Sunday, February 07, 2010
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... include mine of Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves: Leda and the swan rigmarole.
Also:
... Presidents wielding power.
... Bird flu out of mind but still a threat.
... Glimpses of urban violence, through the eyes of victims.
Also:
... Presidents wielding power.
... Bird flu out of mind but still a threat.
... Glimpses of urban violence, through the eyes of victims.
Thought for the day ...
By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life.
- Sir Thomas More, born on this date in 1477
Saturday, February 06, 2010
I love it ...
... Hitchens attacks Gore Vidal for being a 'crackpot'.
I with Hitchens on this. I have always thought Vidal was loathsome.
I with Hitchens on this. I have always thought Vidal was loathsome.
Thought for the day ...
What are kings, when regiment is gone, but perfect shadows in a sunshine day?- Christopher Marlowe, born on this date in 1564
Friday, February 05, 2010
And ruin it ..
... We can change the story!
Amen, brother.
Just what exactly is this supposed to teach children? That sad stories can be brightened up by changing their endings? That Oedipus can escape his fate by magically transforming Jocasta into an ingénue? That Wilson’s shot misses Gatsby, and he runs off with Daisy, who isn’t really such a bitch after all? That Bigger Thomas’s range of choices is not limited to taking a job that demeans him or going hungry, despite what Richard Wright actually says?
Thought experiments ...
... The Art of Living Mindfully. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There's two threads here (at least): a willingness to question things you are likely to take for granted (including your own favorite presuppositions) and faith that you are more in control of life and less at the mercy of impersonal forces than you may have thought.
She is now emboldened to offer an explanation for the results of the counterclockwise study: that the subjects' mental states had direct, physical effects, an explanation that has been borne out in her subsequent, peer-reviewed research.
There's two threads here (at least): a willingness to question things you are likely to take for granted (including your own favorite presuppositions) and faith that you are more in control of life and less at the mercy of impersonal forces than you may have thought.
Fame ...
... Ron Slate on Look At Me! by Orville Gilbert Brim, and Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! by Gerald Nachman.
Like Spike Milligan, my main wish has been for the chance to prove that great wealth won't corrupt me, but fame has never held any allure for me.
Like Spike Milligan, my main wish has been for the chance to prove that great wealth won't corrupt me, but fame has never held any allure for me.
Scroll down ...
... when you click on this link (via Dave Lull), to read the review of Kay Ryan's latest.
Back to the present ...
... From Blair to Spartacus and Back(less).
Peter's book in not available here yet, but I am looking forward to reading it.
Peter's book in not available here yet, but I am looking forward to reading it.
Thought for the day ...
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.- William S. Burroughs, born on this date in 1914
Also born on this date, in 1948, is Christopher Guest, a.k.a. Lord Haden-Guest. Here is one of his finest works:
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Philly event ....
I talked to a guy today who told me that Christoph Lopez, whom he described as a Goth poet, will be giving a reading at the Triangle Tavern at 10th and Reed this coming Sunday afternoon (Feb. 7) at 4. I will have dinner guests arriving just about then, so I probably won't be able to make it myself (it's only a few blocks from where I live).
This is hilarious ...
... unless, of course, you are Akbar Zeb: “BIGGUS DICKUS HAPPENS TO BE A PERSONAL FRIEND OF MINE. (Via Instapundit.)
Hardy, Emerson, and Beauvoir ...
... together at last: Poetry and fate. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My attention was caught by this reference to the Rev. Dawkins:
My attention was caught by this reference to the Rev. Dawkins:
“The river of my title,” says Dawkins, “is the river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues: a river of abstract instructions for building bodies, not a river of solid bodies themselves. The information”—say, the eternal “family face” of which Hardy speaks, “Projecting trait and trace / Through time to times anon”—”passes through bodies and affects them, but it is not affected by them on its way through.”
It flows through time, not space? Surely he jests. DNA is material, is it not? It therefore must occupy space, right? After all, as he goes on to say, it "passes through bodies," which are also material and occupy space. I realize he is differentiating between DNA itself and the information it transmits. But that is precisely the problem. There is no information without the DNA that transmits it, or, if there is, we are no longer talking materialism.
