Saturday, May 18, 2019
Friday, May 17, 2019
Three tales in one …
… Reimagining Harper Lee’s Lost True Crime Novel: An Interview with Casey Cep. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Cep’s debut, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, is fascinating, addicting, and unbearably suspenseful. Cep actually tells three concentric stories: the crimes of Willie Maxwell, the trials of his lawyer Tom Radney, and Harper Lee’s failed attempt to write about them. When I called Cep from “a Southern phone number” on an unseasonably hot spring afternoon, she initially thought I was one of her sources calling with a “some bombshell thing they want to show me, far too late to help with the book.”
Unusual boy, outstanding human …
… Truth, Beauty, and Oliver Sacks | by Simon Callow | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In the essay “Telling,” he describes the upsetting case of the director of a hospital who, struck down by Alzheimer’s, is admitted to his own hospital. He behaves as if he were still running it, until one day by chance he picks up his own chart. “That’s me,” he says, recognizing his name on the cover. Inside, he reads “Alzheimer’s disease” and weeps. In the same hospital a former janitor is admitted; he too is convinced that he is still working there. He is given harmless tasks to perform; one day he dies of a sudden heart attack “without perhaps ever realising that he had been anything but a janitor with a lifetime of loyal work behind him.” “Should we,” asks Sacks, “have taken away his accustomed and well-rehearsed identity and replaced it with a ‘reality’ that, though real to us, would have been meaningless to him?”
Q&A …
… Cynthia L. Haven | Full Stop.
Cynthia L. Haven, a 2018/19 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar, was kind enough to answer a few questions about her book Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard via email.
Usage and Marilynne Robinson…
… Language Log — "Demoralised" = "without morals"? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Every thought vibrates through the universe.
— Dorothy Richardson, born on this date in 1873
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Woeful exile …
… Stefan Zweig, European Man by Joseph Epstein | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The political victory of Adolf Hitler in 1933 meant the personal defeat of Stefan Zweig. With fascism in the saddle, Zweig’s books were banned in Germany and Austria and often burned by fascist youth; he lost his house in Salzburg and with it much of his collection of rare literary and musical manuscripts and artifacts (he owned, among other notable items, Beethoven’s desk and Goethe’s pen); and his first marriage collapsed. Zweig was an internationalist by instinct and political philosophy—that is, a believer in the compatibility of all nations—but Hitler’s Germany put paid to that dream. On the attack throughout Europe, Germany, a nation to which, Zweig said, “good order had always seemed more important than liberty and justice,” had turned Stefan Zweig from a contented cosmopolitan into a woeful exile. “It is over,” Zweig wrote in his diary, “Europe finished. Our world destroyed. Now we are truly homeless.”
May he rest in peace …
… Warren Phillips Built a Powerhouse of News - WSJ.
I knew Warren Phillips. It is a privilege I am grateful for. They don’t make them like Warren anymore. This world is a lesser place.
A most important article …
… Giving Up Darwin. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
But:
Do the numbers balance out? Is Neo-Darwinian evolution plausible after all? Axe reasoned as follows. Consider the whole history of living things—the entire group of every living organism ever. It is dominated numerically by bacteria. All other organisms, from tangerine trees to coral polyps, are only a footnote. Suppose, then, that every bacterium that has ever lived contributes one mutation before its demise to the history of life. This is a generous assumption; most bacteria pass on their genetic information unchanged, unmutated. Mutations are the exception. In any case, there have evidently been, in the whole history of life, around 1040 bacteria—yielding around 1040 mutations under Axe’s assumptions. That is a very large number of chances at any game. But given that the odds each time are 1 to 1077 against, it is not large enough. The odds against blind Darwinian chance having turned up even one mutation with the potential to push evolution forward are 1040x(1/1077)—1040 tries, where your odds of success each time are 1 in 1077—which equals 1 in 1037. In practical terms, those odds are still zero. Zero odds of producing a single promising mutation in the whole history of life. Darwin loses.
But:
If Meyer were invoking a single intervention by an intelligent designer at the invention of life, or of consciousness, or rationality, or self-aware consciousness, the idea might seem more natural. But then we still haven’t explained the Cambrian explosion. An intelligent designer who interferes repeatedly, on the other hand, poses an even harder problem of explaining why he chose to act when he did. Such a cause would necessarily have some sense of the big picture of life on earth. What was his strategy? How did he manage to back himself into so many corners, wasting energy on so many doomed organisms? Granted, they might each have contributed genes to our common stockpile—but could hardly have done so in the most efficient way. What was his purpose? And why did he do such an awfully slipshod job? Why are we so disease prone, heartbreak prone, and so on? An intelligent designer makes perfect sense in the abstract. The real challenge is how to fit this designer into life as we know it. Intelligent design might well be the ultimate answer. But as a theory, it would seem to have a long way to go.
