Over the years, I’ve heard several people I respect (my husband among them) thank Ian Fleming for having forged one of their earliest links between pleasure and reading. But for Andersen’s characters, the Fleming novels are a lot more than entertainment. Starting in the summer after sixth grade, the three friends follow Bond’s adventures the way fundamentalists study holy texts — for an explanation of how the world works and a code to live by.
Sunday, July 08, 2012
A Bond too far …
… ‘True Believers,’ by Kurt Andersen - NYTimes.com.
Temporal illusions …
… Brain Time. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The days of thinking of time as a river—evenly flowing, always advancing—are over. Time perception, just like vision, is a construction of the brain and is shockingly easy to manipulate experimentally. We all know about optical illusions, in which things appear different from how they really are; less well known is the world of temporal illusions. When you begin to look for temporal illusions, they appear everywhere. In the movie theater, you perceive a series of static images as a smoothly flowing scene. Or perhaps you've noticed when glancing at a clock that the second hand sometimes appears to take longer than normal to move to its next position—as though the clock were momentarily frozen.
In case you wondered …
… In scientific studies of music, what’s missing is the culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The piece’s claims aren’t helped by the carelessness with which it tosses around terms from musical theory. Jaw’s spine-tingling refrain does not have traditional “minor chords,” exactly, and traditional minor chords are consonant, not dissonant. More importantly, though, the idea that our emotional response to music can be chalked up to simian reflexes ignores the extent to which our experience of music is shaped by the culture we grow up in. What’s more, this is a problem that many scientific studies of music overlook.
The true and the beautiful …
… A Poet Reflects on Our Times: Catholic World Report. (Hat tip, Cynthia Haven.)
Thought for the day …
Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.
— Jean de La Fontaine, born on this date in 1621
Man of purpose...
...All the President's identities
When Obama leaves NY to become a community organiser in Chicago, he begins to find purpose and identity, and though his efforts at mobilising people are not as successful as he claimed in his memoir (a magazine journalist is largely responsible for the city administration’s response), what becomes clear is that two-and-a-half years later, when he decides to leave his job and go to Harvard Law school, realisation dawns on those who work closely with him: that this stint as community organiser was part of a plan. The others, rooted in the community, could not think of moving on; nothing stopped Obama and he left. As Maraniss states, “Perhaps his behaviour was not so much passive as strategic.” The moral of the story: to become the most powerful person in the world, you must get started very early.
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Nice piece …
… An Open Letter to Mayor Bloomberg - The Frisky.
For what it's worth, I have come to despise Michael Bloomberg, a little tyrant wannabe.
For what it's worth, I have come to despise Michael Bloomberg, a little tyrant wannabe.
Heatwave …
It has, of course, been very hot in these and many other parts these past few days. But my friend and fellow poet Miriam Kotzin sent me an email today mentioning "summers like those I remember before we had air conditioning, with days in the 90's and low hundreds, stretching for weeks." Well, I'm older than Miriam and remember in particular the summer of '47 — that would be 1947 — when I was a mere 5 going on 6 (I'm pretty sure I have the year right). I can still see people sitting on porches fanning themselves. I can also remember visiting my grandmother in the button factory she worked in. No air-conditioning there. Don't know how the workers survived. But they did. The heat has never really bothered me that much — actually, I still can put up with these hot humid days — I used to love gardening on days like this in the '50s (oh my, I am finally becoming nostalgic). Anyway, all of this is just an intro to the following video:
Turn-ons …
… Best literary sex scenes: writers' favourites | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I haven't read Alan Hollinghurst, but I did read some of The Story of O, when a chapter was printed in the Evergreen Review sometime in the mid-'60s, if memory serves. It's a book whose appeal I would have thought was rather limited, but I guess not.
Editor’s Picks - Salon.com
… Editor’s Picks - Salon.com: Thank you for killing my novel. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
—Robert A. Heinlein, born on this date in 1907
Friday, July 06, 2012
Technical difficulties ...
The keyboard for my iMac is malfunctioning.I will shortly be visiting the Apple store to find out what the problem is and solve it. Blogging will resume after this matter is cleared uo.
Thursday, July 05, 2012
Markets and literature …
… Bonfire of the Clichés | Sarah Skwire | Cato Unbound. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A Farewell to Arms
Patrick Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s only surviving son, said in an interview from his home in Montana that when Scribner suggested the raw material be published, he agreed.
