Friday, May 31, 2019
Something to think on …
The truth is simple. If it was complicated, everyone would understand it.
— Walt Whitman, born 200 years ago today
Restored …
… In English at last: Vasily Grossman’s “Stalingrad,” and how nations can be both victims and perps | The Book Haven.
According to Thomson in The Evening Standard, “For good or ill, no definitive version of Stalingrad exists. The ‘official’ version published in Moscow in 1954, one year after Stalin died, was heavily cut by the Central Committee and contained drearily propagandist overtures to collective farm output. Thanks to the editorial endeavours of Grossman’s superb translators, Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Stalingrad has now been restored to the version that Grossman himself might have wanted.”
Yesterday and forever …
… Ascension Day: Facing East by Cynthia Erlandson | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Listen in …
… Adam Gopnik: The secret behind John Updike’s productivity | Library of America. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
FYI …
SUBMISSION PERIOD FOR THE
SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL DOGFISH HEAD POETRY PRIZE OPENS MAY 15, 2019!
Submission Guidelines
The seventeenth annual Dogfish Head Poetry Prize for the winning book-length manuscript by a poet residing in the Mid-Atlantic states (DE, MD, VA, PA, NJ, NY, WVA, NC and District of Columbia) will consist of $500, two cases of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Beer*, manuscript publication by Broadkill River Press, and 10 copies of the book (in lieu of royalties).
The rules are: Manuscripts must be received by midnight, August 15, 2019. Manuscripts received after the closing date will not be considered. Eligible poets must reside in the above listed states and be twenty-one years of age by the date of the award. * The manuscript is to be submitted electronically in one MS Word document attachment. Send to Prize coordinator Linda Blaskey at dogfishheadpoetryprize@earthlink.net. Snail mail submissions will not be accepted.
Two title pages are to be included with each submission: the first with the title of the manuscript, author’s name, address, phone numbers and e-mail address; the second with just the manuscript title. No manuscript is to have any author-identifying information other than the one title page and will be rejected if it does. Judging is blind and double-tiered. The manuscript must be book-length (between 48 and 78 pages of original work – no translations) and no more than roughly thirty lines to a page, including the poem’s title and two line-spaces between the title and the body of the poem. A poem may be more than one page. One submission per entrant. There is no entry fee.
This year’s final judge will be Joseph Millar.
The award will be presented to the winner on Saturday evening, December 14, 2019 at the Dogfish Inn in Lewes, Delaware. The winner must agree to attend this event and to read from their winning book at a reception honoring the winner. The prize will be officially awarded by Sam Calagione, Founder and CEO of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and Distillery, or by another company official.
The author of the winning manuscript also agrees to provide, within ten days of notification, a color head-shot photograph, with photographer’s credit, for the back cover and a dedication page for the interior of the book. Also, an acknowledgement page of poems previously published, and in which publications and/or websites they appeared will need to be provided. The winner agrees to travel to Delaware at the winner’s expense for awarding of the prize. Dogfish Head will provide the winner two nights lodging at the Dogfish Inn in the beach resort town of Lewes, Delaware.
Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales retains the right to use any of the winning work in promotional materials.
Co-workers of Dogfish Head and their families are ineligible to enter. Previous winners of the prize are ineligible to enter.
For questions and more information contact Linda Blaskey, Prize coordinator, at linblask@aol.com
Something to think on …
When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.
— Boris Pasternak, who died on this date in 1960
Shame of a nation. …
… A Long-Lost Manuscript Contains a Searing Eyewitness Account of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
“The side-walks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls. I knew all too well where they came from, and I knew all too well why every burning building first caught from the top,” he continues. “I paused and waited for an opportune time to escape. ‘Where oh where is our splendid fire department with its half dozen stations?’ I asked myself. ‘Is the city in conspiracy with the mob?’”
Something different, for sure …
… Totalitarian Recall: Romania's Museum Of Communist Products. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
FYI …
… Bob Dylan’s 10 Most Jewish Songs – The Forward. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
… based on the evidence of the songs themselves, Dylan was actually paying attention in the Hebrew classes leading up to his bar mitzvah, and also in his adult life, which has at times reportedly included private studies with various rabbis, often from the Chabad movement. A cursory review of songs from the past 50 years turns up many tunes that are inflected with varying degrees of Yiddishkeit.
Who knew?
… How Carl Jung Inspired the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous | Open Culture. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
… for the recovery group's genesis, Wilson cites a more secular authority, Carl Jung. The famous Swiss psychiatrist took a keen interest in alcoholism in the 1920s. Wilson wrote to Jung in 1961 to express his “great appreciation” for his efforts. “A certain conversation you once had with one of your patients, a Mr. Rowland H. back in the early 1930’s,” Wilson explains, “did play a critical role in the founding of our Fellowship.”
