Monday, June 12, 2017
The invisible thread …
… Revisiting Brideshead | Chronicles Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Published in 1945, Brideshead Revisited traces the interaction between Charles Ryder, its ostensibly agnostic narrator, and a family of aristocratic Catholics. In the Preface to the second edition, Waugh wrote that its theme was “the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters.” This authorial exposition of the theme is key, unlocking the deepest levels of meaning in the work. The operation of divine grace means that there is a hidden hand at work, a supernatural presence acting on the characters. It’s as though the novel’s chief protagonist is God Himself, Whose omnipotent and omniscient presence guides the narrative. From a Christian perspective, this is nothing less than realism, in the sense that it reflects reality. It is, however, very difficult for a novelist to suggest this presence without descending to the level of didacticism and preachiness. It is a mark of Waugh’s brilliance that he succeeds with a theme that he himself described as “perhaps presumptuously large.”
Anniversary address …
… Walter Mosley: On Being Black, Being a Writer, and Cave Canem | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
RIP …
… North Carolina's first female Poet Laureate has passed | News & Observer. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Take a deep breath …
… Poetry is in the air; breathe it and just enjoy - Daily Nation. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
Comeback …
… New Life for a 125-Year-Old Literary Journal - The New York Times. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
Unsuspected depth …
… Cannery Row may be sentimental but it is far from shallow | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The whole book is a complicated metaphor about the richness of life, the way different parts of an ecosystem interact. Just as Doc peers into his tidal pools, Steinbeck’s readers are given a view over a society that is largely cut off from a wider ocean. But we know we are still looking at a place subject to currents and tides, still filled with the same salt water as the rest of the sea.
Music hath charms …
… The science of songs: how does music affect your body chemistry? | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… experiments have demonstrated that music is extremely effective at curing insomnia; that shoppers spend more money in stores playing classical music; and that communal singing helps humans to bond with each other by releasing oxytocin into our system - the same chemical we experience during sex or breast-feeding.
Hmm …
… A Masterly Look At Europe | Frontpage Mag. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Although the word Islam figures in Murray's subtitle, he devotes less attention to the religion itself less than he does to Europe's response to it. Islam also gets less space here than Christianity – or, more specifically, Europe's loss of Christian belief and identity. This focus makes for some of the book's most original and fascinating sections, in which Murray (an Oxonian, by the way) explores the impact of Darwin and of the nineteenth-century Biblical “higher criticism” that led to the loss of faith limned in, for example, Matthew Arnold's 1867 poem “Dover Beach.” It was to overcome this loss that the twentieth-century totalitarianisms were concocted. And once they'd done their massive mischief, and been expensively quashed, what remained? A spiritual void.
Blowing as it listeth …
… First Known When Lost: Wind.
As I suggested here recently, wisdom does not necessarily come with age. I can attest to that. But growing old does provide an opportunity to pare your life down to essentials. Think of all the things you once thought were important and that now mean nothing. The length of that list will depend upon the length of your time upon the earth, dear reader.Ah, yes.
Something to think on …
Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
— Anne Frank, born on this date in 1929
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl's Jewish State is a piece I'd always wanted to read, but had put off -- largely under the assumption that it'd be abstruse. The opposite I found to be true: Herzl's essay is not only readable, it struck me as both insightful and prescient. There's a timeless quality to the work -- a certain durability of thought -- that continues to impress.
Part of what surprised me most about The Jewish State was Herzl's attention to the details -- the minutiae -- of emigration. I'd note realized the extent to which he proscribes the steps by which the Jews of Europe were to transition in their social and economic lives to a new existence in Israel. Herzl takes these sections seriously, articulating the supposed transformation from "over here" to "over there."
For me, though, the most interesting sections of the essay focused on what Herzl thought the Jewish state would become as a political entity. He did not, for instance, intend it as a theocracy. Rabbis would play a role, he argued, but the state itself would be developed as either a constitutional monarchy or an aristocratic republic. Herzl was opposed to what he called "unlimited democracy," believing it impossible to "formulate...wise policy in a popular assembly."
(Given what's happened in the United Kingdom of late, it's also interesting to note Herzl's opposition to popular referenda, about which he declared that "no simple political questions...can be answered merely by Yes and No.")
Inevitably, there were a few areas where Herzl was proved wrong: this is the case, for example, when he surmises that the Jews, "once settled in their own state, would probably have no more enemies." Sadly, this has not come to pass.