“They do give insight to how Hemingway was thinking,” said Patrick Hemingway, who is 84. “But it is absolutely true that no matter how much you analyze a classic bit of writing, you can never really figure out what makes talent work.”
From a recent piece in The Times...
Musings on the metropolis...
So today I complete three months in Bombay -- make that THE Bombay. It is so different a state of mind to any other place in India that when they say you become one with the crowd irrespective of the individuality you desperately hold on to, damn, they couldn't be more right. If you have lived in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Calcutta, Gwalior, Indore, or any other Indian city you would follow the same rules of living in each of those, albeit at different scales. Bombay? No, sir. The idiom of survival in Bombay is all its own. It does not cater to, bow before or dip into any leeways.
The positives. It's a remarkably efficient city. It might rain cats and dogs but people go about their business. Trains ply, buses run, streets are as packed as when it's bright and sunny. No excuses please, we are Mumbaikars. This also makes it a city driven by commerce. Got money? Will work. It is impossible to not find anything in Bombay. No other city in India is as enterprising and as remarkably proud about its spirit as Bombay.
So much commerce, so much hankering after constructing a life. All good, huh? Hey, where is the time for subtlety, nuance, dialogue? Bombay is culturally dead. I don't mean art events and film festivals -- there are plenty of those. But try and initiate decent conversation with the person next to you in the local (train) and you'd sooner drop dead. Literate people, supposedly educated people, smartly dressed people, perfect-accent people -- in any other city, such would hold their own in a conversation about art and politics. Bombay? Here we are cutely clueless. Or, ponderously pigheaded. Take your pick!
Bombay tests you. It asks of you to share in its humanity until you become the lowest common denominator in its deservedly elevated sense of self. The LCD in Bombay is itself charming enough, and hallowed enough, to survive a lifetime. You live, merging with the crowd, happy that you are one with the vast sea of people in this metropolis. Never mind your brain goes potty and you become progressively insipid.
Hah!
PS An American friend says he feels the same for New York.
The positives. It's a remarkably efficient city. It might rain cats and dogs but people go about their business. Trains ply, buses run, streets are as packed as when it's bright and sunny. No excuses please, we are Mumbaikars. This also makes it a city driven by commerce. Got money? Will work. It is impossible to not find anything in Bombay. No other city in India is as enterprising and as remarkably proud about its spirit as Bombay.
So much commerce, so much hankering after constructing a life. All good, huh? Hey, where is the time for subtlety, nuance, dialogue? Bombay is culturally dead. I don't mean art events and film festivals -- there are plenty of those. But try and initiate decent conversation with the person next to you in the local (train) and you'd sooner drop dead. Literate people, supposedly educated people, smartly dressed people, perfect-accent people -- in any other city, such would hold their own in a conversation about art and politics. Bombay? Here we are cutely clueless. Or, ponderously pigheaded. Take your pick!
Bombay tests you. It asks of you to share in its humanity until you become the lowest common denominator in its deservedly elevated sense of self. The LCD in Bombay is itself charming enough, and hallowed enough, to survive a lifetime. You live, merging with the crowd, happy that you are one with the vast sea of people in this metropolis. Never mind your brain goes potty and you become progressively insipid.
Hah!
PS An American friend says he feels the same for New York.
Thought for the day …
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
— Jean Cocteau, born on this date in 1889
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Art and reality …
… The Complications of Writing from Life | Prairie Schooner. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Troubadour
… Simon Armitage: 'If everyone was writing poetry, I don't think I would be' - Features - Books - The Independent. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
He set out (in July 2010) deliberately penniless. After an appeal for gigs and hosts on his website, he managed to earn his keep as a footsore, mist-drenched and wind-blown troubadour by reading at prearranged locations along the way and asking his listeners to bung cash – if they wished - into an increasingly whiffy walking sock. Let's cut to the chase: earnings £3086.42; expenses £1174.81; net profit £1911.61. Poetry pays!
Thought for the day …
The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.
— Lionel Trilling, born on this date in 1905
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
I hope so …
… Andy Griffith made one timeless classic of a film, but will obits mention it? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The genuine article …
…The Mere Weight Of Words, By Carissa Halston - The Rumpus.net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Mere Weight of Words is literary fiction written with a muscularity of prose that exercises the talents of the writer and the expectations of the reader. It is therefore exactly what literary fiction should be or should at least aspire to.
