Thursday, August 08, 2013
Emotional extremes...
...Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me by Ellen Forney – review
At one point, she becomes disillusioned with the whole "crazy artist" idea. "Sometimes it seems like pain is too obvious a place to turn for inspiration. Pain isn't always deep ... Sometimes it's awful and that's it. Or boring."
Wednesday, August 07, 2013
Fun With Numbers?
No. Funny Numbers.
Catch-22′s original title was Catch-18. But shortly before it was published, bestselling author Leon Uris published a novel called Mila 18. Heller and his agent Robert Gottlieb didn’t want people to think Catch-18 was somehow connected to Mila 18, so they decided to change the number in Heller’s title. They tried out 11 and 14, but they weren’t happy with either one.
“After a halfhearted attempt at accepting Catch-14, Gottlieb had a late-night flash of conviction,” writes Eller. He quotes Gottlieb: “22, it’s 22! And I remember calling up Joe and saying, ‘It’s funnier than 18!’ But of course the fact is that no number is funnier than any other number, it’s complete self-delusion. But once we were convinced it was funnier, then it became funny.”
Historical Jesus ...
In brief, Meier wants to know what can be known about Jesus through modern techniques of historical research. The aim is a portrait of Jesus that even non-Christians could theoretically accept. The scope is narrower than it appears, because there are many things about Jesus that, given the sources we have, simply cannot be known in this way. As Meier [has observed], what we don't know, we don't know. The resulting portrait of Jesus is, hereadily concedes, a fragmentary and unstable reconstruction that cannot serveas the basis for a faith commitment. The historical Jesus is not the same as the real Jesus.It is this methodological humility that separates Meier from many other contemporary writers on the historical Jesus.
John P. Meier's The Marginal Jew is a four volume -- soon to be five – over twenty year long study of the life of Jesus. Although a Roman Catholic priest (and now Msgr.) Meier's goal is to produce a work that would be written by, in his words, a non denominational council locked in the bowels of Harvard's Divinity School using the tools of historical criticism. Each volume has been hundreds of pages, bristling with footnotes and rigourous review of other works of scholarship. Each volume has received the Church's imprimatur, and at least one, maybe more, was cited approvingly by Benedict in his works on Jesus of Nazareth.
At about the same time as Meier's first volume (1991) John Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus was published (and I read both it and Meier's first volume at the time.) While, unlike Meier's, it was a best seller, I recall little about it except for noise and fury, revealing among other things that Jesus was a … Zealot. (Meier's work had its own revelations, including his conclusion that, upon review of the historical record, Jesus had woman within his circle at a level equivalent to the Apostles ... and so woman priests could well be historically justified. Go us.)
And now we see Aslan's work, Zealot, which claims very little can be known about Jesus historically, in some ways repeating Crossan, (and others back to the First Wave of historical Jesus scholarship); ignoring real scholarship like the magisterial work of Meier, and Raymond Brown before him, and any number of legitimate scholars. But it is a best seller too.
Thomas Tusser was right.
A very sad tale …
…Bryan Appleyard — Jews, Lies and Anti-Intellectualism. (Hat tips to Dave Lull and Rus Bowden.)
Landmark hang out …
… Hanging a plaque where the Beat generation hung out | The Villager Newspaper. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Q & A …
… The Book That Changed Reza Aslan's Mind About Jesus - Joe Fassler - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I can understand that.
I’m a Muslim because the symbols and metaphors that Islam uses to talk about God and humanity, the relationship between creator and creation, are the symbols and metaphors that work best for me. That makes sense to me. They are not more valid, or more true, than the symbols of Judaism, or Christianity, say, but they just make more sense to me.
I can understand that.
Reader's diary …
There has been a lot of back-and-forth lately about the nature of book reviews and their chances for survival. This usually has to do, though,with the book review as shaped by newspapers and magazines. Such reviews have obviously survived online, but the Internet also makes it possible to go about reviewing books in other ways as well. There are, for instance, already plenty examples of readers' diaries, accounts of reading as the reading takes place.
This seems to me a very useful approach, especially when it comes to poetry (and also collections of short fiction or essays). A particular poem or short story may well warrant the space allotted to review an entire novel (think "Little Gidding" or "Death in Venice").
