greatest publishers, Jack McClelland.

Monday, March 25, 2019

The need to lighten up …

… “Cheering as the Summer Weather”: On the Primal Appeal of Light Verse - Los Angeles Review of Books.  (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… some readers and critics maintain that light verse isn’t real poetry. It’s kids’ stuff, doggerel, greeting-card fodder, unhappy echoes of Richard Armour, whose whimsical riffs appeared in Sunday newspaper supplements starting in the Great Depression. Definitions of light verse are notoriously slippery. Connoisseurs and detractors alike defer to US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s threshold test for obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” As to the charge of frivolity, the poet Bruce Bennett notes that the best writers of light verse “not only verge on seriousness; at times they embrace it.”
Mention of the Ladies Home Journal reminds me of Elizabeth McFarland, whose was that magazine's poetry editor for more than a decade. Here is piece I wrote about her.

Time for a laugh …

… Paul Davis On Crime: A Little Humor: Jumping Drunk.

Listen in …

… Episode 313 – Nathan Englander – The Virtual Memories Show.

“Why I like writing is: it always feels like the first book.”

Sounds right to me …

… Iran: Lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh Saved My Life.We Must Save Hers | Time.

In defense of archaism …

… Kristin Lavransdatter : Essays in Idleness. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Get over this adolescent prejudice against archaism, and an ocean of literary experience opens to you. Among other things, you will learn to distinguish one kind of archaism from another, as one kind of sea from another should be recognized by a yachtsman.
But more: a particular style of language is among the means by which an accomplished novelist breaks the reader in. There are many other ways: for instance by showering us with proper nouns through the opening pages, to slow us down, and make us work on the family trees, or mentally squint over local geography. I would almost say that the first thirty pages of any good novel will be devoted to shaking off unwanted readers; or if they continue, beating them into shape. We are on a voyage, and the sooner the passengers get their sea legs, the better life will be all round.

Birthday — and more …

… RT’s Marginalia : Flannery O’Connor and my soul's struggle with what O’Connor called the "stinking mad shadow of Jesus."

Good luck …

… Art Crime — FBI Seeks to Identify Rightful Owners in Cultural Artifacts Case. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

The seized artifacts and human remains were part of a much larger collection amassed by Don Miller, a renowned scientist who helped build the first atomic bomb and a globetrotting amateur archaeologist whose passion for collecting sometimes crossed the line into illegality and outright looting.
For more than seven decades, Miller unearthed cultural artifacts from North America, South America, Asia, the Caribbean, and in Indo-Pacific regions such as Papua New Guinea. A Ming Dynasty vase or intricate Italian mosaic might be on display in his home alongside Civil War and Revolutionary War items.

In case you wondered …

… Poem: The Manager’s Tips for Working at the San Francisco Restaurant and Bar - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Celebrating a mentor …

… Astrophysicist and Author Janna Levin Reads “Berryman” by W.S. Merwin: Some of the Finest and Most Soul-Salving Advice on How to Stay Sane as an Artist – Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)



"I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers."

Better late …

… Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years | Science | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

…  the excavation of what has been called Ship 17 has revealed a vast crescent-shaped hull and a previously undocumented type of construction involving thick planks assembled with tenons – just as Herodotus observed, in describing a slightly smaller vessel.

Something to think on …

God is closer to us than water is to a fish.
— Catherine of Siena, born on this date in 1347

Hmm …

… Update: The future of books at “The San Francisco Chronicle” | The Book Haven. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

  1. George Says:
    My first comment was a bit flippant. I do read the reviews in the Sunday New York Times and Washington Post, and sometimes the weekday reviews in the former. Yet I rarely read the reviews of fiction, and rarely purchase a book because of a review.
    My choices in books depend less on reviews than on what I might have read in some other book, or what just happens to be on store’s shelf, or what a friend might have given me. Now, that other book might happen to have essays that originally appeared as reviews of a sort: George Garrett on Wright Morris, Hugh Kenner, Randall Jarrell, Guy Davenport, or Clive James on almost anybody. So I guess that at second hand I do in part rely on book reviews. But those are not the only cases in which a book leads one to another, are they?
    Then there is the matter of time. My shelves are not that extensive, yet I imagine that if I were to read only the books on them that I have not read through, and of those only the books in English, I would have enough reading to occupy my home hours for a couple of years at least. I once did a rough estimate of the time to read the books reviewed any Sunday in the New York Times, and figured it as six months. ( https://dc20011.blogspot.com/2011/05/book-review.html).
  2. Ron Charles Says:
    A previous comment about The Washington Post Book World may give a misimpression of our books coverage.
    When the print tabloid edition of Book World was closed, the staff was not affected, and the number of reviews was not reduced. People who read Book World online (that is, *most* people, since the print version of The Post is not available outside the DC area) saw no change at all. Yes, some book reviews moved to the Outlook section, but just as many moved to the Style section, including those by the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda; and a new Books page was added to Sunday Style & Arts. Also, a few years ago we hired a new full-time book critic (Carlos Lozada, who was recently a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). Last year, we increased our Books staff again.
    The Washington Post’s book reviews are as “numerous and authoritative” as ever.

