Apparently, Principal Foley fails to understand that no one is celebrating atrocities, that the holidays have taken on a life of their own, the way words - and just about everything else - change over time. She may be down on Thanksgiving, but she is in fact a perfect puritan - filled, in Mencken's words, "with the haunting fear that someone somewhere, may be happy."
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Idiot watch ...
... Massachusetts Principal Takes Aim At Fall Holidays, Says They're Insensitive | Fox News.
Sunday in the bar with Joseph ...
... M.G. Stephens on Brodsky: “It is the voice that seduces us” | The Book Haven.
Meeting the poet could be life-changing – and seems to have been so for Stephens, who was seeking “a Sunday morning hangover drink.”
A pretty classy writer ...
... Paul Davis On Crime: For Your Confidential Information: Ian Fleming Responds To A Fan Concerned About The Possible Death Of James Bond In 'From Russia With Love'.
I just read From Russia With Love for the first time, thanks to Paul's having given me a copy. I thought it was very well done - and I plan to have more to say about that by and by - but I was taken aback by the ending. I certainly didn't expect it.
Thought for the day ...
I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.- P.G. Wodehouse, born on this date in 1881
Friday, October 14, 2011
Thank you, Paul ...
... who graciously mentions that it is also my (70th) birthday: Paul Davis On Crime: Happy 84th Birthday To Roger Moore.
Playing it safe ...
... PBS Programming Continues to Aim Low | Sightings by Terry Teachout - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... in theory, PBS isn't commercial—except, of course, that it really is. It's an audience-driven business that dons the discreet fig leaf of public service in order to justify the government subsidies, corporate contributions, foundation grants and individual donations that keep it afloat. And what do we get for all that money? "Antiques Roadshow" and "Masterpiece Mystery!"
Bring back that "vast wasteland," with things like Play of the Week.
... in theory, PBS isn't commercial—except, of course, that it really is. It's an audience-driven business that dons the discreet fig leaf of public service in order to justify the government subsidies, corporate contributions, foundation grants and individual donations that keep it afloat. And what do we get for all that money? "Antiques Roadshow" and "Masterpiece Mystery!"
Bring back that "vast wasteland," with things like Play of the Week.
Fair appraisal ...
... Dwight Macdonald: A Case Study for Great Responsibility.
Macdonald’s argument may need to be revised to account for recent technological developments, but his general beef with cultural philistines still holds considerable water. This year, we have seen bestselling novelist Lev Grossman, whose books are now being developed into a FOX television series, write a review of George R.R. Martin’s Dance with Dragons, describing it as “the great fantasy epic of our era” without disclosing the fact that Grossman secured a glowing blurb from Martin for The Magicians. Another critic, Laura Miller, openly invites her readers to ban books: “As deplorable as real-life book banning may be, there’s some required reading that those of us at Salon would love to see retired from the nation’s syllabuses simply because we were tortured by it as kids.” Given these affronts to integrity and intellectualism, where is today’s Dwight Macdonald to contend with these two hydrophobic mutts in the woodshed?
Anniversary ...
... Norton Juster’s “The Phantom Tollbooth” at 50 : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.- Dwight D. Eisenhower, born on this date in1890
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Where I am ...
I am at the Apple store with Stiv, thanks to Jesse Freedman, who swears I must get an iMac - and I think he is right.
What think you?
... Should writers review each other? | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In case you wondered ...
... How the National Book Awards made themselves irrelevant - Salon.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In a culture dominated by film and television, all literary novels are so obscure as to be virtually invisible, and books that seem ubiquitous to people embedded in the publishing world are anything but to those who aren’t. (The next time you’re waiting for a bus, ask the person next to you if he or she has heard of Jeffrey Eugenides or “The Art of Fielding.” Hell, ask them if they’ve heard of Jonathan Franzen.)
Thought for the day ...
Learning has always been made much of, but forgetting has always been deprecated; therefore pedantry has pretty well established itself throughout the modern world at the expense of culture.- Albert Jay Nock, born on this date in 1870
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Limitless ...
... The Carcanet Blog: Celan and the Demand of Reading: a response to 'Correspondence' by Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Good poetry is a perpetual enticement, a chronic beckoning: you keep going back because you need to keep going back, because good poetry keeps giving you more each time. Returning, re-reading: this is our responsibility.
Cuts both ways ...
My beloved friend, Lee Low, and have had quite a back-and-forth over Wikileaks, I of course being the contrarian (my friend and former colleague Mike Schaffer says that is what, deep down, I am). Anyway, I found this interesting: “SMART DIPLOMACY.” It will be interesting to see if this gets around. In the meantime, here is a link to a video of the song I alluded to in the intro:
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Not so mysterious ...
