Saturday, November 30, 2019
Better than they knew…
… Review: “The Spectra Hoax” by William Jay Smith | Form in Formless Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Once again, in case you wondered …
… Who killed the American arts? | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
By the end of the Sixties, students and administrators had arrived at a Westphalian peace. The students permitted the university to stay in the business of training specialists and technicians. The university let the students redefine the humanistic curriculum. Henceforth, the purpose of liberal education was to prevent the education of classical liberals.
On the other hand, in case you wondered …
… Why Mister Rogers Is More Relevant than Ever — Strong Towns. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
You know who comes to mind is the character of Lady Elaine, in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Lady Elaine was ornery. Most real-life neighborhoods have a character like that too. But if you’re committed to a place, you’re not going to pull up stakes when things get tough. You have to figure out how to be a good neighbor to the “Lady Elaines.” One of the things I most admired about Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was that there was this very difficult character, and the other characters had to do the hard work of learning how to love her.This seems about right:
He seems very simple, gentle, and sweet; some of his friends even described him as androgynous, not masculine in the traditional sense of being aggressive. And yet he became a very strong person. Everybody I talked to who worked with Fred described him as a wonderfully loving and caring friend, but also somebody who was as tough as nails. He knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish, and how he wanted to go about doing it.
Hear, hear …
… Edward Feser: Against candy-ass Christianity. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… my point is not to criticize Rogers himself, who I’m sure was a decent fellow, and who was, after all, simply hosting a children’s program. I don’t know anything about his personal theological opinions, and I don’t know whether the movie accurately represents them or even refers to them at all. The point is to comment on the idea that an inoffensive “niceness” is somehow the essence of the true Christian, or at least of any Christian worthy of the liberal’s respect. For it is an idea that even a great many churchmen seem to have bought into.The aim in life should never be to win the approval of the fashionable.
Something to think on …
Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.
— Jacques Barzun, born on this date in 1907
Friday, November 29, 2019
Weighing in …
… All Book Marks reviews for One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Good idea …
… Paul Davis On Crime: Project Guardian Will Enforce Current Gun Laws To Combat Gun Crime: My Washington Times Piece On Strict Enforcement Of Existing Gun Laws Rather Than New Gun Control Laws.
It does seem rational to enforce the laws you already have on the books before passing new ones.
Apologia pro vita sua …
… Critics & criticism by John Simon | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Criticism should also be comprehensible, which is to say not written by Frenchmen with esoteric theories and befuddling jargon. And it should not present itself as written on Mosaic tablets by the likes of Harold Bloom. Above all, it should not be the voice of a publisher or editor or anybody else, but independently the critic’s own.
Something to think on …
The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks.
— C. S. Lewis, born on this date in 1898
Thursday, November 28, 2019
In case you wondered …
… How to be a Good Person | Stand Firm. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The point is to first to find something to be grateful about, and then someone to be grateful to.
How to give thanks …
… Remembrance of Past Mercies, by John Henry Newman - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It would be well if we were in the habit of looking at all we have as God’s gift, undeservedly given, and day by day continued to us solely by His mercy.
Learning to swim …
… Faith by Frances Anne Kemble | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Yesterday was Fanny Kemble's 210th birthday.
Sweet at last …
… The Writer's Almanac for Friday, November 22, 2019 — "Local Obits"| Garrison Keillor. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
For all us cornballs and squares …
… Laudator Temporis Acti: Happy Thanksgiving. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The New York Times lineup linked to there is the best evidence yet of what a rag that paper has become.
The New York Times lineup linked to there is the best evidence yet of what a rag that paper has become.
Mark thy calendar …
One of the surprise artists is my friend Penny Emory. That's her ceramic rabbit.
Hmm …
… Bruce Charlton's Notions: John Butler - Christian 'Zen' (not Zen Christianity). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I wonder if Butler even wonders t\i ego may plays a part in his outlook.
Something to think on …
There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.