The same can be said for Herzl's approach to zealotry: no doubt, he recognized the depths of European anti-Semitism. But Herzl was very much a thinker of his time -- cognizant of class division, and believing ultimately in rule of law and political equality.
Herzl concedes that European states had and would continue to take action against individual Jews. He cannot, however, imagine that governments would conspire to "take action against all Jews." This ugliness, of course, came to pass some forty years later, and it's here -- in Herzl's hope for good -- that the essay is most upsetting.
I can't remember whether it was Bellow or Roth who urged those wishing to remain popular to refrain from commenting on the fraught politics of the Middle East. Regardless of who said it, the point was well taken. Reading The Jewish State was, for me, less about contemporary politics and more about understanding the impetus for change, for a significant shift in human geography. Herzl's essay proved surprisingly accessible -- and surprisingly enjoyable: in it are the roots of a concept later turned into a political reality.
"A state," wrote Herzl, "is formed not by pieces of land, but rather by a number of men united under sovereign rule."
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Faith and landscape …
… A Contrarian Friendship — Education & Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the letters shine with just the quirks and grace notes that one would hope for in personal correspondence. Both complain eloquently of hurry, distraction, and overwork, laughing at the popular conception of themselves as leading some kind of idyllic existence. In a letter of 1985, Snyder writes, “I had a person express dismay and disillusion recently when I offhandedly said I owned a chainsaw. Wait til they hear I have three cars, one truck, and two motorcycles all registered to run!” Berry often expresses his vexed relationship with teaching stints at the University of Kentucky. In a letter of 1976 he complains, “I’m done with the fall semester teaching—a bust. I gave nearly 1/3 incompletes. That is to say, I’m afraid, that the impossibility of teaching has begun: there is nothing in or behind many students to hold them up against a discipline.” He would seem to hold the same opinion of poets being interviewed as he does of his students in class. In a letter of 1980 he writes, “Most poet-interviews I see strike me as glib, shallow, self-exhibiting, worthless, embarrassing, and irresponsible. . . . I regret tractors, I guess, at least as much as I regret interviews.” And then he goes on to note, “In all of Boswell’s talks with him, Johnson is always a conversationalist, never an interviewee.”
Something to think on …
Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.
— Yasunari Kawabata, born on this date in 1899
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Something to think on …
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
— Saul Bellow, born on this date in 1915
Sounds like just a neighborly visit …
… Bobcat traps mom, 2 kids in Washington Township home.
… the bobcat left the home through the kitchen window after about an hour, police said. … The bobcat also did not damage the residence.
A spymaster for our time …
… Alan Furst’s World of Spies | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Furst gets Russia right, or plausibly so. Westerners struggle to write convincing historical fiction involving Russia. Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer (1966) comes to mind as a rare exception, but most other attempts strike a cacophony of false notes, making such books hard to enjoy. Furst knows his subject, however. He understands, for example, that Stalin’s NKVD was more than a service for the collection of foreign intelligence—it was a lethal, clandestine army that sought to bring all of Europe under Soviet influence or domination.
Q & A …
… Billy Collins on Twitter, Politics, and Poetry | A&E | connecticutmag.com. (Hat tip, G.E. Reutter.)
Political poetry usually doesn’t last very long because it has a shelf life, it’s tied to the headlines. I think more important than writing or painting politically — especially if you haven’t done that usually, it’s not your voice and you’re sort of straining your voice in some way — I think it’s more important to maintain a kind of artistic or poetic outlook on things. To listen to some of the lessons that poetry generally teaches us. Things like respect for nature, or seeing a connection between us and the natural world, gratitude for being alive, kindness, paying attention, being in touch with your inner self, being in touch with sensitivity. All these things that, when you go generally to a lot of poetry, you find these same ideas are simmering. They’re part of the poetic outlook on life. That should be maintained at any time.Amen, brother.
Friday, June 09, 2017
Thoreau - ette
When I was in the cabin in Montana, far from the Internet, cell service and Philadelphia, I read a number of books, both real and electronic. One of them was a book by Paul Theroux The Tao of Travel, where he collects his favorite travel writing and notes the best travel writing is of bad stuff. I'm still working on a long form piece on my trip, which I will post as soon as Frank's check clears (kidding, kidding) and I will keep Theroux's advice in mind...
