Sunday, June 30, 2024
Something to think on …
Saturday, June 29, 2024
Something to think on …
Friday, June 28, 2024
Something to think on …
Worth pondering …
In case you wondered …
… How Solzhenitsyn Found Himself—and God. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Soviet conditions, Solzhenitsyn came to understand, followed directly from materialism and atheism. If people are nothing but material objects, if there is nothing resembling what we call the soul, then concepts like “the sacredness of human life,” “human dignity” and “the inviolability of the person” are merely bourgeois mystification.
Thursday, June 27, 2024
Something to think on …
— Lafcadio Hearn, born on this date in 1850
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Before he became Catholic …
There’s a simpler explanation …
Something to think on …
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Something to think on …
Monday, June 24, 2024
Are they nuts?
… DHS Doc: Trump Supporters, Military, Religious People Most Likely Terrorists.
The military? Religious people?
Something to think on …
Sunday, June 23, 2024
Something to think on …
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Something to think on …
Friday, June 21, 2024
Claire Keegan
Because I'd recently read Kairos, winner of this year's International Booker Prize, the Internet suggested that I read the work another acclaimed contemporary European author, Claire Keegan. And so I obliged: this time having picked up Small Things Like These.
Let me start by saying that this novel is more of a novella, and that it's been very well received. In many ways, this praise is deserved: I agree that the book is spare, but exacting; it's beautiful without being precious. Every word is measured, and the result, if this is the sort of literary style you enjoy, is a novella that is almost perfectly constructed. Everything that needs to be said is included, and what's not made explicit lurks just below the surface.
But then, Small Things Like These felt to me like an unfinished work: just at the moment of conflict, the novel ends, leaving us to wonder what comes next. And to a certain extent, this can be envisaged. It's just that it would be have been satisfying if the plot had continued, and if the characters had been compelled to confront this conflict. As I say, they are not, and the result is a convincing ascent toward tension -- but one which ends without resolution. (To argue that the remainder can be left unspoken is not fully convincing to me.)
I won't be negative, though, because Keegan does pack a serious punch: this is a novella which functions on a number of levels: political, religious, cultural. There's identity and gender there, too. Ultimately, this is a book about Ireland: its history, its unspoken trauma. It is a book which can be read in a single sitting -- which is a relief of sorts because there is a lot here to unpack and process.
Lionel pegs these days …
The Mental Parity (MP) movement begins its blitzkrieg through the institutions, inspired by the best-selling The Calumny of IQ: Why Discrimination Against “Dum People” is the Last Great Civil Rights Fight. It’s no longer permissible to speak about, or even to acknowledge, differences of intelligence. “Smart,” “stupid,” “dumb,” and all the related assemblage of evaluative terms are placed on the MP Index. CPS visits Pearson because her youngest child, Lucy, reports to a teacher that her mother uses these insulting words at home.
Something to think on …
Thursday, June 20, 2024
The former newspaper of record …
I’m on his side …
Something to think on …
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Something to think on …
What a vast difference there is between knowing God and loving Him.
— Blaise Pascal, born on this date in 1623
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Something to think on …
— Geoffrey Hill, born on this date in 1933
Monday, June 17, 2024
Something to think on …
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Something to think on …
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Friday, June 14, 2024
Jenny Erpenbeck
Hero and saint …
Something to think on…
Dawn …
Daybreak
Now is the time
When darkness fades
And sparrows arrive
In the silence. Before
Things get going again
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Hmm …
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
Something to think on …
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Monday, June 10, 2024
Something to think on …
Sunday, June 09, 2024
What is this world coming …
Something to think on …
Saturday, June 08, 2024
Something to think on …
Friday, June 07, 2024
Something to think on …
Sure seems that way …
… It’s Time to Make a Strategic PR Pivot in Dealing with the Climate Change Issue.
Unless we incorporate sophisticated communication techniques and effective PR strategies, we will lose the AGW war — and that’s the direction we are heading
Thursday, June 06, 2024
How sad …
… The Philadelphia Free Library’s whole Author Events staff has resigned over workplace conditions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I know Andy Kahan. He used to ask me to introduce authors. Great guy.
Scholarly satire …
…. ‘Loud-mouthed bully’: CS Lewis satirised Oxford peer in secret poems. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Lewis took an immediate and intense dislike to Wyld, partly because he considered the content of the lectures to be elementary and self-evident. But he also objected to Wyld’s manner: his snobbery and tendency to harangue his audience for coming in late, not concentrating and not knowing the answers to the questions he fired at them.”
Wednesday, June 05, 2024
Something to think onn …
- As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.
Tuesday, June 04, 2024
Monday, June 03, 2024
Blogging note
I won’t be blogging for a few days.
My iPad only works in my new apartment, and I’m not moving in there until later in the week