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
RIP …
… The Theological Legacy of Rachel Held Evans - Christian Research Institute. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Evans’ appeal grew out of her deep roots within evangelicalism and the Bible Belt. Her facility with the Scriptures combined with her wit, humor, and fluid prose gave a way for believer and non-believer alike to consider faith in a fresh, lively way. In particular, evangelicals weary of the culture wars, angry about notorious hypocrisy within the church, and disenchanted with the conflation of culture, politics, and biblical faith found in her a refuge.
Worrisome …
… Americans’ Loss Of Interest In Civil War Battlefields Is Part Of A Disturbing Trend.
This problem of course goes well beyond the Civil War; it encompasses all of history. Consider the case of the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History examination. In 2014, the National Association of Scholars issued a report exposing the exam’s heavy progressive bias, systematic downplaying of American virtues, and outright omission of important periods in American history. The report sparked enough outrage and bad press that the College Board revised its exam—this time including previously omitted figures like James Madison—but according to the NAS the course materials for the test were unchanged and reflected the same progressive bias.
The way he was …
… [33] Frank Bidart – Grey Sparrow Journal. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Frank Bidart turned 80 on May 27.
Belated Happy Bicentenary …
… Mother Mind by Julia Ward Howe | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Julia Ward Howe as born on May 27, 1819 (four days before Walt Whitman).
Julia Ward Howe as born on May 27, 1819 (four days before Walt Whitman).
Anniversary …
… The Donkey by G. K. Chesterton | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Chesterton was born on this date in 1874.
Chesterton was born on this date in 1874.
Blogging note
I have to take Debbie to physical therapy. I will do some more blogging while waiting.
Poetry and life …
… “Sitting at the Table” with Stein and Ashbery | The Yale Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
By 1979, Ashbery was arguing that it is a “goofy fallacy” to expect that things in a poem are ever actually real, but this does not mean that real things do not appear in poems.
Something to think on …
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
— G. K. Chesterton, born on this date in 1874
And he may not be a nice guy …
… A good writer is hard to find by Hannah Niemeier | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There’s a lot of Williams in Stoner: a professor who came from nowhere and scratched out a life in literature from the hard earth of the frontier. But when asked about similarities between himself and Stoner, Williams insisted that “fiction and autobiography don’t go together in any sensible way.”I recently read Stoner. It really is excellent. The unadorned story of a life, no more, no less. The people who criticize it for misogyny should stop thinking in categories and start getting to to know their fellow human beings better.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
In case you wondered …
… What Artifact Should Indiana Jones Search For Next? The Answer Is Simple. (Hat tip, Jon Caroulis.)
Appreciation …
… Why Edmund Morris Couldn't Capture Reagan - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
…he came up … empty. Well, not empty. Dutch is full of beautiful writing and insight about nearly everything Reagan encountered in a long and eventful life. (Reagan was 75 when Morris, then in his mid-forties, began to tag along.) But about the man himself—the lacquer never cracked, the Reagan twinkle never dimmed to reveal what, if anything, was behind it. Reagan, Morris said years later, “is the strangest man who ever lived.”
Hmm …
… About Aboutness | Issue 132 | Philosophy Now. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is no wonder then that aboutness, connecting subjects to and yet separating them from objects, is so vigorously contested by those like Dennett who want to incorporate humanity into a world defined by “the same physical principles, laws and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition and growth.” In such a world it would be impossible to see how human organisms could have stepped back sufficiently to see those physical principles, laws and raw materials that supposedly define the universe, and see also that they were subject to them; how we could place ‘matter’ in inverted commas and assert that we are made of it. If human beings were as entirely stitched into the causal net as tectonic plate movement and photosynthesis, we would be unable to understand how we could seem to manipulate it ever more effectively, or even entertain the illusion that we do so.
Tracking the decline …
… Stossel: Harvard Caves to Student Mob – Reason.com.
Fired dean Ronald Sullivan often represents unpopular people—not just the accused sexual assaulter, but also accused murderers and terrorists. He's explained why: "In order for the rights of all of us, the rights of the guilty and the innocent alike to be protected, we have to live in a system where we vigorously, vigorously defend the guilty."
In case you wondered
… What Makes a Poet Difficult? (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
When I was around 15, I took a long hike one Sunday — a good 20 miles round trip. On the way back, in late afternoon, I looked across the creek I had hiked along (I was on the high trail) and had an experience very much like the one Wordsworth describes in “Tintern Abbey.” At least that is what I thought when I first read the poem some years later, and it is what I continue to think. Usually, when I read a poem, I just listen to the music and let the sense occur to me over time. But in the case of “Tintern Abbey,” I just had that sense of recognition.
