Friday, March 06, 2009
He also wrote poetry ...
... The power of Milton. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Campbell and Corns discover a Milton who would have been at home in the corridors of New Labour power or in the managerialized modern university. He is a nimble committee man, like some wily pro-vice-chancellor who proudly wears his radical credentials yet is prepared to write position papers to order and to modify his stance in response to subtle changes in the ideological direction of his leader. Milton’s great enemy Salmacius comes to resemble Professor Maurice Zapp, the character in the campus novels of David Lodge: a “celebrity scholar” with his inflated salary and termagant wife “who bossed him around while simultaneously promoting and managing his academic career with a ruthless vigour”.
More pages ...
... of The Gateless Gate.
If you need to, you can click your way back to the beginning at bottom left.
If you need to, you can click your way back to the beginning at bottom left.
A thought ...
Most battered of all are the drawers
labelled Resurrection, The.
Bashed, switched, themselves resurrected
continually: Because it is impossible,
as the galaxies were, as life was,
as flight and language were.
- From Les Murray's "Each Morning Once More Seamless"
labelled Resurrection, The.
Bashed, switched, themselves resurrected
continually: Because it is impossible,
as the galaxies were, as life was,
as flight and language were.
- From Les Murray's "Each Morning Once More Seamless"
Imagining things ...
... or at least imaging them: TED Q&A: Neurologist Oliver Sacks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Quite a review, this ...
... Stranger Than Paradise. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Times got its money's worth, that's for sure. Very nice.
The Times got its money's worth, that's for sure. Very nice.
When asked why she wrote, she replied, “Because I’m good at it.” She found sickness “more instructive than a long trip to Europe.” She was buried the day after she died. Robert Giroux sent a copy of “Wise Blood” to Evelyn Waugh hoping for a blurb, and Waugh replied, “The best I can say is: ‘If this really is the unaided work of a young lady, it is a remarkable product.’ ”
I'm not sure ...
... if I get this: What Bruce Sterling Actually Said About Web 2.0 at Webstock 09. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I will say this, though: If Walter Pater was grousing about "a burst of Art Nouveau in Turin in 1902," he was the greatest futurist ever. Pater died in 1894.
I will say this, though: If Walter Pater was grousing about "a burst of Art Nouveau in Turin in 1902," he was the greatest futurist ever. Pater died in 1894.
Remember pleasure ...
... Not the Usual Suspects. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A quibble: The Silver Swan is the third Benjamin Black novel, but the second featuring Quirke. In between was The Lemur, which I found somewhat disappointing.
... I can't take contemporary fiction seriously, and, what's worse, I can't even finish it. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed reading a contemporary nongenre novel, and I've even exhausted my favorite genre, the espionage thriller ...
A quibble: The Silver Swan is the third Benjamin Black novel, but the second featuring Quirke. In between was The Lemur, which I found somewhat disappointing.
Right ho!
... Suits you, sir: Charles named world's best-dressed man. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I can't imagine why Obama was even nominated. I have noticed nothing sartorially distinctive about him. And what about Nicolas Sarkozy?
I can't imagine why Obama was even nominated. I have noticed nothing sartorially distinctive about him. And what about Nicolas Sarkozy?
Of course ...
... we still remember Washington. Benjamin Bache, not so much. Newspaper Wars. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) Also, in those days, different papers had different viewpoints. Today, not so much.
Graham Swift
Gifted, indeed
I recently received from Picador a copy of Graham Swift's Making an Elephant, a collection of semi-biographical essays. I am eager to review the book, as I consider Waterland, Swift's award-winning (1983) novel, to be one of - if not the - finest pieces of fiction to be published in the English language since the end of the Second World War. And yes, I stand by that statement.
I recently received from Picador a copy of Graham Swift's Making an Elephant, a collection of semi-biographical essays. I am eager to review the book, as I consider Waterland, Swift's award-winning (1983) novel, to be one of - if not the - finest pieces of fiction to be published in the English language since the end of the Second World War. And yes, I stand by that statement.
Mucking about ...
... Stoppard's Chekhov: New Adaptations. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Stoppard's version cuts through the wordiness to better extract the tone -- an idea of character and spontaneity informs his sense of how people speak. Anna, caught in the throes of memory, breaks through to the language of immediacy: she is less precise, perhaps, but her words, in their repetition, have the feeling of one stumbling without forethought into metaphor..