Mea culpa ...
... May Cooler Heads Prevail.
As I said in this post, "If you act like you have something to hide, people are going to think you have something to hide. What I'm trying to get across is something a large segment of the scientific community doesn't seem to grasp - that it has a major public relations problem on its hands."
Well, it certainly looks as if the public relations hasn't been going very well.
Well, it certainly looks as if the public relations hasn't been going very well.
Shouldn't that be "enquiring"?
... An Inquiring Mind Tracks a Reporter Named Hemingway. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
This week's batch ...
... of TLS Letters: Intelligent design, Latin in schools, Queens consort, and more!
Amis , Amis, Amis ...
... The digested read.
Thought for the day ...
A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born on this date in 1906
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Doctorow
I'm not sure whether I missed the boat on this one or what, but I couldn't make heads or tails of Doctorow's City of God. From the start, I struggled to locate the rhythm of this novel, and I failed entirely to grasp its characters. While there were a few chapters that I enjoyed (namely those addressing - in poetic verse - the history of the First and Second World Wars), I eagerly awaited this book's end. If Doctorow was 'seeking God' (as some critics have argued), I must say, I lost him in his quest.
The good shepherd ...
... The Galbraith Revival.
... Galbraith writes that Roosevelt saw the United States “as a vast estate extended out from his family home at Hyde Park, New York. For this he had responsibility, and particularly for the citizens and workers thereon.” A tree-planting program that Roosevelt initiated in the Plains states, for instance, was “the reaction of a great landlord, an obvious step to improve appearance and property values, a benign action for the tenantry.” Galbraith meant this as praise, which is not surprising, because his own attitude toward the country was similar. The people were sheep, and government, with Galbraith as advisor, was the shepherd.
Highbrow lowbrow ...
... Abandon All Poetry, but Enter Hell With an Attitude.
See also Interview / Dante’s Inferno executive producer and creative director Jonathan Knight.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I like the idea of adapting literature to videogames, though I'm not sure this is the best way to go. It certainly isn't the only way.
See also
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I like the idea of adapting literature to videogames, though I'm not sure this is the best way to go. It certainly isn't the only way.
Thought for the day ...
An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.- Simone Weil, born on this date in 1909
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Uh, maybe it's a little more ...
... complicated: Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally.
This actually suggests that it is the body that is influencing the thought, not that the thought is affecting the body.
You say a person is warm and likable, as opposed to cold and standoffish? In one recent study at Yale, researchers divided 41 college students into two groups and casually asked the members of Group A to hold a cup of hot coffee, those in Group B to hold iced coffee. The students were then ushered into a testing room and asked to evaluate the personality of an imaginary individual based on a packet of information. Students who had recently been cradling the warm beverage were far likelier to judge the fictitious character as warm and friendly than were those who had held the iced coffee.
This actually suggests that it is the body that is influencing the thought, not that the thought is affecting the body.
Things as they are ...
... Blue Collar Poet by G Emil Reutter.
I have a copy of this and plan on writing about it in the near future.
I have a copy of this and plan on writing about it in the near future.
More oo la la ...
... Sex and the novel, cont.
After 45 years of professional reviewing, it is the rare sex scene that I do not want to skip.
After 45 years of professional reviewing, it is the rare sex scene that I do not want to skip.
Thought for the day ...
The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.- James Joyce, born on this date in 1882
Monday, February 01, 2010
So we had it coming, eh ...
... Mary Beard, historians and evil. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also: Mary Beard 2: Wicked subversion and the donnish mind. (Also from Dave.)
See also: Mary Beard 2: Wicked subversion and the donnish mind. (Also from Dave.)
Nabokov's "Laura" ...
... Gratuitous excogitations. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I am not for burning anything a major writer leaves behind unfinished, but it strikes me that the little that is left here belongs more properly in an archive or limited university-press edition than in Knopf’s greatly heralded, largely holographic, deluxe publication. These cards are merely an interesting mess. Whereas as a novel they are as unfinished as can be, they do leave my esteem for Nabokov the man, as different but not entirely distinct from the writer, pretty much finished.
