Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Bloggus interruptus ...
A good deal of today has been spent online and on the phone trying to fix a problem with one of my programs -- a program I pay for. The problem is fixed. The technical staff I dealt with -- people at Realplayer -- were wonderfully competent and pleasant. But what is routine for them is exhausting for this old guy. Not only could I not blog while I was engaged in getting out of the way while they fixed the problem, but I now don't feel much like blogging or doing anything much else. So blogging will be light until tomorrow.
Much in what he said ...
... For Rothbard's 85th: Long-Out-of-Print Essay on Vietnam, Ayn Rand, and "anarcho-capitalism." (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think I have mentioned here before a lecture on Albert Jay Nock I gave in 1968. The lecture was attended by a fair-sized contingent of Randians and Rothbardians. The former, as this piece suggests, were certainly dogmatic enough. But both groups, as is also evident from this piece, were fundamentally essentialist: They had their schemata into which all could be shown to fit. I do not believe that reality can or was meant to be cut to our categories. It is our categories that must be altered to fit reality. And such was the basis of my disagreement at the time with both groups, though rest assured, we had some lively discussions.
Welcome back ...
... Bryan returns to cyberspace. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I just read Bryan's review of Evgeny Morozov's The Net Delusion, and I completely agree with his conclusion: "Human beings make human things and history is a contingent, not a deterministic, narrative. Technology will not free us of these truths, but, if we are lucky, it will make them more evident." Like Bryan, I have no Utopian tendencies. But I found it odd that he did not address Morozov's notion that the state should be expected to resolve the problems he describes. Morozov, it seems to me, is more than just an apostate to cyber-utopianism. He is also an apostate to the faith in individual freedom. Many of his complaints are simply a consequence of individuals exercising that freedom. Oh my, more people are interested in porn than in geopolitics. Nothing surprising about that. Not many people are saints, either. Or monsters, for that matter. The internet didn't create the taste for pornography. It simply made satisfying that taste much easier. Why would anyone think it would have turned all mankind into policy wonks or idealists?
No laughing matter ...
... Condemned to Joy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don't think much about happiness. For me, as for Noël Coward, work tends to be more fun than fun. I do things because they interest me, but the interest lies in the doing.
Thought for the day ...
The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.- Tom Wolfe, born on this date in 1931
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
World War I
I know it's not inherently literary, but still, this passage is worthy of recognition...
Hmm ...
... A Passionate End.
I think Lady Chatterley is one of Lawrence's worst novels. Not as jaw-droppingly bad as The Plumed Serpent, but bad enough. But I do think Lawrence was a brave writer.
I also don't remember the Kinsey Report being banned in the '50s. I remember it being a best seller. It was certainly talked about enough.
Counterpoint ...
... I'm rather sorry I weighed in on this matter, since this is not a poliblog and the discussion has less to do with the nature of discourse than with actual political tactics and issues. I will say that I am not a fan of Eric Foner, and my interest here has to do with the electoral process itself. Sometimes the vote doesn't go your way, and you have to live with that.
Anyway, here is another view of the matter from Robert Samuelson: Big Labor's Dilemma Also, it isn't just Republicans: Blue State Dems Turn on State, Local Workers.
And that is all I plan to say on this topic, if for no other reason than that I am not a resident of Wisconsin.
Indeed ...
... Happy 90th birthday, Richard Wilbur!
See also: A Great Living Poet's Rare Art of Reticence. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Tomorrow I shall be sixty-nine, but I do not seem to care. I did not start the affair, and I have not been consulted about it at any step.- William Dean Howells, born on this date in 1837
Monday, February 28, 2011
From page to screen ...
... Your 2011 Books-Into-Films Lineup, From Eyre To Water To Desert. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, I'll certainly be interested in seeing what they do with We Need to Talk About Kevin.
My apologies ...