— Stefan Zweig, born on this date in 1881
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Honoring his bicentenary …
… Smelling sweet in our dust by Christoph Irmscher | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is not, to be sure, the version of Melville most of us remember from high school or college classes, not the dark-timbred author of Moby-Dick or “Benito Cereno.” But while there’s a world of difference between a white kitten (“Blanche”) and a white whale, it’s not far-fetched to say that Melville’s light-hearted Montaigne poem also explores one of his most cherished themes: the much-needed demotion of the human point of view from its position of unearned superiority. Think of Starbuck in Moby-Dick, the Pequod’s first mate, who, unable and unwilling to challenge his unhinged captain, on the third day of chasing the whale suddenly sees what Ahab can’t or won’t, namely that Moby Dick has no interest in humans, that all he wants is to be left alone: “Moby Dick seeks thee not.”
RIP …
… Clive James, writer, broadcaster and TV critic, dies aged 80 | Culture | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice.
—James Agee, born on this date in 1909
Indeed …
… Francis: An Unworthy Householder — Maureen Mullarkey. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reuters called it “a dramatic gesture.” Indeed. It was also a dishonest one, a self-aggrandizing, theatrical simulacra of humility by a well-protected man in the security of his own apartments. Moreover, having one’s shoes smooched is not a quotidian rite for visitors to the papal digs. Try to imagine Francis on his knees caressing the shoes of any Western leader in a plea for reconciliation of political divisions. President Trump’s shoes, you think?
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Begging to differ …
… An interview with historian James McPherson on the New York Times’ 1619 Project - World Socialist Web Site.
I’d say that, almost from the outset, I was disturbed by what seemed like a very unbalanced, one-sided account, which lacked context and perspective on the complexity of slavery, which was clearly, obviously, not an exclusively American institution, but existed throughout history. And slavery in the United States was only a small part of a larger world process that unfolded over many centuries. And in the United States, too, there was not only slavery but also an antislavery movement. So I thought the account, which emphasized American racism—which is obviously a major part of the history, no question about it—but it focused so narrowly on that part of the story that it left most of the history out.
Listen in …
… Episode 351 – Annie Koyama – The Virtual Memories Show.
“More and more in this society, if you have more than other people, you have a duty to share it.”
Something much needed these days …
… A Recital Reaffirms Our Common Humanity in an Age of Tribalism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A few markers of our present moment: every arts institution in the United States is under pressure to discard meritocratic standards in collections, programming, and personnel, in favor of race and gender preferences. When the Museum of Modern Art opened its renovated headquarters in New York City this October, a Wall Street Journal art critic noted that the new MoMA had been able to “correct, and even make reparations for, its heretofore almost exclusive parade of white male superstars.”Gender and race bean-counting is now the key to evaluating a collection’s worth.
When Christian Gerhaher and his long-time accompanist, Gerard Huber, stepped onto the stage of Alice Tully Hall on October 29, in other words, they were entering what university precincts call a “contested” space. Their featured composer—Gustav Mahler—is a dead white male; Gerhaher and Huber are themselves white and male. And they were offering works that represent the pinnacle of a civilization routinely denounced in the academy and the political arena as the font of the world’s racism and sexism. Gerhaher and Huber demonstrated why the preservation of that inheritance is the most pressing imperative of our time.If they're so embarrassed by the masterpieces in their possession, why not just give them away — first come, first serve? What could be more inclusive than that?
Hmm …
… The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius. (Hat ti, Dave Lull.)
If I had to put the recipe for genius into one sentence, that might be it: to have a disinterested obsession with something that matters.
Something to think on …
It is a lesson we all need — to let alone the things that do not concern us. He has other ways for others to follow Him; all do not go by the same path. It is for each of us to learn the path by which He requires us to follow Him, and to follow Him in that path.
— Katharine Drexel, born on this date in 1858
Sounds good …
… New Wodehouse book: ‘This is jolly old Fame’ by Paul Kent hits the spot – Plumtopia. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Kent makes points which had never occurred to me, setting my thoughts in a multitude of new directions. He draws on an impressive array of literary sources and opinions, but doesn’t hold back from giving his own – firmly, but respectfully questioning some of the ideas many of us seem to have accepted as lore when it comes to discussing Wodehouse and his work. This is the sort of thinking and writing the world of Wodehouse appreciation needs – and gives the rest of us plenty to talk about.
Monday, November 25, 2019
Timely surprises …
… First Known When Lost: Our Place.
… this afternoon, walking beneath the spacious empty branches of a long row of trees, I wondered about my grieving. The day was windless and the trees were absolutely silent. The silence was breathtaking. As was the look of the declining yellow light on the trunks of the trees, on the thousands and thousands of twigs and branches. The World was aglow. Silent and aglow.