Listen in …
… Episode 322 – Steven Guarnaccia – The Virtual Memories Show.
“I’m an illustrator. It took me a while to realize I was born an illustrator.”
Something to think on …
Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.
— Ian Fleming, born on this date in 1908
Not good …
… Arizona prisons ban book on black men in the justice system - Lowell Sun Online. (Hat tip Ru Bowden.)
Censorship should be avoided. Period.
In case you wondered …
… Why We Walk: A Manifesto for Peripatetic Empowerment – Brain Pickings. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Watch and listen …
… Replay: Merce Cunningham’s Septet | About Last Night.
You don’t see this sort of thing on TV today, do you?
Q&A again …
… Zones of Independence: A Conversation with Adam Kirsch - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
When I first thought of being a writer I didn’t think of myself as being a Jewish writer, although I was Jewish obviously and Jewishly educated in certain ways. It seemed that the things I wanted to write about and the things I was interested in were human things. Saying you’re a Jewish writer if you’re writing about love or you’re writing about nature seems irrelevant to a certain degree. And I do still understand that, but I don’t see it as the same kind of restriction anymore. I have come to realize than my experience of the world and of America and ideas and books is affected by being Jewish. It’s better to reckon with that consciously, and I think I became more conscious of it as I got older and moved away from my childhood and upbringing and realized how it did affect me.
Listen in …
… The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: Ken Lopez on Vietnam, Book Collecting and Author Archives.
Ken Lopez is a renowned antiquarian bookseller who deals in rare books, specializing in modern literary first editions. He regularly issues catalogs of Modern Literature and less regularly issues catalogs of Native American Literature, the Literature of the Vietnam War and the 1960s, and Nature Writing. He also has an established record of placing authors' archives in institutional collections
Monday, May 27, 2019
Appreciation …
…The world of William Maxwell | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In almost all of Maxwell’s novels the relationship between Maxwell and his older, more vigorous brother is replicated. Maxwell’s brother lost a leg in an accident, as have all the elder brothers in his fiction. Never, to my knowledge, have such particular incidents been used so explicitly and repeatedly. Maxwell’s net was not cast wide.
Journey’s end …
… First Known When Lost: Bourne.
One of the wondrous things about reading Ruskin is that you never know what is around the corner. This may seem like a truism: after all, do we ever know what any writer will say next? But in Ruskin the degree of surprise is enhanced due, first, to his passion for all the particulars of the World and, second, to the universe-wide range of his mind, which may at any moment alight anywhere. Hence, when I was not expecting it, out of the blue comes a delightful disquisition on "bourne."
Something to think on …
Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible, without it nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it.
— Arnold Bennett, born on this date in 1867
Art and life …
… Arthur Miller’s shame – TheTLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I came to understand shame as a structure for Miller’s life and work when I learned about his son, Daniel, who was born in 1966 with Down’s syndrome. Miller and his third wife, Inge Morath, chose not to raise Daniel at home. Instead they placed him in a state facility in Connecticut which, according to someone who worked there at the time, “was not a place you would want your dog to live” (quoted in Vanity Fair, September 13, 2007). According to Martin Gottfried’s Arthur Miller: A life (2003), Miller neither visited his disabled son there, nor mentioned him in his memoirs or interviews.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Discovery …
… These Adventurous Women Photographed the California Desert in the 1920s - Atlas Obscura. (Hat tip Rus Bowden.)
After he’d carefully cleaned the pictures he’d rescued from the Dumpster, the historian in May realized the material was worthy of archiving for future scholars. What especially grabbed his attention were Smith’s images from an early era of Southern California’s Corn Springs in the Chuckwalla Mountains. “Susie was documenting a period in the desert, especially the years 1910-1920, we know little about,” said May.
Q&A …
… Alexander McCall Smith on his love for Robert Burns, Barbara Pym and Evelyn Waugh | HeraldScotland. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)
I have long admired Evelyn Waugh’s trilogy about the Second World War, the Sword of Honour novels. Guy Crouchback is a wonderfully sympathetic character and there is an extraordinary, grave beauty to Waugh’s writing in these books. I would have liked to have written them.
Back when …
… 30-plus years of HyperCard, the missing link to the Web | Ars Technica. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Update: It's Memorial Day weekend here in the US, and the Ars staff has a long weekend accordingly. Many will spend that time relaxing or traveling with family, but maybe someone will dust off their old MacIntosh and fire up Hypercard, a beloved bit of Apple software and development kit in the pre-Web era. The application turns 32 later this summer, so with staff off we thought it was time to resurface this look at Hypercard's legacy. This piece originally ran on May 30, 2012 as Hypercard approached its 25th anniversary, and it appears unchanged below.
