Books, Inq. — The Epilogue

Still kickin' ...

2012-02-02T18:30:00.000-05:00

... Paul Davis On Crime: Cinematic James Bond Still Has A License To Thrill At 50.

Review with a difference ...

2012-02-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

... Mr. Miners Phish Thoughts: An Anthology By A Fan For The Fans by David Calarco :: Books :: Reviews :: Paste.

Reunion ...

2012-02-02T17:00:00.000-05:00

... The Smart Set: Most Likely to Reflect - August 3, 2011.

In planning to attend a 40th high school reunion, you ... have to decide whether to keep quiet about it or publicize it in the hope that others will exclaim, “How could you possibly be going to your 40th high school reunion? You look so young!" — a response you get less often than you’d think, even though it seems the logical, polite thing to say.

I have attended several of Debbie's high school reunions. I suppose I have enjoyed precisely because I no emotional investment in them.

Not mere transcription ...

2012-02-02T16:00:00.000-05:00

... Memoir: It’s All in the Art - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

In memoriam ...

2012-02-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

... Wisława Szymborska: a feather touch that, for all its lightness, lingers | The Book Haven.

Mutual aid ..

2012-02-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

... Bryan Appleyard - Richard Sennett’s Togetherness. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The answer is, as Sennett rightly says, to relocate the concept of the competitive free market within the cooperative human world. Much neo-liberal rhetoric seemed to treat the market as some kind of natural system with which we tamper at our peril. This attitude seems to have been supported by some dubious Darwinian rhetoric about the survival of the fittest. In fact, all markets are very intricate human creations, products of cooperation rather than competition.

Prince Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is in part a rebuttal to the "survival of the fittest" notion. But of course it is the tendency to shift power and responsibility to the central government -- thereby marginalizing local authority -- that is a major cause of the problem. It is the principle of subsidiarity that needs to be revived.

Together at last ...

2012-02-02T14:30:00.000-05:00

... Harry and Charles: Harry Potter as a crash course for Dickens | Drexel Publishing Group.

Decline ...

2012-02-02T14:00:00.000-05:00

... Cheats, spivs and small-time crooks: Britain is getting less honest, and it starts at the top | Mail Online.

Islington Museum currently has an exhibition of library books defaced in the 1950s by the playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. Orton later became a well-known, but not necessarily very good, playwright. The pair of them went to prison for six months for defacing the books, causing £450 damage (the equivalent now, perhaps, of £25,000), stealing 72 others, and cutting out 1,653 art plates. ... However talented Orton may have been, no talent justifies this kind of vandalism; and if we choose to glorify as Islington Museum does, we ought not to be surprised that some people think they can behave in the same, yobbish way.

Things are hardly better on those shores.

The talented Mr. Miller ...

2012-02-02T13:00:00.000-05:00

... Book Review: Renegade - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

A few years ago, the Library of America put out a huge anthology called "Americans in Paris," and Miller turned up in it as just one more literary tourist, perfectly at ease in the company of Henry Adams and Edith Wharton. Now that's the stuff Miller really would have loved. The books he wrote after "Tropic"—which even Mr. Turner concedes are mostly terrible—show him eager to pose as a great sage, laying down the law about everything from the soul of Greek culture to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. They make "Tropic's" gibes against art seem like the sour grapes of the kid longing to get through the clubhouse door.

I beg to differ. I have long thought that Tropic of Cancer suffers from having been written in Paris about Paris.Tropic of Capricorn, however, written in Paris about Brooklyn, thrives from the distance. And even Van Wyck Brooks thought highly of The Colossus of Maroussi -- as did my wife after a trip to Greece. I also think The Time of the Assassins is actually a pretty good take on Rimbaud.

OK, I was wrong ...

2012-02-02T12:30:00.000-05:00

Back in October I opined that, despite pretty warm temperatures, the weather in these parts would eventually get cold and snowy. But there has been only one slight snowfall, and temperatures this week have been downright springlike. Last month was as mild a January as I can remember (there were some pretty mild winters in the early '50s, if memory serves, but Januarys are usually pretty cold here). Of course, a cold snap could happen, but right now spring bulbs are sprouting in my garden.