Hmm …
… The Logistical and Evangelical Challenges of the Archbishop Sheen Beatification. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The accelerated beatification constitutes a massive missed evangelical opportunity. Consequently, the Diocese of Peoria and the U.S. bishops will have to quickly plan a compensatory program — perhaps a “Year of Blessed Fulton Sheen” or some such initiative. That the announcement from Peoria came only days after the U.S. bishops concluded their plenary meeting in Baltimore meant that an opportunity there was missed to discuss how to cope with the accelerated beatification timeline.
Mark thy calendar …
… SRO: HOMING launches - New Door Books.
… you'll have another chance soon: Mark will be reading at Narberth Bookshop on Thursday, December 5, 7 p.m. If you like celery and carrots, we'd especially like to see you, since your cohort was underrepresented the first time.
In case you wondered …
… Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong.
Journalists and activists alike have an obligation to describe environmental problems honestly and accurately, even if they fear doing so will reduce their news value or salience with the public. There is good evidence that the catastrophist framing of climate change is self-defeating because it alienates and polarizes many people. And exaggerating climate change risks distracting us from other important issues including ones we might have more near-term control over.
What the hell?
… West Virginia Inmates Will Be Charged by the Minute to Read E-Books on Tablets – Reason.com. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Under a 2019 contract between the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (WVDCR) and Global Tel Link (GTL), the company that is providing electronic multimedia tablets to 10 West Virginia prisons, inmates will be charged 3 cents a minute to read books, even though the books all come from Project Gutenberg, a free online library of more than 60,000 texts in the public domain.
Another school to ignore …
… davidthompson: It Was Monday And So There Was Psychodrama.
- When I was editor of my college newspaper, I got a letter from Gus Hall, the head of the CPUSA, complaining about a demonstration by Nazis (real ones) outside a speech he had given. I thought it might be nice to get a letter as well from George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party as well, and run them side by side. I was over-ruled by the Jesuit moderator of the paper, who thought it better to ignore both. Seemed reasonable. I
Caught up in a real resistance …
… BOOK REVIEW: 'Under Occupation' - Washington Times.
Based on actual history, as Mr. Furst notes, the German Occupation Authority rounded up Poles who were electricians, welders and machinists, and forced them into slave labor at the German U-Boats naval yards in Germany. The Poles fought back by stealing technical information about the U-Boats and smuggled the valuable information to Paris, where it was forwarded to the British Secret Intelligence Service.
Something to think on …
Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.
— Joseph Wood Krutch, born on this date in 1893
A pilgrimage on native ground …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'Hence the Beauty of Our Finest Monuments'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My copy of Nige’s book just arrived. I plan to start reading it in a few days, after I meet a deadline for a review that is due.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Not a bad idea …
… Climate Change Protesters Target Harvard-Yale Game, So Abolish the Ivy League.
Of course, I’m Jesuit-trained. So the Ivy League has never meant anything to me.
Belated congratulations to our friend Dave Lull …
… Updike society honors retired librarian | THE JOHN UPDIKE SOCIETY.
God knows where this blog would be were it not for Dave’s yeoman's service on its behalf. Probably in oblivion.
Something to think on …
As long as you have a garden you have a future and as long as you have a future you are alive.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, born on this date in 1849
Saturday, November 23, 2019
In case you wondered …
… The American Scholar: 10 of the Most Influential Literary Characters of All Time. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The poodles have it …
… The wonderful world of community theater | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I go to the theater almost never these days. Jesus Hopped the A Train cured me forever of dramatized op-eds. I would love to see Strindberg, Ibsen, Pirandello, Anouilh, Giraudoux, and yes, Maxwell Anderson and William Inge. But no one seems to stage the classics anymore.
Anniversary …
… Rediscovering a Master Composer - WSJ.
In the violently passionate Piano Sonata, his masterpiece, and “The Lament of Ian the Proud” (both 1918), the finest of his songs, it is clear that had it not been for his tragically untimely death, Griffes would have accumulated a body of first-class work large enough to cause him to be spoken of in the same breath as Copland and Samuel Barber.
Something to think on …
Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.
— Guy Davenport, born on this date in 1927
A different sort of player …
… BOOK REVIEW: 'The Siberian Dilemma' - Washington Times.