In search of dandies …

… Martin Green’s treasure hunt by David Platzer | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

To Green’s mind, the post-1918 dandies sought to be eternally young men living in a commedia dell’arte world of Pierrots, Harlequins, and Columbines, rather than responsible, mature fathers as their own fathers had been. He notes that his mentor at Cambridge, the stern critic F. R. Leavis, condemned P. G. Wodehouse, beloved of many a dandy and just about everyone else, for popularizing the avoidance of maturity. Leavis was one of Green’s somewhat curiously named group of “decent men,” the others being George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, and even the early Kingsley Amis of Lucky Jim before Amis, too, went dandy, endorsing smart clothes, snuff, and James Bond.

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Looking back — intensely …

… Little Boy turns 100 – Indicative Mood. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

If it makes you feel blue to anticipate the way someone will be remembered while he’s still living, apologies. It’s just that Ferlinghetti turns 100 in March, and he has just put out a new book. He’s calling it a novel but it is clearly also a sort of memoir—a praise-song, a thrashing-about, a recounting of his colorful life—and at his age, it’s hard not to read it as a kind of elegy for someone who is decidedly not! Dead! Yet!

Centenary …

… Happy 100th Birthday Lawrence Ferlinghetti! | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Inquirer reviews …

… ‘The Wolf and the Watchman’ by Niklas Natt och Dag: Dark Scandinavian tale, one of the year’s best.

… Tony Spawforth’s ‘Story of Greece and Rome’: A sweeping tale for readers everywhere.

… ‘Bangkok Wakes to Rain’: A stunning debut novel from Pitchaya Sudbanthad.

Time for a laugh …

Paul Davis On Crime: A Little Humor: Good Sportsmanship.

Q&A …

… An interview with Christian Wiman | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… Life after death. Or maybe life in death is a better way of putting it? I realize it sounds baldly ridiculous when you say it like that, but it’s a feeling that I’ve gotten from some poems. I think it’s part of what led me into poetry—that sense of another life that the poems seem to open up. What’s the Emily Dickinson line? “Memory is a strange Bell—Jubilee, and Knell.” Maybe the book is an attempt to sound that bell.

A vanished neighborhood …

 Legendary Writer Henry Miller Recalls Williamsburg of The 1890s - GreenpointersGreenpointers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Reading Miller’s writings, the neighborhood comes into focus through the eyes of a mischievous young lad who would later be censored by the United States Post Office for his shocking prose. Miller recalled first being rebuked for his language at the police station at Bedford Avenue where he was dragged by the arm one afternoon by a babysitter at the age of 6 or 7 years old; the crime he had committed was to use dirty language in her presence – the first of many times Miller would shock people with his language.

Finale …

 The Final Treasure from the Tolkien Hoard - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Ever since the publication of The Silmarillion in 1977, Tolkien fils has slowly worked through these materials and produced annotated versions of tales taking place long before the events chronicled in The Hobbit (1937) and Lord of the Rings (1954–’55). Now, with nearly 30 works added to his father’s oeuvre, Christopher Tolkien is finished. His service as his father’s literary guardian and interpreter ended last August with the publication of the earliest story of Middle-earth that Tolkien ever wrote, The Fall of Gondolin. “I ‘presumed’ […] that Beren and Lúthien would be my last,” he writes in the new book’s preface, referring to another story that he edited and published in 2017. “I must now say that ‘in my ninety-fourth year The Fall of Gondolin is (indubitably) the last.’”

Vintage commentary …

… The Sacrament of Bingo | National Review(Hat tip, dave Lull.)

Distinctive clarity …

 Sleuths in the Stacks: Shadow of the Raven by David Sundstrand (2007).

Indeed …

… First Known When Lost: Poetry.

