Sunday, May 18, 2025
Good idea …
… Can learning cursive help kids read better? Some policymakers think it’s worth a try (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I went parocial school. we started learning in first grade, first day.
Friday, May 16, 2025
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Monday, May 12, 2025
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Enchantment and mystery …
… Never Forget: Dana Gioia searches for cultural inheritors (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Friday, May 09, 2025
Q&A …
… A Novel Individual: An Interview with William F. Buckley Jr. on his Fiction ( Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thursday, May 08, 2025
You’ll see why …
… Hilarious and Eye-Catching Signs People Just Had to Snap Photos of ( Hat tip, Jon Caroulis)
Q&A …
… Richard Rodriguez on Pope Francis, the Church and the ‘Moral Laziness’ of America (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Wednesday, May 07, 2025
Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Worth considering…
… Lionel Shriver : The trans nonsense must stop It is mental illness (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Monday, May 05, 2025
Sunday, May 04, 2025
Apologies …
Blogging took a bit slowvroday, i spent a good part of today in a nearby hosoital. I have an infection and was given an antibiotic. luckily, i have dear friens who watch ober, evereyone han a blessed night,
Saturday, May 03, 2025
Friday, May 02, 2025
Thursday, May 01, 2025
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Torborg Nedreaas
About Nothing Grows by Moonlight, all I can really say is wow: this is a brutal, terrifying novel.
Set in Norway following the Second World War, the novel provides an unyielding view into the experience of women in working class communities. Torborg Nedreaas, who was born in Bergen, and who, I've learned, emerged as of the preeminent Norwegian novelists of the last century, knew exactly what she wanted to say, and presented that vision with tremendous courage: this is novel about the abuse of women, about gender inequity, about violence, and, to a certain extent, about the relationship between motherhood and childhood.
Norway today is seen as a progressive nation with considerable financial means, but the country eighty year ago -- the country that Nedreaas knew -- was entirely different: this was an impoverished, solemn, isolated nation concerned less with the rights of working woman than with the evolution of a capitalist system.
Nedreaas tells a simple story about this world, but it is one of tremendous emotional weight: it is one of pregnancies and abortions, alcoholism and loneliness. The story is also one of psychological and religious awakening, followed by unrelenting waves of economic tumult, turning everything black.
Nothing Grows by Moonlight has much to say about what happens at night: about the silence and the stars and the things which intrude upon them. I can't remember the last novel I read which struck such a nerve, and which served as a reminder of how brutal -- truly, how brutal -- life was for so many, so recently. This novel is an exercise in honesty and clairvoyance, a paean to the strength of women forgotten by time. I could not put Moonlight down. And yet, when it was over, I felt a palpable sense of relief.
Remembering …
… Murray Kempton, Around Forever: Resurrecting a Forgotten American Journalist (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Monday, April 28, 2025
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Nice to know …
… at least if you're a Christian, as I happen to be. Here's the proof: Trump makes good on promise to defend Christians
but I am also conserned about increasing manifestationsof anti-Semitism, as we all should there must be reason why religion seems to have been a part of civilization from the start.
Saturday, April 26, 2025
In this corner …
… ‘The Sweet Science’: A.J. Liebling’s Chronicle of Boxing Culture ( Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Friday, April 25, 2025
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Wise ladies …
… ‘Bright Circle’ and ‘Margaret Fuller’: The Rise of the Transcendental Woman ( Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Monday, April 21, 2025
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Friday, April 18, 2025
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Monday, April 14, 2025
Sunday, April 13, 2025
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Friday, April 11, 2025
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Wednesday, April 09, 2025
Unpopular bird …
… From the Desk of Mike Stark: A Bird that Gets Everyone Squawking (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Tuesday, April 08, 2025
John Berger
I returned recently to the essays of John Berger, and finished a collection edited by Geoff Dyer -- this one called Understanding a Photograph. It's a selection of works, most of them previously published, which provides an orientation to Berger's critical themes: the role of the photographer in contemporary society; how photographs function; and the relationship between between photography and history. Taken together, the essays serve as a reminder of Berger's key insights: his uncanny ability to read photographs as something more than two-dimensional representation. Not all of the pieces here are perfect, and some are perhaps overly political; but the few that strike a chord -- that truly resonate -- get at the decisions a photographer makes when framing an image: when that image, if successful, becomes something more transcendent, more lasting than a static moment in time. This was not my favorite collection of Berger's essays, but having not read his work for several years, I was pleased to be back, and was reminded of his unusual ability to interpret photographic imagery.