I have lately been reading three books of poetry – Lynn Levin's Miss Plastique, Miriam Kotzin's The Body's Bride, and Diane Sahms-Guarnieri's Images of Beauty. That's how I like to read poetry when I don't have to review it, just browsing around in this volume or that. That I'm a guy and they're all gals makes it even more interesting. I'm also acquainted with all three.
Anyway, I've been thinking of posting here the thoughts and observations that occur to me as I read these books, as a kind of inaugural reader's diary feature for the blog. I intend the posts to mirror the reading so I'll be skipping around from book to book. I probably won't post daily, but posts will be frequent enough.
I'm going to confine this first post to Miss Plastique. Recently, Lynn and I had an email exchange during the course of which she referred to her collection as "very girly." That it is and that makes it all the more intriguing to a guy. If John Stuart Mill was right, and the difference between eloquence and poetry is that the former is heard while the latter is overheard, then this s the poetry you might overhear in the powder room,or someplace else where men are unlikely to intrude.
The first poem that caught my eye as I paged through the book was "Dippity-Do." I remembered the TV ad from the '60s. I don't think I ever knew what the stuff was for. I just remembered its name being chanted over and over. But to a young girl at the time, wanting to look her best, and be stylish, it could come in useful:
I hated my hair and wished it were straight
so that I could wear it
In a swing or the London Look.
I wanted my hair to be smooth
so the popular girls
would talk to me at school.
I helped raise three girls, so I have some idea of where the poem's speaker is coming from. But the poem then takes a surprising and unsettling turn:
Also wished my father
didn't get mad almost every night.
Once he knocked
all the rollers from my head.
This prompts the speaker to give up the Dippity-Do: "After that, I let my hair go free." And that turns out to be a good thing:
The straight kids thought I was a head.
You look just like Janis Joplin, the hippies said.
And, hey, that was good enough for me.
There's a lot of drama and heartbreak packed into this poem's 19 lines: teen angst, domestic violence, the yearning for acceptance. As for the Dippity-Do, it's the perfect pop culture reference, the kind Frank O'Hara liked to employ, a reminder that poetry can be found in the oddest places.
A thought for today …
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
— Rabindranath Tagore, who died on this date in 1941
Tuesday, August 06, 2013
FYI …
… Elaine Showalter chooses the best novelists writing in the US today | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Theories and Their Makers ...
While the status of women in the sciences has received broad national attention, debate about sexism in philosophy has remained mostly within the confines of academia. But the revelation this summer that Colin McGinn, a star philosopher at the University of Miami, had agreed to leave his tenured post after allegations of sexual harassment brought by a graduate student, has put an unusually famous name to the problem, exposing the field to what some see as a healthy dose of sunlight. Mr. McGinn, 63, rose to public prominence in the early 1990s as one of the so-called New Mysterians, a group of philosophers who challenged the notion that human consciousness could ever be fully explained. [but saw nothing supernatural in that either. See my immediately previous post.]
(Or, using deductive logic, IF a pompous harrasser gets caught in the act THEN he will be a smartass.)Mr. McGinn said that “the ‘3 times’ e-mail,” as he referred to it, was not an actual proposal. “There was no propositioning,” he said in the interview. Properly understanding another e-mail to the student that included the crude term for masturbation, he added later via e-mail, depended on a distinction between “logical implication and conversational implicature.”“Remember that I am a philosopher trying to teach a budding philosopher important logical distinctions,” he said.
Mind is Mystery ...
The "mysterianism" I advocate is really nothing more than the acknowledgment that human intelligence is a local, contingent, temporal, practical and expendable feature of life on earth - an incremental adaptation based on earlier forms of intelligence that no one would regard as faintly omniscient. The current state of the philosophy of mind, from my point of view, is just a reflection of one evolutionary time-slice of a particular bipedal species on a particular humid planet at this fleeting moment in cosmic history - as is everything else about the human animal. There is more ignorance in it than knowledge.
A thought for today …
I never do a full outline, and if I did, I would not feel bound to it, because the view from inside a scene can be different from the view outside it. But neither do I just start writing and see what happens; I am far more disciplined than that.
— Piers Anthony, born on this date in 1934
Monday, August 05, 2013
Well, well, well …
… Jeff Bezos Buys Washington Post for $250 Million - WSJ.com.
It's a much better paper than the Times, and humor columnist E.J. Dionne alone is worth the newsstand price.