Hmm …
… The American Scholar: Reading Thoreau at 200 - William Howarth. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, I remain a fan of Walden. I even made a pilgrimage there once. But this piece grates at times, not least with business about the "unnamed narrator." Come on. It's autobiographical and everyone has always known that. And I heard criticism of Thoreau as a naturalist 50 years ago.
As for Thoreau's contribution to climatology, here's something our author might want to look at:
What Happened to Spot? A Solar Update. It seems to me the jury is still out as to the direction climate is taking, not that I want to cast aspersions on anyone's faith.
Well, I remain a fan of Walden. I even made a pilgrimage there once. But this piece grates at times, not least with business about the "unnamed narrator." Come on. It's autobiographical and everyone has always known that. And I heard criticism of Thoreau as a naturalist 50 years ago.
As for Thoreau's contribution to climatology, here's something our author might want to look at:
What Happened to Spot? A Solar Update. It seems to me the jury is still out as to the direction climate is taking, not that I want to cast aspersions on anyone's faith.
History and metaphysics …
… Double Focus | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Few recent poets have more perfectly fulfilled these twin demands than the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski. On September 24, 2001, mere weeks after 9/11, he published a poem in the New Yorker titled “Try to Praise the Mutilated World.” In it, he acknowledges the pain and violence of the moment (“You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, / you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully”) while also exhorting the reader to “[r]emember June’s long days, / and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.” Indeed, in his four-decade-long career, Zagajewski’s poems have regularly addressed history. “Referendum,” for instance, takes as its starting point Ukraine’s 1991 vote on independence, while “To Go to Lvov” concerns the loss experienced by the Zagajewski family—and an entire generation—after the Soviets forcibly relocated them to central Poland in 1946. (Zagajewski was born in 1945 and so has no memory of the move from Lvov, though it has shaped much of his life.)
Addicted to inconsequence …
… Cyril Connolly and the literature of depression – TheTLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Rarely … has a writer so cruelly studied his own sluggishness, nor cast it in such bleak existential terms, as in The Unquiet Grave. Connolly wrote the first of many drafts in three small notebooks between the autumns of 1942 and 1943; it was, he said, “inevitably a war book”. In her essay “Notes on Failure”, Joyce Carol Oates calls The Unquiet Grave “a journal in perpetual metamorphosis, a lyric assemblage”. In places, sometimes for several pages at a time, it’s no more than a high-toned commonplace book, corralling quotations from Connolly’s mid-war reading: Chamfort, Pascal, Nerval, Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve. An atmosphere of disabused, ironic alienation pervades the passages he selects, and quotes for the most part in their original French. When the author’s own voice is heard it is by turns languid, styptic, childish and self-lacerating. The Unquiet Grave is notorious for certain passages of intense self-pity, which Connolly would like to elevate to essayistic grandeur.
Masterwork …
Carl Nielsen was born on this date in 1865, and Bernstein was one of his best interpreters.
Mark thy calendar …
MAD POET-IN-RESIDENCE – 2017
A Poetry Workshop With Leonard Gontarek
A Free 4-Week Workshop
June 14, 21, 28, July 5 – All Wednesdays, 6-7:30 PM
Walnut Street West Library – 40th & Walnut Streets (SE Corner) Philadelphia PA 19104
Contact: gontarek9@earthlink.net
This workshop is presented free through the generosity of Mad Poets Society.
It is open to everyone.
*Students will gain a fuller understanding of poetry in our world and improve
their poetic skills.
*International and American Poetry will be discussed, with a focus
on what makes a poet’s voice original, what makes the voice their own,
and the ways in which the poet speaks directly to the reader.
Students will learn to identify, and trust, the same qualities in their poems,
and establish voice as a working principle in their poetry.
*The workshop is designed to identify and develop the sense of place
in the poet’s work. The aim is to firmly root the poem where it takes place,
so the subject matter and concerns of the poem will unfold around it.
*Specific direction and assignments will be given, with attention
to the basic elements and forms of poetry. Through invention,
students will build more accurate and textured work.
*The workshop is structured to accommodate poets at any level of accomplishment.
