May 08, 2008
April 26, 2008
Can poetry ever cease to matter?
No. Poetry-not-set-to-music may become an abstruse art-form, and that would be too bad. But song lyrics are, after all, lyric poems. It's not that poetry is less popular than it used to be: it's that current academic students of poetry refuse to acknowledge currently popular poetic forms as part of their discipline.
March 19, 2008
February 03, 2008
January 04, 2008
December 29, 2007
December 13, 2007
Belly Rave update
"Belle Rêve" was in "Streetcar" years before it was in "Gladiator-at-Law." Live and learn.
October 26, 2007
September 19, 2007
September 06, 2007
August 10, 2007
August 08, 2007
July 30, 2007
May 20, 2007
Opinions, blogging, and Sturgeon's Law
Yes, most opinions are worthless, because the people expressing those opinions aren't experts on the topic at hand. But printing your opinions on dead trees is no guarantee of expertise, and there are genuine experts available on line. The problem, for the non-expert, is how to find them, and tell them apart from the cheap knock-offs.
February 24, 2007
December 07, 2006
December 05, 2006
More Portmatomes
Wouldn't you love to read "Gone with the Wind in the Willows" or "The Bell Jarhead"?
June 25, 2006
May 09, 2006
Apologies to Digby; more on Colbert
I was wrong to attribute misogyny to Digby. I never said, and don't believe, that Colbert was "uncivil." I loved his performance. Arguments are often more potent than insults.
May 07, 2006
Does integrity require the breaking of promises?
Jim Lindgren thinks that Ted Sorenson's refusal to claim credit for the authorship of Profiles in Courage reflects his lack of integrity. I would have thought the reverse.
Atrios and Digby on Cox on Colbert
Stephen Colbert points to some foibles of the press, and gets the cold shoulder. . Ana Marie Cox points to some foibles of Left Blogistan, and gets the same treatment.
December 11, 2005
December 10, 2005
Classics out of print
Hilzoy makes the first nomination for a book (1) in English (2) more famous than Raleigh's History of the World and (3) not currently in print: Hakluyt's Voyages. The Folio Society published a version, but seems to have let it go out of print, though it's available second-hand at reasonable prices. It's also available on-line, which isn't exactly "in print"...
Unwritten and lost books
Where Arthur Conan Doyle's tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra meets the Book of Jasher and Prometheus the Firebringer.
December 08, 2005
Puzzle
Walter Raleigh's History of the World.is out of print. Is that the most famous work not currently available, or is there something else?
November 15, 2005
Libertarianism and J.K. Rowling
A libertarian treatise written on a government grant by a welfare mother?
May 06, 2005
March 02, 2005
January 06, 2005
December 29, 2004
December 28, 2004
December 16, 2004
December 14, 2004
The translation problem
Yes, English has a word to translate the Greek poine ("money for blood spilt"): it's "weregeld."
December 12, 2004
December 10, 2004
Odysseus and Wile E. Coyote
Compared to Homer and Vergil, the Saturday morning cartoons are healthy-minded.
December 08, 2004
The wily Yglesias defends the wily Odysseus
Poisoning arrows probably deserved to be a war crime under the conditions of Bronze Age warfare. But whether it deserved to be or not, it was, by the conventions of the age. Breaking such conventions is socially noxious, even if they're mere conventions.
October 11, 2004
Philip Hart: The Swan and Leda
In connection with the controversy over heroism mentioned below, my friend Philip Hart sends a marvellous sonnet he wrote, and which I publish with his permission. The Swan and Leda The god swoops down upon her from behind. It was that or waddle to the attack. The bright wings batter her down on her back. He does what she's not...
January 16, 2004
Cheerfulness and fear
The ever-cheerful Virginia Postrel can't understand how someone could have read her book and been horrified at the world it portrays. No doubt that's why she's so cheerful. Postrel's account of "style" as a marketing phenomenon seems to me largely accurate, but I think that "style" in that sense is in some ways the opposite of quality and integrity. But...
January 12, 2004
A thought from Meng-tse,
whom the round-eyed barbarians
call "Mencius"
A benevolent man extends his benevolence from those he loves to those he does not love. A ruthless man extends his ruthlessness from those he hates to those he does not hate. [VII. B. 1] I somehow doubt Paul O'Neill has read much Meng-tse, but he will now have a chance to learn this particular lesson from that famous scholar...
January 09, 2004
Pattern Recogntion
William Gibson made a huge splash with Neuromancer, and hasn't had a second big hit. That's too bad. People have been missing some very fine books. I haven't re-read Neuromancer, which I liked a lot (the scene with the engineered riot is hilarious) but which I recall as having a Big Idea and some snappy writing but not especially well-drawn...
December 08, 2003
The world's saddest poem
Hiking along (see below) I was reflecting on the rant about Ares and Athena by Enoch Root in the Cryptonomicon, of which more later perhaps. It got me thinking about Greek religion, and when I thought of Aphrodite for some reason a poem from the Greek Anthology popped unbidden into my head and suddenly reduced me to tears. I nominate...
December 03, 2003
Stephenson and the Philosophick Mercury
I've now finished rereading Quicksilver, and am about halfway through my second pass at Cryptonomicon, which makes much more sense now that I have read the first third of the prequel. It's hard to believe that the next two volumes of "The Baroque Cycle" will live up the promise of Quicksilver, but then it was hard to believe that Quicksilver...
October 05, 2003
Quicksilver
I've finally started it, and it's just as great as I'd expected. Greater. A major document. It turns out to tie into Cryptonomicon, as the first part of a three-volume prequel. The theme of the whole seems to be secret messages. Now we find that encryption and decryption, the apparent theme of Cryptonomicon turns out to be a metaphor the...
November 26, 2002
Harry Potter Update
My defense of Harry Potter against Chris Suellentrop has attracted more high-quality commentary than, perhaps, it deserved: first from Kieran Healy and now from Ampersand. [UPDATE: Sisyphus Shrugged is also on the case. Sample: "If Harry actually existed, Fred Barnes would write nasty columns about him."] My original note expressed doubt about whether Suellentrop's Slate essay wasn't some sort...
