Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Q & A …
… Scott's biographer: British polar hero was incompetent - opinion - 04 October 2011 - New Scientist.
A suggestion …
… Give Philip Roth the Nobel Prize as a retirement present - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I"ll stick with Elmore Leonard.
I"ll stick with Elmore Leonard.
Remembrance …
… Uncensored John Simon: JACQUES BARZUN, R.I.P. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
His figure and posture were excellent, and he wore his well-tailored clothes with an aura more diplomatic than academic. His accent was upper-class American, without a trace of his French childhood. I always wanted to address him in French, to hear how he would sound in that language, but I lacked the guts to do so.
Big Six …
… Marathon performance of Bartok's string quartets.
I think Bartok's quartets are the 20th-century equivalent of Beethoven's nine symphonies.
I think Bartok's quartets are the 20th-century equivalent of Beethoven's nine symphonies.
I am not surprised …
… Petraeus ghostwriter ‘clueless’ to affair - The Washington Post.
Vernon is a great reporter, and a real gentleman. I think he would have made a great editor of The Inquirer. That he would not suspect this sort of thing does not surprise me at all. Honorable men don't think that way.
Thought or the day …
I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.
— St. Augustine, born on this date in 354
Monday, November 12, 2012
Coming soon...
...A modern Bridget Jones
For this whole debate risks looking quite simplistic in the current economic climate. (In any case, some may say Bridget is not a feminist, considering she is, to not put too fine a spin on it, absolutely gagging for a boyfriend. But unless you're a sanctimonious joy vacuum with a diktat against fun and snuggles, I don't really see what's so wrong about wanting a relationship, even if it is with an emotionless posho like Mark Darcy.)
No past for the present …
… Ancient and/or Modern — Theodore Dalrymple. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
[. . .]
An article in the French leftish-liberal newspaper, Le Monde, for 15 September, drew attention with evident unease or even mild disapproval to the results of a poll conducted in France by the fine arts magazine, Beaux Arts. To the question of whether it is more important to safeguard the treasures of the past or to promote creativity, the respondents replied by a very large majority that the former is the more important. The article implied that, pace the advertisement, forty million Frenchman can be wrong.
[. . .]
The fact is that, after hundreds of years, the French have lost altogether the knack of building something that someone in the future might look upon with pleasure. They are not the only European nation to have done so; but their architects are definitely among the worst and most incompetent in the world.
It was in this context that the magazine Beaux Arts took the poll. With a few notable exceptions, all that has been erected in the last ninety years in France has been ugly.
[. . .]
Our problem is not that we preserve the past; it is that we produce so little that is, or ever will be, worth preserving. Destroying the past will not improve our performance, only make us less aware of how deficient our performance actually is. I suppose that is a solution of a kind.
Another '50s myth dispelled …
… Paul Davis On Crime: Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle To Save The World.
Mr. Thomas, formerly an editor of Newsweek, knows the Washington media well. He faults his fellow newsmen for picturing Eisenhower as “granddad in a golf cart, the do-nothing, platitude-spouting, syntax-mangling over-the-hill oldest man ever to occupy the White House. The hatchet job was one of the most lasting and effective in political history.”Works such as “Ike’s Bluff” are encouraging historians and the media to take a closer and more objective look at Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Mr. Thomas concludes, “The United States was blessed to be led by a man who understood the nature of war better than anyone else, and who had the patience and wisdom, as well as the cunning and guile, to keep the peace.”
Encounter …
… Paris Review – Book Shopping with the Best-Read Man in America, John Lingan. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
Man cannot live without some knowledge of the purpose of life. If he can find no purpose in life he creates one in the inevitability of death.
— Chester Himes, who died on this date in 1984
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Well, Maybe …
… I’ll Give You Overrated/Underrated Films — Strange Herring. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, I do think Dr. Strangelove is overrated, and as for Scott's performance, it's overacting. On the other hand, I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is a masterpiece.
Well, I do think Dr. Strangelove is overrated, and as for Scott's performance, it's overacting. On the other hand, I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is a masterpiece.
Play and song …
… Issa's Untidy Hut: The Auld Triangle: Issa's Sunday Service, #143.
There is a typo in the text. Behan actually made it to 41.
There is a typo in the text. Behan actually made it to 41.
Conflicts …
… Gay marriage post led to firing, book blogger for conservative magazine says | New York Daily News.
… from David: Statement on my firing.
… from John Podhoretz: A Note.
… from David: Statement on my firing.
… from John Podhoretz: A Note.
For what it's worth, I didn't link to David's original post because I took it to be political commentary, which I usually try to avoid here. But I have to say it struck me as thoughtful and well worth pondering. (I think politics, politicians, and government should stay out of marriage, period. After all, what does President Obama's recent conversion to the cause of gay marriage mean? Nothing. He's not going to push for a federal statute in support of it. And leaving it up to the states only moves him to where Dick Cheney's been for years.)