Forget that rolling stone ...

2012-02-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

... it's the moss you have to watch out for: First land plants plunged Earth into ice age - environment - 01 February 2012 - New Scientist.

The first land plants appeared around 470 million years ago, during the Ordovician period, when life was diversifying rapidly. They were non-vascular plants, like mosses and liverworts, that didn't have deep roots.
About 35 million years later, ice sheets briefly covered much of the planetand a mass extinction ensued. Carbon dioxide levels probably fell sharplyjust before the ice arrived – but nobody knew why.

Still going strong ...

2012-02-02T11:30:00.000-05:00

... At 89 by Daniel Hoffman - The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Getting to know him ...

2012-02-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

... World Exclusive: Introducing poet Paul Lisson - The Globe and Mail. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

'Twas ever thus ...

2012-02-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

... Andrew Shaffer: Johannes Franzen: "Print Books Are Damaging to Society".

Race politics...

2012-02-02T10:20:00.003-05:00

...Affirming a divide

Academics from some of Brazil’s best universities have led a campaign against quotas. They argue firstly that affirmative action starts with an act of racism: the division of a rainbow nation into arbitrary colour categories. Assigning races in Brazil is not always as easy as the activists claim. In 2007 one of two identical twins who both applied to enter the University of Brasília was classified as black, the other as white. All this risks creating racial resentment.

In case you wondered ...

2012-02-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

... Thanks to Plants, We Will Never Find a Planet Like Earth: Scientific American.

We all know how Earth's landscape came about, right? Oceans and land masses formed, mountains rose, and precipitation washed over its surface; rivers weathered bare rock to create soil and plants took root. Well, new research indicates that the last stage of this scenario is not right. Vascular plants—those with structures such as xylem and phloem that can conduct water—are what created the rivers and muds that built the soils that led to forests and farmland.

Thought for the day ...

2012-02-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

- James Joyce, born on this date 1882

RIP ...

2012-02-01T19:00:00.000-05:00

... The Associated Press: Poland's 1996 Nobel poet Szymborska dies at 88. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

A literary institution ...

2012-02-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

... AbeBooks: The Paris Review: Bastion of Fine Fiction & Poetry.

Two weeks left ...

2012-02-01T17:00:00.000-05:00

... 2012 Obsidian Prize for Nonfiction - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

The subject is destiny ...

2012-02-01T16:00:00.000-05:00

... The Old Bunch | Meyer Levin | Destiny's Children | Masterpiece by Joseph Epstein - WSJ.com.

The method is that of realism. Details add up to form character, and character becomes destiny. For example, young Sam Eisen's strain of nonconformity impels him first to leave the boyhood club of friends because of its want of seriousness; later he will drop out of the University of Illinois because of his repugnance toward compulsory ROTC service; the bourgeois spirit of his wife drives him to divorce; and he ends up a lawyer whose career is devoted to idealistic but ultimately empty radical causes.

Trans-species rapprochement ...

2012-02-01T15:00:00.000-05:00

... Anecdotal Evidence: `In My Heart Is Locked the Singing Flame'.

Grammarian of genius ...

2012-02-01T14:00:00.000-05:00

... Shakespeare's skill was in his grammar not his language, academic claims - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The full catastrophe

2012-02-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

... First Listen: Leonard Cohen, 'Old Ideas' : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Restored ...

2012-02-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

... America Magazine - The Church and the Fiction Writer.

In her essay, O’Connor measured her argument and her prose carefully, and it is understandable that she was upset that Father Gardiner had altered one of her paragraphs, which we have inserted into the text below in brackets. We publish this original paragraph with our belated apologies.

Bylined endorsements ...

2012-02-01T11:00:00.000-05:00

... The Millions : I Greet You in the Middle of a Great Career: A Brief History of Blurbs.

Speaking out ...

