Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Thought for the day ...
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born on this date in 1806
Monday, March 05, 2012
Voluptuary of sound ...
... reviewed by Patrick Kurp: The Baboons of Hada: Selected Poems by Eric Ormsby | Quarterly Conversation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Impossible to categorize ...
... The University Bookman: The Private World of Unamuno. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In an essay on Unamuno published in Buenos Aires in 1923, Jorge Luis Borges pointed out that Unamuno affirmed concepts by asserting that they can not be negated if they were capable of being once, ever, so much as asserted at all. In the same way, Unamuno could not conceive how any soul, any spirit, once asserted by its being brought into being, could ever be denied, could forever be denied—by death.
Message from God...
...From ‘Nominal Catholic’ to Clarion of Faith
“Rick found himself in his faith, and he found himself in Karen,” said Mr. Schoeneman, who has known Mr. Santorum for more than 20 years. “He isn’t like one of these born-again people where you get hit in the head by some televangelist and you suddenly see the light. It’s been an evolution. He’s always been a Catholic and he’s always been faithful, but he’s never been at this level of faith.”
Sound advice ...
... Newsman urges Philadelphia Media Network to reconsider "destructive plan" | JIMROMENESKO.COM. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
The future of publishing ...
.... Digital Self-Publishing: Should Publishers Be Worried? - Alan Jacobs - Technology - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Last year I published a book with Oxford University Press called The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Oxford gave me a small advance, but thanks to that advance I was able to turn down some speaking engagements in order to focus on writing, which I enjoy much more than speaking. When I turned in the manuscript it went to some highly professional copy editors who caught many errors that I had missed. Designers came up with an attractive and appropriate cover, and gave the text a clean and elegant look. Marketing people got the book into the hands of reviewers, and arranged for me to give some talks and radio interviews.
Back in the '60s and '70s, I earned a good part of what I liked to call my living as a freelance book editor. By the end of the '70s the market had largely dried up, I think because dropping freelancers was the first wave of cost-cutting. I suspect that a freelance copyediting service might do pretty well these days. (Interestingly, I can still read a book and keep in my mind's eye various parts of it. So if I see something that repeats something said earlier or that contradicts something said earlier, I can usually pretty quickly go back and find the earlier passage. Very useful skill for a reviewer.)
By the way, as Lee notes, the comments on this post are very interesting.
Nuggets of wisdom...
...Amjad Ali Khan: music is like the ocean, it does not belong to any one race or culture
“You know, education from books does not teach everything. Remember the terrorists of 9/11 had university degrees. The greatest lesson is kindness and compassion and — how can I say this — surrendering oneself, and this comes from personal contact with the teacher. This is why our tradition of learning from a guru is still relevant to the modern world.”
Perspective ...
... Remember How Tiny We All Are : Starts With A Bang.
See also The Scale of the Universe. (Hat tip, David Tothero.)
See also The Scale of the Universe. (Hat tip, David Tothero.)
Encllosures ...
... Bryan Appleyard — April is the Cruellest Copyright. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As ever in the digital world, nobody really knows. Yet, arcane and complex though it is, the status of copyright law is now one of the most important problems facing our culture. On one side are the old media players, whose instinctive response is to extend legal protection as far as possible. (Jack Valenti, the late boss of the Motion Picture Association of America, was once asked how long copyright should last. Forever minus one day, he replied.) On the other side are the internet radicals who would make everything free, and who ignore the fact that this would all but destroy the incentive to create.
If there were no money in art, would any body do it? Or would only those who really cared or were otherwise driven do it? Would this result in simply less art or better art?
Thought for the day ...
What Christ gives us is quite explicit if his own words are interpreted according to their Aramaic meaning. The expression 'This is my Body' means this is myself.
— Karl Rahner, born on this date in 1904
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Big and baffling ...
... Anecdotal Evidence: `The Passionate Guess'.
Never been to Houston. Never been to Texas. My loss, but maybe not forever.
Never been to Houston. Never been to Texas. My loss, but maybe not forever.
Real vs ersatz...