... Is the transcendent natural? - Philosophy and Life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... it could be that what can be called the transcendent is what makes the natural sciences possible. This would be the weight of the observation about mathematics. Then there's also the philosophical point about laws of natural which, it seems to me, have to be in some sense transcendent in relation to the natural sciences, or else you embark upon an infinite regress where the laws of nature need secondary laws of nature that determine them, that need tertiary laws of nature etc etc...
Charles and Will ...
... Dead literary lions set to roar next year | The Australian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.- Anatole France, who died on this date in 1924
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Versions ...
... King James’s Version | Bryan Appleyard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have, only an arm's length from where I sit, a copy of the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, to which the King James version owes a great deal. Militant Catholic that I can be at times, it is my preferred version. O have to agree, though, what they were palming off in the Church when I was growing up - the Confraternity edition, if I remember rightly - was pretty short on poetry.
I have, only an arm's length from where I sit, a copy of the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, to which the King James version owes a great deal. Militant Catholic that I can be at times, it is my preferred version. O have to agree, though, what they were palming off in the Church when I was growing up - the Confraternity edition, if I remember rightly - was pretty short on poetry.
In case you wondered ...
... Alexander: How Great? by Mary Beard | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Think again ...
... Think linguistics is boring? Not when David Harrison explains it. | The Book Haven.
Although the first book in Ös has been published – which goes some way to validating the language – the language “is in the terminal stages of its existence” and likely to be extinct within the next decade.
Good news ...
... Nothing is ever lost: an interview with Robert Bellah � The Immanent Frame. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The purpose of the book is to show how deeply historical—beyond what we normally think of as history, or even prehistory—and how biological human religion is. We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and “history” took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists.
He'll always have Paris ...
... “The Observer, Observed” by Daniel Baird | The Walrus | November 2011. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
At fifty-five, Gopnik stands at the peak of his career. He has written six books to date (two of them for children), including the acclaimed Paris to the Moon and Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life, as well as countless articles of varying length for The New Yorker. This fall, he is publishing two new books, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food and Winter, which he is delivering across Canada this fall as the 2011 CBC Massey Lectures.
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
Monday, October 10, 2011
Anniversary ...
... Never Give a Sucker an Even Break: W.C. Fields’s Classic Film Turns 70 | Britannica Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
FYI ...
... Chat about radical education reform | Say What? | 10/10/2011. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is a live chat Frank Stepnowski and I did this afternoon.
La-La theory ...
... Music Training Enhances Children’s Verbal Intelligence - Miller-McCune. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The results showed, in Moreno’s words, “a rapid transfer of cognitive benefits” for the music students. Specifically, those who received music training raised their scores the visual-intelligence test.
In case you wondered ...
... What’s Wrong With the Nobel Prize in Literature by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What a relief then from time to time to say, the hell with it and give it to a Swede, in this case the octogenarian acknowledged as his nation’s finest living poet and a man whose whole oeuvre, as Peter Englund charmingly remarks, could fit into a single slim paperback. A winner, in short, whom the whole jury can read in the original pure Swedish in just a few hours. Perhaps they needed a sabbatical. Not to mention the detail, not irrelevant in these times of crisis, that the $1.5-million-dollar prize will stay in Sweden.
Indigenous poets ...
... Poetica Critique: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Editor, "Effigies."
Long after our hominid ancestors walked out of Africa during the Middle Paleolithic, then dispersed, taking different directions, whether at the same time or in several emigrations (5), some staying behind to populate the African continent—many centuries later they began to meet again. Having evolved the different physiques and colors needed for survival in various climates, along with customs and beliefs, instead of calling a family circle meeting, they saw "strangers" who registered as potential threats, or opportunities for exploitation.
Familiarity breeds honesty ...
... You can learn a lot at a little pharmacy - FT.com. (Hat tip, Vikram Johri.)
... as the grandson of a proper storekeeper, I would like to suggest that this case also raises questions about the basic business acumen of today’s banking elite. Maybe I’m just small minded, or small time, but it strikes me that if some kid with a few years of back office experience knows more about running the cash register than you, you are cruising for a bruising – in the P&L sense.
Brave man ...
... Christopher Hitchens on Writing, Mortality and Cancer - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He added, talking about an essay on Philip Larkin that made it into “Arguably”: “I knew the collection was going to come out even if I did not, and I was very pleased when I finished that one, because of the way it ends: ‘Our almost-instinct almost true:/ What will survive of us is love.’ I remember thinking, if that’s the last piece I write, that will do me.” After a moment he went on: “The influence of Larkin is much greater than I thought. He’s perfect for people who are thinking about death. You’ve got that old-line Calvinist pessimism and modern, acid cynicism — a very good combo. He’s not liking what he sees, and not pretending to.”
Act and belief ...
... A Commonplace Blog: Jewish sin and repentance. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think differentiating between belief and faith would be useful.
