Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Tonight ...
I just got an email alerting me to this: Russell Brand will sit down with New York Times culture reporter Dave Itzkoff in an exclusive interview today, October 12 at 6:30PM ET / 3:30PM ET. Livestream will stream this in-depth look at Russell as he discusses his latest book, "My Booky Wook 2: This Times It's Personal," his role in Julie Taymor's film of "The Tempest," and starring in the title role of the remake of "Arthur." Fans can tune into the live interview on Times Talk’s Livestream page at livestream.com/nytimes.
I'm not the most technically adroit guy in the world, but the player is embedded below. I won't be around then, because I'm going to see Antonia Byatt tonight.
I'm not the most technically adroit guy in the world, but the player is embedded below. I won't be around then, because I'm going to see Antonia Byatt tonight.
Watch live streaming video from nytimes at livestream.com
Truth vs. power ...
... as much more than a mere trope: “I will embrace you with ashes”: Liu Xiaobo, the Writer.
Failure of nerve ...
... Bruce Bawer: Wilders on trial. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Of course, the New York Times wasn't so hot when covering the Ukrainian famine, either.
Of course, the New York Times wasn't so hot when covering the Ukrainian famine, either.
Encomium ...
... Thomas Mann on The Stature of Anton Chekhov. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Whereas Chekhov (like Maupassant, whom by the way I knew much better) confined himself to the modest dimensions of the short story; and this did not call for heroic endurance throughout the years and decades but could be tossed off by some happy-go-lucky artist in a day or two or a week or two, at most. I felt a certain disdain for this, hardly realizing then that genius can be bounded in a nutshell and yet embrace the whole fullness of life by virtue of a brevity and terseness deserving the highest admiration. Such works attain to full epic stature and can even surpass in intensity the great towering novels which inevitably flag at times and subside into noble boredom. If I understood that better in later life than in my youth, this was largely owing to my growing intimacy with Chekhov’s art; for his short stories rank with all that is greatest and best in European literature.
Thought for the day ...
On the question of relating to our fellowman - our neighbor's spiritual need transcends every commandment. Everything else we do is a means to an end. But love is an end already, since God is love.- Edith Stein, born on this date in 1891
Monday, October 11, 2010
Quite limited, actually ...
... The Jurisdiction of Science. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... that our intellectual climate is such that so many merely scientific thinkers so consistently and so brazenly offer up their lame insights on the most momentous of topics does indeed constitute an essential aspect of our present barbarism. The attempt to understand the entirety of human existence in biological terms has less of philosophical seriousness about it, and more of professional pride. We would find ourselves in a very nearly analogous situation if a conclave of plumbers began writing books, asserting that water was the essential element in all nature, that our thoughts could best be understood as so many conduits to our actions, and that society itself is nothing other than a complex structure of pipes, aqueducts, and irrigatory canals, sending and receiving every life-giving benefit. Such a mode of philosophizing might be enjoyable for a while, but it could never be persuasive, and it could never be right.
Yes, and while Fodor and others are criticized for questioning Darwinism because they are not scientists, no one thinks to criticize Dawkins, Wilson, et al. for having no discernible philosophical or theological expertise.
Back to school ...
Last Thursday, at the invitation of my friend -- and When Falls The Coliseum editor -- Scott Stein, I visited one of the classes Scott teaches at Drexel University. It is actually an honors seminar for freshman. The subject? Blogging.
Once again, I was struck by the disconnect between what one hears about the younger generation -- they don't read, etc. -- and the reality of the young people sitting in front of me. They seemed to me to be paying attention to what this old guy was saying and those who posed questions posed good ones.
One of the students, for instance, asked what I thought was a good thing to blog about. I said anything you're really interested in. Her blog -- not surprisingly, all the kids in the class have to blog -- is called Creative Gift Ideas for People You Love. Actually, I think that's a pretty good idea for a blog, one that could turn out to serve a very real need for a lot of people.
Another good question was how to increase traffic to your blog, which reminded of me of just how much blogging is a social activity, capable of drawing together all sorts of people from all over the world, since traffic increases the more you link and are linked to in return.
I had a great time visiting this class. I hope the students found it as much as I did.
Once again, I was struck by the disconnect between what one hears about the younger generation -- they don't read, etc. -- and the reality of the young people sitting in front of me. They seemed to me to be paying attention to what this old guy was saying and those who posed questions posed good ones.