The problem is the kind of designer being thought of. Intelligent Design theory seems to think of God as puttering about in His celestial laboratory wondering what to do about the wombats. But there are more sophisticated notions of a cosmic intelligence at the heart of being. Heraclitus with his notion of nous, Lao-tse with his notion of the Tao, and Meister Eckart all arrived at much the same idea. "The Tao that can be named is not the Tao." (Lao-tse.) " We hear of one good man who in prayers besought God for his name. Then 'Peace!' quoth a brother, 'thou art abusing God.'" (Eckhart.)
Something to think on …
Seems as unfounded ... to say there isn't a God as to say there is.
— James Agee, who died on this date in 1955
Me and My Shadow – Indicative Mood
… Me and My Shadow – Indicative Mood. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don’t know much about the various schools of psychoanalysis and have tended not to be very interested in them as a subject, like intellectually, but as I say, I’ve been doing some searching. I read an essay recently about the Shadow Self, Jung’s idea of the Id. It’s the part of ourselves we keep hidden from ourselves but is there anyway, motivating some of our behaviors. Those hidden aspects of our personalities are usually things we consider negative, but positive stuff can get tangled up in the Id too. It’s a jungle in there.Thanks, I suspect, from having been trained, as an old-fashioned Catholic (pre-Vatican II) to examine my conscious regularly and thoroughly, I seriously doubt that there is any part of me that I have kept hidden from myself. Jung himself says somewhere that he had never had to treat a serious practicing Catholic. Which of course does not mean that there are no parts of myself I would rather to myself, though they have nothing dramatic about them, just the usual pettiness and meanness that comes of being a fallen creature.
The work a intended …
…This New Translation of a Russian Epic Restores What Censors Stole - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The idea that Stalingrad must be Grossman’s lesser book is a legacy of Soviet censorship, Robert says. Grossman wrote the novel in the late 1940s and early ’50s, when all literature in the Soviet Union had to follow the tenets of socialist realism. Official doctrine demanded a “historically specific depiction of reality,” in which characters would undergo “ideological rework… in the spirit of socialism.”We have a flourishing crop of would-be censors in our own society these days.
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
In case you wondered …
… listen in; Home - The Thing About France.
“Nothing teaches you how American you are more than moving to another country.”
Listen in …
… Episode 320 – Seth – The Virtual Memories Show.
“The drawing of the comic is where everything is discovered.”
Pushback …
… Harvard’s Disgrace.
… Harvard Betrays A Law Professor — And Itself.
… Harvard ditched US values of due process and diverse opinion in Harvey Weinstein case.
Capitulating to the noisy complaints of a small number of undergraduates, and a sit-in protest at the dining hall, the Harvard administration recently announced that, effective June 30, Sullivan and his wife, Stephanie Robinson (who likewise teaches at Harvard Law School), would be removed as “faculty deans” at the school’s Winthrop House—a student residence where Sullivan and Robinson also lived. (Sullivan remains as a law professor.) When appointed as residential deans in 2009, Sullivan and Robinson were the first African-Americans to hold that position at Harvard, according to The Harvard Crimson. The decision to remove Sullivan and Robinson was made by Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana, who had reportedly joined the students’ sit-in protest, dubbed “Reclaim Winthrop.”
… Harvard Betrays A Law Professor — And Itself.
Mr. Sullivan is my friend and colleague. He is the director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School and the architect of a conviction-review program in Brooklyn that has freed a score of improperly convicted individuals. He is also a sought-after lawyer who has represented plaintiffs (including the family of Michael Brown, whose death at the hands of a police officer fueled the Black Lives Matter movement) as well as defendants (including Rose McGowan, the actress who faced drug charges and is, ironically, one of Mr. Weinstein’s accusers).
… Harvard ditched US values of due process and diverse opinion in Harvey Weinstein case.
I’m glad Harvard students are anti-rape, but Weinstein must be defended all the same. Lawyers like Ronald Sullivan uphold a bedrock American right.