Hmm …
… College Students Aren't Checking Out Books - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade.
Worth remembering …
… Rebuilding Notre Dame: Form Is Not Fashion - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Though Gothic architecture does not manifest the Christian vision of the sacred exclusively (every created form reflects the divine), it does manifest it more fully and fittingly than other forms. It cannot, therefore, simply be set aside without rendering our architecture and our culture less articulate than before.
Something to think on …
Unfurl the sails, and let God steer us where He will.
— The Venerable Bede, who died on this date in 735
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Mysticism grounded in observation …
… The metaphysical beauty of Ludwig Steinherr’s Light Song. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
An elusive topic …
… Humor, by Terry Eagleton (book review) - PopMatters. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Rather than forge a path forward on what humor should do, he just ambles along the roads much more often taken and points out all the lovely foliage on either side. Humour makes no argument beyond a survey of all the ways one can debunk some portion of all preceding theories of humor. This is so wise, because there simply cannot be a unified field theory on the subject. Humor is the heart of postmodernity in this way, and yet rather than tangle himself in the thorny gobbledygook of critical theory, Eagleton sets out merely to describe. I say "merely", but this is an enormous undertaking for a book that runs under 200 pages.
Something to think on …
This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, born on this date in 1803
A closer look …
… Tangled Up in Blue Poetics: Timothy Hampton Reads a Bob Dylan for the Ages - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For a disruptive cultural-political hero and pop icon, Dylan has been understandably decoded by social contexts, auras of American history, as well as anti-conservative polemics. Not to mention his audience’s shifting admiration and animadversion across six decades, which has followed him from (say) triumph to decline to relentless return, as if he were some perpetual Lazarus of vision. It is perhaps this volatility that makes the close reading of specific texts still necessary, if not exceedingly difficult. Timothy Hampton’s detailed-laden study of text and form in Bob Dylan’s Poetics is a resource of literary-musical interpretation to start from and return to — and will likely prove to be indispensable.
In conclusion …
… Last lines on Brexit from Geoffrey Hill | The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hill’s deep thought about British politics — specifically, English politics — has always been evident, from the earliest days of his career, and his interest has not wavered, and it is ironically fitting, in a way, that his own demise may well have happened at a time when the very Union may be beginning to unravel. You want his thoughts on Brexit? You won’t like them. ‘In the impending referendum I shall vote to remain,’ he announces, despite the fact that in his collection Canaan he ‘derided the Maastricht Treaty as an international corporate fraud./ The alternative now is an England of rotten boroughs and Hobbits maudits’.
Tracking the decline …
… False history from Naomi Wolf and Marc Lamont Hill | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
RIP …
… Caltech Mourns the Passing of Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019) | www.caltech.edu. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gell-Mann helped bring order to the field of particle physics in the 1950s and 1960s—a time when a bewildering array of new particles was being found in "atom-smashing" experiments. He devised a new method for sorting the particles into simple groups of eight, based on their electric charge, spin, and other characteristics (Israeli scientist Yuval Ne'eman also came up with a similar classification scheme). Gell-Mann termed his method the "eightfold way" after the Buddhist Eightfold Path to enlightenment, and for this research and related work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Five new poetry collections ….
… Down by the Old Mill Stream by William Logan | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Taking Bob seriously from the start …
… Bob Dylan | PhillyVoice.
As with any collection, items early in the subject's career were relatively inexpensive and somewhat easy to obtain. Now that Dylan is an icon, materials related to him, such as concert tickets from early shows, posters, even flyers with concert details, have gone up in price, and Baky has to compete with colleges as well as private collectors who want all things Dylan.
Hmm
… Marilynne Robinson and the Mystery of Grace | Moriah Speciale | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This seems an odd piece. And once again, if we're going to talk Calvinism, how about some discussion of predestination and total depravity, which are as much cornerstones of Calvinist theology as sacramentalism.
Appreciation …
… The Gadfly | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Having established himself as a national voice, Lukacs began to receive attractive offers to join Ivy League faculties in the 1960s. He did not succumb. Although he occasionally taught at prestigious institutions elsewhere (Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts, the University of Pennsylvania), he remained at Chestnut Hill College until he retired in 1994, supplementing his income with his part-time teaching at nearby La Salle.A scholar and intellectual of high standards and impeccable integrity, Lukacs was completely content to teach at these modest Catholic colleges. He always despised the empty plumage of academe, its titles and honors and pecking orders. He lamented that most of his colleagues had abandoned historical scholarship for what he called “historianship” (i.e., careerism).