Leonard Gontarek is the author of six books of poems:
Take Your Hand Out Of My Pocket, Shiva (Hanging Loose Press, 2016),
St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris, Van Morrison Can’t Find His Feet,
Zen For Beginners, Déjà Vu Diner, He Looked Beyond My Faults and
Saw My Needs. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review,
Field, Poet Lore, Verse, Exquisite Corpse, Handsome, Fence,
Blackbird, The Awl, Poetry Northwest, Spinning Jenny,
and in the anthologies, The Best American Poetry, The Working Poet,
Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets, and Joyful Noise: American
Spiritual Poetry. He twice received poetry fellowships from the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was the 2011 Philadelphia
Literary Death Match Champion. Since 2006, he has conducted 1000
poetry workshops in venues including, The Moonstone Arts Center,
Musehouse, The Kelly Writers House, University City Arts League,
the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, and a weekly
Saturday workshop from his home in West Philadelphia.
He hosts the Green Line Café Reading and Interview Series.
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly
He’s a poet’s poet. The Philadelphia Inquirer
Leonard reading Altogether:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Leonard poem here:
http://www.backlashpress.com/
Leonard reading Promise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
A Poetry Workshop With Leonard Gontarek
A Free 4-Week Workshop
June 14, 21, 28, July 5 – All Wednesdays, 6-7:30 PM
Walnut Street West Library – 40th & Walnut Streets (SE Corner) Philadelphia PA 19104
Contact: gontarek9@earthlink.net
This workshop is presented free through the generosity of Mad Poets Society.
It is open to everyone.
*Students will gain a fuller understanding of poetry in our world and improve
their poetic skills.
*International and American Poetry will be discussed, with a focus
on what makes a poet’s voice original, what makes the voice their own,
and the ways in which the poet speaks directly to the reader.
Students will learn to identify, and trust, the same qualities in their poems,
and establish voice as a working principle in their poetry.
*The workshop is designed to identify and develop the sense of place
in the poet’s work. The aim is to firmly root the poem where it takes place,
so the subject matter and concerns of the poem will unfold around it.
*Specific direction and assignments will be given, with attention
to the basic elements and forms of poetry. Through invention,
students will build more accurate and textured work.
*The workshop is structured to accommodate poets at any level of accomplishment.
Leonard Gontarek is the author of six books of poems:
Take Your Hand Out Of My Pocket, Shiva (Hanging Loose Press, 2016),
St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris, Van Morrison Can’t Find His Feet,
Zen For Beginners, Déjà Vu Diner, He Looked Beyond My Faults and
Saw My Needs. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review,
Field, Poet Lore, Verse, Exquisite Corpse, Handsome, Fence,
Blackbird, The Awl, Poetry Northwest, Spinning Jenny,
and in the anthologies, The Best American Poetry, The Working Poet,
Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets, and Joyful Noise: American
Spiritual Poetry. He twice received poetry fellowships from the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was the 2011 Philadelphia
Literary Death Match Champion. Since 2006, he has conducted 1000
poetry workshops in venues including, The Moonstone Arts Center,
Musehouse, The Kelly Writers House, University City Arts League,
the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, and a weekly
Saturday workshop from his home in West Philadelphia.
He hosts the Green Line Café Reading and Interview Series.
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly
He’s a poet’s poet. The Philadelphia Inquirer
Leonard reading Altogether:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Leonard poem here:
http://www.backlashpress.com/
Leonard reading Promise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Something to think on …
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
— Charles Dickens, who died on this date in 1870
Thursday, June 08, 2017
Democrats look at themselves; don't like what they see
The Democrats don’t have a “white working-class problem.” They have a “working-class problem,” which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate, including the Rising American Electorate of minorities, unmarried women, and millennials. This decline contributed mightily to the Democrats’ losses in the states and Congress and to the election of Donald Trump.I switched parties sometime ago. I'm actually a libertarian, the less government the better I think, but sigh, nothing is happening there anytime soon. Anyway, like switching other things (what is she talking about? (Google me if you don't know lol)) it was an interesting experience. Most interesting is watching the exact same techniques used by both sides to demonize the other.
Marianne Moore, George Plimpton and Muhammad Ali
[Ali] announced that if she was the greatest poetess in the country, the two of them should produce something together -- "I am a poet, too," he said -- a joint effort sonnet, it was to be, with each of them doing alternate lines. Miss Moore nodded vaguely. Ali was very much the more decisive of the pair, picking not only the form but also the topic: "Mrs. Moore and I are going to write a sonnet about my upcoming fight in Houston with Ernie Terrell," he proclaimed to the table. "Mrs. Moore and I will show the world with this great poem who is who and what is what and who is going to win."