.. to Cormac McCarthy. Debbie and I just watched his play The Sunset Limited with Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. Jackson has just saved Jones from throwing himself in front of a subway train -- the Sunset Express -- and brought him back to his apartment. Jackson is an ex-con who is now deeply religious and feels he has been brought into contact with Jones for a reason. Jones is a professor who has concluded that the world and life are utterly void of meaning. They talk, and their conversation is intense.
I still think The Road is a lousy novel, but The Sunset Limited is both riveting and moving.
Here's a review: 'The Sunset Limited': Is Tommy Lee Jones' HBO film the greatest Cormac McCarthy adaptation?
Who touches this ...
... really does touch a man: Book bound in human skin goes on display in Devon. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
As a bonus, you are also introduced to the phrase "anthropodermic bibliopegy."
Ouch ...
... American Publishing: A Lesson From Tolstoy's Inkwell. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What the public wants (certainly the literate public) is not the book jacket, or the typeface, or the quality of the paper, or the "feel" of a book -- what the public wants is the blood and guts of the author, the contact of the reader's mind with the author's mind -- and the most efficient vehicle for that contact is now the electronic book, the E-book.
Methinks that's so. But what I found most disturbing in this piece was this: "Most copy editors don't read books, they use software to locate possible grammar and punctuation problems." I was for several years a copy editor of books. I cannot imagine not reading every word of a manuscript.
Lorin Stein...
...and The Paris Review. It's like Wieseltier said: "Don't get caught up in all the parties."
A darting spirit ...
... Ron Slate on How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell.
As noted earlier, Montaigne was born on this date in 1533.
Bad not always good ...
... Bad book reviews = great sales?
This Stanford study by two business professors confirms the conventional wisdom — to a point. Bad reviews can dramatically boost sales for obscure and up-and-coming writers. They don’t help the famous.
Introducing ...
... Broadcastr.com, descibed in an email as follows:
... [a} new, free social-media platform for location-based audio and storytelling. Broadcastr lets people easily create and share recordings on an interactive map. We have apps for the Android and iPhone coming out in the next two weeks that will let users hear an automatic stream of stories based on their physical location, like a museum tour of the entire world.
The really golden years ...
... "From Fifty To Sixty, One Is Free From All Ills": Po Chu-i.
The composer Lou Harrison told me once that your best years were your 50s, because you knew what you wanted to do, you know how to do, and you still had the energy.
The composer Lou Harrison told me once that your best years were your 50s, because you knew what you wanted to do, you know how to do, and you still had the energy.
Nullifying identity ...
... Jorge Luis Borges & the plural I. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For Borges, infinity is always serial; it demands replication ad infinitum. One of his favorite figures for infinitude is the mirror image, that vertiginous repetition of the same mute yet glimmering reflection. Hence, too, his related horror of mirrors: "I have been horrified before all mirrors," he wrote in the poem "The Mirrors": "I look on them as infinite, elemental/ fulfillers of a very ancient pact/ to multiply the world."
Thought for the day ...
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.- Michel de Montaigne, born on this date in 1533
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Worthy but forgotten ...
... The 10 best Neglected literary classics - in pictures. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My review ...
... of Patricia Highsmith's selected Novels and Stories: Unsettling prose from author of "Strangers on a Train."
Thought for the day ...
We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through.- Peter De Vries, born on this date in 1910
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Hmm ...
... Owl Criticism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
An odd piece. We are told that no one loves a reviewer, but that there are reviews so great that they that amount to a gift pointing you to something that will enhance your life. That would seem to be a reason to at least like a reviewer.
We are also told that a reviewer's opinion ought to be "based on a description and a judicious citation of evidence." But the swipe at Michelle Bachmann -- that she makes "outrageous statements simply in order to become famous" -- is itself not backed up with any evidence. We simply have to take Baxter's word for it that (a) she makes outrageous statements and (b) that her motive for making such statements is is order to become famous. The only outrageous statement by Bachmann that I have heard of was the use of the phrase "armed and dangerous." But the phrase was taken out of context and referred not to being armed with weapons, but with information. Hardly outrageous.