Something to think on …
All I can do is be me, whoever that is.
— Bob Dylan, born on this date in 1941
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Cause for concern …
… The decline of culture, the loss of beauty—and the surprising resurgence of poetry – Catholic World Report. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The poor sacred music (often badly performed) in many churches is a perfect example of how Catholicism has lost its ancient and essential connection with beauty. There is no understanding of the power of sacred music, art, and architecture to move and engage people. When did Catholicism decide that God only deserved the second-rate?I know the official line. “These exterior things don’t matter. What matters is what’s in our hearts.” But I suggest that part of what is in our hearts is laxness and complacency—a failure to engage the hearts and imagination of parishioners.
His own man …
… The Generalist | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The man that emerges from Paquet’s biography is more complex than the legend; if his journey was in some ways heroic, Leys was not a conventional hero. His greatness was thrust upon him, and he often seemed to dodge it.
Blogging note …
I have to run an errand and have got a late start n things because of other obligations. I'll be blogging again a little later.
Better than his legend …
… Mozart: Rational revolutionary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Paul Johnson, in his biography of Mozart, notes that he lived in a society that thrived on credit and that the debts Mozart left behind were paid off in rather a short time, indicating that his grasp of finances may have been sounder than we think.
I don't have any problem listening to Mozart. He is always wonderful company, and he has a very wide range of moods. Listen to this version of his String Quintet in C:
Paul Johnson, in his biography of Mozart, notes that he lived in a society that thrived on credit and that the debts Mozart left behind were paid off in rather a short time, indicating that his grasp of finances may have been sounder than we think.
I don't have any problem listening to Mozart. He is always wonderful company, and he has a very wide range of moods. Listen to this version of his String Quintet in C:
Something to think on …
Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.
— Paul Fussell, who died on this date in 2012
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Listen in …
… Episode 321 – Nina Bunjevac – The Virtual Memories Show.
“Making art is like an alchemical process for me. I want to take shit and make gold out of it, metaphorically speaking.”
Principles and survival …
… RT’s Reviews and Marginalia: Zoo Station by David Downing (Soho, 2007).
Walking a taut tightrope, and knowing that any misstep will lead to failure and death for himself and others, Russell must find a way of doing the right thing but at the same time also protect his German girlfriend and son.
Hmm …
… Furious Gardening | Anne Kennedy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I'm a laid-back gardener. I even feel for the weeds — though that doesn't mean I don't dispose of them. But I do apologize. For me, gardening is a foretaste of paradise. But that's just me.
Seriocomic extravaganza …
… Chicago kid makes good | About Last Night. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… “Augie March” is a stage version of a major novel, a bastard genre notoriously difficult to bring off. As John Simon put it in an apothegm known to drama critics as Simon’s Law, “There is a simple law governing the dramatization of novels: if it is worth doing, it can’t be done; if it can be done, it’s not worth doing.” Mr. Simon was stretching it a bit, as Kate Hamill has proved in recent seasons with her witty adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Vanity Fair.” Even so, he was onto something, for great novels don’t need to be dramatized—they are by definition sufficient unto themselves. And that’s the loophole through which Mr. Auburn has slipped with Bellow’s picaresque tale of a poor young Jewish immigrant who girdles the world in search of his “purest feelings”: “Augie March” is not really a great novel, much as it strains to be. Sprawlingly long and over-lush in diction, it lacks the artistic self-discipline necessary to hit the pinpoint bull’s-eye of true greatness. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Mr. Auburn has improved on the novel, imposing on it a welcome tautness and pruning its self-consciously exuberant verbal excesses….
Oh, no!
… Somehow I Became Respectable. (Hat tip, Edward Champion.)
I can’t even impersonate a damaged artist anymore. I have actually had friends for fifty years and some of my dinner dates are not tax-deductible for business—the sign of really having a successful personal life. Knock on wood, I’m in good health. Good Lord, I’m seventy-three years old and my dreams have come true. Couldn’t you just puke?
The labyrinth of lineage …
… Broken Family, Broken Country by John Waters | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Michael Brendan Dougherty dug his way to Ireland through American sentimentalism and wishful thinking, which is perhaps the best mode of approach. After all, Irish kitsch is the product of the Irish-American imagination, the remembered symbols of a life that grows greener with distance and lachrymose with time. Raised in New Jersey and New York by his American mother, Dougherty hardly knew his Irish father or Ireland. His attempt to rediscover them both culminated in this book, a series of open letters to his father.
Something to think on …
In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us.