Nige discovers ...
... Garret Keizer.
Speaking of Nige, we are once again on the same page: Starbucks: Instant Karma?
Speaking of Nige, we are once again on the same page: Starbucks: Instant Karma?
I, too, never willingly set foot in one - and for the same reason.
What about ...
... the front stoop? A Republic of Front Porches. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I also saw an awful lot of backyard socializing when I was young. Still, anybody who supports a more diffuse distribution of political power in this country is fine by me.
I also saw an awful lot of backyard socializing when I was young. Still, anybody who supports a more diffuse distribution of political power in this country is fine by me.
Cheever and Updike ...
... Updike's posthumous review of the new Cheever bio: Basically Decent. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Edward Byrne comments and reminisces: John Updike and John Cheever.
You know, if I had a kid who wanted to study English literature, I would seriously look into Valparaiso University, judging by what I see coming out of there.
...this biographer’s zeal makes a heavy, dispiriting read, to the point that even I, a reader often enraptured by Cheever’s prose and an acquaintance who generally enjoyed his lively company, wanted the narrative, pursued in methodical chapters that tick past year after year, to hurry through the menacing miasma of a life which, for all the sparkle of its creative moments, brought so little happiness to its possessor and to those around him. The biography’s valedictory pages are rather stunningly anticlimactic.
Edward Byrne comments and reminisces: John Updike and John Cheever.
Just a few years before Cheever’s death ... I had an opportunity for a brief conversation with the author.... The conversation occurred exactly three decades ago and lasted not more than five minutes; it still remains a vivid memory. I recall Cheever’s uncertainty as he spoke to me in that rather unusual but striking accent of his, confiding that he hoped he’d opened doors for others, and how he felt a bit optimistic some of the younger writers might find acceptance and publication as a result. He mentioned a couple of emerging fiction writers whose work he admired and encouraged. The important thing, he advised, was that one must continue to write as well as one can, produce innovative and imaginative stories with a regard for integrity in the way one presents the plot or portrays the characters, without too much worry of eventual publication or recognition by others.
You know, if I had a kid who wanted to study English literature, I would seriously look into Valparaiso University, judging by what I see coming out of there.
Unexpected treaures ...
... Libraries' Surprising Special Collections. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
At the University of Delaware in Newark, a special space is allotted to the villains of print: forgers, hoaxers and other literary frauds. Donor Frank W. Tober bequeathed a vast collection of books, manuscripts and other materials to the library, which received them in 1995; however, the heart of his personal library was his collection on literary forgery. It includes material regarding nearly every major forgery from antiquity to such recent cases as Clifford Irving, who tried to scam the literary world with a faux autobiography of Howard Hughes in 1972.
Headline of the day ...
... Bulldozer Goes on Rampage in Israel, Driver Killed.
Imagine that, an anti-Israeli bulldozer. And who gets blamed? The "helpless" driver!
Imagine that, an anti-Israeli bulldozer. And who gets blamed? The "helpless" driver!
Layers of editing ...
... at work again: Women, keep drinking.
Even those women in the study who drank the most (15 or more drinks a week) had a cancer incidence of 5.8 per cent, which is virtually identical to those who drank nothing. But this particular take-home message somehow escaped Allen’s notice, and that of the media as well. (Emphasis mine.)
I'd love to cover this ...
... Fisher Poets Gather for Verse, Song and Stories. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Back in 2005 I went to Elko, Nev., and wrote about the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. It was great and so was the poetry. I imagine the piece I wrote has disappeared down the memory hole.
As it happens, the great Dave Lull has tracked down my cowboy piece (you'll have to register read the whole thing, but it's easy): There's poetry in them thar cowboys.
Post bumped.
Back in 2005 I went to Elko, Nev., and wrote about the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. It was great and so was the poetry. I imagine the piece I wrote has disappeared down the memory hole.
As it happens, the great Dave Lull has tracked down my cowboy piece (you'll have to register read the whole thing, but it's easy): There's poetry in them thar cowboys.
Post bumped.
RIP ...
... Horton Foote dies at 92; playwright, screenwriter chronicled small-town Southern life. (Hat tip Dave Lull.)