...Right Minds
Franks adds: I will always remember De Maistre for one of the bitchier lines: "Voltaire, who touched upon every subject without ever penetrating the surface of any ..."
Franks adds: I will always remember De Maistre for one of the bitchier lines: "Voltaire, who touched upon every subject without ever penetrating the surface of any ..."
Paging Jim Ament ...
... Country Music, Openness to Experience, and the Psychology of Culture War | The Moral Sciences Club | Big Think. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Jim comments: I Have Been Paged…
(Post bumped.)
This strikes me as mostly crap. I get pegged as a conservative often enough, probably because I think government should live within its means, not within mine, and I think practically anything the government undertakes — from delivering the mail to selling liquor — can be done better by almost anyone else. But I also think everybody should leave everybody else the hell alone. I lose patience with people who seem concerned over what God thinks of other people. I worry about what God thinks of me.
Anyway, I'll bet I'm at least as open to experience as Mr. Wilkinson. I almost certainly am more familiar with the drug culture than he is — though the familarity was formed during my wild years and I'd rather not elaborate. As for country music, he seems to have missed how much of it is humorous, and how accurately it reflects how a good many people live their lives. I've known some of those people and not one ever struck me as not being open to experience. "But why would you want your kids to grow up with the same way of life as you and your grandparents?" Why the hell not? If you thought you'd had a good life, you would naturally want your kids to have the same.
Jim comments: I Have Been Paged…
(Post bumped.)
What happened ...
... in contrast to what was reported: Islam, Free Speech, and Democracy - Reason Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... Judge Martin had before him a defendant who, by his own and his lawyer's admission, was grossly ignorant of the protections for free speech in America. Surely, a lecture on civics would not have been amiss.
Destined for immortality ...
... Internet Archive’s Repository Collects Thousands of Books —NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Varieties of significance...
...Voluminous
A library has a personality, a temperament. (Sometimes a dull one.) Its books show the scars of use and the wear of need. They are defaced—no, ornamented—by markings and notes and private symbols of assent and dissent, and these vandalisms are traces of the excitations of thought and feeling, which is why they are delightful to discover in old books: they introduce a person.
Triple play ...
... Ivebeenreadinglately: Josh Wilker on the 1970s, baseball, and the Bad News Bears. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Echoing words ...
... The American Spectator : Common Prayer, Uncommon Beauty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Common sense ...
... and common experience: Bruce Charlton's Miscellany: Evolutionary philosophy versus specific applications of evolution. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Indeed we know by ordinary common sense that evolution really happens - the dispute is whether evolution happens in such and such a circumstance, and how far or fast it can go.
Live the gay life...
...The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love and the Reality of Cheating by Eric Anderson – review
Anderson sees regular casual sex with a variety of people (which he recommends) as different from affairs (involving dating and romance), which he regards as emotional betrayal. This distinction may apply among gay men, where impersonal and spontaneous sex is not uncommon, but most heterosexual wives and girlfriends would question this finesse – as even he admits in several of his anecdotes about men who were caught in the act by their enraged girlfriends.
George Barker's Elegy V ...
I
These errors loved no less than the saint loves arrows
Repeat, Love has left the world. He is not here.
O God, like Love, revealing yourself in absence
So that, though farther than stars, like Love that sorrows
In separation, the desire in the heart of hearts
To come home to you makes you most manifest.
The booming zero spins as his halo where
Ashes of pride on all the tongues of sense
Crown us with negatives. O deal us in our deserts
The crumb of falling vanity. It is eucharist.
II
Everyone walking everywhere goes in a glow
Of geometrical progression, all meteors, in praise:
Hosannas on the tongues of the dumb shall raise
Roads for the gangs in chains to return to
God. They go hugging the traumas like alleluias
To the bodies that earn this beatitude. The Seven
Seas they crowd like the great sailing clippers,
Those homing migrants that, with their swallow-like sails set,
Swayed forward along the loneliness that opposed,
For nothing more than a meeting in heaven.