2012-02-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

... Carol Ann Duffy is 'wrong' about poetry, says Geoffrey Hill | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

"When the laureate speaks to the Guardian columnist to the tremendous potential for a vital new poetry to be drawn from the practice of texting she is policing her patch, and when I beg her with all due respect to her high office to consider that she might be wrong, I am policing mine," said Hill, in a lecture entitled "Poetry, Policing and Public Order". The Oxford professor of poetry has previously described difficult poems as "the most democratic because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing they are intelligent human beings", saying that "so much of the popular poetry of today treats people as if they were fools".

Thought for the day ...

2012-02-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that's their order of importance.

- Muriel Spark, born on this date in 1918

William S. Burroughs

2012-02-01T01:24:00.001-05:00

Selected letters (care of the Paris Review Daily)

Typical befuddlement of debate...

2012-01-31T23:43:00.001-05:00

...Verses and Versions of Power
The author bemoans Bellow's remark on Rushdie trying, unsuccessfully, to do an Ulysses on the Islamic world as Orientalism but that does not take away from the truth of Bellow's assertion. By claiming that Rushdie's pariah-like status has something to do with the West's supposedly blinkered view of Islam, the author does great disservice to the right of free speech. Rushdie is very much an "Indian" writer in the themes that he explores. His exile in the West is a necessity borne out of the vicious and threatening tirade against him. And to compare the Rushdie affair with the situation in Kashmir is patently laughable. Here is s country where an Arundhati Roy can foster secession by urging Kashmiris to "get azaadi (freedom) from bhookey nangey (impoverished) Hindustan" in the heart of Delhi. Forget violence, not an iota of trouble visits her.

Remember, his last was 'Foreskin's lament'!

2012-01-31T22:10:00.001-05:00

The Driftwood Remains: My Search for A Bankable Title

A good idea ...

2012-01-31T20:00:00.000-05:00

... Transterrestrial Musings - Time To Get Religion Out Of Science Classes.

I have a modest proposal. Instead of promulgating either the Christian religion, or the Green religion in our science classes, let’s get teachers who actually have degrees in science (as opposed to “education”), so they don’t need “teaching materials,” and teach kids how to do math (including statistics), think critically, and actually formulate testable and falsifiable hypotheses and test them, so that they will be inoculated to all religions, when it comes to learning science.

As good a picture ...

2012-01-31T19:00:00.000-05:00

... as I've ever taken.

More dumbing down ...

2012-01-31T18:00:00.000-05:00

... Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe: Did they take out the “J” word, too? | The Book Haven.

Where did we get the idea that all reading must be easy reading?

"A loose affair" ...

2012-01-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

... The TLS blog: Happy-go-lucky Edward Thomas

Review ...

2012-01-31T16:00:00.000-05:00

... PhanArt - Jambandbootleg by Paul Siegell.

FYI ...

2012-01-31T15:00:00.000-05:00

... Ten Reasons Not to Sleep with an Essayist - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Congratulations ...

2012-01-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

... Kudos to Fern G. Z. Carr, poet lawyer - The Globe and Mail. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

And two others ...

2012-01-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

... The Pope’s Life of Jesus | TLS.

Benedict’s book ... is full of surprises. There is a welcome emphasis on the rootedness of Jesus and his followers in Israel’s Scriptures, something which older exegesis, both Protestant and Catholic, often passed over. The heart of the volume is an exposition of Jesus’s vocational understanding of his own death in terms of the Psalms and Isaiah, particularly the “servant songs” of Isaiah 42–53, leading to a clear statement of the cross as the moment of vicarious, substitutionary atonement. This, Benedict writes, “constitutes the most profound content of Jesus’ mission”. This is not a view that Protestants normally expect popes to hold. Some Roman theologians, I suspect, will be surprised as well.

Here we go again ...

2012-01-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

... Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)

Franzen said he took comfort from knowing he will not be here in 50 years’ time to find out if books have become obsolete.

In even less time than that, I won't have to hear about a new Jonathan Franzen novel being published. That's one good thing about being 70.

This won't change things...

2012-01-31T11:51:00.000-05:00

...The Economist's Chinese competition

Inquirer news ...