Outspoken, for sure ...
... Some lines from Dahlberg’s letters. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I read a good bit of Dahlberg when I was in college. I was rather taken with the baroque style. But he's hard to take in large doses and the crankiness wears. Still, it's always nice to see someone take potshots at sacred cows. But I'd also like to know who who, if anyone, he liked.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
A backward glance ...
... Money spinner: Martin Amis and his hip coterie of young British novelists were at the heart of the 80s fiction boom. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A somewhat misleading headline, since the article is about a good deal more than Amis & Co.
A somewhat misleading headline, since the article is about a good deal more than Amis & Co.
Giants still walked the earth of course. Iris Murdoch's finest novel, The Sea, the Sea, was behind her, but The Book and the Brotherhood and The Good Apprentice were as compellingly readable as ever; Amis père still commanded respect; and William Golding and Anthony Burgess famously went head-to-head for the 1980 Booker Prize, the latter refusing to leave his room at the Savoy unless he was told he'd definitely won. He could be excused his tantrum when Golding carried the prize; if you can't win the Booker with a novel as stupendous as Earthly Powers, you might as well give up.
Keep it up ...
... Underground Erudition. (Hat tip, Maxine Clarke.)
This reminds of the time I was waiting for a train at a station in Mount Airy where, among the graffiti, someone had carefully down the opening lines of "Burnt Norton."
This reminds of the time I was waiting for a train at a station in Mount Airy where, among the graffiti, someone had carefully down the opening lines of "Burnt Norton."
Uh-oh ...
... I almost missed this. It's National Grammar Day: Grammarnoir: The complete serial. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Plenty of egg ...
... for the collective countenance: Double-dealing at Wiley-Blackwell: the case of the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization.
Imagine how far a corresponding complaint regarding Islam would get you - if anyone had the nerve to make one.
Imagine how far a corresponding complaint regarding Islam would get you - if anyone had the nerve to make one.
Art and life ..
... Author stumbles on G-Bissau drama. (Hat tip, Paul Davis, who notes: "This is one way to gather material for a novel.")
Hey, blogging is fun ...
... but I think there's a bot more to happiness: Can Blogging Make You Happier? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A very good question ...
... indeed: Where are the contemporary novels about liberty? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Maybe because a lot of people don't appreciate something until they notice that it's slipping away. I think some people may be noticing that in this country and I have a suspicion that writing a novel about it not at the top of their agenda.
There is, of course, this.
There is, of course, this.
One good discovery ...
... deserves another. Over at Books and Notes, which I came upon yesterday, I came upon a link to Novel Readings.
Pop goes ...
... the Jack-Out-of-the-Box: Malcolm Gladwell, explainer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gladwell often sets up his reports on psychological or social-scientific research with piquant thumbnail sketches. Tall, wearing three earrings and a metal plate in his head, availing himself of profanity of a kind that would make an Algerian camel driver blush, Zack Zipperman, Ph.D. has for the past 26 years, in his windowless laboratory at MIT, been teaching white mice to dance the cha-cha-cha, with interesting results for those who can't comprehend why men born after 1942 never carry handkerchiefs. I parody, but not that wildly.
Too frequently one reads Gladwell's anecdotes, case studies, potted social-science research and thinks: interesting if true. Yet one feels naggingly doubtful about its truth quotient. So much Gladwell writes that is true seems not new, and so much he writes that is new seems untrue. Preponderantly, what he reports feels more like half- and quarter-truths, because they do not pass the final truth test about human nature: They rarely, that is, honor the complexity of life.
A conversation ...
... with Frank Wilson -- editor, critic (The Philadelphia Inquirer [retired]).
I know him.
As this indicates, I am able to predict the past.
Post bumped.
I know him.
As this indicates, I am able to predict the past.
Post bumped.
Maybe it's time ...
... to retire the word evolution: A handy little guide to small talk in the Stone Age. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Post bumped.
Drawing an analogy between how species came to be and how language has developed overlooks the salient point that language doesn't just happen. Maybe it would be better instead to do it the other way around and find an analogy between how language has developed and how species came about.
More here: Scrabble tips for time travelers?
(Thanks to David McKelvie for pointing me to this.)More here: Scrabble tips for time travelers?
Post bumped.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Classically perfect ...