"An instant photographed can only acquire meaning in so far as the viewer can read into it a duration extending beyond itself. When we find a photograph meaningful, we are lending it a past and a future."
Monday, April 07, 2025
Sunday, April 06, 2025
Saturday, April 05, 2025
Friday, April 04, 2025
Thursday, April 03, 2025
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Tuesday, April 01, 2025
Monday, March 31, 2025
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Interesting …
... Cynthia Ozick: ‘Alice in Wonderland seems calculatedly cruel’
(Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Friday, March 28, 2025
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Epistolary wit and wisdom …
… I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Monday, March 24, 2025
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Saturday, March 22, 2025
A fine look at some masters
… Constellation of Genius: Miłosz, Camus, Einstein, and Weil
… and a close look at one of these: Ambassador of dreams
Friday, March 21, 2025
Arnold Bennett
Apologies for my absence from the blog: I've been immersed in, well, in a very long novel. But I've finished it now, and have a few observations to share.
The novel in question: The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett, published in 1908. I must say, when I first encountered this book, I had limited expectations. This is a big novel, set very much in the realistic style of later nineteenth century French fiction. Put differently, this isn't the sort of work I'd usually enjoy.
But let me say at the start: wow -- The Old Wives' Tale is an absolute triumph. I could not have been more attached to these characters, nor to Bennett's uncanny ability to chart the impact of time, of history.
The Old Wives' Tale is masterfully written: this is the work of an author who knows how to wield not only language, but syntax and structure. The result is a detailed portrayal not only of the Baines sisters, but of the events surrounding them. In that sense, this is a novel from the inside: industry and early commercialism emerge as characters in their own right, pushing and pulling the sisters from one year to the next.
And more: there is a very effective element of this novel focused on the emotional lives of the Baines sisters, and what their lives "mean," what legacy they've left. For one sister, the answer must be the defense of place -- of, literally, the family home. For the other sister, the answer is different: it is work, and accumulation of material reward. In the end, however, home and labor result in very little: both sisters are overwhelmed by social and economic factors subtly presented by Bennett.
It's that presentation -- that conclusion -- which renders this novel so powerful: the Baines sisters struggle and succeed, but then, in the end, the question becomes: for what? Their legacies are washed away by a more modern version of politics, by the emergence of consolidated industry, and by the fading tides of memory.
This long novel functions very much as a serialized television show might today: there is no rush; there are episodes upon episodes to build characters and place; and there are distant plot sequences which intersect, bringing everything together at last. The Old Wives' Tale is a tremendous accomplishment and one of the most effective examples I can recall of an accessible, readable, realistic novel composed in English. (Between Bennett and Hardy -- I'd take the former!)
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Monday, March 17, 2025
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Friday, March 14, 2025
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Listen in …
… A new Robert Frost poem was discovered and published. Is it any good?. [Hat tip, Dave Lull.
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
It is tempting …
… lionelShriver: Am I a culture war addict
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It may be too early to say if the woke wars are over. The perceived Trumpian “vibe shift” may constitute a mere temporary setback for the inexorable “march through the institutions” by the deranged progressives who’ve dominated us commonsensical normies for over a decade. More ideally, a loudly slammed door consigns all that racial hysteria and gender woo-woo behind it to the status of a bad dream. But the dogma is still out there, and the same brainwashed fanatics still occupy many positions of influence
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Monday, March 10, 2025
Friday, March 07, 2025
A note to readers …
i am having technical problems with Blogger. I also have a serious doctor's appointment this afternoon. so I won't be blogging for awhile.
Thursday, March 06, 2025
Interesting …
… Trump Names COVID Contrarian to Head NIH, Restore Faith in Science
In 1928 , Dr. Alexander Fleming was investigating the properties of Staphylococcus bacteria. He grew some in a petri dish before leaving for vacation.
When he got back, a strange mold had attacked the bacteria, destroying it. He noticed the mold seemed to be preventing the bacteria around it from growing. He correctly deduced that the mold must have been secreting a substance that acted as a self-defense chemical.
Fleming also had some good luck. The preferred lab animals at the time were dogs. but for some reasonreason, none were available at the tupime. so he had to settle on white rats. Luckily for him and us. dogs are allergic to penicillin. White rats react as we do. hHence, we have penicillin.
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
I’m certainly not …
… Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He seemed very nice when I met him at the White House when I was the Inquirer's book editor. Laura Bush had invited us to talk to some school kids.
