Wednesday, October 05, 2011
A splendid piece ...
... Christopher Hitchens | Bryan Appleyard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This ... may well be his last collection of journalism. It spans, roughly, the past decade and it covers subjects from fellatio to life in Afghanistan, from PG Wodehouse to Stieg Larsson, from the beauty and horror of Iran to the increasingly bonkers Gore Vidal. He doesn’t seem to do much science but, in general, if it reads, bleeds or laughs, Hitch will be all over it, specially if the intricacies and wonders of American foreign policy are involved.
Q & A ...
... Booklist Interview: Cory Doctorow, by Daniel Kraus | Booklist Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... I know a bunch about libraries, but I assumed that they could just order books from Lulu or Amazon or whatever; I hadn’t considered the bureaucratic load associated with establishing new vendor accounts to get a single title. I was absolutely correct about the time burdens and pitfalls associated with everything I knew and had done before and wildly off about everything I was just inferring about.
Thought for the day ...
As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.- Vaclav Havel, born on this date in 1936
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Can you choose ...
... not to read this? Does evil exist? Neuroscientists say no. - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... correlation doesn't always equal causation: We may know the 13 regions that light up on an fMRI when we feel "empathy" (or fail to light up when we choose evil) but that doesn't explain whether this lit-up state indicates they are causing empathy or just reflecting it.
I am not usually given to quoting myself, but some things I said in a review of Julian Barnes's Nothing to Be Frightened Of seem pertinent:
[Barnes] seems to have swallowed hook, line and sinker what is perhaps best described as mechanistic determinism: “far from having a whip to crack, I am the very tip of the whip itself, and what is cracking me is a long and inevitable plait of genetic material which cannot be shrugged or fought off.”
Later on he cites — if not with approval, certainly without demurral — a “specialist in consciousness” who explained over the radio “how there is no centre to the brain—no location of self—either physically or computationally; that our notion of a soul or spirit must be replaced by the notion of a ‘distributed neuronal process.’ ” In other words, the specialist declared, “these words coming out of this mouth at this moment, are not emanating from a little me in here, they are emanating from the entire universe just doing its stuff.”
So “I” don’t really exist, and neither do “you,” dear reader. Nor does “Julian Barnes.” Each of “us” is but the end-point of a chain of causation, just one damn thing after another until one or another of “us” pops up. “We’re” happenings, man!
This means, of course, that one can only compare the output of one chain of causation with that of another. It certainly cannot be said that one output is correct and another isn’t. Both simply are.
So the end-point of the chain of causation that I happen to be couldn’t help “thinking” that looking for a self-center in the brain is a bit like looking for a larynx in the telephone receiver. And what about that “plait of genetic material”? Barnes’ chain of causation evidently forces him to accept the view that Richard Dawkins’ chain of causation forces Dawkins to hold, that we are “survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”
But my chain of causation prompts me to wonder why we should give pride of place to genes. They’re pretty far along in the chain of causation themselves and are every bit as much robot vehicles as “we” are, one more way station on that ever-lengthening sequence of causes that is “the entire universe doing its stuff.” All of which seems to “me” to get “us” — like Mr. Toad — “nowhere in particular.”
Changing times ...
... Dammed If You Do | Via Meadia.
Particularly out west, where many massive dams were erected by gung-ho progressives around the turn of the last century, the destruction of fisheries and the loss of opportunities for commercial and recreational use of rivers is starting to outweigh the increasingly obsolete benefits of the old dams.
Triumphant close ...
... Late Revelations - The final works of Willem de Kooning get their due - Obit-Mag.com.
The late abstractions, painted when de Kooning suffered from dementia, close the show on a triumphant note. They’ve been denigrated for years because of his diminished mental and physical state during the 1980s. Many wondered how an artist who had lost his short-term memory, had difficulty writing, and could no longer sign his name could complete 26 paintings in 1987. See for yourself. Two of these, including one that Jasper Johns owns, hang in MoMA’s special exhibition galleries. Known as the White Paintings, the artist’s last burst of abstractions look fresh, frisky, timeless. It’s their polar opposite, the Neo-expressionist figures draped in angst and lauded during the 1980s, that now seem dated.
Shocking ...