... 70 years on, John Ford’s Stagecoach is an enduring masterpiece. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Now I know ...
... what David Denby means by snark. It's making fun of anyone or anything Denby approves of: The Hunting of the Denby. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Say what you will about the creators of the British magazine Private Eye, to whom he devotes considerable space, but they’re equal-opportunity jeerers. In American terms, Richard Ingrams, Private Eye’s founder, would be reviled as a homophobe, a racist, and an anti-Semite. When co-owner Peter Cook’s comedy partner Dudley Moore went off to California in the late 1970’s to romance Bo Derek in 10, Cook was sympathetic: “I suppose if you’re a lower-middle-class midget from Dagenham with a club foot, being a Hollywood star must seem quite a good deal.”
Sobering thoughts ...
... The limits of materialism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is often said that a battle has raged between science and belief. Where that metaphor falls down is when it conceives of science gaining more and more ground, eventually forcing religion off the map. Instead, a better interpretation would be to say that the emergence of mechanistic science a few centuries back threw the religious worldview into a struggle to accommodate the materialistic metaphysics implicit in it. However, for almost a century now, that materialism has itself been profoundly challenged in physics. The tide is turning again. A richer understanding of the cosmos increasingly seems to be required to understand what we observe, experience and know. Biology is, if you like, going to have to catch up.
The tempest ...
... of intellect vs. emotion: The Poems of Barry Goldensohn.
Stevens, with compatriots Williams, Eliot, et al, were, in their varied ways, obsessed with making language a hard, malleable material no less than clay or steel, and they wanted to write and elaborate upon images that didn't obscure the fantastic qualities of the world their language was supposed to be writing about. Perception is a dominant concern for this generation of modernist poets, and Stevens, I believe, followed the loose dictates brilliantly and developed a methodology of processing the world that could capture in it many of its amazing juxtapositions. What is amazing about Stevens' work is that he develops a philosophy of perceptual imagination from the world as it already is.
Boy, is this depressing ...
...`Difficult Achievements'.
The first difference I observed in contemporary classrooms from my own experience decades ago – after tattoos, cell phones, mp3 players, male students with earrings and females dressed in streetwalker chic, I mean – was their decentralized nature. The teacher is just another member of the mob. Seldom is he or she in charge, the object of attention and at least putative respect. Education, the acquisition of knowledge, is a dim, mirthless joke.
Breathtakingly bad ...
... A. C. Grayling and a Stock Move of Militant Atheists. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also Contra Grayling.
See also Contra Grayling.
Travel notes ...
... The train of thought so far — where my column has taken me. Featuring Dave Lull.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Knower and known ...
... Putting Man Before Descartes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What science amounts to is a probabilistic kind of knowledge with its own limits, because of the limitations of the human mind, including the mental operations and the personal character of scientists themselves, which could range from sublime to fallible. There is only one kind of knowledge, human knowledge, with the inevitability of its participation, with the inevitable relationship of the knower to the known, of what and how and why and when a man knows and wishes to know.
Persistent misunderstanding ...
... Believing in Flannery O’Connor. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
O’Connor, as Wise Blood proves, was no run-of-the-mill religious novelist. In addition to having a deeply philosophical turn of mind, she was a thoroughgoing modernist who adhered no less devoutly to the Jamesian precept to “dramatize, dramatize!” Moreover, her youthful reading of Jacques Maritain, the Catholic philosopher who argued in Art and Scholasticism (1930) that “the pure artist considered in the abstract as such . . . is something completely unmoral,” had persuaded her that the serious Catholic fiction writer had no moral obligation to be preachy.
Just a thought ...
... why try to explain art, music and literature in terms of what we have in common with other animals, when no other animal paints or sculpts, composes music, or writes literature? Since the making of art seems to distinguish us from other animals, should not the explanation of it derive from something peculiar to us, something we do not have in common with them?
And rather well ...
... Theism defended. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think it more than "rich." I think it is appalling. But I have long thought that Dennett's manner of discourse bordered on formal thought disorder. It is grammatically and verbally correct but the sequence of thought seems aleatory (see Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel, beautifully phrased - and dangerous - nonsense).