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
Monday, March 03, 2025
Saturday, March 01, 2025
Appreciation …
Maugham the Master - Chronicles [Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Maugham happens to be one of my favorire authors. Of course, I'm so old, I remember watching the TV show of his stories that was on in the early '50s, which he appeared on.
Friday, February 28, 2025
Thursday, February 27, 2025
A must read
Reining In District Courts - by Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Glenn knows what he's talking about.
A lesson worth learning …
… A Christian Message in ‘Inside Out 2’? The Surprising Lesson Found in the Popular Disney Film
Who we are is not about what we do, not about what we own, and not about what we accomplish. Who we are is really about whose we are.
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Monday, February 24, 2025
Sunday, February 23, 2025
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Hmm …
Stephen%20King%20Is%20Proud%20Maine%20Gov.%20Janet%20Mills%20Will%20Fight%20to%20Let%20Men%20Bully%20Women%20%u2013%20Twitchy
No guy better try mess with my daughters. He'll learn very quickly what it's like run into a guy whomstarted life in North Philly — and is the son of a cop.
Friday, February 21, 2025
Monday, February 17, 2025
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Kazuo Ishiguro
It had been quite some time since I last read a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, but over the past week, for whatever reason, I found myself reading -- and enjoying -- An Artist of the Floating World.
This is one of Ishiguro's earliest novels, and while it may not be as evolved as Remains of the Day, say, it is a succesful work in its own right. Much of that success owes, in my estimation, to Ishiguro's narration: this is book which embarks on a series of tangents and asides, and for every step forward, there are several backward or to the side. The result, though, is not confusion: it is a holistic sense for the primary character, his history and evolution, and his relationships with family and friends.
If I had a critique of Floating World it would focus on its politics: Ishiguro flirts with Japan's imperial past and its authoritarian governments leading to the Second World War. But he never fully exposes this: his characters reference the war -- and Japan's eventual defeat -- but they do so from a distance: all of the politics here are cloaked in generalities or innuendo. It is the art which seems to draws Ishiguro's attention.
I recognize, of course, that Floating World was not strictly intended as a political novel: nor, specifically, as a history of Japan. Instead, it is a novel about reputation, apprenticeship, and advancement. Ishiguro's central character -- the aging Masuji Ono -- represents the arch of artistic fulfillment. (That fulfillment may have achieved a sort of transcendence, but it is also checkered with regret and contrition.) At the same time, however, Ono represents the sum of his memories, which take him from one story to the next. I hesitate to use the word "fractured" -- because that is not what this is novel is about: instead, it is about, perhaps, the potential for memories to come together to forge something profound: something approaching identity.
An Artist of the Floating World has lots of interesting things to say about art and its interplay with personal identity (and yes, politics too). This is an eminently readable novel worthy of thought and reflection.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Friday, February 14, 2025
Growing old
… A Goddam Stone Wall You Butt Your Head Into.
I turn 84 in October. My view is the same as Bette Davis's: "Growing old sure in hell ain't for sissies."
Monday, February 10, 2025
Sunday, February 09, 2025
Annoying, to say the least …
if they want to have all sorts of crap prior to the Superbowl,fine. but how about keeping it pre-game. it is nearly 6:30.
Saturday, February 08, 2025
Not exactly charming …
… Kingsley Amis. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.'
Amis was always misogynistic and chauvinistic. Take a Girl Like You, for example, published in 1960, is about how the arrogant Patrick Standish is “justified” in behaving as he behaves if the female in question, Jenny Bunn, is beautiful and provocative.
Sounds like a good idea …
… Give the National Endowment for the Arts Back to the Public (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Friday, February 07, 2025
Thursday, February 06, 2025
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
Monday, February 03, 2025
Another ignorant legislator ~
I just saw a video of Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin going on about how Congress created USAID. JFK created it by executive order. Hence, it can be ended by executive order.
Sunday, February 02, 2025
Saturday, February 01, 2025
Friday, January 31, 2025
Oh my …
… Plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia leaves multiple houses on fire, causes explosion.
i grew up not far from North Philly airport. My brother worked there for awhile. Can't recall anything kike this happening back then.
Pathetic …
… British university puts trigger warning on Greek mythology for ‘distressing’ content.
They've only been around for more than two millenia.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Getting things straight …
… Etienne Gilson’s essential book on philosophy and its history. [Hat tip, Dave lull.)