... Clean-energy credits tarnished : Nature News.
"What has leaked just confirms our view that in its present form the CDM is basically a farce," says Eva Filzmoser, programme director of CDM Watch, a Brussels-based watchdog organization. The revelations imply that millions of tonnes of claimed reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are mere phantoms, she says, and potentially cast doubt over the principle of carbon trading. "In the face of these comments it is no wonder that the United States has backed away from emission trading," Filzmoser says.
Genesis, not Marilyn ...
... Book Notes | Books and Culture.
The critics who pin the story on a seven-year itch aren't wrong, exactly, but they might be missing the forest for a single tree. (Tellingly, in an interview with his publisher, Stamm sidesteps a question about Billy Wilder's film entirely.) It's not Monroe but rather the Genesis ghosts of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel who haunt this narrative—reconfigured and updated for contemporary Europe.
Thought for the day ...
You can keep the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year.- Damon Runyon, born on this date in 1884
Monday, October 03, 2011
Virtual conversation ...
... Conversation - Jeffrey Eugenides and Colm Toibin - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It's back ...
... Invictus Redivivus � The Dabbler.
I remember being stirred by "Invictus" when I first read it, sometime in my mid-teens. But now, when I read it - and knowing full well that the "clutch of circumstance" Henley refers to involved real suffering, worse than I have ever experienced - it no longer has that effect. I admire its technique, honor its candor and courage, but I just don't feel that way anymore. My own sense of things, the older I get - and I am at an age where old means old - is nearer to what Eliot says in "East Coker":
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
Sci-Fi and innovation ...
... Innovation Starvation | World Policy Institute. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
The problem I have with this is the implication - or at least my perhaps mistaken inference - that we need someone or some agency or maybe all of us in collusion or ... I'm not sure, to decree and manage this. Who ordered James Watt to invent the steam engine? Or the Wright brothers the airplane?
Innovation of that magnitude cannot be programmed. It's individuals being ... individuals. It is the sort of stuff that any evangelical evolutionist ought to delight in. But their countervailing tendency seems to want to manage everything.
Mr. Clemons ...
... Paul Davis On Crime: Scholar Unravels The Story Behind 'The Father of American Literature' Mark Twain.
Hard to see how Twain can be considered "the father of American literature" (which is what Faulkner called him), since quite a bit of first-rate literature was written in America before Twain, including Moby Dick (1851), The Scarlet Letter (1850), and Leaves of Grass (1855). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn didn't come along until 1884 (when it was published in England; it came out in the U.S. a few months later in 1885).
Pacing around ...
... Ron Slate on Humiliation, by Wayne Koestenbaum (Picador) | On the Seawall: A Literary Website by Ron Slate (GD).
By page 70 I had made note of several stabs at defining humiliation, starting with “an observale lowering of status and position.” But it is also “a process of accretion .. one grows more and more humiliated.” He says it “resembles a fold … the outer and inner realms change places … An object that should be private and unseen is suddenly visible.” He then describes humiliation “asthe intrusion of an unwanted substance or action upon an undefended body.The pain of intrusion, but also its suddenness and incomprehensibility (what substance is entering me?) – constitutes the humiliation.
Thought for the day ...
In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death.- Thomas Wolfe, born on this date in 1900
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Graces and browbeating ...
... The Letters of T. S. Eliot - Volume 1 - 1898-1922, Revised Edition - Volume 2 - 1923-1925 - - Book Review - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Eliot’s criticism is now undervalued, dismissed by critics without half his sensibility or intelligence. The poems have so long been the foundation of modern anthologies that their reputation has almost as long worked against them (the one indispensable poem of the 20th century is still “The Waste Land”). Eliot’s best poems have almost disappeared beneath dust heaps of commentary, and the dust heaps that lie on those dust heaps. Much of his early work — “Prufrock,” the “Sweeney” poems, “Gerontion,” even “The Waste Land” — could be called urban eclogues, part of the turn in English poetry from the country to the city. It may take a long time to appreciate those poems afresh, after the poets who struggled against Eliot, whether as allies or enemies, are long dead; by that time his world will seem as out of date as Pope’s.