“Arkady was an Investigator of Special Cases, and if a bear running loose in the heart of Moscow was not a special case, he didn’t know what was.”
Giving the sacred its proper voice …
… Prayer in English - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The time for a worthy English version of the Mass has arrived, by several unexpected channels.
But it will be a disaster if the Catholic faith does not resume its place at the heart of this development.
Worth remembering …
… The Story of Erroll Garner, the First Artist to Sue a Major and Win – Variety. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It was a landmark case that has been largely forgotten. “The Erroll Garner story is an important one,” says UCLA history professor and author Robin D.G. Kelley. “The context is the ‘50s at the height of Garner’s power. He was winning DownBeat polls and other international prizes. He was at the top of his game, and his manager, Martha Glaser (pictured above, right, with Garner), had worked out a contract with Columbia with an unprecedented clause giving Erroll the right to approve the release of any of his recorded music.”
Friday, November 22, 2019
The world just became less funny …
… Gahan Wilson, Macabre Cartoonist, Dead at 89 – Multiversity Comics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull..)
God, he was a great cartoonist.
Grim anniversary …
… RT’s Reviews & Marginalia : President assassinated in Dallas.
Yeah, I remember where I was when I heard the news. I was a college senior flirting with the pretty girl at the switchboard.
Bicentenary …
… I Grant You Ample Leave by George Eliot | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Today is the 200th anniversary of George Eliot's birth.
Not just the thing with feathers …
… Hope As a Natural Virtue | Peter J. Leithart | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Clark inverts the common picture to demonstrate how reason, knowledge, and virtue are founded on faith, hope, and love.
Shouldn't it be phrase of the year?
… and isn't it just a rhetorical ploy? Oxford Dictionaries declares 'climate emergency' the word of 2019 | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Poetry to read at your own risk …
… Truth or consequences by William Logan | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.
— C. S. Lewis, who died on this date in 1963
Thursday, November 21, 2019
The one thing needful …
… Enough Nones-sense—let’s settle for nothing but Truth – Catholic World Report.
… we need to insist on the ancient and perennial questions: What is truth? Do I desire it? How can I find it?
Faith encounter …
… An Icon of St. Margaret by Marly Youmans | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Someone wekk worth getting to know …
… The Woman Who Brought Dostoevsky and Chekhov to English Readers | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Garnett made Dostoyevsky a household name, and he did the same for her. Ernest Hemingway was one of many who admired her Dostoyevskys, as well as her Tolstoys. “I remember,” he told a friend, “how many times I tried to read War and Peace until I got the Constance Garnett translation.” Not everyone shared his opinion. One critic described her Chekhov as a Victorian death rattle. Nabokov jumped in to damn her versions. But compare his translation of Gogol’s sleighbells in Dead Souls to Garnett’s. Chudnym zvonom zalivayetsya kolokolchik becomes:
Garnett: “The ringing of the bells melts into music.”
Nabokov: “The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy.”Who, do you think, has the tin ear?
The art of writing …
… on Essays: One by Lydia Davis – On the Seawall. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In the craft essays that make up the bulk of Lydia Davis’ collection Essays: One, the pleasure is always immediate, the joy near at hand. Perhaps this peculiar but welcome sensibility comes from Davis’ affinity for the short story, which in her case is often as short as a sentence. Perhaps it stems from her work as a translator, where she engaged phrase-by-phrase with triumphs by Proust and Flaubert. (The forthcoming Essays: Two deals directly with translation.) Whatever the reason, Davis’ writing on writing possesses a candor and warmth that are rare in the genre, even while she demands an unusual amount of rigor.Here is an excerpt: Lydia Davis: Ten of My Recommendations for Good Writing Habits.
Tyranny alert …
… Myanmar judge extends sentences for poets jailed for mocking military - Reuters. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Another place where speaking truth to power comes at a price.
Another place where speaking truth to power comes at a price.
And the winners are …
… 2019 National Book Award Winners Announced - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
We must believe in free will — we have no choice.
— Isaac Bashevis Singer, born on this date in 1902
Poetry in extremis …
You'll Need Me When They're Gone: The Poems We Reach For in Grief - The Millions. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
… poems about grief offer us language at times when we can’t come up with our own. This occurs on all levels of catastrophe.
Who knew?
… Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hebrew Poet – Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The Romantic poet’s underappreciated collaboration with the pioneering Hebrew scholar Hyman Hurwitz made him more of a Hebraist than most readers know.
Q&A …
…First Draft of the King James Bible | National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In 2015, Jeffrey Alan Miller, an English professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, stunned the academic world with his announcement, in the Times Literary Supplement, that he had discovered “the earliest known draft of any part of the King James Bible, unmistakably in the hand of one of the King James translators.” This year Miller was awarded an NEH research fellowship to bring out a critical edition of the draft, and, as we went to press, it was announced that he had won a MacArthur “genius” grant.
Q&A …
…First Draft of the King James Bible | National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In 2015, Jeffrey Alan Miller, an English professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, stunned the academic world with his announcement, in the Times Literary Supplement, that he had discovered “the earliest known draft of any part of the King James Bible, unmistakably in the hand of one of the King James translators.” This year Miller was awarded an NEH research fellowship to bring out a critical edition of the draft, and, as we went to press, it was announced that he had won a MacArthur “genius” grant.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
About time …
… The Magnificent Tarkington. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Penrod books (not mentioned in this piece) were still popular when I was a boy
All three books cast doubt on [Thomas] Mallon’s verdict that Tarkington, in the “throes of nostalgia,” produced works “trapped in amber.” In truth, besides reminding us of what a splendid writer Tarkington was, they show that few American novelists have had a better intuitive grasp of human motivation and group dynamics. Tarkington was especially attuned to how human action and interaction were shaped, distorted, and poisoned by egotism, willfulness, and self-centeredness.
The Penrod books (not mentioned in this piece) were still popular when I was a boy
Well, maybe …
… The 50 best nonfiction books of past 25 years. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Just off the top of my head, I would have found room for Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, which is a very important book, and also Auberon Waugh's Will This Do?, and Julian Barnes's Nothing to Be Frightened Of.
Something to think on …
The ways of Providence cannot be reasoned out by the finite mind ... I cannot fathom them, yet seeking to know them is the most satisfying thing in all the world.
— Selma Lagerlöf, born on this date in 1858
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Listen in, with sadness …
… Tom Spurgeon Bonus Episode – The Virtual Memories Show.
Following the unexpected death of Tom Spurgeon, my best friend and an inveterate supporter of the show, I’ve re-posted our 2012 conversation, along with a new (and emotional) introduction.
Pretty near definitive …
Yesterday was Eugene Ormandy's birthday. I grew up seeing and listening to him conduct. I happen to think he is underrated. But I don't think anyone doubts that he was a great conductor of Rachmaninoff's music. Rachmaninoff certainly thought so.
Something else to listen to …
… Episode 350 – Ed Ward – The Virtual Memories Show.
“I don’t like nostalgia. I consider it destructive to a rational understanding of history.”
Tracking the decline …
… RT’s Reviews & Marginalia : “10 books about Emily Dickinson ... “
I got today the one Emily Dixkinson book everyone should have: Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them.
Getting to know him …
… A motel room of one’s own. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, a rich exhibition now at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, highlights the contrast between Hopper’s early, lesser-known years as a commercial illustrator and his later eminence as laconic American icon, the serious solitary who painted crumbling Victorian boarding houses, faded hotel lobbies and highway motels.
Appreciation …
… Nigeness: Literary Grappa.
If God grants me time, I hope to get around to reading Compton-Burnett.
If God grants me time, I hope to get around to reading Compton-Burnett.
Just read the books …
… John O’Hara: The Novelist Whose Conservatism Robbed Him of Fame - The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is something I wrote for his centenary.
Here is something I wrote for his centenary.
Dismaying …
… Stanford administrators compare College Republicans to mass shooters and domestic terrorists | The College Fix.
Higher education would be vastly improved by greatly reducing the number of administrators — and curbing their power. They could be a pain even when I was in college.
Something to think on …
In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.
— Allen Tate, born on this date in 1899
Monday, November 18, 2019
Landscape and interloper …
… Backdrop addresses cowboy by Margaret Atwood | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Margaret Atwood turned 80 today.
Poor guy …
… Man In Critical Condition After Hearing Slightly Differing Viewpoint | The Babylon Bee.
The man is being kept stable on ideology support at St. Francis medical center, surrounded by friends and family who agree with him 100% on every single issue.