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Janet Malcolm
I didn't know much about Janet Malcolm, but this past week, I finished Still Pictures, a posthumous collection of essays loosely focused on Malcolm and her family. I say loosely because, in the end, as Malcolm's daughter notes in her afterward, this collection is not strictly autobiographical. In each chapter, Malcolm takes a grainy old image and uses it as an entry point into the past, into her past. There are essays focused, primarily, on Malcolm's family and their emigration from Czechoslovakia to America; there are other pieces, though, about religion, American culture, and intellectual life -- both in Europe and the States. For me, what was most refreshing about this collection was its brevity, confidence, and wit: Malcolm does not reach for too much, and she does not focus her gaze entirely on herself: instead, her view is outward, from the original image to its context and history. In many ways, the result is a social history of the first half of the twentieth century: from the wars to the Cold War and beyond. For those with a special appreciation for Czech history, this collection will be particularly rewarding. All told, Still Pictures was a book to savor, and was evocative -- in all the right ways -- of Sebald, Berger, and other greats.
Monday, January 27, 2025
Sunday, January 26, 2025
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Friday, January 24, 2025
Remembering …
(12) David Lynch Teaches Creativity and Film | Official Trailer | MasterClass - YouTube (Hat tip, Felix Giordano.)
Another poem …
Bash Bish Falls | Aaron Poochigian | The New York Review of Books (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Monday, January 20, 2025
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Friday, January 17, 2025
Tennesse Williams
Much has been written about A Streetcar Named Desire -- and I won't attempt to rehash that here. But having just read the play for the first time, I will offer one point: this is a dark play, punctuated by acts of deliberate cruelty. I was surprised by this, actually: because while I had a general sense for the play and its position in the pantheon, I was not expecting such a dire view of, well, of the human condition. This is a play with very little remorse: characters come into repeated conflict, but rarely apologize for it. The nature of playwriting -- the very structure of a play -- magnifies this conflict as the scaffolding of a novel is peeled away. Without the narrative, and the description, and the literary enclosure, all that's left in Streetcar is pain and loss. This moment in time -- this vision of characters, in a specific place, with a specific set of concerns -- is one, in my reading, of unyielding despair.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Blogging note …
i am about to be taken to the hospital for a ptovedure. no bloging until sometime later,
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
High-ranking poet …
… ‘Geoffrey Chaucer’ Review: A Worldly, Well-Traveled Poet. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Monday, January 13, 2025
Sunday, January 12, 2025
One greart writer on another …
Auden reviews Tolkien | Epistle of Dude
The demands made on the writer’s powers in an epic as long as “The Lord of the Rings” are enormous and increase as the tale proceeds-the battles have to get more spectacular, the situations more critical, the adventures more thrilling-but I can only say that Mr. Tolkien has proved equal to them.
Listen in …
… This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Rachel Cusk
I've written on the blog before about Rachel Cusk. I think she's a singular novelist: her Faye trilogy represents a high point in modern literature. Those books occupy their own space, and they have a lingering quality very rare in this world of unrelenting content.
Having so enjoyed the Faye novels, I recently read another of Cusk's book, Second Place. There's much here which is similar to the earlier works: the uncertain relationship between Cusk and the narrator, the interjection of philosophy and reflection into common experience, and the ability to universalize the banal -- to quietly endow it with an unexpected weight.
True, Second Place is a book about a second physical space, but equally, it is about the sensation of feeling that you, as a person, have perpetually come in 'second place.' There is a lot here about the dynamics between men and women, and about what it takes to generate great art. There are reflections about the hierarchy of that art, and about the effects of the artistic impulse, especially on families or friendships.
Second Place is at times a dire, brutal recounting of one woman's interactions with two different types of men: one silent, one aggressive. But it is more than that: it is a story of this woman's gradual awakening to her own sense of power and artistry. Second Place is not as strong, perhaps, as the Faye novels, but that is not a critique as much as a further celebration of those earlier books. In the end, Second Place takes on a tremendous amount -- art, gender, power, space -- and distills it to its core. These things are real, Cusks seems to suggest, while we experience them, and not only in hindsight, not only upon reflection. We would do well to remember this.
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Friday, January 10, 2025
Thursday, January 09, 2025
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
Tuesday, January 07, 2025
Monday, January 06, 2025
Sunday, January 05, 2025
Saturday, January 04, 2025
Friday, January 03, 2025
As time passes …
Anecdotal Evidence: 'A Goddam Stone Wall You Butt Your Head Into'
As Bette Davis said, “Old age ain't no place for sissies.” I can attest to that.
Thursday, January 02, 2025
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