Mental exercise...
Fiction books give a boost to the brain, says Stanford professor
Readers of Beckett's novels, Landy said, "shouldn't bother trying to reconstruct what Beckett's theory of the mind-body problem is; rather, they should feel what it's like to come to a point where such questions no longer torment us."
In case you wondered …
… On James Agee | Open Letters Monthly - an Arts and Literature Review. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)
My recollections of that initial encounter are, first, that it took forever to read the book, and, second, that I loved it. It was dense and difficult and sometimes I had no idea what James Agee was talking about or trying to do. And when I told people I was reading a 400-page book about tenant farmers in rural Alabama, they found it difficult to understand why – and I found it equally difficult to explain. The story ofLet Us Now Praise Famous Men – both the story it tells and the story of its writing – is a strange one, and it symbolizes the strangeness and intensity of its author’s career as a whole.
Fascinatingly modern …
… A philosopher for the Facebook generation - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
— Franz Kafka, born on this date in 1883
Monday, July 02, 2012
Poetic knitting …
… Introducing Goldengrove Unleaving | lime tree bower dot net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Two lives …
… Julian Barnes: my life as a bibliophile | Books | The Guardian.
… John Banville: a life in writing.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… John Banville: a life in writing.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Risky business …
… Banville's new novel breaks taboo around underage sex - Books, Entertainment - Independent.ie. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I remember a friend telling me once long ago how he had had a fling with, I believe, a teacher of his when he was about 15. He was mature for his years and, so far as I know, nothing bad came of it for either of them. There was no coercion involved and, I gather, considerable discretion.
I remember a friend telling me once long ago how he had had a fling with, I believe, a teacher of his when he was about 15. He was mature for his years and, so far as I know, nothing bad came of it for either of them. There was no coercion involved and, I gather, considerable discretion.
Thought for the day …
Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.
— Hermann Hesse, born on this date 1877
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Hmm ……
… Is Meritocracy A Sham? | Via Meadia.
Precisely. And Trig Palin is certainly more adorable than Paul Krugman.
… the technocrats were — and are — committed to the concept of rule by the best and the brightest. This is not a temporary stage on the road to a higher and ultimately more equal stage of society to gentry liberals. It is a natural division of power and responsibility based on innate differences in human beings. Gentry liberals believe that people who score high on SATs, do well in college, and get through the PhD process are, well, smarter than people who don’t do those things and that society will be better off if the dumb people get out of the way and let the smart ones make the important decisions.The problem is that scoring high on tests doesn't necessarily mean that you're all that bright. It may just mean that you're good at taking tests.
For a Christian, the belief in the equal value of all people in God’s eyes is a bedrock belief. Every human being is created directly by God; every human soul is beloved by God. Human beings are not all alike, and we have different gifts and different abilities. But each of us was created to be exactly who and what we are by the Author of the Universe, and we believe that God loves and values the child with Downs’ syndrome as much as he loves and values the Nobel-prize winning economist.
That’s right. God thinks Trig Palin is just as marvelous and wonderful and adorable as Paul Krugman. The homeless old guy with the shakes down by the subway is as important to God’s vision for the world as the Rhodes Scholar passing him by.
Precisely. And Trig Palin is certainly more adorable than Paul Krugman.
The experience of growing old …
Age on the calendar is one thing. Age as you experience it is something else again. Many years ago, I fractured my right kneecap. Split it cleanly in half. I didn't learn about this until decades later when my knee swelled up to the size of a cantaloupe after I had done some work in the garden. The orthopedist I was referred to did an x-ray and said to me, "You do know, of course, that you fractured your kneecap?" And I said to him, "Not until just this moment." He went on to say that it was a clean break and had healed very nicely. You see, when it happened, back in the '70s, I was young and immortal — and I sure in hell didn't have health insurance. So, even though I had smashed my knee against a pile of overturned sidewalk and had to actually peel my pants out of my knee when I got home, I thought had just badly banged up my knee — which, of course, I had.