I also think it pertinent to quote this again:
... Dennett was largely abusive. Theism corrupts “our common epistemological fabric”; it is a fairy tale; it is no better than astrology. At one point he compared theism to Holocaust denial. And this is particularly rich, coming from an apostle of atheism. The Holocaust was the state-sponsored industrial-scale campaign to obliterate a people who had remained intact for millennia out of their unshakable belief in God. The Holocaust was a collective organization of militant atheism, which clamored for the removal of God’s chosen people—theism’s most irrational symbol—from the face of the earth. To associate the spiritual heirs of its victims, who decline to abandon theistic belief out of a refusal (in Emil Fackenheim’s words) to hand Hitler a posthumous victory, instead with those who wish to cover up the crimes of the perpetrators is to engage in propaganda little more sophisticated than the slur that the Israelis are the New Nazis. So much for respecting “our common epistemological fabric”!
I think it more than "rich." I think it is appalling. But I have long thought that Dennett's manner of discourse bordered on formal thought disorder. It is grammatically and verbally correct but the sequence of thought seems aleatory (see Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel, beautifully phrased - and dangerous - nonsense).
I also think it pertinent to quote this again:
... what could be the cause of being as being? Certainly not a being of the universe. For whatever being one would want to indicate as the cause of being as being, it would always be a participating being, a contingent being and, therefore, a caused being. Being, however, is not the cuase-of-being, for it is caused-being. Precisely under the aspects under which it would be indicated as the cause of being - namely, as being - it is not cause but caused, because it is participating and contingent-being. ... Nothing appears much simpler as soon as it is understood that the universe, conceived as the universality of all beings does not have the ground "to be" in itself. However, there is not nothing. There are beings, the universe is. Being is being-caused, being-under-the-influence-of-something-else; therefore it is excluded that this "influencing reality" would not be, for otherwise nothing would be. But something is.
- William A. Luijpen, Existential Phenomenology
Speaking for myself, my faith is grounded in the sense of a presence well described by Wordsworth in "Tintern Abbey." This is an experience I have had on more than one occasion and in my view experience trumps theory. Finally, whatever God may be, one thing He is definitely not: the terminus ad quem of an argument.A roll of drums ...
... and a flourish of trumpets, please: It's Small Press Month '09.
Well, they certainly deserve our support.
Well, they certainly deserve our support.
Maybe ...
... iTunes proves newspapers can and should charge for online. (Hat tip, Davel Lull.)
iTunes offers access to a product people are willing to pay for. But what Glenn says here about the Kindle is probably more to the point. Note that Glenn also links to Howard Kurtz on the same subject. None of the newspaper people seem to know of Michael Yon or Michael Totten.
iTunes offers access to a product people are willing to pay for. But what Glenn says here about the Kindle is probably more to the point. Note that Glenn also links to Howard Kurtz on the same subject. None of the newspaper people seem to know of Michael Yon or Michael Totten.
Prose, not poetry ...
... a gratuitous swipe at MFA programs in poetry. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I am inclined to agree. Poets need to find their own way.
I am inclined to agree. Poets need to find their own way.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Hard to say who won ...
... Cheever vs. Cheever.
There is in Kerouac’s Dharma Bums a sneering appeal to
take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show.
This is Main Street in Cheever Country, but Cheever saw it as an object not of scorn or disappointment but of love and fascination, a place to be understood and protected.
I don't think there is anything sneering in Kerouac's "appeal." It's an accurate description of what was going at the time. You can deplore people being glued to the tube without disdaining the suburbs and those who live there. After all, there is a good deal more to life that what can be found on television.
Making everything relative ...
What the temptations on the high mountain mean today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As I see it, the Satan who confronted Jesus during this encounter is the personification of moral relativism, and the materialism which creates it. What we are shown is not merely ‘all the kingdoms of the world’ but the entire universe, in all its colossal extent, reaching backwards and forwards into infinity and beyond the powers of the human mind to grasp except in mathematical equations. We are told: this came into existence, not by an act of creation, but as a result of the laws of physics, which have no moral purpose whatever — or indeed any purpose. There is no conceivable room for God in this process, and mankind is an infinitely minute spectator of this futile process about which he can do nothing, being of no more significance than a speck of dust or a fragment of rock. If you will accept this view of our fate, then there is just a chance that by applying the laws of science to the exclusion of any other considerations, and by dismissing the notion of God, or the spirit, or goodness, or any other absolute notion of truth and right and wrong, we shall be able marginally to improve the human condition during the minute portion of time our race occupies our doomed planet.
