Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Social clmbing and its discontents …
… Creative Destruction in Fiction | Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Educating for Liberty. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
O’Hara writes about ambition and the things it makes us do. His business people drive hard bargains and his married couples obsess about how they might move themselves up in the social pecking order. Worse, his young people, observing this behavior in their parents, are so jaundiced that they don’t seem to harbor much ambition at all. In the posthumously published story “Family Evening” (1972), a daughter refers to her elders as “the B.D.’s” or “Better Deads.”
What the seasons hint at …
… Hope in Creation: The Worldview of Richard Wilbur - The Imaginative Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Wilbur’s reliance on nature, and thus God’s creation, does affirm his eternal hope and perspective. As Wilbur narrates the puzzle of why four great rock maples [are] seemingly aligned in “In Trackless Woods,” it becomes apparent that his or man’s conjecture is incapable of deciphering the issue.
Something to think on …
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
— H. L. Mencken, born on this date in 1880
Monday, September 11, 2017
Ladbroke's odds …
… on this year's Nobel Prize for Literature:
Haruki Murakami 5/1
Margaret Atwood 6/1
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Were it up to me it would be either Sebastian Barry or Sweden's own Torgny Lindgren.
Unintended consequences …
… How Poets Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Academy - The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… in many ways poets have traded reliance on an aristocratic elite for a technocratic one — the patron for the administrator.And those administrators are less cultured today than their predecessors. And the academy — at least its liberal arts branches — has become too much in thrall to hare-brained fashions.
Jive talk …
… Cab Calloway’s Hepster’s Dictionary: A Guide To The Language Of Jive (1938) . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Myths old and new …
… The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: exploring the myth of the original sinners. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The claim to be based in science is one of the defining features of modern myths. After the collapse of European imperial power, the pseudo-Darwinian mythology that propped up colonialism fell into disrepute. But it was soon followed by other myths claiming a basis in social science. A progressive mythology developed that viewed racism and imperialism as exclusively Western vices and the flaws and conflicts of post-colonial states entirely as consequences of colonial rule. These myths were channelled through theories of modernisation, which posited a future fundamentally different from anything that existed in the past.
Something to think on …
Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.
—D. H. Lawrence, born on this date in 1885
Sunday, September 10, 2017
The poetry sleuth …
… 'Plagiarists never do it once': meet the sleuth tracking down the poetry cheats | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tips to Dave Lull and G.E. Reutter.)
Hmm …
… Informal Inquiries: In the Name of the Father (2006).
Nations happen. They aren't invented. See various attempts at "nation-building."
'Washington as general and president was both father to his nation and {as plantation and slave owner} father to his slaves.(Emphasis added) So, as the author argues, 'the Washington mythology opened a space for the incorporation of slaves into this national family, with slaves, like white Americans, united in bonds of affection and gratitude {and consent?} to Washington ... {Thus, the} paternalist ideology of nationalism blended into and eventually authorized a paternalist {and acceptable} ideology of slaveholding as these texts promoted both nationalism and slavery in the name of the father.'I think the former Colonists already had some idea of themselves as a nation, and while the contradictions are evident, there's no reason to assume that any of what he is talking about was intentional.
Nations happen. They aren't invented. See various attempts at "nation-building."
Hmm …
… So, should we ban Catholics from public life? | Abortion | spiked.
Indeed, today we have the perverse situation where to criticise Islam’s repression of women is treated virtually as a speechcrime, as Islamophobia. So not only does the chattering class hold back on criticising Islam – it pressures everyone else to do likewise. How about we have a truly equal and secular form of freedom that allows all religion to be criticised, and all people to hold whatever religious beliefs they choose?Fine by me.
Well, that's nice …
… Literary landmark named for this Bethlehem poet — The Morning Call. (Hat tips to Dave Lull and G.E. Reutter.)
This is less so:
This is less so:
Overshadowed in the male-dominated canon during her lifetime, Doolittle has been rediscovered by academics in recent decades as they study her work through the lens of feminism.
