In a sense, this book reminds me of 52 Loaves by William Alexander ... another City person who moves to the country but carries their metro pace and compulsions with them. Here we have a person who is not designing the perfect garden or in search of the perfect bread recipe, but a laid off publisher who decides to learn Latin at age 58.
Besides the reprise of mid-Hudson mania, the book reminds me of me. And I guess that is why Hammergrael bought it for me for Christmas (even though I got the present in July, probably our latest seasonal gift exchange yet).
Oh yes, the book is Living with a Dead Language by Ann Patty (in case us older folk don't recognize the name, she published The Life of Pi).
Unlike Hamilton, there is not one single word underlined in this book despite the many times it made me laugh. But like Hamilton, this book is on its way to Houston, where my daughter-in-law, wife of a Latin teaching magister at a private prep school, is trying to master the dead language herself. (So much in common, my son dragged me with him -- he was too young to drive -- to learn Italian as my advanced age.)
Ms Patty audits Latin courses at Vassar (a bow to my visit to Po'keepsie earlier this summer) where the politically correct school no longer calls Latin and Greek "Classics" but GRST for Greek and Roman Studies." ARGH. She describes her follow undergrad students who sound just like the conglomerate of various sexual identities that predominated the last CAMWS conference I went to. She compares them to sci-fi aficionados.
I absolutely love that she calls an ex-husband her ablative absolute although her current husband sounds a bit too back to nature to me (he did nonetheless give her a fabulous present, a Thomas Cole like view of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains by selective pruning ....).
Patty eventually ends up at Bard and spends a summer in Rome, so her course of studies follows what I understand to be the "classical" sequence of learning the language. So okay, I admit it, as a winner of two national merit pins in Latin from high school, I skipped over the Latin and only read the translations. Once she gets into poetry, I wonder whose translation is the closest, as well as the most poetic. Circle back to Heaney's translations of Greek drama.
I'm sure D-I-L will love it; also sure son will think it drivel.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Politics Then and Now
Finished Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, all 738 pages and probably drained a pen dry with all my underlining. What possibly to quote from all the wonderful historical facts, superb writing, and thorough documentary of a great American.
This blog knows how frequently I revert to biographies when all else fails to appeal to me. My favorite ones were Robert Moses Power Broker and Caro's multi-volume biography of LBJ. Add Hamilton to the list.
Why oh why was American history not taught in grade school using Hamilton's accomplishments as the focal point? Who determined that generals winning battles and presidents were the only key figures? Are children too naive to understand the importance of banking, trade, a free press or the importance of being a chief adviser? Especially here in New York ... the book reads like a primer on local history, Schuyler Mansion, Schuylerville, the Battle of Saratoga and the importance of NYC in the late 1700s.
It also assures us all that State politics started off badly with governorship of George Clinton and a legislature whose members were all out for themselves since day one. And then of course, there is Aaron Burr. (I will "get extra credit" for reading this over the summer by capping off the season going to Cooperstown's Fenimore Art Museum to see a special exhibit of the Burr Hamilton letters.)
So, essentially, I picked Hamilton not only because I missed out on seeing Lin on Broadway, but because I wanted to get some perspective of USA elections vis a vis the current farce and to measure this life story against others and study why an author chooses biography as a medium. These goals will limit my choice of quotes.
On how to write (also an issue when having to review governmental documents prepared by subordinates) "...Hamilton churned out twenty-one straight essays in a two-month period. On two occasions, he published five essays in a single week and published six in one spectacular week when writing on taxation. Hamilton's mind always worked with preternatural speed ... His papers show that, Mozart-like, he could transpose complex thoughts onto paper with few revisions. At other times, he tinkered with the prose but generally did not alter the logical progression of his thoughts. He wrote with the speed of a beautifully organized mind ... it is important to note that virtually all of his important work was journalism, prompted by topical issues and written in the midst of controversy ... His eloquence seemed to require opposition to give it its full force. But his topical writing has endured because he plumbed timeless principles behind contemporary events." Would that newspapers today were so erudite and that candidates articulated governing theory instead of knee jerk appeal to daily crises.
And on to politics "Hamilton wanted to lead the electorate and provide expert opinion instead of consulting popular opinion. He took tough, uncompromising stands and gloried in abstruse ideas in a political culture that pined for greater simplicity. Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and a thinker, not as a leader of the average voter. He was simply too unashamedly brainy to appeal to the masses. Hamilton ... regularly violated what became the first commandment of American politics: thou shalt always be optimistic when addressing the electorate." Other founding fathers do not fare so well in Chernow's book; on the same page as these quotes come from, he describes Jefferson as "a virtuoso of the sunny phrase and hopeful themes that became staples of American politics." (HOPE ... everything old is new again.) And of JQ Adams saying Jefferson had been "pimping to the popular passions." BTY, Adams comes out as a political scaredy cat, running off to Massachusetts whenever any hot issue or controversy presented it self. He and Abigail seem to be spoiled blue bloods.