Roth - Reconsidered
Will he?
Was there ever a more gloomy (modern) meditation on love than Phillip Roth's Professor of Desire? I read it earlier in the year - and several of its (dark) passages remain with me. Chief among them:
"I have no talent, you see, I have no talent and...and lots of vanity."
I wish that he'd win the Nobel.
Was there ever a more gloomy (modern) meditation on love than Phillip Roth's Professor of Desire? I read it earlier in the year - and several of its (dark) passages remain with me. Chief among them:
"I have no talent, you see, I have no talent and...and lots of vanity."
I wish that he'd win the Nobel.
Dodging and weaving ...
... Boxing with Mailer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dissatisfaction over and above that which inevitably attends human existence is one of the marks of the intellectual, and Mailer chose himself as the subject and object of his dilemmas and dissatisfactions.
Further proof I am not an intellectual. But I am something of a boxing fan. "... even I could see at once that the world champion was a cut above the others, for his movements had a smoothness, even a grace, that theirs lacked." Precisely. He was not just a fighter.
DFW
Remembering a giant
Of the many essays charting the life and times of David Foster Wallace, perhaps the most poignant appeared recently in the alumni magazine of Amherst College. "Even at 21," remembers the writer Sue Dickman, "I could tell that it [Foster Wallace's intelligence] was the kind of smart that made you strange, that it was too much." On 12 September '08, it was, sadly, tragically, too much. We remember a giant.
Of the many essays charting the life and times of David Foster Wallace, perhaps the most poignant appeared recently in the alumni magazine of Amherst College. "Even at 21," remembers the writer Sue Dickman, "I could tell that it [Foster Wallace's intelligence] was the kind of smart that made you strange, that it was too much." On 12 September '08, it was, sadly, tragically, too much. We remember a giant.
Happy birthday ...
... Frederic Chopin. Nige has a clip of Richter playing the Revolutionary Etude. Here you can hear Richter playing the Ballade No. 1. And below is a clip that addresses what is brought in the comments on Nige's post.
(I missed Nige's post on Daumier Day.)
(I missed Nige's post on Daumier Day.)
The flexibility of reputation ...
... Robert Lowell and the "Great" Debate.
Hear, hear.
Although one might legitimately argue that final evaluation by David Orr about the relative greatness of the poetry written by Lowell or Bishop, and I could make a case for both poets, Orr’s reference to the changing status in the minds of readers and the writings of critics concerning Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop in recent decades ought to serve as a caution against pronouncements of greatness about anybody, even those we may believe worthy and whom we widely admire among present-day poets, including a designation of John Ashbery as great by David Orr or the Library of America.
Hear, hear.
Uncertainty catches on ...
... What Do They Know? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, I don't know about the language of psychotherapy, but I've been arguing for a greater appreciation of uncertainty for quite some time now.
The language of psychotherapy -- the recognition that few things in life are black and white, that it mostly consists of perplexing shades of gray -- seems immensely more helpful now than the self-assured, directive lingo we've all become accustomed to speaking or hearing.
Well, I don't know about the language of psychotherapy, but I've been arguing for a greater appreciation of uncertainty for quite some time now.
Dispatches from Judith ...
... Poetry means the world to me, too.
... Remember THE inaugural poem? Lucky you. (Not having watched an inauguration for decades I missed hearing it in the first place.)
... Remember THE inaugural poem? Lucky you. (Not having watched an inauguration for decades I missed hearing it in the first place.)
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... our very own Judith on Count this: 40 years of 'Sesame'.
... A graceful tour of ancient woods.
... and Floyd Skloot on an Iconoclast who found the limelight.
... A graceful tour of ancient woods.
... and Floyd Skloot on an Iconoclast who found the limelight.
Making up your mind ...
... Now think again: making the right decision calls for the heart as well as the head. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I do this sort of thing all the time. But I'm not a terribly rational sort.
A Dutch experiment involving getting people to choose the most suitable car found that they made the right decision more often if they stopped thinking, distracted themselves and then chose the car that popped into their head when they started thinking about it again.
I do this sort of thing all the time. But I'm not a terribly rational sort.
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