A Momentary Taste of Being

A friend from work just walked in a gave me a wonderful gift.  So, now on my bulletin board, with St. John of the Cross, and a list of seventeen evidences of a lack of humility, and a calendar showing tropical island vistas is a photograph of William Faulkner's house in Oxford Mississippi--Roanoke. I am blessed to have such worktime friends who think of me and bring small tokens.  I am blessed also to be so delighted in such a gift.  This has really made my day!

It seems too often that in our serious consideration of poetry, we forget the foundations of poetry.  It is not often that one hears a modern poet tell us that we should be reading Keats and Shelley and Byron, much less poets of more antique vintage.  And that is a shame, because there are pleasure in poetry--not merely that more recent. And so, as a specific against the chauvinism of the new, I offer this excerpt from one of the great Romantics. (The "its" in the first line refers to youthful abandon.) from "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" William Wordsworth And all its aching joys are now no more And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts have followed; for such loss, I would believe abundant recompense. For I have leanred To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten...

After I completed my review of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior , I was offered a review copy of Click:The Magic of Instant Connections , a book about which I had some doubts and reservations because the subject matter wasn't of the same compelling interest (to me) as that of Sway . Nevertheless, I had enjoyed the first book so much, I thought I had nothing to lose and much to gain by taking up the second. And I'm glad that I did.  While the subject matter is not of the same caliber of interest as the first, I found myself gradually warming to the premise.  More than that, the authors indicated that it was their opinion that these magical connections did not have to be happenstance--that there were circumstances and practices that could help cultivate them.  Finally, the magic connections were not all about e-Harmony or e-Chemisty or e-I'm-Desperate-for-Any-Sort-of-Date; indeed, these were in the minority.  Most of the "clicks" described were t...

Essays and other short prose works by Thomas Pynchon Including a piece on the virtues of being a luddite.  I'll never qualify, or at least not easily.  I have little or no problem with technology, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is part of my problem, hence I might appreciate the virtues of the luddite life.

A book-length interview with David Foster Wallace. I've probably said it before, DFW is one of those authors I just don't get.  Massive works (even the essays seem to go on long beyond the exhaustion of the subject matter under investigation.  Perhaps his person is more engaging that his writing.

Don't Overstay Your Welcome (via Books Inq.)

Buechner in review at The Commonplace Blog Adding my own voice to Professor Myers, I cannot recommend Mr. Buechner's fiction highly enough (his theological work is another matter about which I have some reservations).  Godric, Brendan, and On the Road with the Archangel are all marvelous reading material, and Mr. Myers mentions several others that might be worth looking into.

Author of Home, Gilead, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson talking about faith and the new atheism

Yann Martel talks about getting bad reviews.

A wonderful exposition and discussion of Flannery O'Connor's story.

from Major Pettigrew's Last Stand Helen Simonson "I understand," said Grace. She looked at him and he read in her eyes a disappointment that he should have stooped to the dead relative excuse. Yet he was as entitled as the next man to use it. People did it all the time; it was understood that there was a defined window of availability beginning a decent few days after a funeral and continuing for no more than a couple of months. Of course, some people took dreadful advantage and a year later were still hauling around their dead relatives on their backs, showing them off to explain late tax payments and missed dentist appointments: something he would never do. "I will just have to do the best I can," said Grace and her face drooped, as if defeat were inevitable. "I was afraid I might let Daisy down again, but of course that is no excuse for me to trespass on your very great grief. Please forgive me." She put out her hand and touched him lightly on th...

As you may have noticed by now, I'm not particularly good at book reviews.  I recognize that about myself, because for me a book review would need to be nearly as long as the book itself to do the book any sort of justice.  So I excel at long chains of notes with commentary--perhaps not deep and moving commentary--but thoughts I had while reading the book.  Presently I'm in the throes of reading three really fine books-- Click by Ori Brafman and Ram Brafman (about which more later), How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer (he of the wonderful  Frontal Cortex Blog), and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson--a book I wouldn't have picked up on a bet, were it not for some kind words about it in a magazine book review.  And, oh, what I would have missed out on.  Often reading literary fiction and most literature, I find myself wondering if it is impossible to make literature out of the light side of the human experience--so much of it is so uniformly bl...

On YouTube--Poetry as it is meant to be read--aloud--Spoken Verse

From Open Culture a list of movies including several by Hitchcock, at least one by Goddard, at Open Culture.

From Books INQ.  Reviews of two books of poetry--Marie Ponsot and Don Paterson. Both seem more than promising.

A wonderful lecture on the building of the Colosseum noted by Open Culture

As a painter Marcel Duchamp was a reasonably good theorist.  I've always been a bit disappointed in looking at the much vaunted works-- Fountain, The Bride Laid Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, and most particularly Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 .  The reason for my disappointment in the latter was my sheer delight in what immediately follows.  In this case the "book" is better than the "movie" even though the book followed by nearly half a century. Nude Descending a Staircase X. J. Kennedy Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh, A gold of lemon, root and rind, She sifts in sunlight down the stairs With nothing on. Nor on her mind. We spy beneath the banister A constant thresh of thigh on thigh-- Her lips imprint the swinging air That parts to let her parts go by. One-woman waterfall, she wears Her slow descent like a long cape And pausing, on the final stair Collects her motions into shape. Every line is perfectly balanced and each contains some ...

via Books Inq. A review of Robert Alter's book on the influence of the KJV in American letters. It is nice to know that I concur with one of the great biblical scholars on the supremacy of this translation.  It is nice to know that the language is not just beautiful but reasonably accurate and straightforward (if Jacobean English can be said to be straight forward.)

From The Beliver via Bibliokelpt, this list of what some thought the best work of 2009 One of these would be on my list--Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall .  I haven't read many of them, but two others I would see removed:  Let the Great World Spin and Invisible both of which were not to my taste seeming much of a muchness and that muchness being ado about nothing.

By now Neil Postman is old news, even to those who first met him through the aegis of this blog.  However, to achieve closure, a review is in order, a sorting out of those stray thoughts and ideas that fleet-footed flee the mind at the first possible moment unless they are capture, more or less intact, through the medium of a review or some stray scribblings dedicated to them. Postman's book is one that everyone would profit from reading, even if one disagrees with the central thesis.  And we must be very careful to state what the central thesis of the work is because there are those who would have us extend that thesis to realms beyond what Mr. Postman intended in this small work.  It is possible that in other works he expanded upon the central thesis of this one; however for our purposes, the thesis of Amusing Ourselves to Death is that the television medium has irreversibly altered the nature of political discourse in America and in the world.  Several times Mr...