It's a much better paper than the Times, and humor columnist E.J. Dionne alone is worth the newsstand price.
A pair of haiku …
Limping old lady.
A squirrel standing alert.
Waning August light.
All of this around
Us is what God is making
Up. Pretty scary.
Opening gambits …
… My favourite first line – by writers on the 2013 Man Booker prize longlist | Books | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I've always liked "Call me Ishmael."
I've always liked "Call me Ishmael."
Smooth operator …
… Bryan Appleyard — Arianna Huffington: The Life Force. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, she certainly has faith – in herself.
Well, she certainly has faith – in herself.
Just a thought …
The big news lately is the terror alert the government has issued and the temporary closing of various embassies. Nothing has happened yet, which doesn't mean something won't. But if nothing does happen, the government will assure us that nothing happened because the government was doing its job of protecting us. That will then be used to justify the surveillance state the government seems to want to establish. But suppose – just suppose – the alert is a government ruse. This sort of thinking seems reasonable when one no longer trusts the government. Many Americans, I suspect, increasingly distrust ours.
Please note: I am not suggesting this is a government ruse. What I am suggesting is that recent revelations about government snooping are just the sort of thing that makes people suspicious of the government.
Talent and skill …
… Mystical perception as a learned skill, and implications for religious epistemology - The Prosblogion. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In the practices Luhrmann describes, religious experience is not like ordinary perception, which requires no conscious or deliberate training, but more like a skilled perception, such as that of an art connoisseur or a scientist. By acquiring the relevant skills, a scientist or connoisseur can discern things that would escape an ordinary observer.The best way to develop an appreciation of painting is to look at a lot of paintings. Really look at them, on your own, with as little outside input as possible. This gives you your experience of painting. This experience helps when you encounter opinions regarding painting. It is the same with other arts. Immerse yourself in them before getting involved with criticism. Before trying to develop skills, discover what your inclinations are. As for prayer, best just to open yourself to God and let Him do His thing.
Horace to the rescue …
… on Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet, by Harry Eyres (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) | On the Seawall: A Literary Website by Ron Slate (GD). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My impression was that Eyres was recreating Horace in the image of a contemporary bien pensant.
My impression was that Eyres was recreating Horace in the image of a contemporary bien pensant.
Coulrophobia
Stott credits Dickens with watering the seeds in popular imagination of the scary clown—he’d even go so far as to say Dickens invented the scary clown—by creating a figure who is literally destroying himself to make his audiences laugh.
Great Resource ...
Religion Online is designed to assist teachers, scholars and general "seekers" who are interested in exploring religious issues. The aim is to develop an extensive library of resources, representing many different points of view, but all written from the perspective of sound scholarship. While the initial orientation has been to seek material written primarily from a Christian perspective, the ultimate aim is to broaden the scope to include material on all the world's major religions.At present there are more than 6.000 chapters, monographs, speeches and articles on line. Each year more than 1.7 million visitors download more than 7 million documents from this site, including requests from more than 400 colleges, universities and schools of theology in the United States, and another 200 throughout the world.
A thought for today …
It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.
— Guy de Maupassant, born on this date in 1850
Sunday, August 04, 2013
Sic transit Gloria mundifrederick …
…More on the Incredible Shrinking MSM | Via Meadia.
The rise of new publications like IBT illustrates the reality that the public still wants and needs news. Indeed, the global hunger for real news, useful filters and helpful analysis is growing. What isn’t growing is the desire to read the bloviating, self-indulgent prose of dozens of highly paid, self-important windbags who tweak the conventional wisdom week after week under the illusion that they are making some kind of contribution to public life. (Here at Via Meadia, none of our self-important windbags are highly paid.) The public appetite for theme and variation on the Davos party line is small, and the desire to pay hefty subscriptions for the privilege of reading elegantly phrased iterations of the elite consensus seems to have melted away.
Jesus as jihadist …
… Book review: ‘Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth’ by Reza Aslan - The Washington Post.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much new here other than Aslan’s slick writing and cinematic sensibilities. In a now-notoriousFox News interview that propelled the book toward the top of the bestseller lists, Lauren Green questioned whether a Muslim should be writing about Christianity’s founder. But the real problem is that Aslan, like thousands of “historical Jesus” experts before him, refuses to say “I don’t know” with anything near the frequency required for the task. He, too, purports to be an intrepid archaeologist for historical truth, excavating the “real” Jesus out of the “propagandistic legend” that has grown up around him. But he, too, remakes Jesus in his own image.