Make of this what you will …
… Is Poverty Necessary? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This seems to me to be all over the place and to arrive nowhere in particular. I don't even think the question posed is actually answered. But I'm open to enlightenment.
This seems to me to be all over the place and to arrive nowhere in particular. I don't even think the question posed is actually answered. But I'm open to enlightenment.
Something to think on …
Perhaps the habit which distinguishes civilized people from others is that of discussion, exchange of opinion and ideas, the ability to differ without quarrelling, to say what you have to say civilly and then to listen civilly to another speaker.
— Katherine Anne Porter, born on this date in 1890
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Lower education …
… Harvard's Bad Call on Ronald Sullivan - The Atlantic.
The vital work of criminal defense has managed to endure … thanks to a core of sober-minded citizens in each generation who know better than to pile on. They understand that to defend an accused criminal is not to defend his or her alleged crime—and that conflating the two by imposing social sanctions on attorneys would make criminal trials more like popularity contests.
Educational institutions ought to teach young adults this justice-enhancing logic. Harvard is now teaching its undergraduates how to undermine it.
In case you wondered …
… Did Marcus Aurelius feel too little – or too much? Hmmmm… | The Book Haven.
When I first read the Meditations many years ago, it struck as perhaps the saddest book I had ever read.
Hmm …
… The Narcissism of Contemporary Poetry | The Walrus. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Much of contemporary poetry has become something of an assembly line, turning out verbal representations of minor occurrences in the poet’s daily life. Most formulaic are the lyric poets, who often come across like oversensitive souls wandering the world logging every detail of every impression that strikes them—the iridescent feathers of a bird they saw on the way to work, the metallic screech of the streetcar that woke them up in the middle of the night, the ugly tile pattern in the bathroom where they hid to avoid talking to anyone at a party. The lyric is, in a sense, the selfie of the poetry world: it provides a perfectly contrived snapshot of the poet at a moment in time.
Another grim anniversary …
… RT’s WW2 Marginalia (1939-45): Rotterdam Blitz — 14 May 1940.
I was once in conversation with someone who was a child in Holland during WWII. I asked him how he and his family had managed. And he said, quite matter-of-factly, “Oh, we stayed hidden in the walls.” Chilling.
About time …
… Pushing Back Against Marilynne Robinson's Theology | Church Life Journal | University of Notre Dame. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For Robinson, grace is free for all, found everywhere, and in everything. This grace sounds wonderful, but it ignores the problem of evil. I know that Robinson prefers to highlight the goodness in creation and is frustrated by dark writers who she considers misanthropic. However, writers who acknowledge darkness and evil represent reality as it is, not how we wish it to be. A world that glimmers and shines, as it does in Robinson’s novel, paints over the ugly, but by doing so, marginalizes injustice.I gather from some other things that I have read that Robinson’s fondness for Calvin depends on downplaying his notions of predestination and total depravity. The school system and social welfare agencies he established in Geneva apparently appeal to her because it makes him seem like a modern liberal. I have not read Gilead, but I reviewed Home, which I thought well-written, but otherwise forgettable.
Something to think on …
The most dangerous tendency of the modern world is the way in which bogus theories are given the force of dogma.
— Jean Daniélou, born on this date in 1905
Monday, May 13, 2019
In case you wondered …
… Was Shakespeare a woman? | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
‘Everything in here was rigorously fact-checked by The Atlantic,’ Winkler insists. In which case, The Atlantic has further reason to be embarrassed.
RIP …
… Doris Day: The actor and singer who symbolised wholesome America in the Fifties and Sixties | The Independent. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I feel chilly and grown old.
Not what you might think …
… The Life and Death of a Line: Saul Steinberg’s “The Labyrinth” - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Post bumped.
The best way to read The Labyrinth, I would like to propose, is as an animated film in book form.Dave also sends along this.
Post bumped.
Hmm …
… Why books don’t work | Andy Matuschak. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… as a medium, books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don’t realize it.
… as a medium, books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don’t realize it.
Well, the book doesn't disappear. You can pick it up and refresh your memory. It is a storage system, after all. I've spent more than 50 years summarizing books in reviews, and I find I retain a certain sound overall sense of what is contained therein. For more detail, I take them down off the shelf and look through them again.
A serious anniversary …
… RT’s WW2 Marginalia (1939-45): Winston Churchill — Blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
Fortunately, there were some serious people around then — though the Congress seems familiar.