III
Therefore all things, in all three tenses,
Alone like the statue in an alcove of love,
Moving in obedient machinery, sleeping
Happy in impossible achievements, keeping
Close to each other, because the night is dark;
The great man dreaming on the stones of circumstances,
The small wringing hands because rocks will not move;
The beast in its red kingdom, the star in its arc:
O all things, therefore, in shapes or in senses,
Know that they exist in the kiss of his Love.
IV
Incubus. Anaesthetist with glory in a bag,
Foreman with a sweatbox and a whip. Asphyxiator
Of the ecstatic. Sergeant with a grudge
Against the lost lovers in the park of creation,
Fiend behind the fiend behind the fiend behind the
Friend. Mastodon with mastery, monster with an ache
At the tooth of the ego, the dead drunk judge:
Wheresoever Thou art our agony will find Thee
Enthroned on the darkest altar of our heartbreak
Perfect. Beast, brute, bastard. O dog my God!
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... Richard Burgin reviews Hari Kunzru: Many stories, overlapping.
... The Jane Eyre story, post-WWII.
... Inside Eisenhower's complex interior war room.
... 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank' explores tensions between religious and secular.
... In Watergate, what were the women up to?
... The Jane Eyre story, post-WWII.
... Inside Eisenhower's complex interior war room.
... 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank' explores tensions between religious and secular.
... In Watergate, what were the women up to?
Thought for the day ...
Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me — I am happy.
— Hamlin Garland, who died on this date in 1940
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Missing class...
...Oscar host Billy Crystal wasn't funny or relevant
I just saw Billy's Opening Monologue online and it certainly was nothing to write home about.
I just saw Billy's Opening Monologue online and it certainly was nothing to write home about.
Bohemian farewell ...
... To Judge By Appearances — by Theodore Dalrymple. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Nige and I have solved the problem by becoming flâneurs. I dress not for the sake of others, but for my own sake. I like to look natty. And I was very pleased when a fellow last summer complimented me on my apparel as I was walking through Center City to The Inquirer. That said, as anyone who knew me in the '70s and '80s will attest, the house on Duval Street where my family ad I lived was surely one of the last bastions of true bohemianism. Interestingly, some years ago, in response to a request from the editor the now-defunct Inquirer Magazine, I wrote a column about judging a book by its cover.
An answer ...
... to the question I posed the other day: From Single Cells to Multicellular Organisms18 - Molecular Biology of the Cell - NCBI Bookshelf. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Single-cell organisms, such as bacteria and protozoa, have been so successful in adapting to a variety of different environments that they comprise more than half of the total biomass on earth. Unlike animals, many of these unicellular organisms can synthesize all of the substances they need from a few simple nutrients, and some of them divide more than once every hour. What, then, was the selective advantage that led to the evolution of multicellular organisms?
A short answer is that by collaboration and by division of labor it becomes possible to exploit resources that no single cell could utilize so well. This principle, applying at first to simple associations of cells, has been taken to an extreme in the multicellular organisms we see today. Multicellularity enables a plant, for example, to become physically large; to have roots in the ground, where one set of cells can take up water and nutrients; and to have leaves in the air, where another set of cells can efficiently capture radiant energy from the sun. Specialized cells in the stem of the plant form channels for transporting water and nutrients between the roots and the leaves. Yet another set of specialized cells forms a layer of epidermis to prevent water loss and to provide a protected internal environment (see Panel 1-2, pp. 28-29). The plant as a whole does not compete directly with unicellular organisms for its ecological niche; it has found a radically different way to survive and propagate.
As different animals and plants appeared, they changed the environment in which further evolution occurred. Survival in a jungle calls for different talents than survival in the open sea. Innovations in movement, sensory detection, communication, social organization - all enabled eucaryotic organisms to compete, propagate, and survive in ever more complex ways.
The only problem with this is that it seems purely speculative. It assumes the truth of evolutionary theory and proceeds to show how something may have happened in accordance with said theory. That, however, does not constitute evidence that it did happen that way.
Showbiz without tears ...