Really my book is so underlined that I am hard pressed to single out what I liked the best. The above two citations were easy only because I wrote the page numbers on the title page. This volume, along with the next blog book I will review, will be packed off tomorrow to head to Houston where the library reserve length for Hamilton was last at 17 weeks! This should be required reading. Thank God will remain on US currency.
This blog knows how frequently I revert to biographies when all else fails to appeal to me. My favorite ones were Robert Moses Power Broker and Caro's multi-volume biography of LBJ. Add Hamilton to the list.
Why oh why was American history not taught in grade school using Hamilton's accomplishments as the focal point? Who determined that generals winning battles and presidents were the only key figures? Are children too naive to understand the importance of banking, trade, a free press or the importance of being a chief adviser? Especially here in New York ... the book reads like a primer on local history, Schuyler Mansion, Schuylerville, the Battle of Saratoga and the importance of NYC in the late 1700s.
It also assures us all that State politics started off badly with governorship of George Clinton and a legislature whose members were all out for themselves since day one. And then of course, there is Aaron Burr. (I will "get extra credit" for reading this over the summer by capping off the season going to Cooperstown's Fenimore Art Museum to see a special exhibit of the Burr Hamilton letters.)
So, essentially, I picked Hamilton not only because I missed out on seeing Lin on Broadway, but because I wanted to get some perspective of USA elections vis a vis the current farce and to measure this life story against others and study why an author chooses biography as a medium. These goals will limit my choice of quotes.
On how to write (also an issue when having to review governmental documents prepared by subordinates) "...Hamilton churned out twenty-one straight essays in a two-month period. On two occasions, he published five essays in a single week and published six in one spectacular week when writing on taxation. Hamilton's mind always worked with preternatural speed ... His papers show that, Mozart-like, he could transpose complex thoughts onto paper with few revisions. At other times, he tinkered with the prose but generally did not alter the logical progression of his thoughts. He wrote with the speed of a beautifully organized mind ... it is important to note that virtually all of his important work was journalism, prompted by topical issues and written in the midst of controversy ... His eloquence seemed to require opposition to give it its full force. But his topical writing has endured because he plumbed timeless principles behind contemporary events." Would that newspapers today were so erudite and that candidates articulated governing theory instead of knee jerk appeal to daily crises.
And on to politics "Hamilton wanted to lead the electorate and provide expert opinion instead of consulting popular opinion. He took tough, uncompromising stands and gloried in abstruse ideas in a political culture that pined for greater simplicity. Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and a thinker, not as a leader of the average voter. He was simply too unashamedly brainy to appeal to the masses. Hamilton ... regularly violated what became the first commandment of American politics: thou shalt always be optimistic when addressing the electorate." Other founding fathers do not fare so well in Chernow's book; on the same page as these quotes come from, he describes Jefferson as "a virtuoso of the sunny phrase and hopeful themes that became staples of American politics." (HOPE ... everything old is new again.) And of JQ Adams saying Jefferson had been "pimping to the popular passions." BTY, Adams comes out as a political scaredy cat, running off to Massachusetts whenever any hot issue or controversy presented it self. He and Abigail seem to be spoiled blue bloods.
Really my book is so underlined that I am hard pressed to single out what I liked the best. The above two citations were easy only because I wrote the page numbers on the title page. This volume, along with the next blog book I will review, will be packed off tomorrow to head to Houston where the library reserve length for Hamilton was last at 17 weeks! This should be required reading. Thank God will remain on US currency.
Monday, July 25, 2016
Summer Reading
Well, I quit book club after how many years? How many awful books? And have dedicated myself to read books by the pound. Started with The Emperor of Maladies. Loved it. For anyone who has plowed through most of these postings, I do like reading about the history of scientific discoveries, primarily those related to the field of biology. Reading about all the brilliant, curious, never-give-up scientists and dedicated oncologists researching and treating cancers was inspiring and made me delve deeply into an assessment of whether I would have ever had the patience, diligence, almost compulsion to take up those kinds of careers. I marvel at their brilliance and as as importantly, I marvel at how well Siddhartha writes. People with a similar ability to simplify but yet intrigue young minds to science is what is needed in education today, not a brand commercial for STEM.