Try studying it through the lens of poetry. I discovered her work one day at the Holmesburg Library when I was maybe 15. It was, as Thomas Mann said of his first encounter with work of Peter Altenberg, "love at first syllable." I still read her regularly. She is one of the great poets..
Trusting in God...
SO THIS GUY WAS warned about being in the path of a hurricane. HE SAID "That's okay God will save me." The winds and the rain started coming and a rescue worker came by, "Time to leave sir." HE SAID "That's okay God will save me." The water started rising and he had to go to the second floor of his house. His cell phone rang. "Get out of there," his mother said. HE SAID "That's okay God will save me." The water kept rising, and he had to climb out on his roof. A boat came by "LAST chance sir, please leave." HE SAID "That's okay God will save me." He died, went to heaven and asked GOD "Why didn't you save me?" GOD SAID "I sent a rescue worker, your mother and a boat. What else did you think I was going to do?"
Something to think on …
Religion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is its soliloquy.
— Franz Werfel, born on this date in 1890
Saturday, September 09, 2017
In case you wondered …
… Why Jack Kerouac Loathed The Hippy Generation He Inspired. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As embarrassing as it was for me to realize this, I respect his lack of hubris. He was a deeply religious, lifelong Republican, and he loathed the counterculture that arose in response to his writing. But he was also a broken and remorseful alcoholic undeserving of his role as a moralist, and he freely admitted it: “I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another ‘til I drop. This is the nigh
Visual stories
… A Writer Learns From Wyeth | The Woven Tale Press. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… it’s when we read what Wyeth said—to his wife, to Thomas Hoving (in Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography), to Meryman, to Edward Hopper, to anyone who could persuade Wyeth to step, for a moment, out of the shadows he preferred and into the concentrated light of reminisce and explanation—that we discover the painter who might have offered a master class on the asterisk arts of literature. The necessary unseens. The rites of passage. The principled purpose.
Something to think on …
Surely there comes a time when counting the cost and paying the price aren't things to think about any more. All that matters is value - the ultimate value of what one does.
— James Hilton, born on this date in 1900
Friday, September 08, 2017
A truly epic Virgil …
… The Continuing Enterprise of the Poem | Open Letters Monthly - an Arts and Literature Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Although his translations of Vergil’s Ecologues and Horace’s Odes have been widely praised, it is Ferry’s original poetry for which he has been more widely recognized. In 2012 he won the National Book Award for his collection of poems entitled Bewilderment. His discussion in the preface about his choice to use iambic pentameter for this translation of The Aeneid further underscores his talent as a poet who recognizes the importance of choosing an appropriate meter whether it be for an original piece of work or for a translation. Like generations of English translators of ancient epic that have come before him, Ferry agrees that this meter works best in the language in which he is working: “In my view, the forward-propulsive character of English speech favors iambic pentameter, in which iambic events naturally dominate, with anapestic events as naturally occurring.”
Lovely, but …
… The Country's Most Beautiful Mountaineering Route | Outside Online. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Lovely, but not my kind of terrain. I prefer the woods.
Lovely, but not my kind of terrain. I prefer the woods.
Hmm …
… Informal Inquiries: "All overgrown by cunning moss" by Emily Dickinson.
I also prefer the three-stanza version though the other stanzas provide an interesting gloss.
I also prefer the three-stanza version though the other stanzas provide an interesting gloss.
Something to think on …
The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.
— Thomas Szasz, who died on this date in 2012
Thursday, September 07, 2017
Bleak vision …
… Informal Inquiries: "London" by William Blake (1794).
I was hugely into Blake when I was in college. Later, I was thrilled by Kathleen Raine's William Blake. But as I have grown older, my interest in him has waned for some reason.
RIP …
… Maine author Elaine Ford dies of brain tumor at 78 - Portland Press Herald. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The spirit of the world …
… First Known When Lost: Two Linnets, A Dove, And A Lark.