... Book Review: The Astaires - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Kathleen Riley's book on Fred and Adele—the first full-scale study—is a welcome rehabilitation. Drawing on family archives as well as her own extensive research, Ms. Riley gives us an unusual subject: showbiz without tears. There's no temperamental hazing of underlings, sexual curiosa or ruthless scheming to rule the world. Adele adores her brother; Fred protects his sister. Ms. Riley quotes Fred accepting an award shortly after her death, in 1981: "Delly was the shining light and I was just there pushing away." Even then, he was still throwing the act to her.
Have a look ...
Some years ago, Debbie and I spent two glorious weeks in Barberino Val d'Elsa, about 20 km south of Florence. There we met Danila Maneri and we are privileged to have one of her wonderful pressed-flower arrangements hanging our living room. Danila is immensely talented and a great person to boot. We still hear from her from time to time. If there is one thing I want to do before shuffling off my mortal coil it is to visit Barberino Vald'Elsa one more time.
Cashing in ...
... PJ Media — Anti-Bullying Entrepreneurs on the Job After School Shooting.
My older brother was bullied by some kid when he was in grade school. One day the kid chased him home. My mother saw her son being chased and locked the front door. Unable to get in, with the bully on his heels, my brothers panicked, turned around and, having no other choice, beat the living hell out of his tormenter, whose own mother paid a visit to ours later on to complain. She did not garner much sympathy.
Two good lessons: My brother learned how to defend himself, and the bully probably started to think twice about picking on people.
Watch your language ...
... Learning the Lingo Ahead of Super Tuesday - WSJ.com.
Some years ago, when I was in Elko, covering the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, I quickly learned — after I had made reference to Nevahda — that the state's natives call it Nevaada (the "a" pronounced as it is in "back." I should think anyone who nows classical music —and, in particular, Saint-Saëns's Jota Aragonese — would know that the jota is a dance. I like learning how the locals pronounce things, and I try to remember to pronounce them that way myself.
Quants take over..
...School for quants
When asked whether she thought all these quants made for more stable financial markets, Mirghaemi looked at me and said: “It is very, very risky and it brings a lot of volatility to the markets and it is out of control.”
Difficult and painful ...
... Book Review: Carl Van Vechten - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Van Vechten's reputation today is inseparable from the infamy attached to his one enduring book. Only curiosity or study could lead a reader to his other novels—their titles dated in a different way: "Peter Whiffle," "The Tattooed Countess," "Parties"—but he was an artist of varied accomplishment. The portrait photography to which he devoted himself after giving up writing in 1932, aged 52, is as fresh now as the day it emerged from the darkroom. Practically every black author, performer and socialite of note posed in front of one of Van Vechten's distinctive exotic-print backcloths. (Ralph Ellison was among the few who declined the invitation to sit for him.) He was, moreover, a partygoer of insatiable appetite.
Barker's Elegy V ...
... third stanza.
III
Therefore all things, in all three tenses,
Alone like the statue in an alcove of love,
Moving in obedient machinery, sleeping
Happy in impossible achievements, keeping
Close to each other, because the night is dark;
The great man dreaming on the stones of circumstances,
The small wringing hands because rocks will not move;
The beast in its red kingdom, the star in its arc:
O all things, therefore, in shapes or in senses,
Know that they exist in the kiss of his Love.
Thought for the day ...
What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed on order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?
- Georges Perec, who died on this date in 1982
Fictionalizing dough...
...Show me the money
Greed and fear and obliviousness are things we all understand. In fiction, I could write about them without having characters say, “Remind me, Daphne, what exactly is a synthetic credit default swap?”
Friday, March 02, 2012
Jane Austen
Well, I've finally finished it. Ten years after buying Jane Austen's Emma, and more than a month after starting it, I've come to the end. The journey is complete.
There's not much that I can say about this classic that might be considered new, so let me instead offer just a few reflections.
What I enjoyed most about this novel was its provincial quality. I love that Austen commits herself to one or two small communities - close to London, but not properly a part of it. This commitment lends itself to an intimate portrait, a sort of micro-fictional account of those on whom Austen casts her (very patient) gaze.
Another aspect of the novel that I enjoyed was the context in which it was written. Put differently: there's a forgotten quality to the start of the nineteenth century. It's no longer the period of the American Revolution or Enlightenment, but it's not yet the age of the Victorians. Austen's era was dominated by the aristocracy. And that, I think, leads to a novel that's very firmly of another time, of another imaginative space.