2012-01-31T11:48:00.001-05:00

... Philly newspapers boss responds to NYP story | JIMROMENESKO.COM. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

Continuing ...

2012-01-31T11:00:00.000-05:00

... Why Geology Matters, Part 4 | Books and Culture.

Depends ...

2012-01-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

... The self-epublishing bubble | Ewan Morrison | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

This may be so for those who take up writing in order to get rich. John Jakes once told me that the thing that was most surprising when he had his first best-seller is how many people he met who thought it was his first book. It was, in fact, his 26th. I think most people who write do it for reasons other than becoming rich quick.

Thought for the day ...

2012-01-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

- Thomas Merton, born on this date in 1915

Namelessness matters ...

2012-01-30T20:00:00.000-05:00

... Bryan Appleyard - 4Chan and Anonymous. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

FYI ...

2012-01-30T19:00:00.000-05:00

... Erika Dreifus’ Guide to Flash Nonfiction Markets - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

Kicks and links ...

2012-01-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

... Secret Dead Blog: Kickin' Out Some Updates.

Sectarian killers ...

2012-01-30T17:00:00.000-05:00

... Detectives Beyond Borders: Resurrection Man.

And he paid for doing so ...

2012-01-30T16:00:00.000-05:00

... He Told the Truth About China’s Tyranny by Simon Leys | The New York Review of Books.

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 brought the name of Liu Xiaobo to the attention of the entire world. Yet well before that, he had already achieved considerable fame within China, as a fearless and clearsighted public intellectual and the author of some seventeen books, including collections of poetry and literary criticism as well as political essays.2 The Communist authorities unwittingly vouched for the uncompromising accuracy of his comments. They kept arresting him for his views—four times since the Tiananmen massacre in June 1989. Now he is again in jail, since December 2008; though in poor health, he is subjected to an especially severe regime.

For purists ...

2012-01-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

... Issa's Untidy Hut: Walking the Dog: Issa's Sunday Service, #128.

Putting things in perspective ...

2012-01-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

... Feel special, do I? Well... | Facebook.

In many respects, being gay has been the most fantastic thing in my life. It has enabled me to chart my own course of social and personal development without having to fit in to the dominant model peopled by straights.

Celebrating life ...

2012-01-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

... The Art of the Obituary - Telegraph.

Birthday greetings ...

2012-01-30T12:30:00.000-05:00

... Paul Davis On Crime: Authors Praise Joseph Wambaugh To Mark His 75th Birthday.

Fighting back ...

2012-01-30T12:00:00.000-05:00

... The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - Boarish Behavior.

Feral pigs have been devastating the American landscape since they were first introduced to this continent by European explorers in the 1500s. Some people call them razorbacks, or wild hogs—and, like the John Travolta movie of the same name, you will have trouble finding anyone with a good word to say about them. They ravage every ecosystem into which they’re introduced. They can grow to 500 pounds. They reproduce rapidly, and can begin breeding when they’re only eight months old. They’re violent and dirty and ugly and omnivorous—and they are everywhere.

Superhuman focus ...

2012-01-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

... Dan Neil on the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Van Gogh Up Close - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It's not surprising that Van Gogh found transcendence in a "blade of grass"—an image he perhaps borrowed from the Calvinist critic Thomas Carlyle. And Van Gogh was not the only artist possessing a Zen-like zoom lens. Ms. Kienle might as easily have name-checked T.S. Eliot, who writes in "Four Quartets": "We must be still and still moving / Into another intensity / For a further union, a deeper communion."

A most useful pamphlet ...

2012-01-30T11:00:00.000-05:00

... Transmissions from a Lone Star: Learn Japanese the World War II Way! | Columnists | RIA Novosti.

Lurching into the unknown ...

2012-01-30T10:30:00.000-05:00

... Book Review: Alfred Jarry - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Despite, or because of, the riots the play was a great success. Jarry, however, proved unable to renew himself. Novels and plays, full of brilliant phrases and scenes poured out from him over the next decade, but these tended to rely on incidents in his own life made "Jarryesque" by crude satire and a liberal use of expletives. A huge play, based on the Renaissance satirist Rabelais, kept being rewritten, first for marionettes, then as an operetta. Nothing came of it.