I would say that Four Quartets, which I have just re-read, are every bit as indispensable as "The Waste Land."
A toast ...
... Carl Djerassi at 88: hitting the road – with champagne, too | The Book Haven.
... the evening hosted a reading of Carl’s newest play, Insufficiency – on the subject of (you guessed it) champagne. Or rather the chemical makeup of champagne and its bubbles, with a few digs along the way at the foibles of academic publishing, academic snobbery, and academic tenure. A pleasant coincidence for Carl that the subject of his “play in nine scenes” matched the bubbly theme of the event. (Karol Berger and Laurence Yansouni were slated to be the actors for the reading.)
Thought for the day ...
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.- Graham Greene, born on this date in 1904
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Legends ...
... National treasures: Talonbooks' Karl & Christy Siegler - The Globe and Mail. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not quite ...
... Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: Did Lucretius’s Poem Really Bring Us Modernity? - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
... the word “epicurean” came to mean a seeker of luxury, a sybarite; but in fact, Greenblatt shows, the original Epicureans led a modest lifestyle. Their philosophy was intended not as a license for indulgence but as a therapy for the fear of death. “Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city,” Epicurus said, and this message is at the heart of De rerum natura.
And still more ...
... Trader Or Prankster? We Called Alessio Rastani And Asked - Forbes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Friday, September 30, 2011
Strictly self-critical ...
... The Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume II - review | Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In 1948, from Dublin, where he was staying with his mother, he writes: "The weather is fine, I walk along my old paths, I keep watching my mother's eyes, never so blue, so stupefied, so heartrending, eyes of an endless childhood, that of old age. Let us get there rather earlier, while there are still refusals we can make. I think these are the first eyes that I have seen. I have no wish to see any others. I have all I need for loving and weeping. I know now what is going to close, and open inside me, but without seeing anything, there is no more seeing."
Liberation via poetry ...
... Much-loved poet Pam Ayres reveals how her verse helped her escape a life of rural poverty | Mail Online. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
During snowstorms, gusts of snowflakes blew in like a corny comic sketch, and a barricade of coats lay along the bottom of the door in a hopeless attempt to keep out the draught.
Continuing ...
... SinC25: Katherine Howell, #4 post of “moderate” challenge | Petrona.
What is so enjoyable about Katherine Howell’s books is not just the realism of the paramedics’ jobs as they are called out to many kinds of bizarre, dangerous, sad, repetitive or funny incidents that test the full range of their ingenuity and survival skills, but also the sheer pace and muscle of the stories, which are more common (in my experience) in crime novels by male authors.
The Letters of Ezra Pound
I hadn't realized that Pound was a graduate of Hamilton College, nor that he had connections to Penn. Here, letters to his parents.
About that Goldman Sachs video ...
... Resource Clips � Auguries-The Unspeakable Truth. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Directly after the interview, it was asserted that Rastani must be a hoaxer. It turned out that this was not so, although he is a part-time trader, at best, and something of a fantasist. But what if he is right? Back in April, this space quoted Marshall McLuhan, “Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.” This explains the extraordinary reaction to Rastani’s statements—he spoke the unspeakable.
Attractive oddness ...
... 1)Shakespeare 2)Dickens….? | Bryan Appleyard. (Hat tips to Dave Lull and Rus Bowden.)
Perhaps one of the reasons for such effusions is the attractive oddness of the man. He sticks out of English literature like a sore thumb. To the Victorians, his immediate superstar predecessors were Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Dickens admired Scott and, in his youth, adopted the romantic, dandy style of Byron, but he was like neither. Tomalin links him to Chaucer in his creation of characters, and Slater sees Ben Jonson as both an influence and a precursor. “In his amateur theatricals, he chose Jonson rather than Shakespeare, and he was very fond of Every Man in His Humour.”
Taking his time ...
... Secrets of growing slowly | TLS.
The authentic Rilkean tone begins to emerge with the first volume of what would become The Book of Hours (most recently translated by Susan Ranson in 2008, an assortment of whose translations are included in the Selected Poems). Written after a trip to Russia in 1899 with Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Book of Monkish Life, a series of poems from the perspective of an icon-painting monk, was followed two years later by The Book of Pilgrimage. These volumes bear the stamp of Rilke's personality in their idiosyncratic conception of God as the supreme manifestation of becoming, rather than of being; Rilke presents Him not through the traditional iconography of the father, but as the son, the guarantor of futurity.