To follow up on this, the final part of the novel that I enjoyed was its approach to sensuality - if it can so be called. Whereas the early Victorians danced around this topic, but resolved its awkwardness with opaque references to a hand gracing the ruffles of a chemise, Austen doesn't even go that far. The erotic qualities of the book (again, if they can so be called) are caught up in the thought processes captured by the narrator. In that sense, the marriages that are at the heart of this book are best understood as intellectual unions. Or that's the way I understood them...
To close, I should add that while Austen's universe of love seems removed from our own, the mystery and immediacy accompanying it remains - and in that sense, this forgotten universe might not be as far as we sometimes imagine.
Very interesting ...
... and, for this Catholic, enlightening: Afrocentric Muslimah: Qadr and choice.
A changing genre ...
... AWP 2012 – Creative Nonfiction and the Possibility of Post-Orientalist Travel Writing – BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
... something essential has changed — is changing — about the genre: increasingly, it answers to Edward Said’s postcolonialism (e.g. Orientalism), rather than to Granta’s stable. Five travel writers said as much on March 1 in a Hilton Chicago banquet room whose electroliers and possibly-oriental carpet looked like something out of Raban’s mansions. That I was seated on this carpet in an overflow corridor with a dozen other (young, nonwestern) globetrotters is one measure of this change.
... something essential has changed — is changing — about the genre: increasingly, it answers to Edward Said’s postcolonialism (e.g. Orientalism), rather than to Granta’s stable. Five travel writers said as much on March 1 in a Hilton Chicago banquet room whose electroliers and possibly-oriental carpet looked like something out of Raban’s mansions. That I was seated on this carpet in an overflow corridor with a dozen other (young, nonwestern) globetrotters is one measure of this change.
Hmm ...
... AttackingtheDemi-Puppets: Universities and Indoctrination.
"In a university, the 'best' students are those who best give the professors what they want to hear." Probably mostly true, especially nowadays. But my best teachers -- Father Gannon, Father Handren, Bill Lynch, John Burke, to name just a few -- wanted to hear their students think. Of course, I entered college a half-century ago.
Good news ...
... A Look at Wes Montgomery: Echoes of Indiana Avenue - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For the defense ...
... Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Since I sometimes post links to articles questioning global warming, I feel it is only fair to link to one that objects to the objections. But I must say this piece is not terribly persuasive. Nordhaus says "that global temperatures are rising over the last century-plus is one of the most robust findings of climate science and statistics." But the graph indicates that the warming has been about eight-tenths of a degree. Over more than century. Hardly catastrophic, I would think.
As for his second point, it hardly squares with this: Climate Models Fail to Match Observed Historical Data.
His third point is to cite the Supreme Court as a source. The Supreme Court may have expertise when it comes to the law, but even its members get their science elsewhere.The notion of CO2 as a pollutant is nonsense.
All this said, please understand that I do think the evidence indicates a warming trend. I am also pretty sure that human activity may contribute to this somewhat. But probably everything else does, too. That's what we mean when we talk about an "environment." I remain unconvinced that this warming in either unprecedented or that it is catastrophic or that we can do much about it.
Since I sometimes post links to articles questioning global warming, I feel it is only fair to link to one that objects to the objections. But I must say this piece is not terribly persuasive. Nordhaus says "that global temperatures are rising over the last century-plus is one of the most robust findings of climate science and statistics." But the graph indicates that the warming has been about eight-tenths of a degree. Over more than century. Hardly catastrophic, I would think.
As for his second point, it hardly squares with this: Climate Models Fail to Match Observed Historical Data.
His third point is to cite the Supreme Court as a source. The Supreme Court may have expertise when it comes to the law, but even its members get their science elsewhere.The notion of CO2 as a pollutant is nonsense.
All this said, please understand that I do think the evidence indicates a warming trend. I am also pretty sure that human activity may contribute to this somewhat. But probably everything else does, too. That's what we mean when we talk about an "environment." I remain unconvinced that this warming in either unprecedented or that it is catastrophic or that we can do much about it.