"We will call it 'A Poem on the Annihilation of Ernie Terrell,' " Miss Moore announced. "Let us be serious but not grim."
"She's cute," Ali commented.
A pen was produced. Ali was given a menu on which to write. He started off with half the first line -- "After we defeat" -- and asked Miss Moore to write in Ernie Terrell (which she misspelled "Ernie Tyrell" in her spidery script) just to get her "warmed up."
I seem to recall an article by Plimpton, who had introduced Moore to Ali, on taking Moore to a baseball game too, but I can't find it right now.
Blogging note …
Went with my sister-in-law to visit my brother's grave. Emotional day. Blogging will resume tomorrow.
Suspicious of ideology …
… Ironists of a Vanished Empire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Its hallmark [was] a profound skepticism about the power of government—any government or, for that matter, economic system—to reform human life. In Austro-Modernist fiction and poetry, irony—an irony less linked to satire (which posits the possibility for reform) than to a sense of the absurd—is thus the dominant mode. The writer’s situation is perceived not as a mandate for change…but as an urgent opportunity for probing analysis of fundamental desires and principles.Sounds about right to me.
That's for sure …
… Marianne Moore was a singular voice. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is no one quite like her, no one to whom she could be compared, such is her rootedness in her own hugely eccentric and wilful Moore-ishness. Her poems are finically, even excessively observant, and scrupulously formally structured, with, on occasion, the most improbably outrageous of end-rhymes. She had a passion for animals, birds, flowers and insects. Her painstaking descriptions of the odd characteristics of such creatures (she had a great fondness for compound adjectives) cause her poems to read at times like high-literary glosses on David Attenborough’s “Planet Earth” decades before its time.
Something to think on …
To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tantamount to constant travel: One is traveling with the earth.
— Marguerite Yourcenar, born on this date in 1903
One of the Most Remarkable Things I Have Ever Seen...
"Once I lost my hearing I gave up,
but I wanted to do more with my life than just give up."
Wednesday, June 07, 2017
It's Prince's Birthday too!
“I know that you had one birthday. You were born on a certain day. You had no more birthdays after that…. I don’t celebrate birthdays, so that stops me from counting days, which stops me from counting time, which allows me to still look the same as I did 10 years ago.“
Happy birthday, Dino …
He could act, too. And the scene with Jerry Lewis is pretty neat.
Here's Dean just singing it.
Well he is a politician …
… Ben Sasse is insufferable. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Embarrassingly for a self-described "historian" (the kind who did his Yale dissertation on Reagan) and would-be pedant, the second sentence contains a solecism: "Perplexed" followed by an infinitive is not idiomatic English. (One can be "perplexed" by something, not perplexed to it.) A few pages later we are treated to a harangue of some poor students at his former university who failed to erect a Christmas tree according to his specifications. The number of decorations at the top of the tree was insufficient. "'Was there not a ladder in the gym?' the vice president queried. 'Was maintenance unwilling to bring one?'"Not sure I get this. I could be perplexed to see something that, well, perplexes me. That said, Sasse does seem to be something of an ass.
Committee talk …
… Spoiling the Broth – Barton Swaim – Medium. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is tempting to conclude that we live in a world governed by politicians too dumb or too careless to know what they’re reading from their notecards or their teleprompter.Not only tempting, but persuasive. Eisenhower and Reagan were both hands-on when it came to the speeches they delivered. Both could write. Eisenhower himself coined the phrase "military-industrial complex."
Why science works...or not
Pride and self-reproach have both been on display in the scientific community in recent weeks. At this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for example, some scientists took up pro-science signs and marched in a nearby public square, while others gathered in conference rooms to agonize over a recent proliferation of questionable claims.
The fields suffering most from dubious results are social science and medical research, where critics say too many highly-cited findings are evaporating as soon as others try to replicate the original experiments.
Laid back success …
… Hume as historian – Incudi Reddere. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Nor was it a passing phase; even in industry, the man was idle. Writing again to his publisher, having begun to “tire of [his current] course of life” (by which he meant “such a life of dissipation as not to be able to think of any serious occupation”), he described some of the diligent researches he had been recently undertaking, which he hoped to use in a future (“very distant”) edition: he had “run over” the memoirs of King James and “picked up some curious passages.” Of course, he soon thought better of the idea, and relapsed into sloth and indolence. “Some push me to continue my History. Millar [Hume’s publisher] offers me any price. All the Marlborough papers are offered me; and I believe nobody would venture to refuse me. But cui bono? Why should I forego idleness, and sauntering, and society, and expose myself again to the clamours of a stupid factious public? I am not yet tired of doing nothing; and am become too wise either to mind censure or applause.”