"Could you have said the bluejay suddenly/Would swoop to earth?" (Wallace Stevens, "The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man.") This is how the World reveals itself to us: in an unending series of miraculous and beautiful commonplaces. (By the way, I never use the word "commonplace" in a pejorative sense.)
Something to think on …
If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments — we'd have the Ten Suggestions.
— Malcolm Bradbury, born on this date in 1932
Ho-hum …
… Amazon's 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime - Amazon Release Ultimate Reading List.
Some good books, even some great books. Some pretty lousy ones, too, especially among the more contemporary ones. But these sorts of things are mostly a waste of time.
Wednesday, September 06, 2017
Commentary …
… Maverick Philosopher: David Benatar, The Human Predicament, Introduction. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This seems well worth following.
This seems well worth following.
Sinners welcome …
… Poetry and Prayer | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The tension between form and feeling in Dickinson seems in retrospect essential to her New England Protestantism, for which nature was at once a sign of God’s determinations and a wild emblem of the devil’s temptations. Chandler’s poems, in contrast, suggest the complementarity of nature and grace, of faith and reason, proper to Catholicism.
Something to think on …
You cannot imagine at all how much you interest God; He is interested in you as if there were no one else on earth.
— Julien Green, born on this date in 1900
Hmm …
… The Inexplicably Enduring Appeal of Hilaire Belloc’s “Cautionary Tales” | The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The article seems to run counter to the headline. It very quickly makes plain their appeal, which has much in common with Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Also, Amazon certainly has enough titles of Belloc's books. I remember reading his religious poems in my Catholic grade school, and even remember seeing his obituary in the paper.
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
The hound of heaven on the prowl …
… Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer by Mary Karr. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Who knew?
… Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Readers have liked this, but some educated beyond their intelligence have objected.
Readers have liked this, but some educated beyond their intelligence have objected.
Something to think on …
Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
— Arthur Koestler, born on this date in 1905
Monday, September 04, 2017
Hmm …
… Literary testaments: The urge to delete all traces of failure | Sunday Guardian. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)
I can understand why an author would want unfinished work destroyed. I cannot undestand why anyone could wish that Max Brod had destroyed Kafka's work.
I can understand why an author would want unfinished work destroyed. I cannot undestand why anyone could wish that Max Brod had destroyed Kafka's work.
And the winner is …
… Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture | Hiett Prize in the HumanitiesDallas Institute of Humanities and Culture: THE HIETT PRIZE IN THE HUMANITIES.
Well, you know about those forks in the road …
… Informal Inquiries: Wise Blood: another fork in the road.
Well, no one will surprised to hear that I am a person of faith.
Robert Whiting
For every few novels I read, I like to return to my roots and make my way through a book focused on the early modern period in Europe. And having just finished The Blind Devotion of the People, Robert Whiting's insightful analysis of the Reformation in Devon and Cornwall, I can safely say: there's nothing quite like a good work of history.
Whiting argues that the state of Catholic practice in England was strong on the eve of reform: there were exceptions, of course, but the large part of England's population adhered to Catholic dogma, including to its perceived powers of spiritual intersession.
All of this changed, however, with the advent of the Henrician church. Whereas the large majority of the English in 1530 directed money in their wills toward prayers and masses, for instance, twenty years later, this practice had almost entirely ceased. Whiting writes often of the near total decline of financial "expenditure" funneled toward the "apparatus [of] traditional rites."
This was about more, therefore, than the dissolution of the monasteries and the attack on Catholic objects: what Whiting has uncovered in the Southwest is a collapse of the financial rhythms of early modern Englishmen. Monies once directed toward to the clergy and local parishes were now be conveyed elsewhere: to the poor, to the crown, to enterprise. This, Whiting argues, marked a profound moment: it was a time when knowledge emerged as a counterpoint to devotion.