Anyway, now that I'm old, I having to pay for that little encounter with concrete. I spent a good part of last year having physical therapy to deal with knee-related problems (I was staring to have days when my usual three or four mile walk had to be followed by lying down and contemplating an hour of really noticeable pain. Oddly, it turns out that my knees aren't in such bad condition that am a candidate for knee replacement. I am, though, a candidate for Synvisc injections to replace the cartilage. But I discovered over the past couple of days something interesting. I found that if I used my walking stick, not as an affectation, but as an aid to walking, I could walk better, faster, and with very little discomfort. When I bought my favorite walking stick — an ask stick, like Stephen Daedalus's that I bought in Kinsale while on assignment to cover the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday — she said, "You know, some day you might just need one." Well, now I do.
Anyway, now that I'm old, I having to pay for that little encounter with concrete. I spent a good part of last year having physical therapy to deal with knee-related problems (I was staring to have days when my usual three or four mile walk had to be followed by lying down and contemplating an hour of really noticeable pain. Oddly, it turns out that my knees aren't in such bad condition that am a candidate for knee replacement. I am, though, a candidate for Synvisc injections to replace the cartilage. But I discovered over the past couple of days something interesting. I found that if I used my walking stick, not as an affectation, but as an aid to walking, I could walk better, faster, and with very little discomfort. When I bought my favorite walking stick — an ask stick, like Stephen Daedalus's that I bought in Kinsale while on assignment to cover the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday — she said, "You know, some day you might just need one." Well, now I do.
I beg to differ …
… Eliot the Adversary by Mark Anthony Signorelli. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
There you have the dialectic that would torment Eliot over the next couple of decades — the still, quiet voice of the traditionalist being dismissed brusquely by the young modernist. The Waste Land is the culmination of the argument, you might say. Soon after is Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets.
As Somerset Maugham said, "men are not a of a piece." We change. With luck, we grow. I certainly think Eliot did.
What about the prima facie evidence of the imitation of terza rima in "Little Gidding," as well as its clear allusion to the relation between Virgil and Dante? There's plenty of traditional verse throughout Eliot's work.
… contemporary Christians and conservatives alike … generally take Eliot to be “one of theirs,” a great champion of tradition and ordered society, a judgment no doubt based on Eliot's own description of himself as a "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion."But the Eliot who so described himself was not the young modernist Eliot. Note the concluding lines of "Preludes," one of his early poems:
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
There you have the dialectic that would torment Eliot over the next couple of decades — the still, quiet voice of the traditionalist being dismissed brusquely by the young modernist. The Waste Land is the culmination of the argument, you might say. Soon after is Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets.
As Somerset Maugham said, "men are not a of a piece." We change. With luck, we grow. I certainly think Eliot did.
Any attempt to characterize Eliot as a conservative or a defender of tradition must overcome the prima facie objection that his verse constituted a radical repudiation of over two thousand years of Western poetics …
What about the prima facie evidence of the imitation of terza rima in "Little Gidding," as well as its clear allusion to the relation between Virgil and Dante? There's plenty of traditional verse throughout Eliot's work.
And it's very worthwhile …
… AdviceToWriters - ATW INTERVIEWS - Terry Teachout. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Taking action …
… An open letter to the editors of Bookforum Ruth Franklin's Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Enormous fruit bowl …
… ‘America the Philosophical,’ by Carlin Romano - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Inquirer books …
… Cyberstalking and teen suicide in New York.
… ‘Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt' looks at downtrodden U.S. communities.
… Waiting for His Majesty in Eggers' ‘A Hologram for the King'.
… Kolpan's "Magic Words" is a novel, Wild West take on American Jewish life.
… Alix Ohlin's ‘Inside' a twisty, clever tale of desperation and hope.
… Jess Walter's "Beautiful Ruins" a beautiful novel of movies past and present.
… ‘Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt' looks at downtrodden U.S. communities.
… Waiting for His Majesty in Eggers' ‘A Hologram for the King'.
… Kolpan's "Magic Words" is a novel, Wild West take on American Jewish life.
Thought for the day …
I write of the wish that comes true - for some reason, a terrifying concept.
— James M. Cain, born on this date in 1892
Where's the bravado?
...Men in books
...as opposed to the Great Male Narcissists’ creations, the new-guy characters are so quick to admit to their own foibles and humiliations, sometimes one almost longs for a little bravado.
Serial murderee...
At the end of the first page of any Christie novel, the reader is infected with a delicious sense of anticipation. Nothing has happened as yet — no corpse, no murderous thought, no simmering resentments — yet the page trills with excitement. In the voice of Dolly Bantry, the reader’s thought is “This is my murder, and I intend to enjoy it!”
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