Reductio ad absurdum …
… The Philip Pullman Dilemma | Peter Hitchens | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If on your thirteenth birthday you discovered that your soul looked like a cockroach, an urban pigeon, or a rat, and would for the rest of your life, it would be a bit like being branded on your forehead with the word “failure.” Then again, if the ambitious new executive in your office had a vulture perched on his shoulder, or a rattlesnake coiled round his arm, you’d obviously know to be careful. But then, anyone so obviously nasty would surely never get the job. Novels and plays might become very hard to write, for deviousness, alas, makes fiction function. In many ways it makes the world go round. A world without dissembling sounds wonderful, but is it practical?
Ouch …
… Susan Sontag, Savant-Idiot - Commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
How … could a woman who was so inadequate a mother, so untrustworthy a friend, so out of touch with the most commonplace realities, have been a penetrating analyst of culture and politics? The short answer is that she wasn’t.
The mention in the lede that Simone Weill "starved herself for the good of humankind" may be inaccurate. One of Weil's early biographers said that Weil actually asked for food during her last illness and may just have been too ill to eat.
Hmm …
… Thomas Aquinas versus the Economists.
Hirschfeld’s primary objective, however, is to establish a Thomist foundation for economics, if not outline the contours of a fully Thomist economics. This, she believes, will allow a Thomist understanding of the nature of the good to shape economic ideas, practices and institutions so as to contribute to the growth of what she regards as a more humane economy. According to Hirschfeld, such a project would help economics take into account some of those truths about the good and justice that, in her estimation, modern economics willfully excludes from its typical modes of inquiry.
Something to think on …
The aim of education is to guide young persons in the process through which they shape themselves as human persons-armed with knowledge, strength of judgment, and moral virtues-while at the same time conveying to them the spiritual heritage of the nation and the civilization in which they are involved.
— Jacques Maritain, born on this date in 1882
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Mark thy calendar …
POETRY IN COMMON
&
THE GREEN LINE CAFÉ POETRY SERIES
&
100 THOUSAND POETS FOR
PEACE AND CHANGE
PRESENT
AN OPEN POETRY READING
THE ANNUAL RONALD JOHNSON POETRY AWARD
FOR BEST POEM
THE PRIZE: $100.
Judge: CHARLES CARR
Hosted by LEONARD GONTAREK
Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 6 PM
Sign Up: gontarek9@earthlink.net
Poets will get 4 minutes to read
Poems on any subject
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
PHILADELPHIA, PA USA
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
&
THE GREEN LINE CAFÉ POETRY SERIES
&
100 THOUSAND POETS FOR
PEACE AND CHANGE
PRESENT
AN OPEN POETRY READING
THE ANNUAL RONALD JOHNSON POETRY AWARD
FOR BEST POEM
THE PRIZE: $100.
Judge: CHARLES CARR
Hosted by LEONARD GONTAREK
Tuesday, November 19, 2019, 6 PM
Sign Up: gontarek9@earthlink.net
Poets will get 4 minutes to read
Poems on any subject
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
PHILADELPHIA, PA USA
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
Sounds ghastly …
… Like, Emily Dickinson, Whatever - Commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dickinson is a pandering distortion of the life of America’s most important 19th-century poet, and thus viewers should be careful to treat it for what it is—an intermittently amusing cartoon driven by trendy ideology, and not a serious appreciation of Emily Dickinson’s poetry or life.The past and its inhabitants are best understood on their own terms, not our trendy ones.
How we got here …
… New York Review of Books: The Medium Is the Mistake. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Much of the fault, [Taibbi] thinks, arises from the homogeneity of the journalistic milieu. Fifty years ago, a good many newspapermen and -women came from working-class backgrounds. Now, most political journalists have gone to “expensive colleges,” and “literature degrees are common among our kind (I have one).” Telling stories is what these people do, and their lack of political knowledge is atoned for by their shared possession of an attitude. This imparts an unruffled confidence to their judgments and assures their lack of curiosity about stories or angles that others of their group have identified as pointless. “They are on social media day and night,” Taibbi says, and the people they talk to are each other. “They share everything, from pictures of their cats to takes on the North Korean nuclear crisis.”
Something to think on …
The main objection to killing people as a punishment...is that killing people is wrong.
— Auberon Waugh, born on this date in 1939
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Self vs. soul …
… Ibsen's Soulcraft by Algis Valiunas | Articles | First Things.