Towards the end of the book where Siddhartha gets into the cellular chemistry of the diseases I almost felt like Alice in Wonderland, displaced by how minute the triggers and remedies could be. Looking for a suitable analogy, I felt my mind could only wrap around 1,000 pieces of a jig saw puzzle. But shortly, I credited myself with zeroing in on the features of each of the 1,000 pieces ... their "ins and outs," their nuanced colors, any latent patterns in placing them across a vertical or horizontal cut. I still don't think I could ever be a biochemist though.
Of course you can't read a book like this disinterestedly if you are a cancer "survivor" or currently know people undergoing treatment. At least the science had reached an acceptable level of attack when I first had cancer in 2001. Reading about the discovery of tamoxifin and Taxol was reassuring; reading about the various nuances of leukemia grounded me a bit more in my friends symptoms, from the disease as well as the medications.
As a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, I guess I am late to reading such a good book. I planned on giving my paperback copy to one of my team whose mother was being operated on last week but she had bought a copy. And of course, when I mentioned it to my older son, he had not only read it but watched the PBS adaptation. (Is there anything he hasn't read?)
So on to my next hefty volume, Chernow's Alexander Hamilton. If I can't get Broadway tickets, I'll read the "libretto."
Towards the end of the book where Siddhartha gets into the cellular chemistry of the diseases I almost felt like Alice in Wonderland, displaced by how minute the triggers and remedies could be. Looking for a suitable analogy, I felt my mind could only wrap around 1,000 pieces of a jig saw puzzle. But shortly, I credited myself with zeroing in on the features of each of the 1,000 pieces ... their "ins and outs," their nuanced colors, any latent patterns in placing them across a vertical or horizontal cut. I still don't think I could ever be a biochemist though.
Of course you can't read a book like this disinterestedly if you are a cancer "survivor" or currently know people undergoing treatment. At least the science had reached an acceptable level of attack when I first had cancer in 2001. Reading about the discovery of tamoxifin and Taxol was reassuring; reading about the various nuances of leukemia grounded me a bit more in my friends symptoms, from the disease as well as the medications.
As a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, I guess I am late to reading such a good book. I planned on giving my paperback copy to one of my team whose mother was being operated on last week but she had bought a copy. And of course, when I mentioned it to my older son, he had not only read it but watched the PBS adaptation. (Is there anything he hasn't read?)
So on to my next hefty volume, Chernow's Alexander Hamilton. If I can't get Broadway tickets, I'll read the "libretto."
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Am I doomed to once a month posting?
Guess so, because I got three biographies from the library and had to renew them to avoid fines, although two will go back tomorrow: Backing Into Forward by Jules Feiffer and Chinaberry Sidewalks by Rodney Crowell. The third, I will eventually get to.
I expect the laugh continuously with the Feiffer, not. As I planned out what to write about it, I thought how appropriate he was to use car gears to describe his life. However, the book is in idle.
Once again, as with too many of the biographies I have selected recently, I am planted in another NYC Jewish neighborhood in the 40s and 50s. I get it, I get it. (And add to that, Bernie Sanders.) I loved Feiffer's cartoons in Playboy. (When I mentioned him to my husband, he said, who .... guess guys really only looked at the boobs.) I loved Feiffer even more as the illustrator of The Phantom Toolbooth. But the book, meh.
Contrast that with Chinaberry Sidewalks. No idea who Rodney Crowell was/is and he had me both laughing out loud and crying. I picked it up only because the flap said it was about growing up in Houston. It is a bit like the best parts of The Boy Kings of Texas, and like that book, has a few low points, especially his teenage years and years of figuring out girls and sex, and then Crowell like the boy kings, gets into 60s drug culture.
So I ponder ... what is an autobiography? How much of an un-analyzed diary? Shouldn't the author comment on his experience with some hindsight and growth? How much is too much information or does the reader have to be introduced to the sins of the author, when no lessons or growth are recorded? Is a life well-lived only the one that gives that person a chance to write about it?
All things considered, I still prefer autobiographies to biographies. While the latter are more interpretative and assessing, they lack the "in my brain this is what I thought we were all doing," that a memoir provides. I want to change the genre. I want to be a biographer of my life, trying to reassess what I did then by what I know now.
I expect the laugh continuously with the Feiffer, not. As I planned out what to write about it, I thought how appropriate he was to use car gears to describe his life. However, the book is in idle.
Once again, as with too many of the biographies I have selected recently, I am planted in another NYC Jewish neighborhood in the 40s and 50s. I get it, I get it. (And add to that, Bernie Sanders.) I loved Feiffer's cartoons in Playboy. (When I mentioned him to my husband, he said, who .... guess guys really only looked at the boobs.) I loved Feiffer even more as the illustrator of The Phantom Toolbooth. But the book, meh.