Getting started …
… Jennifer Weiner: From Small-Town Beat Reporter to Big City Columnist | Literary Hub. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)
I was a copy editor when Jennifer started at The Inquirer. Her writing talent was immediately evident.
I was a copy editor when Jennifer started at The Inquirer. Her writing talent was immediately evident.
Something to think on …
Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
— Elizabeth Bowen, born on this date in 1899
The Writing process
Pulitzer prize winner Elizabeth Strout:
I will start by writing a scene or a piece of a scene. I have learned over the years to take anything that is most pressing to me – it may be as mundane as a concern about upcoming dental work, or as serious as worrying about the safety of my child – and to transpose that emotion into a character. This will give the scene life, as opposed to having it wooden. I am a very messy worker – I push these scenes around our table. It is a big table, and over time I realise which scenes are connected. I have never written anything from beginning to end, not a story or a novel. I just collect different scenes, and the ones that aren’t any good to me, get slipped on to the floor and eventually into the wastebasket. (There are many of those.)
Tuesday, June 06, 2017
Listen in …
… Episode 221 – Kyle Cassidy | Virtual Memories.
“In photography, the story is the most important thing, and technical imperfections will be forgiven.”
Devastating …
… Witness to George Will’s Flight from Politics - Online Library of Law & Liberty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Will has long struck me as a self-satisfied pedant, but his descent into being completely in mauvaise foie is astounding.
But don’t just take Buckley’s word for it (let alone ours). When Reagan awarded Chambers the Medal of Freedom in 1984, one eloquent writer noted that Chambers’s “extraordinary memoir ‘Witness’ is . . . comparable in depth and power to the memoir of another American alienated from his times, ‘The Education of Henry Adams.’” Witness, this author continued, “is an unrivaled account of the costs of the totalitarian temptation.” So that’s why “To Us, Chambers, a graceless man touched in the end by the blinding grace of painful truthfulness, led a life worth honoring.” George Will, you were right about Chambers the first time. - See more at: http://www.libertylawsite.org/2017/06/02/witness-to-george-wills-flight-from-politics/#sthash.youXukJE.dpuf
Will has long struck me as a self-satisfied pedant, but his descent into being completely in mauvaise foie is astounding.
A teenager and Ray Bradbury
My title was a nod to a line Ray himself had written: “[I]f you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer.”
The words are as true today as they were when I first read them. Only now, I know that Ray’s advice transcends writing.
He was teaching me how to live.
“Now listen,” Ray told me as our conversation wound down. “You’re making all the right noises. Most important is that you stay enthusiastic about life.”
Holly came from Miami FLA...
hitchhiking her way across the USA...
One of my dearest friends (since 2nd grade summer camp) started singing Lou Reed's song when they saw this pic of me. Bastard.
Something to think on …
There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.
— Thomas Mann, born on this date in 1875
Blogging note …
I must be off to do a boook pickup at The Inquirer. Will blog when I have the chance.
By one who knew …
… Weaving by Lucy Larcom | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Rus writes that "I walk through Lucy Larcom Parkway often. It's right downtown behind the high school. She is considered a Lowell poet by Lowellians, as she is part of the Mill Girl history before moving to Boston. Interesting that she wrote this poem. You can see why Lowell is proud to claim her."
FYI …
… What Reading Robert Pirsig Taught Me About Writing (And Life) | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Snapshot …
… West Chester Poetry Conference by George Green - The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Monday, June 05, 2017
Honor deserved …
… Alvin Plantinga’s Masterful Achievement | William Doino Jr. | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is worth noting that in 1966, the year before Plantinga began his theistic trilogy, Time published its sensational cover story, “Is God Dead?” By 1980, however, the somewhat chastened magazine acknowledged he was not: “God is making a comeback Most intriguingly, this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers—most of whom never accepted for a moment that he was in any serious trouble—but in the crisp, intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse.” The man Time credited more than any other for this turnabout was “America’s leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God, Alvin Plantinga.”