Thought for the day ...
It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something.- Truman Capote, born on this date in 1924
Thursday, September 29, 2011
RIP ...
... The TLS blog: Death of a philosopher.
It is this possibility of absolute nothingness that Rundle is mainly concerned to expose as an illusion. He points out that, in ordinary speech, when we say there is nothing in the cupboard, or nothing that is both round and square, we are talking about an existing world none of whose contents meet a certain description. To say nothing is X is to say everything is not X. We can perhaps conceive of the disappearance of everything in the world, so that there are no things left in it, but even then we are not imagining nothing at all, but rather a void, a vacuum, empty space. Taken literally, the hypothesis that there might have been nothing at all seems self-contradictory, since it seems equivalent to the supposition that it might have been the case that nothing was the case. Is there any way of understanding the possibility that there might have been nothing at all without interpreting it incoherently as a way things might have been -a fact, as Rundle puts it, a possible state of affairs, an alternative possible world? Rundle thinks not, and that therefore the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" does not call for an answer.
Religion of peace ...
... strikes again: Iranian Pastor Sentenced to Death: Nadarkhani Refuses to Convert - International Business Times.
Of course, as good multiculturalists, we must try to understand where these people are coming from and not insist they pay any heed to our decadent Western notions. In the meantime, does anyone have a spare ticket for Saturday night's stoning?
Surprising debut ...
... A Strange Review: Higher Ground | Strange Herring. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Never before have I seen a film that so brilliantly captures the restlessness produced by the faith that promises peace beyond understanding. Higher Ground, based on the memoir by Carolyn S. Briggs and adapted for the screen by the author, is an extraordinarily intelligent, probing, disturbing, and altogether compassionate look at what it means to believe without seeing. Farmiga and Briggs treat their subject, and their central character, with respect and care, though never noncritically.
No relation ...
... but a damn good story: The Dead Roads by DW Wilson | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Old Macdonald ...
... Son of Cults | Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes.
On the other hand, who cares about Cozzens today, even if Macdonald is the main reason nobody cares?
But maybe we should care about Cozzens, and maybe Macdonald did us all a disservice in causing us not to.Guard of Honor is a very good book. Cozzens's contemporary, John P. Marquand, is another novelist deserving pf a closer second look, such as what John O'Hara, another contemporary, is starting to receive.
Following Thoreau ...
... Quiet after despair | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/29/2011.
Much more than a how-to manual (though it offers plenty of practical advice), Cabin tells the tale of a man who has passed "his own personal equinox" and is reeling from life's blows (divorce, job loss, health scare, and the death of his mother, his only steady parent). Beset by depression and "visitations of panic and loneliness," he takes to the woods to pursue a lifelong dream. Along the way, he does plenty of reckoning, and the cabin becomes both pretext and instrument for redeeming and renewing himself.
Tiny DIY Books by Victorian Tweens
Charlotte Bronte, that is, and her little brother. Images of their handmade books at The Hairpin.
Thought for the day ...
Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.- Miguel de Unamuno, born on this date in 1864
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
For the defense ...
... Confessions of a literary barbarian: a defense of the Cambridge History of the American Novel. - By Benjamin Reiss - Slate Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This reminds me of the professor referred to in The Pooh Perplex who was working on a book called All Previous Thought.
While I find Epstein's characterization of our 71-chapter volume—which covers everything from the publishing business to Henry James, dime novels to modernist aesthetics—closed-minded and inaccurate, his rant does raise a good question. What is literary history, and how should it be brought to bear on the genre of the novel? The Cambridge History of the American Novel is really a biography of the novel as it intersects with American history. Part of the explanation for the changing shape of the American novel involves individual genius (i.e., great writers), but it also involves the stuff of national history: wars, slavery, emancipation, democracy, territorial expansion, civil rights, women's rights, immigration, and capitalism.
Not to pick on the British, but...
Michael Wood's recent piece in the LRB touches - by way of Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending - on that "elusive stupidity of intelligent people." And by people, Wood means the British.