— Peter Matthiessen, born on this date in 1927
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Of age and shrubbery …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'Well! It Is Always Good to Be Undeceived'.
I was in my 30s when my barber at the time warned me that my beard would go gray first. And it did. But, taking my cue from a friend who had advised her balding boyfriend to be aggressively bald, I decided I would be aggressively gray. Of course, my beard now is quite white. My hair hasn't quite caught up and is still just gray.
In case you wondered …
… Who are Europe’s ‘Civilizationists’? | Spectator USA.
‘I fully acknowledge the faults of the Civilizationists,’ Pipes tells me, ‘but I note their faults are not unique.’ The question now, he reckons, is whether the Civilizationists can negotiate alliances with established center-right parties. If they can, they will reshape the political map of Europe, and perhaps even restore the frayed trust between voters and politicians.
Transcending ideology …
… Poems for an Uncertain World: On Serhiy Zhadan’s “What We Live For, What We Die For” - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
… what is striking about Zhadan — who read his work at my home institution, UCSD, two years ago — is his ability to connect with individuals on a personal level. He is direct, engaging, and remarkably patient. As a small group of us shared dinner after the event, a woman at the next table overheard our Russian-language conversation and, when we introduced Zhadan as a Ukrainian poet, asked whether he was a nationalist. Zhadan, who had recently been listed by the Russian government as a nationalist terrorist and arrested for attempting to attend a poetry festival in Belarus, shook his head, then added, “But I believe in a people’s right to decide its future.” He agreed to send the woman some of his writing electronically. I was stunned by his empathy and generosity.
The lessons of gardening …
… A Writer’s Guide to Organic Growing | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
The plant is teaching you that you are only partly in charge of its final form. You are moving toward acceptance of the mysteries surrounding the development of living matter, most of which happens while you are not looking, most of which happens in dimming and darkness.
Besuty and austerity …
… on Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells by Pico Iyer – On the Seawall. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Towards the end of the book, Iyer digresses to speak of Thoreau and the confrontation with the actual. “In Thoreau there’s the snag of something tougher, as of the branches of real life,” he remarks. Thoreau, who held his dying 26-year old brother John as he died. When Iyer talks about autumn, there is the same appreciation for both beauty and austerity. “Autumn poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying.” Do we hear this as banal? Perhaps the point is that death is banal but our hearing is rather intriguing.
Listen in …
… Barry Moser on print-making, illustrating and designing books, and collecting his works.
In 1967 Barry Moser moved from Tennessee to New England to teach at The Williston Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts. He was soon introduced to Leonard Baskin with whom he studied at Baskin's Gehenna Press.
Something to think on …
It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
— Sir Kenneth Clark, who died on this date in 1983
Hmm …
… As critics lacerate Jacob Rees-Mogg's history book, CRAIG BROWN asks: Could only nanny love it? | Daily Mail Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It would be interesting to know something about the book, such as who some of the titans of the subtitle are. Maybe a quote or two as well. The reference to Chaucer and Dryden in the quote from Philip Larkin, if I read it correctly, seems to border on insanity — and I like Larkin’s poetry.
Monday, May 20, 2019
Brave and sad …
… David Milch’s Third Act.(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Despite what dementia has stolen from the cerebral creator of “Deadwood,” it has given his work a new sense of urgency.
"I’m different recognizably, unmistakably, from one day to the next. I’m capable of things on one day that are absolutely beyond me. Down to things as rudimentary as sometimes where I live. One tries to adjust to those rigors and disciplines as they reveal themselves, as the day unfolds. At one level—the level of vanity, I suppose—there’s a shame that shows itself as anger, an anger that is quickly internalized as unfair to the disciplines or ambitions of the exchange in which I’m involved at that moment. And I try to adapt to that because it’s a distraction from what the invoked purpose, the proper purpose, of that exchange is. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. At a rudimentary and humiliating level, I’m incapable of lucid discourse. That’s no fun."
True and lovely …
Hands
It was a spring day when I sat
with you on the patio of your
life. Your hands and face
marked with spots of age and
you spoke of time how it went
so slowly in the beginning and
so quickly as you approached
the end. I think of you as I
count the spots on my hands
notice the ones on my face.
It was a spring day when I sat
with you on the patio of your
life. Your hands and face
marked with spots of age and
you spoke of time how it went
so slowly in the beginning and
so quickly as you approached
the end. I think of you as I
count the spots on my hands
notice the ones on my face.