But knowledge did not a Protestant make, and Whiting is clear that the decline of Catholicism did not yield the birth of Protestantism, nor the birth of a Protestant nation. In practice, he writes, "the Reformation was less a transition from one form of religious commitment to another than a descent from a relatively high level of devotion into conformism, inactivity, and even disinterest."
Whiting is careful not to overstate the case: because while some Englishmen may have been attracted by Protestant belief, the large majority were motivated by what Whiting labels "non-spiritual motivations." These included coercion by the state, xenophobia, financial opportunity, and increasingly "secular compulsions."
The Blind Devotion of the People is an exceptional work of history: concise, clearly written, and packed with evidence. It's the work of a historian at the height of his powers, cognizant of just how complex this period was. In the end, Whiting shows how easy it is to destroy, but how challenging it can be to build: by 1570, only 10% of the English population remained actively Catholic, but an equally small percentage could be considered meaningfully Protestant. The rest were stuck in the middle: passive and indifferent, he asserts.
To which I might add another condition: confused. Blind devotion -- one of the primary bequests of the medieval period -- proved a difficult phenomenon to overcome, even with the support of the early modern state.
Hmm …
… Informal Inquiries: 1957, desegregation, "mob rule," crimes, and mysteries.
Yet another reason why Eisenhower's stock among historians has steadily risen.
Good question …
… Imagination is a powerful tool: why is philosophy afraid of it? | Aeon Ideas. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Kant’s bifurcation hints at why philosophers treat the imagination with both despair and delight. Perhaps the kind of imagination we despise is totally different from its more useful cousin. But in accepting this subdivision, we give up on the possibility of seeing the imagination as a unified mental faculty – which is perhaps more how we experience it.I have come to think of imagination as the integrating faculty of intelligence.
Something to think on …
There is nothing beautiful or sweet or great in life that is not mysterious.
— François-René de Chateaubriand, born on this date in 1768
Sunday, September 03, 2017
RIP …
… John Ashbery, celebrated and challenging poet, dies at 90 - StarTribune.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
I've found that people who look at things as they are, and not as they wish them to be, are the ones who succeed.
— Sarah Orne Jewett, born on this date in 1849
Saturday, September 02, 2017
On the comeback trail …
… Neo-Latin Seizes its Day - The Marginalia Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For over a century a Protestant academic elite—filled with contempt for Catholicism—disdained study of post-classical Latin literature, precisely because such literature was predominantly Catholic. That disdain reinforced the colossal misperception that Europe hibernated through centuries of “The Dark Ages” until it abruptly and spectacularly awoke with the rediscovery of classical manuscripts by humanists. Overhyped books, like Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, perpetuate that stereotype by largely ignoring the literature and classical scholarship produced during Late Antiquity and the early medieval era.More about Stephen Greenblatt here: The case of Stephen Greenblatt.
In these uncertain times...
I don't know if you can tell but we are hiking along the top of a ridge with pretty much down on either side of the trail, which adds to the beauty surrounding us from below and above and around.
Danger surrounds you out here a little too because it is a harsher place, you could fall off the trail on either side as it gets steeper, and either side gets rockier. Animals too, the dogs got in a fight with a young male moose recently, they were playing but the moose wasn't, and they finally got that and ran away when the moose charged them, but they weren't freaked, and ran back to me, 100 yards away, laughing at their encounter, and the adrenaline rush.
They mostly fail at catching wildlife, the moose was the only time they encountered something up close since we got here, they usually try but fail to catch something, anything, but they are noisy because they wear bear bells on their collars, small brass Christmas bells to warn wildlife that they are coming. And if if we somehow come across something too dumb to hear or understand the bells, they don't have the reflexes or speed to catch anything anyway.
I have a bear bell too, on my pack where I also have bear spray, which is a big can of mace essentially, but like 5 times larger and 100 times more potent. I wear it in a kind of sling under my arm, so I can get to it quickly, you have about 2 seconds when a bear starts charging, and even though I have the dogs, they can only slow him down for about a half second...unless they take off which might happen too. But I think/hope they will be protective and give me that extra half second, even though I'd probably choke anyway, snagging the spray on something as I try to pull it from its sling or maybe I would simply stare at the bear dumbfounded, as a seven foot tall, eight hundred pound grizzly charges at me for invading her space.