Something to think on …

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.
— Malcom Muggeridge, born on this date in 1903

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Ghastly …

… The French Genocide That Has Been Air-Brushed From History - Quillette.

Ghastly …

… The French Genocide That Has Been Air-Brushed From History - Quillette.

A dubious achievement …

A Spy for Stalin(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sorge was, Matthews writes, "a raging intellectual snob," with a German doctorate, who somehow took his ideology in the name of the working class—and his psychological milieu in "the casinos, whorehouses, and dancehalls of pre-war Shanghai and Tokyo." When the SS grew suspicious of Sorge, they sent a man named Josef Albert Meisinger to investigate. Although Meisinger had the nickname "the Butcher of Warsaw" (and pause for a moment to consider what it takes for the SS to label someone a butcher), by the time Sorge was done carousing with the visiting German, Meisinger gave his masters in Berlin a glowing account of a faithful Nazi who was the real intellect behind the German ambassador.

Rolling stones …

… From Picasso to Jarman: new book lifts the lid on the endless appeal of pebbles - The Scotsman. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Whatever we choose to call them, though, there’s no doubt that the small-ish, round-ish pieces of rock that line many of our beaches are of far more interest to human beings than they have any right to be, and in their newly published collaboration, The Book of Pebbles, writer Christopher Stocks and artist Angie Lewin set out to explain why. In the book’s foreword, Lewin, who is based in Edinburgh, explains that her attraction to pebbles has to do with an instinctive sense of aesthetics (“I’m no geologist, but I’m attracted to how they look and feel in the hand.”) She also notes how, viewed out of context, they can act as little portals into a whole scene: “a pebble defines an entire landscape for me,” she writes, “and through them, I try to depict the wild places I love.” As her interest in pebbles has grown, she says, so they have taken up more and more of the foreground in her work, and this is borne out by the linocuts, screenprints, wood engravings and watercolours that illustrate the book: pebbles and plants dominate; the rest of the landscape, if it ap


In case you wondered …

… The Enduring Appeal of Literary Tricksters | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

… tricksters are fixated on crossing and altering boundaries and thieves are known to violate the established boundaries of the law. But when thieves strive for riches or even just the pleasure of getting away with something, they fall short of the trickster who steals to reorder the world and keep it flexible. Based on that criterion, one might suggest Robin Hood as a possibility, since robbing from the rich to give to the poor is an obvious assault on the established order, but an important element of that myth is that he believes his actions are just, and so he fails the test of ambivalence, one of the trickster’s defining features. Satan is also commonly mislabeled as a trickster, though he fails the same important test since he tricks mankind out of hatred.

Light bearers …

… Zealotry of Guerin: The Cave at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Utagawa Hiroshige), Sonnet #449.

Something to think on …

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.
— Friedrich Hayek, who dies on this date in 1992

Worth bearing in mind …

… When They Come for the Jews, They Won't Ask Questions



American Jewry is at a crossroads.  The vast majority of American Jews will continue to cling to their familiar ancestral belief system; it's all they know.  To change now would be to deny everything their family members and they, themselves, have lived for.  But before they bury their heads in the sand once again, they should at least hear these simple truths.  When our enemies came for us during the Holocaust, they did not ask if we were Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or secular Jews.  Neither were they interested in any past service we rendered for the state.  We were Jews.  That was all that mattered.  If history repeats itself, when our enemies come for us once again, they will not ask if we are Israelis or Zionists.  They will not care if we marched in Selma, Alabama; protested against apartheid in South Africa; supported equal rights for women; advocated for the LBGTQ community; and campaigned for Hillary or Bernie.  It will matter that we are Jews.


Readers and their books …

… National Review's Personal Libraries. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Candidate for promotion …

Cardinal Newman: Saint, Theologian, Prose Stylist - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

By the time he wrote the Apologia, Newman had pruned his style of its spectacular elements ….  If you come to the Apologia after just having read the Idea of a University, as I first did years ago, you may be disappointed by the lack of fireworks.  The whole thing is written in black and white and shades of gray, not in Technicolor.  How drab it all seems at first.  But stay with it a while, grow accustomed to its melody, and you soon realize you’re in the presence of another prose masterpiece, though a masterpiece of a very different kind.

Compex narrator, curious events …

… Sleuths in the Stacks: Salt River by James Sallis (2008).