Since Pollack was the one to bring up theology, however, it might do some good to clarify his own. In a word, his theology isconfessional. Or, to be less coy about it, his thinking is not Jewish at all, but Christian. It is the Christian who demands prior belief as a condition of performing religious acts. For the Jew, things are rather different. As Arthur A. Cohen explains, “All Jewish beliefs interpret and elaborate the mystery of acts themselves, determining finally that many, even those regarded as critical, derive their justification from no rationalization, no human logic, but merely because they are the will and ordinance of God.”
RIP ...
... Diane Cilento - Telegraph.
Her heyday came in the late 1950s and 1960s, with her most memorable film part being that of Molly Seagrim, the lewd gamekeeper’s wench in Tony Richardson’s 1963 production of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.
Thought for the day ...
Romanticism may not inaccurately be described as a conviction that the world is an Englischer Garten on a grand scale. The God of the seventeenth century, like its gardeners, always geometrized; the God of Romanticism was one in whose universe things grew wild and without trimming and in all the rich diversity of their natural shapes. The preference for irregularity, the aversion from that which is wholly intellectualized . . . which were eventually to invade the intellectual life of Europe at all points, made their first modern appearance on a grand scale in the eighteenth century in the form of the new fashion in pleasure gardens.- Arthur O. Lovejoy, born on this date in 1873
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Religion of peace ...
... strikes again: Iran actress sentenced to one year in jail, plus 90 lashes.
The least one can do in a case like is subject those responsible and their apologists to ridicule.
A wonderful piece ...
... which I just happened upon: An Irresistible Long-winded Bore.
I am a Powys enthusiast, in part, I suppose, because I read his autobiography while I lived in Germantown, about which he writes so engagingly (though briefly). I read it when I was at one of the low ebbs in my life -- mucho responsibilities, but few prospects (Gwen would understand) and somehow it gave me hope that I would endure, as indeed I did.
How interesting ...
... zmkc: He Doesn't Get It.
I should go abroad more. By the way, pay a visit to ZMKC, if only to look at the great photos. But there's a lot more of interest besides.
Beautiful Losers
I've just finished Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers (1966), a book which I'd meant to read since a trip to Montreal last year.
This experimental novel - parts Henry Miller, parts Djuna Barnes - is divided by four obsessions: history, form, sexuality, and place. These themes are woven - particularly in the first section of the book - into a complex tapestry built on a narrative voice that fluctuates in its paranoia and sense of loss. The voice is sometimes Cohen's, sometimes that of his nemesis, F.
Cohen's reverence for the past, his fear of F., and his fascination with the endless permutations of sexual exchange, dominates the second part of the novel, which establishes Montreal as a cold, but evocative place, one in which form wrestles with content to produce, well, to produce Beautiful Losers.
That this book is difficult to write about owes a considerable amount to the fact that its primary effect is the creation of an ethos, a sort of literary atmosphere. This atmospheric energy permeates Cohen's novel and is defined by its sadness and its quiet sense of hope. The first part of this book really is like Miller's Tropic of Capricorn, except set in the Great White North.
The final word is reserved for Cohen: "Don't be a magician," he writes. "Be magic."
Also from Mark ...
... My Philosophy Guru � Mark Vernon � Genuinely Useful, Lucid, Informative & Wise.
Mine turned out to be Aristotle, which is not so strange, I guess, since I studied Thomism.
Hmm ...
... A question of style over substance - Philosophy and Life.
Might Apple be accused of iPhonyness too? 'Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service,' remarked Jobs, cited by Fry. But the thing about soul is that it endures. Soulful music is timeless. Plato wondered whether the soul might be immortal. Will the iPhone last?
But may it not be that it is soul that confers style, that soul is what gives matter whatever style it has?
Thought for the day ...
Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.- Ivo Andric, born on this date in 1892
Saturday, October 08, 2011
The art of journalism ...
... Five Best Books: Writing for Newspapers - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Creamy or chunky ...
... The Peanut Butter Chronicles, or Growing Up With Peter Pan. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
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
Friday, October 07, 2011
Classic Sci-Fi ...
... AbeBooks: Collectible Isaac Asimov.
Asimov (1920-1992) was one of the three most influential authors of hard science fiction during his lifetime, along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. He was born in Russia to mother Anna Rachel Berman Asimov and father Judah Asimov, whose love of Russian literature and Yiddish stories in particular contributed to his son's early fondness for reading. Teachers recall young Isaac devouring books as quickly as he could get his hands on them. As an adult, Asimov majored in chemistry in university, and later spent time in the military, at the US Naval Air Experimental Station. Both of those facts make Asimov's eventual niche as a celebrated science fiction author unsurprising. Whether Asimov's claustrophilia - or love of small, enclosed spaces - was of benefit to him throughout his career remains unreported but intriguing.
September Eve - Ithaca, N.Y. ...