Listen in …
… The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: Carey Cranston on the American Writers Museum in Chicago.
Carey Cranston took on the role of President of the American Writers Museum in September of 2016. Prior to that Carey served for 12 years as President of Fox College, a private career college in Chicago, and prior to that he was a Vice President at Hill & Knowlton, a global PR firm, where he led the digital and web services division
Self-creation …
… Clair Wills reviews ‘The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien’ edited by Maebh Long — LRB 4 April 2019. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There are embellishments here – O’Nolan got the sack from the civil service in 1953 because of his frequent and protracted absences, and for ridiculing his superiors in the newspaper column he wrote as Myles na gCopaleen; it is unlikely he ever studied in the US, though he may have travelled there in the late 1940s – but the biographical sketch is accurate in its essentials. It is repeated throughout this new edition of O’Nolan’s letters in scores of introductions and pitches that he sent to publishers; agents; provincial Irish newspapers; the British press, radio and TV; and even to firms that might be looking for someone to write advertising copy. He created fantastical backgrounds for himself under other names – whether as Flann O’Brien (‘As a lad I knew Ibsen … Swinburne and Joseph Conrad were also frequent visitors to my grandfather’s place … At dusk, Coleridge would sometimes look in on his way home for a final pipe, and more than once the burly shape of Lord Macaulay was known to grace the gathering’) or Myles na gCopaleen (‘Diaghilev I knew and liked, a strange genius of a man if ever there was one. But Fokine was the daddy of them all, and an exemplary family man among a crew of roués’). These letters, however, deal with the burdens of being plain Brian O’Nolan.
Something to think on …
Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.
— Daphne du Maurier, born on this date in 1907
Sunday, May 12, 2019
An encore …
Since I was recently taken to task for seeming to slight the notion of global warming, I thought I’d link to a piece I wrote some years ago that has some bearing on the topic: Digging deeper on climate change.
Climate science, with its computer models, is a Johnny-come-lately to the narrative. Not so geology. "For almost 200 years," Peters writes, "geologists have studied the basic evidence of how climate has changed on our planet." They work, not with computer models, but with "direct physical evidence left in the muck and rocks."
Inquirer reviews …
Paris Review redux …
… Eileen Myles, The Art of Poetry No. 99.
I was like the family clown. The middle child entertaining. I was a lousy student, but interestingly the nuns always let me write plays or do drawings, endless special projects. I made art when I was a kid so I wouldn’t fail in school.
Hmm …
… The Dubia Were Answered - The Catholic Thing.
Whatever the reason, the world watched, read, and missed the answers to the dubia proposed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in his April essay, “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse.”
In offering a three-part response to the crisis in the Church, he indirectly answers the five dubia that Cardinals Brandmüller, Caffarra, Meisner, and Burke presented years ago to Pope Francis. The pope emeritus fulfilled a duty that Pope Francis has not, namely, to maintain the bishops and all the faithful in the unity of the Church’s constant teaching on faith and morals.
Something to think on …
There is an art of seeing things as they are: without naming, without being caught in a network of words, without thinking interfering with perception.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, born on this date in 1895
Saturday, May 11, 2019
A tale of two gardens …
… On the Composting of Thee and Me | George Weigel | First Things.
In the biblical view of things, men and women, created in God’s image and likeness, have a God-given dignity that implies a responsibility to care for God’s creation, the Earth. Exercising that responsibility is a good thing here-and-now; it’s also an act of generosity toward future generations, who should inherit the Earth as a garden to cultivate, not a garbage dump to manage. But if men and women are, in the final analysis, compost—“a cubic yard of soil,” as Ms. Spade told the Post—why should we possess a unique dignity? Why should we bear any special responsibility to treat the Earth and other living creatures well? If we’re just compost-waiting-to-happen, why should we treat nature with respect?I regard myself as a conservationist. I find environmentalists off-putting.
Something to think on …
If ever the public was betrayed by its press, it's ours.
— William Dean Howells, who died on this date in 1920
Not what you might think …
… The Just Third Way: Evelyn Waugh on Vatican II. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In Waugh’s opinion (which turned out to be prophetic), changes in outward forms, while puerile and tasteless in many cases, did not affect anything doctrinal. They could, however, lead the way to alterations in doctrine as well as discipline.
Friday, May 10, 2019
Hardly surprising …
… Historical Ignorance Reigns Over Notre Dame’s Columbus Ban - Crisis Magazine.