Contrast that with Chinaberry Sidewalks. No idea who Rodney Crowell was/is and he had me both laughing out loud and crying. I picked it up only because the flap said it was about growing up in Houston. It is a bit like the best parts of The Boy Kings of Texas, and like that book, has a few low points, especially his teenage years and years of figuring out girls and sex, and then Crowell like the boy kings, gets into 60s drug culture.
So I ponder ... what is an autobiography? How much of an un-analyzed diary? Shouldn't the author comment on his experience with some hindsight and growth? How much is too much information or does the reader have to be introduced to the sins of the author, when no lessons or growth are recorded? Is a life well-lived only the one that gives that person a chance to write about it?
All things considered, I still prefer autobiographies to biographies. While the latter are more interpretative and assessing, they lack the "in my brain this is what I thought we were all doing," that a memoir provides. I want to change the genre. I want to be a biographer of my life, trying to reassess what I did then by what I know now.
Saturday, May 21, 2016
More Tana French
Sometimes, it is easy to revert to the pre-teen I was decades ago when I sat at the dining room table, occasionally looking outside to see what was never going on in the back yard, and devoured Nancy Drew books. I tried to read everything else that Tana French has written over the past few weeks. What I like about her approach to murder mysteries are (1) they're set in and around Dublin and she gets in idiomatic speech right; (2) she weaves in cultural family imprinting, highly Catholic and clannish; (3) all of her lead inspectors have almost fatal flaws ... she does not make them infallible superheroes of truth and justice and the Irish way; and (4) her stories interweave Ireland's economic highs and lows as factors and influences in the personalities, outlooks and motives of all her characters.
So I plodded on through books over 400 pages each: Broken Harbor, Faithful Place, and The Likeness. And then came to a screeching halt with The Secret Place. And what is so off-putting about this one? It's the girls. Set in St. Kilda's school, the Garda is going back to a year old case, the death of a teenage boy from a neighboring school found on Kilda's campus. The case reopens when the daughter of the investigator in Faithful Place reports that an unknown classmate knows more about the crime. I just tried to find the quote where Tana has the ranking investigator characterize the female students because she wrote exactly how the story struck me: a dozen or so catty 15 or 16 year olds, only marginally different from each other, in such minor ways that the reader does not care. As a result of this blob of girls, no person emerges as a focal point. It is like reading one of those socially correct books that junior high teachers think teenagers need to read. Well, adults don't. Being set in a school does not help to delineate a crystal-clear place and time like the decaying yuppie wanna be neighbor along the coast in Broken Harbor, or the Southie style old neighborhood in Faithful Place, or the forced fixer upper in The Likeness. All of Tana's award-winning fortes of a great author have been abandoned in this effort. Hope she returns to her old ways.
The rains will keep me out of my garden and impel me to the library as I return unfinished The Secret Place and seek out more challenging things to read.
So I plodded on through books over 400 pages each: Broken Harbor, Faithful Place, and The Likeness. And then came to a screeching halt with The Secret Place. And what is so off-putting about this one? It's the girls. Set in St. Kilda's school, the Garda is going back to a year old case, the death of a teenage boy from a neighboring school found on Kilda's campus. The case reopens when the daughter of the investigator in Faithful Place reports that an unknown classmate knows more about the crime. I just tried to find the quote where Tana has the ranking investigator characterize the female students because she wrote exactly how the story struck me: a dozen or so catty 15 or 16 year olds, only marginally different from each other, in such minor ways that the reader does not care. As a result of this blob of girls, no person emerges as a focal point. It is like reading one of those socially correct books that junior high teachers think teenagers need to read. Well, adults don't. Being set in a school does not help to delineate a crystal-clear place and time like the decaying yuppie wanna be neighbor along the coast in Broken Harbor, or the Southie style old neighborhood in Faithful Place, or the forced fixer upper in The Likeness. All of Tana's award-winning fortes of a great author have been abandoned in this effort. Hope she returns to her old ways.
The rains will keep me out of my garden and impel me to the library as I return unfinished The Secret Place and seek out more challenging things to read.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
In the Woods by Tana French
Doubling down on my plans to stick to award winners: here is In the Woods, Tana French's 2007 mystery debut that won the Edgar. This was a paperback that my daughter-in-law left here in July and I let it sit on my bedside table, thinking it was going to be some rehash of the Broadway play Into the Woods. So when the weather was bad and I was too fagged out to even make it to the library on a Saturday, I picked it up.