... by our friend Brian Keeler. We own a couple of his works. Starting today there is a show of his works at the Titus Gallery, 202 the Commons, in Ithaca. Show runs through Nov. 30. Click on the image to see the painting better.
Chuckles ...
... The book "Understanding Women" is now out in your local bookstore - VloggerHeads. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
What happened ...
... Nazi Crimes: Diaries Reveal How Much Wartime Germans Knew - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International.
"The purpose of my record," he began, on Sept. 26, 1938, "is to capture a picture of the current mood in my surroundings, so that a future generation is not tempted to construe a 'great event' from it (a 'heroic time' or the like)." In the same passage, on the same day, Kellner revealed a bitter clear-sightedness, when he summed up German postwar history in one sentence: "Those who wish to be acquainted with contemporary society, with the souls of the 'good Germans,' should read what I have written. But I fear that very few decent people will remain after events have taken their course, and that the guilty will have no interest in seeing their disgrace documented in writing."
Impersonals ...
... Of Love, etc. - Theodore Dalrymple. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The problem with meritocracy, however, even in its purest imaginable form, is that few people are of exceptional merit. The realisation that the fault lies in us, not in our stars, that we are underlings, is a painful one; and in the nature of things, there are more underlings than what I am tempted to call overlings. A meritocracy is therefore fertile ground for mass resentment.
About the reading last night ...
The author event at The Free Library last night was one of the best I have ever participated in. Not that I had anything to do with that. I just performed my functional role and got off stage as quickly as possible.
Paul Hendrickson and William Kennedy then proceeded to give two of the best readings I have ever heard. Hendrickson read from Hemingway's Boat with a wondrous rhythmic passion. I remember thinking that his prose sounded exactly as I had heard it in my mind's ear while I was reading the book.
Kennedy's reading style was different, but no less effective. He has an uncanny knack for suggesting, with just the slightest change in inflection, different voices for different characters. One of the characters in his latest book, Chango's Beads and Two-Toned Shoes, is Ernest Hemingway. Kennedy managed to sound a lot like Hemingway does on the recordings we have of him.
As if the readings weren't enough, they were followed by what was mostly a conversation that Hendrickson and Kennedy had on stage about Papa. Both think highly of Hemingway without turning a blind eye to his flaws. Hendrickson noted that it took real courage for the prematurely aged and multiply diseased Hemingway to keep at the writing day after day even when a day yielded only a sentence, if that. And Kennedy noted that Hemingway's style is easy to imitate, but well-nigh impossible match.
A great evening for lovers of good writing.
Hmm ...
... Do American Novelists Even Deserve the Nobel Prize? � Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What the historical moment in literature is calling for is anybody’s guess. There is no such thing as prospective criticism. Nazaryan, however, knows just what it is. He believes the Swedish Academy has been trying to tell American novelists what they lack and what they need. In a word (Nazaryan’s word), they need to be universal. (The italics are his too.) Hence his dig at Roth’s Newark. It is “solipsistic,” you see, to know one place inside out. Far better to be able to congratulate oneself on knowing a little something about all the capitals of Europe. Such knowledge will obviously have “relevance . . . to a reader in Bombay.” I do wonder, though, if Nazaryan believes that a novelist of Bombay like, say, Amit Chaudhuri has relevance for readers in Newark.
Also, if you leave out novelists who know one place inside out, does that mean Joyce can be dismissed? William Kennedy, whom and a good many others saw give a splendid reading from his latest novel last night, knows Albany inside and out, and what he read didn't sound solipsistic to me.
You say you want a revolution ...
... Gone in 60 nanoseconds - The Washington Post.
It cannot be. Yet, this is not a couple of guys in a garage peddling cold fusion. This is no crank wheeling a perpetual motion machine into the patent office. These are the best researchers in the world using the finest measuring instruments, having subjected their data to the highest levels of scrutiny, including six months of cross-checking by 160 scientists from 11 countries.
Thought for the day ...
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.- R. D. Laing, born on this date in 1927
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Jeffrey Eugenides - The Marriage Plot
From The New York Times: "Sexual equality and divorce haven’t killed the novel..."
Tonight!
... FLP - Author Events - Author Events - William Kennedy | Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes; with Paul Hendrickson | Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961.
Yours truly has the honor of giving the introduction.
Hmm ...
... Increased Science Literacy Correlated To Less Worry About Climate Change.
Science likes to deal in facts and natural laws, not superstition or hysteria, so the study also found that the more scientifically literate the person, the more likely they were to be dismissive of opposing beliefs; so smarter people worry about climate change less and likely have less patience talking to activists who just blame some vast right wing conspiracy or the military-industrial complex for a general lack of fear about climate change.
And the winner is ...
... The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011 - Press Release. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dave also sends along this: Tranströmer's Whispers in a Microphone.
Thought for the day ...
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.- Alfred Lord Tennyson, who died on the is date in 1892
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
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