But David removed the post in a timely fashion, and Podhoretz's action seems unduly hasty and smacks, whether he likes it or not, of intolerance. The fact is, David's commentaries, whether you agree with them or not, are always worth your time, I think. Ed Champion might not agree, but it was Ed who brought this to my attention, and like me, Ed does not approve of David's being fired. This could have been handled differently and better.
The intrepid Dave Lull also alerted me to this, of course.
The intrepid Dave Lull also alerted me to this, of course.
Thought for the day …
To love someone means to see him as God intended him.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on this date in 1821
Anyone who has ever genuinely loved someone knows this is true. It may, in fact, be the best argument for the existence of God.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
World without God …
… Till We Contemplate Faces | Online Library of Law and Liberty.
Atheists … will deny anything save error becomes lost when religion is abandoned. Scruton disagrees, although he acknowledges individual atheists may possess as much moral integrity as believers. His account of what else is lost besides belief along with religion is complex and subtle. It involves his making several wide-ranging forays into subjects as various as art, music, architecture, socio-biology, philosophy, and, last but not least, religion itself. The result is a set of profound meditations whose primary subject is the phenomenology of personhood, inter-personal relations, and numinal experiences. He combines them en passant with an acute and characteristically acerbic critique of contemporary consumerist culture that should pose a challenge to all free-marketeers. While his is not the most readily accessible recent treatment of these subjects, as ever Scruton’s is highly original, often deeply insightful, and never less than always thought-provoking.
Praise for Dave …
… and well-deserved it is: Roger Scruton on Aphorisms > All Aphorisms, All the Time.
Thought for the day …
There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.
— Friedrich Schiller, born on this date in 1759
Friday, November 09, 2012
Cynthia Ozick
On a whim, I picked up Cynthia Ozick's Messiah of Stockholm earlier in the week. I wasn't sure what to expect from Ozick, but having finished the book, I can safely say: she knows what she talking about.
This short little novel charts the ruminations of the Polish refugee Lars Andemening, who has convinced himself that he's the orphaned son of the great Jewish writer Bruno Schulz.
Andemening, who has settled in Sweden, has little evidence of his ancestry, save a sense that he has inherited from Schulz an eye for literature and a sensitivity to the past.
Half way through the novel, Andemening encounters his double: a woman posing as the daughter of Schulz. Adela (as she's called) is thus the sister of Lars.
As the two debate their relationship to - and with - Schulz, Ozick effectively transforms their dialogue into a larger discussion of literary criticism: that is, Lars and Adela, in their unyielding loyalty to Schulz, claim ownership to his legacy. On the surface, they engage in a battle for their father; below, they wage an intellectual war for the most insightful (and impassioned) criticism.
It would be giving away too much to reveal which character lays final claim to Schulz; and it would be equally too much to say where Adela comes from and where, in the end, she retreats.
What I can say, though, is that Ozick, in just 150 pages, has crafted a smart novel about what it was to be a refugee in the wake of German atrocities, and what it takes to reclaim one's ancestry - one page, one sliver of forgotten manuscript, at a time.
Always a bridesmaid …
… Rose Tremain: The art of not winning literary prizes | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In case you wondered …
… Can paper survive the digital age? | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
The West in general should stand up more for its own values. It is not always worthwhile to compromise.
— Imre Kertész, born on this date in 1929
Thursday, November 08, 2012
Looking things in the eye...
...Master of antipathies
The Indian secular narrative had become too wedded to a historical narrative according to which it could not be the case that Hindus and Muslims had deep conflict, temples could not ever really have been destroyed for religious reasons. Naipaul’s claim was that this was a repressive narrative that would generate its own pathologies. It made Enlightenment values precariously hostage to getting history right; as if to say that if indeed there had been conflict in the past, the current conflict would be justified. His claim was that Enlightenment values could not rest on historical myth-making. You should be allowed to say that temples were indeed destroyed. But acknowledging this and moving on was a far healthier psychological state than a discourse where that thought could only be repressed and produce its pathologies in turn. Converting the religious-secular divide into a debate over history was to miss the point. The terrain of the conflict was entirely psychological. The proper critique of Naipaul is not that he got history wrong. Having interestingly plumbed the depths of the psychology that animates movements like Hindu nationalism, he became so enamoured of what he found, that he become blind to its effects.
This is the incident that started the controversy referred to in the article.
Dealing with defeat...
...Rose Tremain: The art of not winning literary prizes
The art of surviving this is simply the art of keeping on. Time and hard work will heal the poor ravaged thing. In the work lies the future. In the future may lie other shortlists and other wins or non-wins. And so the whole darn desperate process begins again …
Social realist poetry …
… John Updike’s ‘Rabbit Redux’ and White Working-Class Angst - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
'Twas ever thus …
… Steven Shapin reviews ‘The Pseudoscience Wars’ by Michael Gordin — LRB 8 November 2012.
The difference now is that we have the scientists themselves engaging in catastrophism, what with all the ecological doom stories we are regularly treated to, and in fact, as this review points out, they were already engaging in it back in the '50s, with their nuclear doomsday scenarios. I don't know where the idea comes from that scientists are somehow immune to the weaknesses of other mortals — probably from the scientists themselves.
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