One of the students, for instance, asked what I thought was a good thing to blog about. I said anything you're really interested in. Her blog -- not surprisingly, all the kids in the class have to blog -- is called Creative Gift Ideas for People You Love. Actually, I think that's a pretty good idea for a blog, one that could turn out to serve a very real need for a lot of people.
Another good question was how to increase traffic to your blog, which reminded of me of just how much blogging is a social activity, capable of drawing together all sorts of people from all over the world, since traffic increases the more you link and are linked to in return.
I had a great time visiting this class. I hope the students found it as much as I did.
Missing my wife ...
... who is currently traveling about Turkey with some friends.
Secret Music
For Debbie
The house, when she was gone too long,
Was like a false cadence, a song
Broken off. The song resumed
When she returned, the house assumed
Its harmony. He was but the silence
Between tones, granting them sense.
He understood, better than before,
The fissure gaping at the core
Of love, dividing take from give,
Something one must learn to live
With, while the other thrives,
Defining sharply married lives.
He still could hear the song
She’d sounded to him for so long,
And even found himself content,
Engaging love’s original intent.
© 2005 F. Wilson
The latest batch ...
... of TLS Letters: Imperial definitions, Irish English, Apollinaire, and more!
This really sounds awful ...
... What’s wrong with Jonathan Franzen?
... kisses him “with aggression . . . hungry abandon” -- Yuck!
Walter Berglund, the closest Freedom has to a main character, is initially willing to limit his freedom to sleep with his eager young assistant, Lalitha, in the hope of propping up his marriage to Patty. Walter weeps with frustration when Lalitha kisses him “with aggression . . . hungry abandon”, and weeps again “into Lalitha’s hair” when finally his wife departs and the couple satisfy their hunger – leaving Walter unexpectedly desolate. Patty weeps on realizing that Walter has fallen for Lalitha, then weeps “for a long while” when he discovers that she herself has had a long-term affair with his best friend. “I swear to God, Walter. I swear to God. I’ve spent my whole life trying not to hurt you. You’re so good to me, you don’t deserve this.” Not all the dialogue in Freedom sounds as though it has been extracted from one of the flimsier episodes of Desperate Housewives, but quite a lot of it does.
... kisses him “with aggression . . . hungry abandon” -- Yuck!
Something I forgot ...
... I was away most of Saturday and blogged hardly at all. But I should have noted that October 9 is the anniversary Jacques Brel's death.
RIP ...
... Soprano Dame Joan Sutherland dies, age 83. (Hat tip, Cynthia Haven, for alerting me to the video clip.)
Tove Jansson
I've just finished Tove Jansson's The Summer Book. Simple. Elegant. Peaceful. My thoughts exactly.
Mostly true ...
... TV? Don’t waste your time, says Stanford prez.
The only things I watch with any regularity are the Phillies and movies. Sometimes PBS's Masterpiece Theater. The glimpses I get from time to time otherwise strike me as either boring or appalling.
I second this ...
... Happy 85th Birthday to One of America's Best Crime Writers, Elmore Leonard.
I've said it before, but I think it worth repeating: I think Dutch is the coolest guy I've ever met.
I've said it before, but I think it worth repeating: I think Dutch is the coolest guy I've ever met.
Thought for the day ...
I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.- Elmore Leonard, born on this date in 1925
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Saint Jack ...
... The Beat Generation, the Tea Party and the Meaning of 'Beat'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who is appropriately given a featured role.)
Precisely right.
Here some serious qualifications are in order. Although 'beat' does have the connotation of 'beaten down' and 'exhausted,' this meaning is strictly secondary when compared to the term's fundamental meaning which is in the semantic vicinity of 'beatific,' 'beatitude,' The Eight Beatitudes, and the Beatific Vision (visio beata) in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Kerouac cannot be understood apart from his Catholic upbringing. If we take Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) and Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac) of On the Road as the main exemplars of beatness, there is nothing of the cool, jaded beatnik about them (the latter term an invention of the liberal media modeled on 'sputnik.') They are not cool, but hot, 'mad,' joyously affirmative. Every Kerouac aficionado thrills to the passage near the beginning of On the Road where Sal confesses: ". . . the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . ." (p. 9)
Precisely right.
For Sunday ...