Dr. Johnson and friends …

… The Club’ Review: ‘An Assembly of Good Fellows’ - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Johnson has been accused of speaking less for conversation than for victory. This alone might seem off-putting, were it not that nearly everything he is recorded to have said was so dazzlingly intelligent. He said that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” yet he also said that “the only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.” His put-downs, in person or in print, were definitive. After praising “Paradise Lost,” in his “Lives of the Poets,” he added that “none ever wished it longer than it is.” Of a minor and now forgotten poet named George Stepney, he concluded, in a remark perhaps even more useful when contemplating many of the swollen reputations of our day, “one cannot always find the reason for which the world has sometimes conspired to squander praise.” Politically conservative, he said that “most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.”

Friday, March 22, 2019

Something to think on …

If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.
— Louis L'Amour, born on this date in 1908

Dresden and Vonnegut...

...Fifty years from Slaughterhouse Five

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Higly recommended …

… Sleuths in the Stacks: Liberty Bar by Georges Simenon.

Creative partners …

… The Unlikely Friendship that Unlocked Two Writers’ Talents | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Left to his own devices, Davenport could have made do as a scholarly hermit, content to read books, fill up his notebooks, teach a few students, and go camping with his lovers. Yet Davenport avoided this fate and became a prolific essayist, illustrator, translator, poet, fiction writer. He owed this transformation largely to one man, the literary critic Hugh Kenner. The intense friendship between the two writers, a consequential union that remade them both, can now be charted, thanks to the publication of a hefty and sturdy two-volume set, Questioning Minds: The Letters of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner, edited by Edward M. Burns. The volumes make clear that it was Kenner who coaxed Davenport into print, while Davenport was the source of many of the key ideas, and even some of the words, of Kenner’s 1971 masterpiece, The Pound Era, one of the greatest works of literary criticism of the last century.


Endgame …

 Forgotten, not gone | Considering the old problem of old age – Carol Tavris. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As the population surges into young old age and old old age, the number of books wrestling with that question has grown from a trickle to a tsunami. Today the field of gerontology is, dare I say, older and wiser and I am older and warier. “Old age” has crept up a decade or two, reflecting the steady rise of people living into their nineties and, the fastest-growing category, into their hundreds. Many are living well, without mental or physical incapacitation, but anywhere between a quarter and a half of the population will show signs of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia by the age of eighty-five. The cost of care – emotionally and financially – is already immense. 

Something to think on …

Those wearing Tolerance for a label call other views intolerable.
— Phyllis McGinley, born on this date in 1905

Listen in …

… Episode 312 – Bram Presser – The Virtual Memories Show.

“To me, this is a book about how we tell stories, and how we come to understand stories.”

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

A master plays …

Sviatoslav Richter was born on this date in 1915.

'Tis the season …

… RT’s Marginalia : Gerard Manley Hopkins — “Spring”.

A fond remembrance …

 W. S. Merwin, Read a Friend's Heart.

Happy birthday …

Today is Vera Lynn's 102nd birthday. God bless her.

When television was "a vast wasteland" …

… Snapshot: Boris Karloff in Heart of Darkness | About Last Night.

Something I missed …

… 5 inspiring Irish poems to read this St. Patrick’s Day — or recite at the pub - Los Angeles Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Remembering …

… IN MEMORIAM GENNADY BARABTARLO - LISTSERV 16.0 - NABOKV-L Archives. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In case you wondered …

… Ted Gioia on Twitter: "A correspondent asked me for a list of the 10 best postmodern mystery novels. For what it's worth, this is how I responded. . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Literature and property rights …

 a return to Narnia – Snakes and Ladders. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Listen in …

The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: Darrel J. McLeod on his memoir Mamaskatch, residential schools and unconditional love.

Something to think on …

The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.
— Henrik Ibsen, born on this date in 1828

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Have a chuckle …

 Paul Davis On Crime: A Little Humor: A Drunk's Dry Cleaning.

Making things clear …

… How to Recognize False Mercy, According to Ven. Fulton Sheen. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

“Mercy does not come first, and then justice; but rather justice first, then mercy.” Otherwise, “The divorce of mercy from justice is sentimentality, as the divorce of justice from mercy is severity.”

Roman Graffiti...

...In Roman England

The question of guilt …

 RT’s Marginalia : Nathaniel Hawthorne and my updated Blogging Note — road trip plans altered.



Philip Larkin's says in "Aubade" — "The good not done, the love not given, time / Torn off unused" — wondrously summarizes what we should feel guilty about.