Messed up and talented …
… Warren Zevon: the man behind the demons | Music | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Would anybody be interested in an artist who wasn't messed up? Are there any such?
Would anybody be interested in an artist who wasn't messed up? Are there any such?
No More Paper ...
The Kindle has turned me off paper books
I'm a rare book dealer, but since getting an e-reader older reading media seem awkward and cumbersome
Tyranny (cont'd.) …
… Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | theguardian.com. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Of course, these people we're supposed to trust to protect us are also the people who gave Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning access to the information they won't give Congress access to.
Of course, these people we're supposed to trust to protect us are also the people who gave Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning access to the information they won't give Congress access to.
The Power of Words ...
But that was not the worst of the week for the language police. Seattle is considering banning the use of the term Brown Bag when referring to workers bringing food to work because it’s racially insensitive
A thought for today …
In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.
— Knut Hamsun, born on this date in 1859
Saturday, August 03, 2013
FYI …
…The Public-Private Surveillance Partnership - Bloomberg.
Interesting that this should come from Bloomberg, given that Michael Blomberg is such a reflexively intrusive twit.
Interesting that this should come from Bloomberg, given that Michael Blomberg is such a reflexively intrusive twit.
On Walker Percy and those ridiculous Apple ads
The thing about this Apple ad is: It suggests that buying an iPhone makes you the Most Interesting Man in the World, when the truth is it makes you Homer Simpson. You feel as if you have truly discriminating taste to select such a fine piece of technology but you’re just reacting automatically to this feeling, this urge to be saved, post-religion, by anything, anything at all.
He would know …
…Lincoln Hunter Web Log: Daniel Ellsberg on Edward Snowden.
This pretty much says it all in no uncertain terms: Obama fails again.
This pretty much says it all in no uncertain terms: Obama fails again.
Obama wants us to believe that, because he is "the end user of this kind (italics mine) of intelligence," they and we have nothing to fear.
Because it's good …
… How a Swath of 20-Somethings Have Tuned In to 1920s Pop | Vanity Fair. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If they only had brains …
… Seattle officials call for ban on 'potentially offensive' language | Fox News.
"Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo obtained by the station. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'"
I think the term he's looking for is "subjects".
A thought for today …
Is it really so important to be different?
— Walter Van Tilburg Clark, born on this date in 1909
Friday, August 02, 2013
The elusive real …
… BBC News - A Point Of View: Ghosts in the material world. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Temporary Angst ...
That such works as Monet’s famous Waterloo Bridge, London (1901) and Picasso’s Harlequin Head (1971) could never again be seen left many grief-stricken. If proved, the destruction would constitute, one curator insisted, “a crime against humanity”. But is loss always to be lamented? Or can the ephemerality of an object itself be cherished?
"Moses, you Bast**d" ...
I never have been able to get comfortable with the C-word. I can’t even summon the courage to type it. Yet I’m convinced that it is an appropriate – the appropriate – translation of Judges 5:30. After all these years the Bible still makes me uncomfortable and pushes me to the limit of my sensibilities. This is as it should be. In order for literature to sustain an audience over several millennia it must be more than chicken soup for the soul; it has to bend the reader just to the point of breakage and then no further.
Salons deliberate …
… Senators spar over definition of ‘journalist’ in seeking to protect them | McClatchy.
Feinstein suggested that the definition comprise only journalists who make salaries, saying it should be applied just to "real reporters."
Well, that would eliminate a lot of people, including many newspaper employees. These days everybody wants to be a pundit. Real reporting is hard work. Not that punditry isn't journalism of a sort.
What goes around …
… Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic' Finally Becomes So in Parody - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think the criticism of the song was a bit unfair. It always seemed to me that song was using the term (intentionally) in the clichéd way it had come to be used.
I think the criticism of the song was a bit unfair. It always seemed to me that song was using the term (intentionally) in the clichéd way it had come to be used.
A thought for today …
The most beautiful thing in the world, of course, is the world itself.
— Wallace Stevens, who died on this date in 1955
Thursday, August 01, 2013
Don't panic …
… The Latin Mass and the Franciscans of the Immaculate - Taylor Marshall. (Hat tip, Dave lull.)