From Stale Bread and Coffee by g. emil reutter
Hmm …
… Flannery O'Connor's Two Deepest Loves Were Mayonnaise and Her Mother | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Of all the edibles that appear in the author’s correspondence with her mother, one inspires her most enthusiastic commentary: mayonnaise. She loves the thick, eggy spread, although she cannot spell its name. “Mayonaise” is as close as she gets. More often, she opts for “mernaise.” She considered the condiment a staple and lamented its scarcity in Iowa City at the time. The canned pineapple she chilled on her windowsill seemed lackluster without the familiar white dollop. Her tomatoes were all but naked. Where her sausages were concerned, mustard was a poor companion. She requested that her mother send her the homemade mayonnaise of her childhood, but instead, she received a store-bought jar, which arrived at her dorm on a Wednesday evening just in time for dinner.The only mayonnaise I like is homemade. The stuff in a jar I can’t bear.
Literary lineage …
… Lost volume sheds new light on Tolkien’s devotion to Chaucer | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The material now uncovered includes Tolkien’s eight-page “Introduction on Language”, in which he argued that Chaucer’s language should not be modernised. “His language is much further removed (in more than five centuries) from ours than appears at first sight, and the chief danger to those beginning the study of his works lies in underestimating not in exaggerating the degree of difference,” he wrote.
Q&A…
… James Baldwin: “No writer can judge his work. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to judge mine.” | The Book Haven.
I was a black kid and was expected to write from that perspective. Yet I had to realize the black perspective was dictated by the white imagination. Since I wouldn’t write from the perspective, essentially, of the victim, I had to find what my own perspective was and then use it. I couldn’t talk about “them” and “us.” So I had to use “we” and let the reader figure out who “we” is. That was the only possible choice of pronoun. It had to be “we.” And we had to figure out who “we” was, or who “we” is. That was very liberating for me.
Interesting thesis …
… A Tale of Two Coups - L'Ombre de l'Olivier.
…allowing the losers to come up with one way after another to try and delegitimise an election they lost is bad on its own because the ability to “throw the bums out” is a key feature of democracy. If voters can’t trust that their votes will be respected they are likely to resort to other methods of expressing their displeasure with the current set of rulers and that is something that these rulers may come to regret. The good news is that the New AG seems to be doing his job and turning over any number of stones that various parties would have preferred remained unexamined.The losers in this case did it because they thought they could get away with it, which is the same reason most people commit crimes.
Hmm …
… The Intellectual Absurdity of Championing Diversity While Condemning 'Cultural Appropriation' | Intellectual Takeout.
'When the furor reached Asia, many seemed to be scratching their heads. Far from being critical of Ms. Daum, who is not Chinese, many people in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan proclaimed her choice of the traditional high-necked dress as a victory for Chinese culture. “I am very proud to have our culture recognized by people in other countries,” said someone commenting on a post of the Utah episode on WeChat.
“It’s ridiculous to criticize this as cultural appropriation,” said Zhou Yijun, a Hong Kong-based cultural commentator. “From the perspective of a Chinese person, if a foreign woman wears a qipao and thinks she looks pretty, then why shouldn’t she wear it?”If anything, the uproar surrounding Ms. Daum’s dress prompted many Chinese to reflect on examples of cultural appropriation in their own country. “So does that mean when we celebrate Christmas and Halloween it’s also cultural appropriation?” asked one WeChat user.
Something to think on …
One cannot escape dogmas—those who hold most firmly to dogmas today are those whose only dogma is that dogmas should be feared like the plague.
— Sigrid Undset, born on this date in 1882
Sunday, May 19, 2019
People who have too much time on their hands …
…World Beard & Moustache Championships in Antwerp | The 2019 World Beard & Moustache Championships, in pictures - News.
And yes, I have worn a beard for almost my entire adult life.
Because it’s just a guess?
… Why Is It So Hard to Predict the Future? - The Atlantic.
The pattern is by now familiar. In the 30 years since Ehrlich sent Simon a check, the track record of expert forecasters—in science, in economics, in politics—is as dismal as ever. In business, esteemed (and lavishly compensated) forecasters routinely are wildly wrong in their predictions of everything from the next stock-market correction to the next housing boom. Reliable insight into the future is possible, however. It just requires a style of thinking that’s uncommon among experts who are certain that their deep knowledge has granted them a special grasp of what is to come.
Stick-to-itiveness …
… Writing until the ripe age of 90 - San Antonio Express-News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Writing helps preserve and strengthen memory, even building synapses where none existed. In a time when old age pushes people to the margins, many are refusing to be confined to the periphery of graying matter.