Still pertinent after all these years …

 Rich Parents Still Ignore William F. Buckley’s 1951 Warning About Prestige Universities. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Buckley established his conservative bona fides with God and Man at Yale. Never again did one of his books have an impact to rival this one. The book was positive and negative. It dealt with theology and economics -- good and bad -- which I surely can appreciate. It offered what seemed to be a practical solution: a call to the alumni to cut off the funds. This was perceived by Yale's defenders as a highly practical solution and therefore highly dangerous. It was neither. Buckley in 1977 quoted Dwight Macdonald: Yale's authorities "reacted with all the grace of an elephant cornered by a mouse."

Quite a person …

 language goes on holiday: Elizabeth Anscombe. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… there is a human story, or a picture of Elizabeth Anscombe as a human being, that seems to get overlooked. And it's worth seeing, partly because it's true and partly because it's simultaneously horrifying and inspiring.
I must read some of her work, probably Three Philosophers. (Well, I had to settle for From Plato to Wittgenstein.)

Appreciation …

… The Genius of Terry Southern. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



Can't say I share the enthusiasm. I didn't like Easy Rider or Dr. Strangelove. And resemblance between Evelyn's Waugh's The Loved One and the movie that was made of it is purely coincidental.

Something to think on …

Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another's appetite as to thine own.
— Richard Francis Burton, born on this date in 1821

Wonderful …

… 'Some Transcendent Addiction to the Useless,'A Poem by Kay Ryan | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Monday, March 18, 2019

Blogging note …

I have errands to run and hope to get much out of the way today. Blogging will resume later and should proceed in a more orderly fashion the rest of the week.

Sweet …

… iroon.com: Blogs: Morning Blend. (hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Poetry and biography …

… Ha Jin: Poet of A Distant Center and a biographer of Li Bai | International Examiner. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)



I already have the Kindle version of the Li Bai biography.

Anniversary …

… The First Reviews of John Updike's "Rabbit" Novels | Book Marks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



John Updike was born on this date in 1932.

Faith, medicine, and poetry …

… Rafael Campo: Poetry as Healing, Illness as Muse - Image Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Also in this book is his painfully forthright essay, “Like a Prayer,” on his relation to the Catholic faith of his Cuban-American heritage. As a child he loved Mass: “Poetic language began for me upon a praying priest’s lips, in the rhythmically intoned words that seemed as luxurious and sensually attractive as his flowing gowns.” But when, as a teenager, he gradually realized he was gay, he came to see with horror that “I was the degenerate homosexual whom I imagined my Church so despised.”  
The focus of the faith — something the official Church often overlooks — should always be on what Graham Greene called  "the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God."

In case you wondered …

… The Code of the Western - Commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The other historical myth dramatized in Stagecoach is the Code of the West—the unwritten rules of conduct for settlers of the territories that had not yet achieved statehood. Since the Old West was beyond the remit of written law, its inhabitants staved off chaos by hewing (at least on screen) to personal honor. Under the Code of the West, a man’s word is his bond, and a pledge of loyalty to a friend, colleague, or family member cannot be withdrawn unless it is negated by that person’s betrayal. Hence the self-imposed mission of the Ringo Kid, who has broken out of jail to pursue and kill the villains who murdered his brother and father. Even though the prostitute Dallas begs him not to put his life and their love at risk by doing so, the Code of the West leaves the Ringo Kid with no alternative: Were he to fail in his duty, he would be unworthy of Dallas’s love.

Sad song …

… Forgotten Poems # 58: "The Sands of Dee," by Charles Kingsley.



I guess Kingsley is known now only The Water Babies, but when I was a kid you still heard of his novel Westward, Ho!

Something to think on …

Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.
— Nikolai Berdyaev, born on this date in 1874

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Commitment …

… RT’s Marginalia : Nathaniel Hawthorne and raising “the darken’d veil”.y

The new pharisees …

… just like the old pharisees: The Prison of Purity | The American Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull,)

There’s one place left in the world where you can find mercy. It’s called the Christian church. (Make sure you inquire at a traditional or biblical church — not the mainline kind where they’ve traded their freedom for slavery to cultural fashion.) All your life you’ve been told that traditional Christians are scolds and hypocrites, dispensing scarlet letters left and right and pointing bony fingers at sinners. In fact, we’re the last refuge of mercy in today’s world. We don’t care what you used to be — the worse you used to be, the more we’ll celebrate your changed life. Redemption is what we’re all about.

Hmm …

… 10 Schools of Philosophy that should be better known (in the West) | Julian Baggini | Granta. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)



A most peculiar piece. Take the item on Russian philosophy. It is rather short on specifics. I've read a lot of Berdyaev and Shestov. I find them both impressive. But they are hardly the whole story. There's also

Solovyov. And the altogether different Belinsky, Herzen, Florensky, Sorokin.