The essay is a funny one at times and includes lots of little insights into the English character. These include references to a "certain self-admiring obtuseness" as well as the belief - at least among some - that "deference" amounts to one's "due."
The best part of the piece comes at the end, though, when Wood turns serious and makes a quiet point about modern literature.
His suggestion amounts to the idea - in the work of Barnes and elsewhere - that fictional characters walk a fine line these days between "ironically miming [their] own helplessness" and "taking refuge in old and comfortable evasion."
To a certain extent, we all walk this line...
Outcomes ...
... The Wilson Quarterly: The WikiLeaks Illusion by Alasdair Roberts.
We live in very different times. There is no popular movement against U.S. military engagement overseas, no broad reaction against established authority in American society, no youth rebellion. The public mood in the United States is one of economic uncertainty and physical insecurity. Many Americans want an assurance that their government is willing and able to act forcefully in the pursuit of U.S. interests. In this climate, the incidents revealed by WikiLeaks—spying on United Nations diplomats, covert military action against terrorists, negotiations with regimes that are corrupt or guilty of human rights abuses—might not even be construed as abuses of power at all. On the contrary, they could be regarded as proof that the U.S. government is prepared to get its hands dirty to protect its citizens.
Thought for the day ...
And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.- Confucius, born on this date in 551 B.C.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Professional eyewitness ...
... The Long Night | Books and Culture.
Adventure stories usually tell of the adventurer's having accomplished something: conquered the dragon, survived the dark forest, married the princess. Tales of adventurous journalists, however, are at best stories of people who go out to see rather than to do. Their finest accomplishments come when, like daring flies, they manage to sneak in and cling to the wall, eavesdropping while others make things happen.
Mob flicks ...
... Gangster film book looks inside the cannoli box | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/27/2011.
Are gangster movies different in other countries? Which actor is the most prolific mobster? Is a "gangster comedy" a contradiction in terms?Yes. Robert De Niro. No.
Take that, Will!
... Digital monkeys with typewriters recreate Shakespeare - CNN.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Place your bets ...
... Nobel Literature Prize Betting Odds | Bet Online at Ladbrokes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Maybe they'll surprise everybody and give it to Torgny Lindgren.
The short of it ...
... Aphorisms by Ralph Waldo Emerson - All Aphorisms, All the Time. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Classy ...
... The Cahiers Series: “really, really beautiful” – and hand-stitched, even | The Book Haven.
“There are two main justifications for the Cahiers Series. The first is that we publish material that cannot easily be published anywhere else; we can play with form in a way that commercial publishers cannot. The second justification is to make something where the parts, through their relation to each other, add up to more than just that.”
Thought for the day ...
Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.- Henri Frédéric Amiel, born on this date in 1821
Monday, September 26, 2011
Beware the black dot ...
... AbeBooks: The Woman Who Shocked America: Shirley Jackson.
The Lottery was met with much negativity which surprised both the author and The New Yorker, and ultimately caused many subscribers to cancel their subscriptions and send hate mail. It has since become one of the most important American short stories and continues to be analysed, critiqued and taught in schools.
Never thought of it that way ...
... and not sure I do now: On Genuine Literary Citizenship � BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
A very small peat contributor ...
... The TLS blog: Intellectual peat.
“Is Carlyle himself, with all his Genius, to subside into the Level? Dickens, with all his Genius, but whose men and women act and talk already after a more obsolete fashion than Shakespeare’s? I think some of Tennyson’s will survive, and drag the deader part along with it . . . . And (I doubt) Thackeray’s terrible humanity.”
The talented Mr. Dickens ...
... Claire Tomalin: 'Writing induces melancholy. You're alone, a hermit' | Interview | Books | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tomalin's book, a page-turner, seems to me to be an effective reproof to those who, like Michael Holroyd, believe literary biography to be in its death throes. But what does she think? Are publishers going to dispense with fat lives? "No! I think people are always saying things are over. Fiction has been regularly over since the 19th century. You can't entirely talk about books in groups like that. Some work and some don't. Clearly, we have got a public with a shorter attention span, but there is also this great interest in history. I'm devoted to Michael. He's adorable. But I rather think he's enjoying being Cassandra about this."
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