The game of love ...

2012-01-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

... Swithering: A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch.

Thought for the day ...

2012-01-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.

- Barbara Tuchman, born on this date 1912

The Spies of Warsaw

2012-01-29T19:44:00.003-05:00

I've just finished Alan Furst's The Spies of Warsaw, a work of historical fiction set between the wars.

My response to this book was mixed. On the one hand, you can't go wrong with the interwar period, particularly in Europe: it's the perfect backdrop for a novel involving espionage, diplomacy, and yes, romance.

To a certain extent, Furst is successful is his use of this backdrop: his characters are interesting (or interesting enough) and a few of them engage in meaningful musings on history and the events leading to 1939.

Despite the praise heaped on this book by critics like Jonathan Yardley, I ultimately found it to be a novel in search of itself. Furst follows a number of a plot twists toward something approaching a climax, but when this climax comes, it's doesn't pack the punch that we might expect after more than 200 pages of intrigue.

In addition, there was something, I felt, that was contrived about Furst's book: it's tricky work, I recognize, to successfully integrate historical realities into fiction, but there were moments in this novel that Furst's characters spoke in a way that was too didactic, too instructive - as if Furst were offering his readers the background they would need to fully appreciate the dialogue he'd constructed.

Perhaps this is necessary, but there are other writers - including Hilary Mantel, whose work immediately comes to mind here - who weave the past into their narratives in a manner far more effective (and seamless) than does Furst.

Still, this was a fun book to read, and I credit Furst with getting a least part of the way toward evoking the energy - and anxiety - of that tremendous period of global history.

Enter now ...

2012-01-29T17:00:00.000-05:00

... The Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction -BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.

The next level ...

2012-01-29T16:00:00.000-05:00

... SinC25: Claudia Piñeiro, #7 post of expert challenge | Petrona.

Before the legend ...

2012-01-29T15:00:00.000-05:00

... The Wilson Quarterly: Book Reviews: Papa's Beginnings by Michael Moynihan.

Continuing ...

2012-01-29T14:00:00.000-05:00

... Democracy: Skepticism Versus Cynicism | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes.

Well, that should finish it ...

2012-01-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

... First ever crime writing MA launched | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Be very scared ...

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000-05:00

... Fear Itself: Books That Go Bump in the Night on AbeBooks.

No matter, never mind ...

2012-01-29T11:00:00.000-05:00

... It's time for science to move on from materialism | Mark Vernon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... some scientists are proposing top-down, holistic explanations. Sheldrake's particular proposal is that such self-organising systems exist in fields of memory or habit. These contain the information required to make the structure.

This sounds to as if Sheldrake is trying to adapt quantum physics to biology, packets of information corresponding to packets of energy.

Nice to know ...

2012-01-29T10:30:00.000-05:00

... 'There might be a God', says Sir David Attenborough | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Today's Inquirer reviews ...

2012-01-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Actually, in the print version of the paper (to which I loyally subscribe) there is a roundup of books to look forward to this spring. Unfortunately, this is all I can find online: Volumes to delight. This let's you see pictures of some book covers. If anyone can figure out how to link to the story, let me know.

Thought for the day ...

2012-01-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.

- Romain Rolland, born on this date in 1866

Breaking stereotypes...

2012-01-28T23:04:00.001-05:00

....Gilbert and George: the odd couple

"Even today the very educated papers still try to abuse us," says Gilbert. "Our art is capable of bringing out the bigot inside the liberal, and the liberal inside the bigot. A taxi driver who thinks that all modern art is rubbish will say to us, 'It's good what you do, guys.'"

"Both and" ...

2012-01-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

or "either or": From Mark Twain to Ray Bradbury, Iconic Writers on Truth vs. Fiction - Maria Popova - Entertainment - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)

Hmm ... hmmm ...