Hmm …
… Instapundit — CNN REPORTS: Exclusive: Dozens of CIA operatives on the ground during Benghazi attack.
Sounds like they're covering up a screw-up.
Sounds like they're covering up a screw-up.
Giving back …
How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fourtune Into A Library Legacy : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My favorite library will always the one I grew up with, the Holmesburg Branch of the Philadelphia Library.
My favorite library will always the one I grew up with, the Holmesburg Branch of the Philadelphia Library.
Introspection DOES Slow Time ...
Zeno of Elea was a Greek philosopher who suggested that if you could slice time into small enough increments, the world would freeze in place. It turns out that he was right — at least, from a quantum mechanics perspective.
Wow...
...Plain Dealer Journalists Get Axed Over the Phone
Update: I am reminded of an incident. When I started out in journalism, it was with book reviews in a few American dailies. Frank was, of course, the first books editor to give me work. (Thanks, Frank!) Once I had a byline in an American paper, it became easy to find work at other outlets. I was soon writing for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, St Petersburg Times, and others.
Update: I am reminded of an incident. When I started out in journalism, it was with book reviews in a few American dailies. Frank was, of course, the first books editor to give me work. (Thanks, Frank!) Once I had a byline in an American paper, it became easy to find work at other outlets. I was soon writing for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, St Petersburg Times, and others.
However, one paper that I was unable to crack was the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The books editor of the paper, I remember distinctly, asked me to send her hard copies of my published reviews. When I explained to her that I was in India and it would be much faster if I could simply send attachments, she replied it was procedure. It was splendidly fatuous but I was starting out and wanted all the work I could get. I made a neat bundle of my reviews and packed them off to Cleveland, OH.
I waited. Fifteen days, a month, then two months. No word. I wrote her, to no avail. I kept writing, buoyed by the advice that another books editor had given me. Persistence, he had told me, always works with Americans. So I wrote to the Cleveland lady every week. Finally, she replied saying she was not interested.
Wow. Was that terse! I wondered if this was something unique to this newspaper since I had generally received favorable responses. Not everyone published me but they sure as hell did not ask me to get lost after making me send a big packet halfway across the world.
So, it is with some amusement that I read reports of the rather indiscreet sacking method employed by the Plain Dealer management.
Disconnecting head from heart …
… Pope Francis Should Seek Clarity on Moral Responsibility | Online Library of Law and Liberty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
By elevating feeling over thought, by making compassion the measure of all things, the Pope was able to evade the complexities of the situation, in effect indulging in one of the characteristic vices of our time, moral exhibitionism, which is the espousal of generous sentiment without the pain of having to think of the costs to other people of the implied (but unstated) morally-appropriate policy. This imprecision allowed him to evade the vexed question as to exactly how many of the suffering of Africa, and elsewhere, Europe was supposed to admit and subsidize (and by Europe I mean, of course, the European taxpayer, who might have problems of his own). I was reminded of a discussion in my French family in which one brother-in-law complained to another of the ungenerous attitude of the French state towards immigrants from the Third World. ‘Well,’ said the other, ‘you have room enough. Why don’t you take ten Malians?’ To this there was no reply except that it was a low blow: though to me it seemed a perfectly reasonable response.In this, he is definitely a Pope for our time.
Overdue …
… Benno Schmidt: Mitch Daniels's Gift to Academic Freedom - WSJ.com.
Politicians can't dictate course syllabi or reading lists in higher education. But nor should faculty be allowed to engage in indoctrination and professional irresponsibility without being held to account. And yet, over the past 50 years, that is essentially what has happened. The greatest threat to academic freedom today is not from outside the academy, but from within. Political correctness and "speech codes" that stifle debate are common on America's campuses. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.
A thought for today …
To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
— Herman Melville, born on this date in 1819
Believers and Atheists ...
In a truly mind-bending episode, Christ, hanging from the cross, quotes Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" The Psalm continues:
Why so far from my call for help,
from my cries of anguish?
My God, I call by day, but you do not answer;
by night, but I have no relief.
This passage is a strange thing for a Christian; it appears, as GK Chesterton put it, that God himself is abandoned by God. "Let the atheists themselves choose a god," Chesterton mused. "They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed himself for an instant to be an atheist."
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