I also don't think that many people who know anything of philosophy are unaware of Pragmatism.

My own philosophical training was in Scholasticism and Existential Phenomenology. It is good, I think, to start with a vantage point.

Creative subtraction …

… Exercise by W. S. Merwin | Poetry Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Contemporary journalism …

… Backstory: How Reuters uncovered Beto O'Rourke's teenage hacking days | Reuters.

After more than a year of reporting, Menn persuaded O’Rourke to talk on the record. In an interview in late 2017, O’Rourke acknowledged that he was a member of the group, on the understanding that the information would not be made public until after his Senate race against Ted Cruz in November 2018.
Foregoing the interview and breaking the story would seem more in the public interest. Thanks, Reuters.

Roddy Doyle on stage …

 Two Pints – Indicative Mood. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

…  Roddy Doyle gives us something more of-the-moment, or at least in-the-moment. You feel like you’re really there, in the friendliest of ways, even when the people you’re meeting are half killing you with their sadness.

Inquirer reviews …

… Esmé Weijun Wang’s ‘Collected Schizophrenias’: How to live with a ‘slippery mind’.

… Ian Rankin and John Rebus return in ‘House of Lies’.

… Helen Oyeyemi’s brilliant tweak on the fairy tale in ‘Gingerbread’.

Q&A …

… Paul Davis On Crime: Sifting Truth From Lies: An Interview With Mark Bowden, Author Of True Crime Book, 'The Last Stone'.

The real one …

… St. Patrick: A Sonnet | Malcolm Guite. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



Ireland has never had greater need of Patrick than now.

Something to think on …

You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not — life has been lived but it is still all going on, in the mind for better and for worse.
— Penelope Lively, born on this date in 1933

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Appreciation …

… Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A polymath in a profession of intellectual pygmies – manwithoutqualities. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

There was something old-fashioned about Mr Moynihan–a throwback to an earlier age when politicians championed causes, not parties. His cause was the poor. One reason why he so disliked McGovernite leftists was that he thought that they were middle-class brats, intent on hijacking the party of his birthright. And one reason why he was so interested in conservative intellectuals was that he thought that their ideas on the primacy of the family and the organic nature of society might be able to revitalise his party.

On your mark …

 When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the 1,288-Word Sentence from Absalom, Absalom! | Open Culture. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Behold …

 Jack Kerouac's "Beat Paintings:" Now Gathered in One Book and Exhibition for the First Time | Open Culture. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Hearing the Word …

… ‘The Hebrew Bible’ and ‘The Art of Bible Translation’ Review: An Ear for Scripture - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It has to be said that this thrashing is long overdue and mightily refreshing. Anyone who has had to suffer through (to borrow Mr. Alter’s phrase) “ungainly and banal” scriptural readings, whether in church or synagogue, will have a queasily intimate understanding of the “gnashing of teeth” that Christian scripture describes. Thus, in the Jewish Publication Society’s version of Genesis 1:16, we read that “God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night.” But, as Mr. Alter notes, the verb “dominate” “entirely wrecks the beautiful cadence of the Hebrew” and, worse, demonstrates “a manifestly tin ear to the connotations of the word”—for “dominate” is drawn from a political context and these days can suggest “sexual perversion with whip and boots.” By a slight alteration—“dominion of day” and “dominion of night”—he rescues the verse and restores its original cadence.

Mark thy calendar …


Hmm …

… Maverick Philosopher: The Seductive Sophistry of Alan Watts. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



In his autobiography, In My Own Way — which I finished on a train to D.C., only to then pick up a copy of Time and learn that he had just died — Watts quotes a letter he received from Bernard Iddings Bell, an Episcopal priest very well known in his day. Watts, at the time an Episcopal priest himself, had written to Bell to tell him he was leaving the priesthood. Bell cautioned him against it, citing the case of Bell's friend Albert Jay Nock, who had done the same thing. Bell said that Nock was never again a happy man, adding "the priesthood, Alan, is forever." When Watts's The Watercourse Way was published sometime after his death, he was described in the introduction as taking another swallow of the vodka he had already had too much of." 

Vintage commentary …

… Listening to Daniel Berrigan | National Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

“I don’t think we can get any further with this. I want to say only that I am as antisemitic as I am anti-Catholic.” Not all that reassuring if you think about it.
That's for sure.