… Ibsen’s vision inclined toward the tragic. He subjected all the good things he praised—freedom, self-fulfillment, love, nobility, happiness—to the acid test, which revealed every flaw and sometimes dissolved every shred of the ideal. Impediments to happy endings abounded. Ibsen knew how difficult it could be to escape one’s past, even when the failing was not one’s own. The sins of the fathers were indeed visited upon the children, and pain was transmitted in the blood, sometimes literally, down the generations. He also understood that certain goods, most desirable in themselves, may be incompatible with one another—that self-realization in one’s chosen work may preclude love, or nobility foreclose happiness. He proved, in the lives he imagined, the tragic nature of the liberal order as Isaiah Berlin would later describe it, in which there is no fixed hierarchy of virtues, and ideas evidently of equal worth, such as freedom, nobility, and equality, might not agreeably coexist.
It’s come to this …
… Column: Northwestern University, the cancel culture and ‘Whatsoever things are true’ - Chicago Tribune.
Gee, when I was editor of my college newspaper I loved it when people took offense. It proved I had got their attention.
Journalism was once the province of the iconoclasts, but no longer. Now establishment journalism, in the main, serves the establishment. The cancel culture doesn’t shape journalists as much as it shapes propagandists, but ultimately this is not the fault of the students.
It’s our fault. They’re our kids. We let it happen.
A prophet for our times …
… How a 20th century theologian became a quiet prophet for our distracted age | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Concurrent with [the] loss of what Guardini calls “natural religious experience” has been a move toward mass conformity—what we might call the “hive mind.” “Mass man has no desire for independence or originality in either the management or the conduct of his life,” Guardini writes in The End of the Modern World. “Nor does he seek to create an environment belonging only to himself, reflecting only his self. The gadgets and technics forced upon him by the patterns of machine production and of abstract planning mass man accepts quite simply; they are the forms of life itself.”Guardini is a great writer and thinker. I have been re-reading The End of the Modern World. It could been written yesterday. I notice this piece has the usual boilerplate reference to the "conformist" 1950s. Check out the books and plays that were written then, sir.
Something to think on …
But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
— Alan Watts, who died on this date in 1973
Friday, November 15, 2019
Quite a tale …
… John M. Ford’s books are being republished, but how did he fall into obscurity? (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
How had a writer this good fallen into this level of obscurity? The more I looked into Ford’s career, the more frustrating and mystifying his posthumous invisibility came to seem. Ford had won the Philip K. Dick Award and multiple World Fantasy Awards. He was a beloved and influential peer to writers including Neil Gaiman, Jo Walton, Ellen Kushner, James Rigney (better known as Robert Jordan), Jack Womack, and Daniel Abraham. So why had so few people heard of him? Why wasn’t anyone publishing his books?
The poet and his poem …
… The Auden Poem Auden Hated - Commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Auden was wrong to think that “the whole poem…was infected with an incurable dishonesty.” Indeed, “September 1, 1939” is powerful above all because of its willingness to tell the unvarnished truth about England and Europe in the ’30s, and it is noteworthy that Sansom’s book retreats into a flurry of evasive obscurity just as Auden becomes most specific about what he has to say. For “September 1, 1939” is above all a repudiation of the “low dishonest” politics of the ’30s and an acknowledgment of the failure of left-wing ideology to provide an answer to the “psychopathic god” of Hitlerian nationalism.
Encountering Mr. Blake …
… zmkc: William Blake - Tate Britain. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ultimately, I wondered if the problem I was having was more than anything a difference of temperament. I have noticed that fans of the apocalyptic and the Gothic tend not to be strong on humour and I felt that Blake too, although in some ways perhaps an absurd figure himself, had no sense of the absurd. There is a poignance in some of the accounts contained in the exhibition of how even in his own time barely anyone - possibly no one - understood his larger projects. Now I notice that they are being championed by Patti Smith among others - another charismatic but solemn figure. Perhaps at heart I am too flippant to be a romantic and this is where William Blake and I parted our ways?I think this is wonderful. It is how we ought to encounter art and artists. Honestly.
Something to think on …
In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong, dreadfully wrong. There are no guarantees; the religious life is a venture; foolish and debilitating error is a permanent possibility. (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right.)
— Alvin Plantinga, born on this date in 1932