I am more terrified of that than anything. Just the other day a trail closed to people, because an elk had died on the trail, and there was "feeding activity."
We have only seen one, as we drove up to a trail head, feeding in the fields on one side of the small road. He was there off and on for a couple of weeks, a young male, and we saw him feeding in the garden of a house along the narrow road too. We stopped once at the house, when we didn't see the bear but did see a person, and told him about the bear, and he was pretty much unfazed, saying something about yea he's back, and thanked us and we drove away.
His underreaction made me think that I may be overreacting a little on the bear front. Also, as is sometimes the case in life, the other day I bent over to pick one of the dogs up to put him in the back of the truck after our hike, and managed to dislodge the safety catch on the bear spray, and spray him and me, and my armpit. So we sneezed our faces off, and cried from the spray in our eyes, and my armpit hurt for the rest of the day. In other words, I only harmed myself with my preventative measure.
Besides, like the dogs with the moose, I do know the beneficial effects of meeting and controlling danger in nature, and in life. For me it has become as necessary as breathing, and sometimes is the only thing that allows me to learn to breathe, especially when I have to go to some city for a few days to deal with some matters, like a court hearing about discrimination against my people.
And I've doubled down on some of the more dangerous aspects at times, like when I go downhill mountain biking, which is a sport that requires about eight hundred dollars of protective gear:
But it is fun and cathartic, demanding precise focus and control, and in my uncertain times, and like the dogs, I have an atavistic need for the experience:
 |
| Still shot with data from my GoPro bike mounted camera |
Something to think on …
You don't create your mission in life — you detect it.
— Viktor Frankl, who died on this date in 1997
Friday, September 01, 2017
Pilgrimage …
… Writer's Seat | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Anyway, a year or two after our exchange I found myself out of work, footloose, and broke. I reasoned that White, an octogenarian widower living alone and in poor health, would appreciate a visit of unknown duration from a young stranger with lots of time on his hands and no visible means of support. As a courtesy I dropped my friend a line letting him know I was planning to come see him in Maine—although planning was a deceptive word. At the time I couldn’t plan a trip to the grocery store.This was years before email, and I had no idea the postal service could operate so quickly. Within four days an envelope was in my mailbox, with elegant pale blue lettering showing the return address in the upper left hand corner. “Dear Mr. Ferguson,” the letter read. “Thank you for your letter about the possibility of a visit.” After this uplifting sentence, the tone went brittle. He mentioned a couple of his stubborn ailments, including his failing eyesight. And then: “So here I am, one eye gone, half my wits gone, and you want to come and view the ruins. Figure it out. There’s one of me, at most, and there are ten thousand of you. Please don’t come. Sincerely, E. B. White.”
Blogging note …
I am finally able — somewhat — to get out and about. I have an appointment in town this afternoon. Blogging will resume sometime thereafter.
Lovely …
… A Formidable Writer, An Exceptional Man: Philip Roth on Richard Stern | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What did I prize in him? What do I most miss about him? His scrutinizing engrossment with every last vicissitude of existence, his raptness and his rapture, his lucidity, his being perpetually wide awake as if he were being stung by life, his childlike geniality, his gentle and not-so-gentle force, the swiftness of his perspicacity, his impulse to celebrate, his miniscule antipathies and his benevolent urges and his wide-ranging fellow feeling, his imaginative merging with other lives, the bonding of his vulnerability to his fortitude, a steely literary integrity—beyond everything, the way he was weighted down by love. Because the wellspring for his daemonic attentiveness was, in the widest sense, love.
Something to think on …
That is the mystery of grace: it never comes too late.
— François Mauriac, who died on this date in 1970
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