Thought for the day ...
I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do.- Theodore Sturgeon, born on this date in 1918
Friday, February 25, 2011
Who knew?
... Thucydides Hates “Realists.”
Theoretical realism would strike Thucydides as barking nonsense — the kind of idea that could only appeal to people with little experience of actual affairs. Thucydides was not a realist in this sense; he was something much smarter. He was realistic.
Avoiding ruts ...
... Flannery O’Connor on the Banning of Books in High Schools. (Hat tip, Cynthia Haven.)
The real problem, she says, is not that the schools are assigning “dirty” books, but that they are assigning a preponderance of modern books, and that there seems to be no clear purpose behind the teaching of literature in most middle and high schools other than to try to capture the “interest” of the adolescent mind. This principle—the idea that it is the school’s duty to excite or gratify the unformed tastes of teenagers—she calls “the devil of Educationism…the kind that can be cast out only by prayer and fasting,” and she notes with bemusement that mid-20th century America seems to be “the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning.”
Her honor ...
... LAILA LALAMI TO JUDGE 2ND ANNUAL 3QD ARTS & LITERATURE PRIZE. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Breaking silence ...
... Liu's Family 'Hostages'. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
"Can't go out. My whole family are hostages," Liu Xia said. Later she wrote, "I only saw him once," apparently referring to her husband, Liu Xiaobo.
Thought for the day ...
If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.- Anthony Burgess, born on this date in 1917
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Finally ...
... Charlie Rose Talks to Nassim Taleb. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The "Black Swan" problem comes from a high dose of unpredictability that people do not take into account. It makes the world less and less forecastable. Now, if the world is not easy to forecast, what do you do? You build reserves. You try to not have to rely on forecasts. If you have debt in a system, you need to be very good at forecasting.
Scribbling magic lines ...
... Allen Ginsberg’s 'Howl’: 'I scribbled magic lines from my real mind’. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Howl, the film, brilliantly brings alive the story of the poem, mixing a dramatisation of the trial with reflections from Ginsberg (superbly played by Franco) and hallucinatory animations by the graphic-artist Eric Drooker, who collaborated with Ginsberg on a collection of illustrated poems in 1995.
This is worrisome ...
... THE OLD ORDER IS BREAKING DOWN.
I must confess that I have lately felt that the world order at present is extremely wobbly.
I must confess that I have lately felt that the world order at present is extremely wobbly.
I link to this ...
... simply because I am presuming readers of this blog will recognize the name Emmanuel Goldstein: Odd target.
Blood and soil ...
... Benghazi's vicious revolutions.
... Appian, one of the fairer historians of the Spartacus slave war, was caught up in this Cyrene revolt in the Nile delta as a young man. He was the writer on Spartacus who best knew what it was like to be pursued by rebels of highly unreliable behaviour.
Charmingly self-confident ...
... Niall Ferguson: 'Westerners don't understand how vulnerable freedom is'.
"The moral simplification urge is an extraordinarily powerful one, especially in this country, where imperial guilt can lead to self-flagellation," he explains. "And it leads to very simplistic judgments. The rulers of western Africa prior to the European empires were not running some kind of scout camp. They were engaged in the slave trade. They showed zero sign of developing the country's economic resources. Did Senegal ultimately benefit from French rule? Yes, it's clear. And the counterfactual idea that somehow the indigenous rulers would have been more successful in economic development doesn't have any credibility at all."
No mere ornament ...
... Poetry in Revolt. (Hat tip, Rud Bowden.)
Of course, this was also a situation where dissent could come at a price.
Thought for the day ...
Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.- George Moore, born on this date in 1852
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Yes, I'm shamelessly plugging ...
... my blogging partner (who doesn't know that I'm doing this): A Portfolio of Writing.
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