Roundup ...
... The American Scholar: The Complete Zinsser on Friday - William Zinsser.
Congratulations are also in order. Zinsser may be 89, but he's up for an award for digital commentary. Way to go, oldtimer!
Not what was expected ...
... but not without its good points: AWP 2012 – Prettying Up the Baby: Publishing CNF in a Challenging Market - BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
Hoping for a pleasant third reading cycle
I started reading rather late but picked up pace in college. During engineering, one doesn't really need to study and I devoted long hours cooped up on bed with a book in hand. This was time I discovered the joys of Virginia Woolf, Alan Hollinghurst, Henry James and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. There was something ineffable about the joy of reading. The pleasure that Sarah Waters' books gave me was so definite that I remember taking them to the bathroom even when I had to pee. This was entirely new for me, every page held the promise of some magic handed to me in neat little moments.
This was entirely unstructured reading. I was still developing my political affiliation. Like all youngsters, I was in awe of leftism and its attendant ideologies. Without knowing too much, I instinctively felt for the rights of women, the subaltern and the marginalised. This was the natural progression to what had been my lack of reflection. My politics stemmed from my intestines. My gut feelings.
That was my first reading cycle. After I became a journalist, I came in touch with a different set of writers. Naipaul, Greene and Kundera opened my eyes to news ways of seeing. I moved from estimating ideologies to estimating individuals. Feminism, racism and the environment movement still held an emotional charge for me but I was more willing now to listen to the story and accommodate doubt. In other words, I became less militant about ideology and more accommodating of narrative.
This, my second reading cycle, was coterminous with my shift towards right-of-centre. Big government, the scandalous climate change debate, and terror all focused my mind on the need to relook at my beliefs. The transformation was slow but definite. It was also more full-bodied in that I allowed myself the freedom to hold disparate views culled from different ideologies without bracketing myself within a framework. On gay rights, I was and am left-of-centre but am against gay marriage (though for vastly different reasons than the religious right).
But my point is this: My reading also has changed, and not just in the texts I read but also in how I approach them. I am more cautious of believing blindly what the writer is pointing towards, and I want to bring my imprint on my reading. In other words, I have turned into an active reader from an erstwhile passive one. I am now looking for red flags in the texts I read to alert myself to any propaganda, ideology or back-channel theorizing. This has enabled me to become a better judge of what I will and will not like. For instance, I know that I can read the Financial Times' Oped page without worrying for the health of my mind. They will not stuff pansies down my throat. I mean the flowers. The WSJ has in fact started marking its columns as left, right or centre leaning.
However, I also miss the innocent joy that my earlier reading brought me. Especially fiction. It is very important to approach fiction with a generous mind since then it brings you the greatest fruits. My critical eye, while doubtless helpful in my political leanings, is hampering my enjoyment of literature.
I hope the next phase in my reading cycle will bring back the original pleasures in addition to new, hard ways of examining things.
Barker's Elegy V ...
... second stanza.
II
Everyone walking everywhere goes in a glow
Of geometrical progression, all meteors, in praise:
Hosannas on the tongues of the dumb shall raise
Roads for the gangs in chains to return to
God. They go hugging the traumas like alleluias
To the bodies that earn this beatitude. The Seven
Seas they crowd like the great sailing clippers,
Those homing migrants that, with their swallow-like sails set,
Swayed forward along the loneliness that opposed,
For nothing more than a meeting in heaven,
Thought for the day ...
The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.
- John Jay Chapman, born on this date in 1862
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Making time ...
... Local Author Profile: Joe Samuel Starnes | Philadelphia Stories.
The most satisfying aspect of novel writing for Starnes: "You get to tell a story on your own terms with no compromises. It's all yours. When you are finished, you can look over the world you created and say, ‘I made that.'"
Duets ...
... Literary Collaborations: Two Heads are Better Than One.
I reviewed Stephen King and Peter Straub's Black House. I thought it was great.
I reviewed Stephen King and Peter Straub's Black House. I thought it was great.
In case you wondered ...
... Why we need real live orchestras - Classical Bookworm.