Authentically horrible ...
... Ayn Rand: engineer of souls. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A passionate hater of religion, Rand founded a cult around her own person, complete with rituals of excommunication; a passionate believer in rationality and logic, she was incapable of seeing the contradictions in her own work. She was a rationalist who was not entirely rational; she could not distinguish between rationalism and rationality. Of narrow aesthetic sympathies, she laid down the law in matters of artistic judgment like a panjandrum; a believer in honesty, she was adept at self-deception and special pleading. I have rarely read a biography of a writer I should have cared so little to meet.
Highly recommended ...
... by me (as you will see) and others: Harold Boatrite: Sonatas and Suites.
I have known Harold for years and he set one of my villanelles. The review included at the link was one I posted at Amazon.
I have known Harold for years and he set one of my villanelles. The review included at the link was one I posted at Amazon.
Overlapping magisteria ...
... A very modern illusion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sounds familiar.What analysis of this kind suggests is that the reasonableness of science is partially true, during periods of what Kuhn called normal science, when puzzles are proposed and solved. However, during paradigm shifts, that evaporates. Science enters a period of flux and uncertainty until a new paradigm is settled. Intellectual wars break out too. Scientists stop talking to one another. They label opponents "heretics". Then rational discourse breaks out once more – until the next shift.
Tudor Mystery
It does not take a professor of English history to recognize that Eric Ives's recent biography of Lady Jane Grey represents a tremendous achievement. The author of several analyses of the Tudor period (including a celebrated account of Anne Boleyn), Ives presents the saga of Jane Grey with unyielding detail: there is no stone left unturned here, no personality left unexposed. And yet, amidst this detail, this thorough research, Ives constructs a compelling (and, it must be said, unusually readable) narrative. The result is a book which provides a fresh - at times controversial - assessment of the characters involved in the girl's demise, but which locates these characters (chief among them, John Dudley and Mary Tudor) within the complicated political dynamics of the mid-Tudor crisis. I'm with Ives: here's to Jane Grey - one of 'brutality's victims.'
Bryan, who is always interesting ...
... on Peter Carey: an Australian in New York. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Debbie and I met Peter Carey a few years ago and he wonderfully kind and funny, especially to Debbie.
Debbie and I met Peter Carey a few years ago and he wonderfully kind and funny, especially to Debbie.
Words fail ...
... Bump and grind with Dickie Dawkins, you whited sepulchres! (Hat tip, Dave Lull. who also sends along Oh for God's sake...
Dawkins really is becoming parody, not so much of himself as of every professed believer who also happens to be a nitwit (and there are plenty of those).
Dawkins really is becoming parody, not so much of himself as of every professed believer who also happens to be a nitwit (and there are plenty of those).
Thought for the day ...
The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.- S.J. Perelman, born on this date in 1904
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Plus ça change ...
The chairs were arranged in a semicircle, and when all his guests were seared, Pompey stood. He was, as I have said, no orator on a public platform. But on his own ground, among those whom he thought of as his lieutenants, he radiated power and authority. ... He began by giving the latest deatils of the pirate attack on Ostia: nineteen consular war triremes destroyed, a couple of hundred men killed, grain warehouses torched, two praetors - one of whom had been inspecting the granaries and the other the fleet - seized in their official tobes, along with their retinues and their symbolic rods and axes. A ransom demand for their release had arrived in Rome yesterday. "But for my part," said Pompey, "I do not believe we should negotiate with such people, as it will only encourage them in their criminal acts." (Everyone nodded in agreement.) The raid on Ostia, he continued, was a turning point in the history of Rome. This was not an isolated incident, but merely th most daring in a long line of such outrages ... . What Rome was facing was a threat very different from that posed by a conventional enemy. These pirates were were a new type of ruthless foe, with no government to represent them and no treaties to bind them. Their bases were not confined to a single state. They had no unified system of command. They were a worldwide pestilence, a parasite which needed to be stamped out, otherwise Rome - despite her overwhelming military superiority - would never again know security or peace.
- from Imperium by Robert Harris
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