… when the university leadership was confronted by the cultural janissaries shouting about identity and injury, they proved embarrassingly supine. What could have been a “teaching moment” (in the parlance of modern liberals) became another occasion for the administration of progressive judgment: Tribute was given, treasure was lost, and the history once considered glorious was confessed in shame. This loss was not parochial, but national. Another monument to our shared history has been removed to order the world along destructive ideological lines.Notre Dame — the one in Indiana — is hardly worth taking seriously anymore, if only because the people running it don't take education seriously anymore.
Global warming strikes again …
… May snowstorm breaks 117-year-old record in Minnesota.
Maybe more people should pay attention to Valentina Zharkova: Hmm.
Maybe more people should pay attention to Valentina Zharkova: Hmm.
Sad anniversary …
… RT’s Reviews and Marginalia : When I am gone what will you do?
I ran into Shel Silverstein twice (he was easily recognizable), once when he was leaving the original Playboy mansion in Chicago, and once when he was having lunch a few tables away in DC. I promised myself if I ran into him a thord time I would go over and introduce myself. But it never happened.
Blogging note …
This is busy day for me. I have to out right now. Hope to be back to blog some before I go out again this afternoon.
Encountering the world …
… Entitled Opinions: Philosophy Outside Academia | Blog of the APA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“I believe in it,” Harrison said. “And the reason I believe in it is that at Stanford we are dwelling in a garden of ideas. I know how much desire there is outside academia to have an ‘in’ on the kinds of conversations we have.” He said in a 2008 interview that he wants to “show people what exactly it means to devote your life to an author like Proust or the idea of mimetic desire, as René Girard has done. In other words, I wanted to turn to all the people I know and have come to know for 20 years and get them on the air for an hour. All of them, almost invariably, have been fascinating.”Of course, the academy needs to learn from the world also.
Something to think on …
I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.
— Karl Barth, born on this date in 1886
Thursday, May 09, 2019
Good for them …
… On Poetry: Poem's roots go deep for tree-hugger | Northern Living | record-eagle.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
It still saddens me that the maple tree in the backyard of where I grew up, which I raised from seed, was cut down by the people who bought the house when my mother, in her old age, moved to live with my older brother and his wife.
What can one say …
… 'Even Now, I Don't Want to Admit That Xiaobo is Gone'. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Asked about how she feels living in a state of relative freedom compared with house arrest back in Beijing, Liu said that she hasn't settled in well at all, and feels "extremely uncomfortable," and often thinks about buying a ticket back home.Her body may have arrived in Berlin, but her thoughts and emotions are all back in Beijing, she said, where her home is still filled with memories from their marriage.
The art of conversation …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'A General Effect of Pleasing Impression'.
It’s not just the subject matter that is tiresome in so many attempts at conversation but the manner of delivery. If the nurse were to tell me, with appropriately quiet pride, that her daughter had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, I would be riveted. I could listen for hours. But if someone’s brat hits a double in Little League, and the parent won’t stop cheering about Junior's accomplishment, include me out, to use a Goldwyn-ism.
In case you wondered …
… Must-Read Poetry: May 2019 - The Millions. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Here are six notable books of poetry publishing in May.
Something to think on …
The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café.
— José Ortega y Gasset, born on this date in 1883
Wednesday, May 08, 2019
Hmm …
… Late season winter storm buries parts of Italy.
It may have been a wintry storm, but I am sure winter ended in Tuscany around the same time it ended here — in late March. So we’re talking about a snowstorm in spring.
Hmm …
… New Research Confirms We Got Cholesterol All Wrong – Reason.com.
The study also reports that "heart attack patients were shown to have lower than normal cholesterol levels of LDL-C" and that older people with higher levels of bad cholesterol tend to live longer than those with lower levels.
Thoughts on taking leave …
… Elegy Season | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Possessed by Memory really is a kind of valediction. In the first sentence of his first chapter, Bloom writes, “As I near the end of my eighties, I am aware of being in the elegy season.” This book dwells in the elegy season from its first to its last page, and it concerns itself throughout with ends: the end of friendships (Bloom mentions dozens of poets and critics whom he has loved and lost) and the end of Bloom’s own life. Many of the book’s chapters are short, more brief reflection than sustained argument, and hardly a chapter goes by without an intimation of Bloom’s own mortality: “I lose old friends every month or so now. Consolation is difficult to find, but elegiac poetry helps.”
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