Check this out …
… This Incredible Flower Timelapse Took 3 Years and 8TB of Photos to Create. (Hat tip, David Tothero.)
What's in a phrase?
… apparently, for too many, a lot: About Last Night | The problem with “no problem”. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Above all, though, I was struck by the furious resentment that came boiling into my Twitter feed as a result of my casual observation, as well as by the assumptions implicit in this resentment. It was, lest we forget, a one-sentence tweet devoid of context. Nevertheless, many respondents seem to have taken it for granted that I was portraying a real-life encounter between a haughty middle-aged man of means (i.e., me) and a poorly paid millennial convenience-store clerk (i.e., them). And while hundreds of people earnestly assured me, some pleasantly and others less so, that there is no definitional difference between “No problem” and “You’re welcome,” I soon lost count of the responses which made it crystal-clear that there is, at least for these particular respondents, a huge and purposeful difference.I can't say I've ever heard someone reply to my "Thank you" with "No problem." But it does seem odd. How does the an expression of thanks connect with the notion of a problem? And I'm no baby boomer. I'm older than that. I did find it amusing how some seemed to think that because you are old, you are also feeble. Some old guys are quite capable of kicking the shit out of people, even people younger than they are.
Something to think on …
The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.
— Adam Smith, born on this date in 1723
Sunday, June 04, 2017
David Foster Wallace - Part 3
Well, I did it: I finished Infinite Jest. Which is something I can't quite believe, because this beast of a book is absolutely enormous, and there were a few times I thought it'd defeated me. But I've lived to tell the tale, and this will be my third and final post about the novel.
Over the past three hundred pages, one question has emerged: namely, is Jest an effective book? Does it hold together? Does it work?
The answer: I'm just not sure. No doubt, this is a novel imagined by an obsessive mind, by an author unable at times to curb, to control his creative impulse. And for that, I think, we should celebrate Foster Wallace: in many ways, Jest is the modern novel, it is a near-perfect representation of our collective conscious.
But whether that makes it accessible, or readable, or ultimately worthwhile is a different question. I struggled through Moby Dick in much the same way that I did Jest: there are long sections of both books that border on impenetrable, and I find that, frankly, frustrating.
And true, those sections might represent something new: maybe those sections of Jest that are so far gone are actually the ones in which Foster Wallace carved a new fictional space. I don't know. Certainly they represent some sort of amalgam: some hybrid of Pynchon, DeLillo, and Burroughs mixed into modern rendering of youth tennis.
What I'll take away most, I suppose, from Jest is its focus on addiction. This is a novel very much about obsession and dependence, about the thin line between an addiction to drugs and an addiction to athletic excellence. But more than that: it's about an author's addictive pursuit of story telling, of Foster Wallace's inability to stop, to declare his book complete. Infinite Jest could have gone on forever, and in some sense, it does: its stories beget stories, and those in turn beget others.
Given all the words, and all the pages, and all the characters, I'll reserve the final bit here for Foster Wallace:
"Up until the last phase of his career, [X] had apparently thought the stilted, wooden quality of nonprofessionals helped to strip away the pernicious illusion of realism and to remind the audience that they were in reality watching actors acting and not people behaving."
Q & A …
… The Hipster Pyramid: An Interview with Francesco Pacifico.
I feel that a book isn’t properly edited until it’s translated into a different language, because you get past all the fascination you have for your own language. You’re left with the very structure, the wires of the book, and you gain a deeper understanding of your limits, your inspiration. Also, a different language helps you see different moral approaches. The language in Italian novels is not a very spiritual language, whereas the American novel is a novel that’s often very concerned with the dignity and humanity of the characters. So having that American sound in my head—hearing the book with American sounds—staked it in morality.
Recommended …
… Informal Inquiries: Review: The President is a Sick Man.
And no, it is not about the current incumbent.
Picking winners …
… What a 1930s horse racing guide by a conservative philosopher could teach sports scientists today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The more we know about data in sport, the more the Oakeshott position – confidence in good judgement rather than scientific “proof” – gains strength. Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team, is a leading exponent of data analytics. Yet he is in the vanguard of anew, subtler understanding of the relationship between data and judgement. The quality of the mind interpreting the theory is as important as the theory, Morey argues. “You have to figure out what the model is good and bad at, and what humans are good and bad at.” No model can deliver results without a wise, shaping intellect: all theories need to be marshalled by judgement.
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