Corrective lens …
… Reclaiming History From Howard Zinn - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… he observes that it’s “hard to read about” early-19th-century America “without thinking of the series of events culminating in the coming of the Civil War as if they were predictable stages in a preordained outcome. Like the audience for a Greek tragedy, we come to this great American drama already knowing the general plot,” and susceptible to the illusion that it was written in advance. He urges readers to resist “that habit of mind” and remember that people at the time had no foresight to match our hindsight.
More timely than ever …
… Pondering the Defeatists | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
René Girard writes in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel that all great novels end the same way, with the main character, often tortured by the author, ultimately coming to see the error of his ways in his final moments. Examples given include Madame Bovary, Julien Sorel, and Don Quixote. This represents a self-overcoming and reconciliation on the part of the author, Girard suggests, where the writer recognizes himself in his hated protagonist and comes to forgive the character in an act of personal transcendence. Wilson notices the disparagement of Don Quixote by Cervantes and the way Quixote’s heroic quest is treated as a madness, but he does not mention the ending. The real heroism comes, Girard argues, in Cervantes’s act of self-recognition, insight, and love when Don Quixote renounces and confesses his madness—both character and author overcoming the obstacles and limitations of the human heart. This is the kind of thing that Wilson seems to be waiting for from the modern author.
Something to think on …
Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future.
— Walter Lord, who died on this date in 2002
Saturday, May 18, 2019
The one and only …
… Warren Zevon: A Genius and Disaster. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This was someone who could write that his lover was a credit to her gender. / She put me through some changes, Lord, / sorta like a Waring blender, in the 1976 "Poor Poor Pitiful Me." Or They killed to earn their livings and to help out the Congolese, in the 1978 "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner." Or I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse, in his 2003 song about dying, "Keep Me in Your Heart." They're great lines, clever rhymes, and they could only have come from one songwriter. The sadness, the ruin, of Warren Zevon is that there aren't enough of them.
RIP …
… Grumpy Cat, Permafrowning Internet Darling, Dies At Age 7 : NPR.
A fabulous figure and a great American.
A fabulous figure and a great American.
Grappling with loss …
… Asymmetry by Adam Zagajewski | World Literature Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is a reason Zagajewski has found so many readers—he is open to us. He makes no assumptions about his readership, no exclusions.
Urban dogs and people …
… Symbiosis by Kenneth Lee : American Life in Poetry. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Hmm
… Harvard and Ronald Sullivan, why Harvard was basically right - Marginal REVOLUTION. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
While it’s obviously true that all criminal defendants have a right to an attorney, it’s equally obvious that criminal defendants don’t have a particular right to Ronald Sullivan’s services.It should also be obvious that Sullivan is entitled to offer his services to whomever he chooses. There is also the matter of Weinstein's presumed innocence. Harvard seems to have presumed his guilt. (I know, I know. But Constitutional considerations should still prevail).
Remembering …
… Aquarium of Vulcan: Margot Fonteyn Centenary Year. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And here is Margot Fonteyn in a scene from Sleeping Beauty.
In her acclaimed and detailed biography, author Meredith Danemann notes that it was also at this time that Fonteyn had an on-and-off affair with the conductor and composer Constant Lambert (1905-51). According to friends of Fonteyn, Lambert was the great love of her life and she despaired when she finally realised he would never marry her. Aspects of this relationship were symbolised in Lambert's astrologically-themed ballet Horoscope which was first performed on January 27th 1938.Here is the "Invocation of the Moon and Finale" from Horoscope
And here is Margot Fonteyn in a scene from Sleeping Beauty.
Something to think on …
Anything you can do, I can do meta.
— Rudolf Carnap, born on this date in 1891
Stefan Hertmans
Not every novel moves you, or holds your attention. And it's certainly not every novel that forces you to reconsider what a novel is, or could be. But this was definitely the case with War and Turpentine, Stefan Hertmans's penetrating account of the First World War.
No doubt, Hertmans owes much to the late W. G. Sebald, and War and Turpentine is evocative of his work (including, most notably, Austerlitz and The Emigrants). Like Sebald, Hertmans explores the line between history and fiction, weaving stories that feel real, or historical, but which exist, despite that sense of gravity, in the fictional realm. This dynamic is reinforced by Hertmans's use of photography, which further endows his narrative with that historical quality made famous by Sebald.
But Hermans charts new territory, too: unlike Sebald, who focused much of his work on the Second World War, War and Turpentine takes the Great War as its subject. At it core, Hertmans's novel is a paean to neutral Belgium, and commemoration of the trauma its population and soldiers experienced at the hands of its ambitious neighbor to the east.
War and Turpentine is a rousing success, a deep and moving novel that cuts across time and generations, and that reminds us that the past, while gone perhaps from view, is still very much with us, and has a surprising, almost mystical, ability to emerge when we least expect it.
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