Prayer
Kneeling
Making the Sign
Lifting mind and heart
Toward a silence
More resonant than any
Sound
Kneeling
Making the Sign
Lifting mind and heart
Toward a silence
More resonant than any
Sound
Failing better ...
... Happy 60th, Blockhead: Charlie Brown and Other Lovable Literary Losers.
As for me, I never liked Peanuts.
As for me, I never liked Peanuts.
Straw woman ...
... vs. "thinking in a more nuanced way": Joumana Haddad is killing Scheherazade.
For someone taking on the subject of stereotypes, I was disturbed by her reliance on cliché (especially troubling for a woman who considers herself a poet). She spoke of the “free and emancipated” woman. She spoke of how the internet “teaches you that the personal is universal” and that it’s “connecting the world together — I really believe in the power of that.” She spoke of “empowerment.” So I wasn’t terrifically surprised when she said, in answer to a question, “I never function by ‘outcomes,’ I function by fashion, needs, anger.”
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... including my review of a great book, Peter Stothard's Spartacus Road: 'A Journey Through Ancient Italy': A walk that blends past with present.
... 'Obama's Wars': An outsider copes with White House infighting.
... 'The Grace of Silence': A look at the role of racism in a family's past.
... A fun, imagined alternative history.
Also: Mario Vargas Llosa, visiting professor at Princeton, wins Nobel Prize in literature .
... 'Obama's Wars': An outsider copes with White House infighting.
... 'The Grace of Silence': A look at the role of racism in a family's past.
... A fun, imagined alternative history.
Also: Mario Vargas Llosa, visiting professor at Princeton, wins Nobel Prize in literature .
Thought for the day ...
God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible.- James Clavell, born on this date in 1924
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Thought for the day ...
The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it.- Andre Maurois, who died on this date in 1967
Friday, October 08, 2010
Communication skills ...
... Digital technology is destroying the language. Or not.
These kids are composing in imaginative ways most of us couldn’t conceive of when we were young. Their ability not just to write but to compose using mixtures of text and images and sound are astounding.
Oops ...
... Overestimate fueled state's landmark diesel law.
See also: Sun's activity flies in face of climate expectations.
Gee, I thought the science was all settled.
The pollution estimate in question was too high – by 340 percent ... the air board estimate of a nitrous oxide source was off by at least a factor of two ...
See also: Sun's activity flies in face of climate expectations.
Gee, I thought the science was all settled.
A Lost Generation
...In 2010. (If you're young, you'll likely need a box of Kleenex for your tears.)
Thought for the day ...
If by the time we are 60 we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and bad are mingled in every action we take, we haven't grown old to much purpose.- John Cowper Powys, born on this date in 1872
Here is a fine appreciation of Powys by Margaret Drabble: The English degenerate. I think his autobiography is a masterpiece. I read it at just the right time, in my mid-30s, when I was quite disillusioned with myself.
Thursday, October 07, 2010
More ...
... on the NYT and Hayek from The Economist: What is this thing Hayek called "the rule of law"?
Clear to whom? Not to me. And not if the likes of Michael Bloomberg have their way. (See Mayor Bloomberg as the Soda Nazi. -- Via Instapundit.)
... now, almost 70 years later, it is abundantly clear that the prevailing sort of liberal-democratic welfare state has no general tendency toward tyranny.
Didn't they call those mansions ...
... at Newport cottages? When Poets Talk of Cottages... (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.- R.D. Laing, born on this date in 1927
Free speech roundup ...
... Psychology: The Latest Threat to Campus Free Speech?
... here is Pinker's speech.
... more here.
... and here's Nat Hentoff on Obama's euthanizing of 4th Amendment.
... here is Pinker's speech.
... more here.
... and here's Nat Hentoff on Obama's euthanizing of 4th Amendment.
I am the son of a police officer and one of my nephews is a police officer. The primary function of the police is not to prevent crime, which can only be done by policing society, which can only result in the deprivation of freedom. Police are supposed to restore order and bring to justice those who have disturbed that order. A police state is by definition not a free society.
Good heavens ...
... what appears to be a good remake: True Grit; One Awesome Trailer.
Of course, Jeff Bridges is a great actor.
Of course, Jeff Bridges is a great actor.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Memory lane ...