2012-01-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

... FuturePundit: Intellectual Interests Genetically Predetermined?

A hallmark of the individual is the cultivation of personal interests, but for some people, their intellectual pursuits might actually be genetically predetermined. Survey results published by Princeton University researchers in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that a family history of psychiatric conditions such as autism and depression could influence the subjects a person finds engaging.

But your family history does not determine what you actually encounter in life. You might well go through all of life without suffering any of the cited psychopathologies if you never encountered one or another of them as a subject that engaged you. A good many people these days do not seem to know that a proposition has to be examined from different directions, especially from the one directly opposite, the contradictory, the one that, if true, demonstrates the falseness of the other.

In this case, I think both propositions state a complementary truth. Together, they merely move the question back a step. For it is hard to think of the response prior to the stimulus. It is the satisfaction derived from the stimulus that would have to be predetermined.

This, by the way, is as far as I have got in reading this piece. I think it is worth reading because it lays out quite clearly a argument. But it is also worth reading slowly, taking time think about what it is being said.

Not really ...

2012-01-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

... zmkc: In Praise of Censorship.

And then I thought, 'Do newspapers and reporters ever ask themselves what good it actually does, when they decide to tell us many of the things that they do decide to tell us, usually without ever being asked to tell us?' Do they wonder to themselves about what exact important purpose is served by providing us with all the prurient details of individual acts of gory madness?'

The post is not really about censorship, but about prudence and taste. And no, newspapers and reporters don't really ask such questions. You print what you think people want to read. And sensationalism has a wide appeal.

The value of fabricated truth ...

2012-01-28T15:00:00.000-05:00

... Blog: The Misadventures of Marotta - Chillicothe, IL - Chillicothe Times-Bulletin. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Authors' lairs ...

2012-01-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

... Writing is a life of poverty? Not. | The Book Haven.

Muddled psychologizing ...

2012-01-28T13:00:00.001-05:00

... Siris: Baggini, "Subjective Experiences," and Suspicion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... it is at least as irrational to be suspicious of something for no good reason as it is to accept it for no good reason; and at least in principle they want their suspicions as well as their beliefs to be well-grounded. And the only skeptic I've ever come across who appealed to such a ridiculously broad consideration as Baggini has here is Julian Baggini. And suspicion is as much a subjective experience as anything else: it's one of the kinds of ways we feel that something might not be right.

Indeed ...

2012-01-28T12:00:00.001-05:00

... Paul Davis On Crime: A Brit Looks At An American Crime Writer: Elmore Leonard - The Great American Novelist.

From Hensher's piece:

Leonard's work is a very long way from the average crime novel, with its sequence of atrocity, mystery, maverick investigator and solution. He is fascinated, for instance, with the mechanics of writing, and wants his readers to share that interest. Characters investigate the textures of dialogue – "'How come,' Raylan said, 'you can't answer a question without asking one?'" (Riding the Rap.) They discuss diction in intricate detail – Foley and Buddy reading a newspaper report in Out of Sight: "'They think you may "flee the country."' 'I've had to run like hell a few times,' Foley said, 'but I don't think I've done any fleeing. You ever flee?' 'Yeah. I read one time I fled the scene of a robbery.'"

I have written a couple of times that Leonard should get the Nobel. Like Dickens, he has created a world.

Worried thoughts ...

2012-01-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

... Zealotry of Guerin: Wheat Field With Crows (Van Gogh).

Also born today ...

2012-01-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

... Jackson Pollock 'transcends time and fashion' - Telegraph.

Thought for today ...

2012-01-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.

- Thomas Aquinas, born on this date in 1225

Hmm ...