Last week, Debbie and I saw Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conduct a wonderful Brahms first. I am sure a recording of the performance would be quite good. But it wouldn't be the same as being there.
Hmm ...
... The American Spectator : Roger Scruton on Facing Up to Darwin.
The social scientists respond that culture is uniquely human because we created it. But the Darwinians reject that answer as a fudge: if we created culture, what explains our capacity to create it? The answer is that this capacity evolved. Culture is therefore an adaptation, which exists because it conferred a reproductive advantage on our hunter-gatherer ancestors. According to this view, many of our cultural traits are local variations of attributes acquired during the Pleistocene age and now "hard-wired in the brain." But if this is so, cultural characteristics may not be as plastic as the social scientists suggest. There are features of the human condition, such as gender roles, that people have believed to be cultural and therefore changeable. But if culture is an aspect of nature, "cultural" does not mean "changeable." Maybe these controversial features of human culture are part of the genetic endowment of mankind.
If I understand all this correctly -- and I may very well not -- evolutionary theory posits that everything can be explained in terms of the need for the organism to reproduce. This is, I presume, a blind drive, having nothing to do with the desirability of being alive. But life qua life once achieved is one thing. One could say that once life makes its entrance there is no getting it off the stage. But evolutionary theory is also supposed to explain -- indeed that is the point of it, is it not? -- the diversity of species. And the mere drive to reproduce doesn't seem to me to fit the bill. Why exactly go beyond the uni-cellular? If the sine qua non of life is reproduction, well, there you have it with the first single cell: simple and efficient, even conveying a kind of immortality, since the original cell just splits in half and becomes two and those two do the same and so on ad infinitum. What precisely is the reproductive explanation of the origin of species, of the diversification into so many different franchises? Why does life need more than one species?
Self-suppression ...
... When writers censor themselves | Books | guardian.co.uk.
The easiest form of self-suppression is to have an idea and not write it, and we may well wish that more authors would exercise this prerogative. It gets more complicated once the book exists, however – even in unpublished manuscript form. Since we usually don't know about the successful suppressions, the most famous cases of authorial efforts at self-silencing are those of writers who attempted and failed to quash the publication of works they had written but did not wish to see the light of day.
Something different ...
The other night I was paging through George Barker's Collected Poems 1930-1955, looking to reacquaint myself with some old favorites. I was particularly taken this time with the fifth of his Sacred Elegies. And the thought occurred to me that -- since I suspect not many people are familiar with Barker's work these days -- it might not be a bad idea to post the poem here. Only not all at once. I think the effect of the poem will be greater to those unfamiliar with poem or poet if they encounter it one stanza at a time. So here is the first stanza. I will post the second tomorrow, the third Saturday, and the whole thing on Sunday.
I
These errors loved no less than the saint loves arrows
Repeat, Love has left the world. He is not here.
O God, like Love, revealing yourself in absence
So that, though farther than stars, like Love that sorrows
In separation, the desire in the heart of hearts
To come home to you makes you most manifest.
The booming zero spins as his halo where
Ashes of pride on all the tongues of sense
Crown us with negatives. O deal us in our deserts
The crumb of falling vanity. It is eucharist.
Who knew?
... Rick Santorum Is Right - Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Rosenberg brushes aside the notion that his college or any like it could be an “indoctrination mill.” The very idea! But indeed Macalester College comes as close as any contemporary liberal arts college to giving substance to such a label. I have written elsewhere (“‘Collective Certainty’ at Work“) about President Rosenberg’s mixing of calls to civility with sneers at the ignorant Tea Party masses which he says the folks at Macalester “are constantly striving to rise above.” And I took note (“Macalester Preps for World Domination“) of the college’s vigorous embrace of that distillation of contemporary illiberal liberalism, “global citizenship.” Macalester has an institute devoted to its promotion. This matches about as closely as anything could to Santorum’s idea of indoctrination.
Happy birthday, Richard Wilbur ...
Anecdotal Evidence: `All Things Are Connected'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day ...
Primitive societies without religion have never been found.
- William Dean Howells, born on this date in 1837
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