Not long after the Phillies game tonight I switched over to Turner Classic Movies to see what was going to be on. Turned out it's critics' choice month, and the critic choosing tonight was my old college classmate Dick Corliss, whom I haven't seen in decades (though we have exchanged the occasional email). I was glad to see he has finally grown a beard, and that his hair is white, while mine is still gray (though my beard is white). The only really odd thing was that he didn't sound the same. He sounded fine, but somehow different from what I remember. His pick was Citizen Kane, which I decided not to watch, since I've seen it so many times. The interesting thing about Dick and me is that we both ended up doing exactly what we wanted. Bully for us.
God bless him ...
... Famous Smoking Chimpanzee Dies At 52.
... smoking was not a factor in the Charlie's death, who at 52, lived ten years beyond the normal life expectancy of the average chimpanzee.
Interesting ...
... Portrait of the Artist as a Music Fan. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I'm not so sure that Schoeck was a "fervent supporter" of Hitler. I think the case is a bit more complicated than that.
I'm not so sure that Schoeck was a "fervent supporter" of Hitler. I think the case is a bit more complicated than that.
Thought for the day ...
Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.- Lord Tennyson, who died on this date in 1892
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Take that ...
... Marilynne Robinson on Sam Harris: What Unitarians Know (and Sam Harris Doesn't). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ouch.
[Harris] lingers wistfully over a vision of society in which sophisticated lie detectors are concealed in places where honesty is at a premium, for example law courts and political events. A lie would set off an alarm. He grants that the devices could never be wholly reliable but notes that we occasionally execute the innocent as the price we pay for the practice of executing the guilty. Apparently we are to find comfort in this thought.
Ouch.
Complaint noted ...
... No Respect for John O'Hara. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is the piece I wrote for O'Hara's centenary: John O’Hara: Depth, insight win out.
I hope the link works. This is my first try with Google Docs.
Here is the piece I wrote for O'Hara's centenary: John O’Hara: Depth, insight win out.
I hope the link works. This is my first try with Google Docs.
Thought for the day ...
Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.- Vaclav Havel, born on this date in 1936
Monday, October 04, 2010
Hmm ...
... Kant on a Kindle? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Presumably, something similar must have happened when we moved from scrolls to books and from manuscripts to print.
Presumably, something similar must have happened when we moved from scrolls to books and from manuscripts to print.
Thought for the day ...
Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.- St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast is today.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
My talk last Sunday ...
Cynthia Haven and Lee Lowe both asked if I could post the text of the talk I gave at Lansdowne Friends Meeting last Sunday. Well, it needed a bit of polish, and I had to figure a way to do it (it is rather too long for a blog post). Anyway, here it is, along with a poem I also read at the event): Metaphor and Faith.
This link, provided by the indefatigable Dave Lull, should work.
This link, provided by the indefatigable Dave Lull, should work.
God bless him ...
... and thank you, Cynthia: Robert Conquest is “Getting On”: A great poem after a century of living.
Bizarre ...
... Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts.
Gee, when I wrote a piece for The Inquirer about The Road to Serfdom -- a book that I think has been continuously in print since its publication more than half a century ago -- it was ranked No. 999 on Amazon. That was more than year ago. It is currently in Amazon's Top 100 -- No. 56, to be exact. So you hardly have to look for it on "dusty bookshelves." And exactly what is odd about reading classic texts? Has Ms. Zernike ever heard of a guy named Plato? His stuff has been in print for a long time, too, and people are still reading it. What a silly piece.
Thought for the day ...
What is ten thousand years? Time is short for one who thinks, endless for one who yearns.- Alain-Fournier, born on this date in 1886
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Thought for the day ...
What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality.- Wallace Stevens, born on this dare in 1879
Friday, October 01, 2010
Hey, big guy ...
... what have you been reading lately? I Tried a Dating Site That Matches You Based on Your Favorite Books. (Hat tip, Dwight of A Common Reader.)
Coterie art ...
... Heard of Any Great Playwrights Lately? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don't think the newspaper business has done itself any favors by neglecting "high" culture in favor of a pop culture whose products seem increasingly transient and peripheral. On the other hand, "high" culture hasn't done itself any favors by focusing on preaching rather than entertaining (in its original sense of compelling attention).
Thought for the day ...
Poetry being an attempt to express, not the common sense, - as the avoirdupois of the hero, or his structure in feet and inches, - but the beauty and soul in his aspect . . . runs into fable, personifies every fact. . .- Marsilio Ficino, who died on this date in 1499
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