2012-01-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

... Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’ — By Frederick Turner — Book Review - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It grieves me to say it, but I think this is mostly crap. Henry/Val in the Tropics is not Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn, by the way, is a far better book than Tropic of Cancer). Bawdy humor seems to escape Winterson. The Miller in the books is a parody, a caricature. I reviewed a biography of him years ago. I foget the name of the book and the name of the author - a woman, and an admirably honest biographer. She admitted at the outset that she intended to do a job on Henry, but found out after meeting him that "Henry Miller was a very nice man." I believe hers is the book that relates how, when Miller learned that his wife Eve had died - and it had been a stormy marriage - he fell on his knees in his kitchen and just wept uncontrollably. As Somerset Maugham sagely observed, men are not of a piece. Blackguards can prove surprisingly sensitive at times, and genuine saints can often be mean and vicious.

Sorry, sort of ...

2012-01-27T20:00:00.000-05:00

.. Literary Apes Anonymous - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Good advice ...

2012-01-27T19:53:00.000-05:00

... Making Time For Study | The Jewish Week.

Let's you and him fight ...

2012-01-27T19:00:00.000-05:00

... Alain de Botton reveals plans for 'temple to atheism' in heart of London | World news | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Back and forth ...

2012-01-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

... Faith that is known first in the body | Mark Vernon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

... The modern believer is not suspicious enough.

A persistent pain is a pretty good indicator of the presence of bodily damage; the feeling that you have been touched by the Holy Spirit is only a good indicator that you have had a generic religious experience, shared by many the world over, and you have interpreted it according to the narratives and belief systems familiar to you.

Really? I should think "feeling that you have been touched by the Holy Spirit" would be rather an overwhelming experience. And experience trumps all theories. I would suggest that modern skeptics are not suspicious enough of pure reason.

More here: The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake - review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

We need a new mind-body paradigm, a map that acknowledges the many kinds of things there are in the world and the continuity of evolution. We must somehow find different, more realistic ways of understanding human beings – and indeed other animals – as the active wholes that they are, rather than pretending to see them as meaningless consignments of chemicals.

The value of secrecy ...

2012-01-27T17:00:00.000-05:00

... CS Lewis Rejected Royal Honor | Via Meadia.

Hmm ...

2012-01-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

... Curriculum Proposals at Stanford Focus on Critical Thinking - Curriculum - The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

How the hell does anyone manage to get admitted to Stanford - or any other college or university for that matter - without first displaying some acquaintance with "ways of thinking, ways of doing"?

Masculinity...

2012-01-27T15:45:00.000-05:00

...and Henry Miller. A new book on the topic.

Speaking of dissent ...

2012-01-27T15:00:00.001-05:00

... Timothy Snyder: On dissent and “the stories people tell about themselves” | The Book Haven.

Dissenting opinion ...

2012-01-27T14:00:00.000-05:00

... Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming - WSJ.com.

Also born today ...

2012-01-27T13:30:00.000-05:00

... in 1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Defending Updike ...

2012-01-27T13:00:00.000-05:00

... John Updike: The bizarre and misguided assault on his reputation. - Slate Magazine. (Hat tips, Dave Lull and Ed Champion.)

... his immense talent is part of what people seemed to find suspect about him in the years before his death. Critics and writers hold the fact that he writes beautiful sentences against him, as if his writing is too well crafted, too flamboyantly, extravagantly good. James Wood wrote a decade ago, “He is a prose writer of great beauty, but that prose confronts one with the question of whether beauty is enough, and whether beauty always conveys what a novelist must convey.” Here one has to wonder about that special handbook of “What a Novelist Must Convey,” and the rules and regulations contained therein.

Cold War thrillers ...

2012-01-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

... Paul Davis On Crime: Book Review: 'Agent 6' By Tom Rob Smith.

In this corner ...

2012-01-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

... James Earl Jones v. Chris Walken: A poetic Poe-down - The Globe and Mail.

Drawn in ...

2012-01-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

... When Falls the Coliseum - Lisa reads Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright.

A fresh approach ...

2012-01-27T10:00:00.001-05:00

... Nonfiction Review: The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Cunning verbal music ...

2012-01-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

... Robert Graves's "John Milton Muddles Through" | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The genius of the English language, whether transplanted to Wales, Scotland, Ireland or America, remains literal, logical, and anti-hypothetical. No sensitive poet or critic can accept without a blush Milton’s pastoral affectations ...