And it was difficult to put it down, even given other pressing deadlines like tax filings. 429 pages long ... how many other mystery writers have that much of plot twists to master. One villain did emerge clearly after page 300 or so, but my then I was so caught up in the detective team, their personal prior lives, and how that past biased their investigations.
And did I mention it is set outside Dublin? Just enough turns of phrase and idioms to make you know it is Irish but enough contemporary world issues that it still came off as current and timeless. (See I am still thinking like Heaney, having finished that short shrift blog in the last half hour.)
So I am analyzing the plot for its poetry in taking the intensely personal and making it resonate universally. Here is the murder of a child being investigated by a man who assumed another name and identity after his two best friends disappeared in the same "wood." As I am beset by having my staff and collaborators sign conflict of interest forms before the analyze information or negotiate with organizations, I question whether the real intent is to swear one won't profit from their assignments when it is impossible not to be influenced by what you know, the background and experience you bring to your desk, the very talents and past I pay highly for.
While investigating political corruption and suspected child abuse, French depicts another poignant subplot, paralleling the relationship between Rob (the surviving child of the 1984 crime), his partner Cassie and the newbie in the detective room, Sam, and that blissful childhood of Rob, with Jaime and Peter. Those three children at 12 were living an idyll, children on the cusp of boarding school; the three policemen have a similar care free equality in looking into the crime. Yet Rob cannot see the investigation leading to a parallel breakup of camaraderie. Rob's past is recreated in his withdrawal and trauma suppressed in the new investigation. Cassie can't successfully express her own earlier sufferings and studies to inform and convince the rest of the team.
The story makes cops human, well intended, yet still capable of well intentioned oversights. This is a mystery I will leave with my retired friend and book club founder as soon as possible, mystery junkie like myself. I will immediately go on the Net to see if the library has French's other books.
And it was difficult to put it down, even given other pressing deadlines like tax filings. 429 pages long ... how many other mystery writers have that much of plot twists to master. One villain did emerge clearly after page 300 or so, but my then I was so caught up in the detective team, their personal prior lives, and how that past biased their investigations.
And did I mention it is set outside Dublin? Just enough turns of phrase and idioms to make you know it is Irish but enough contemporary world issues that it still came off as current and timeless. (See I am still thinking like Heaney, having finished that short shrift blog in the last half hour.)
So I am analyzing the plot for its poetry in taking the intensely personal and making it resonate universally. Here is the murder of a child being investigated by a man who assumed another name and identity after his two best friends disappeared in the same "wood." As I am beset by having my staff and collaborators sign conflict of interest forms before the analyze information or negotiate with organizations, I question whether the real intent is to swear one won't profit from their assignments when it is impossible not to be influenced by what you know, the background and experience you bring to your desk, the very talents and past I pay highly for.
While investigating political corruption and suspected child abuse, French depicts another poignant subplot, paralleling the relationship between Rob (the surviving child of the 1984 crime), his partner Cassie and the newbie in the detective room, Sam, and that blissful childhood of Rob, with Jaime and Peter. Those three children at 12 were living an idyll, children on the cusp of boarding school; the three policemen have a similar care free equality in looking into the crime. Yet Rob cannot see the investigation leading to a parallel breakup of camaraderie. Rob's past is recreated in his withdrawal and trauma suppressed in the new investigation. Cassie can't successfully express her own earlier sufferings and studies to inform and convince the rest of the team.
The story makes cops human, well intended, yet still capable of well intentioned oversights. This is a mystery I will leave with my retired friend and book club founder as soon as possible, mystery junkie like myself. I will immediately go on the Net to see if the library has French's other books.
The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney
Well, more than I month since I wrote, but have done some reading, not enough but all I have the energy to do after challenging days with the new bureau.
So here is the best book I've read all year, maybe longer. Finishing up my delving into Heaney's works, I tackled his Literature Nobel Prize, a series of ten lectures at Oxford, The Redress of Poetry. Wow. Maybe the rest of my year should be devoted to prize winning books.
Flat out, Heaney composes as beautifully in prose as poetry. He makes me think about how much I miss reading for structure, voice, and intent instead of plot. He makes me break out old high school literary magazines when we were challenged to tackle a particular meter, style, voice or some little used challenging device and like eager Catholic teenagers in the mid '60s, we did. I can only quote verbatim and at length because these sections are not only thought provoking but exquisite.
"... Plato's world of ideal forms also provides the court of appeal through which poetic imagination seeks to redress whatever is wrong or exacerbating in the prevailing conditions .. whereas poets are typically more concerned to conjure with their own and their readers' sense of what is possilbe or desirable, or indeed imaginable ... It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality ... This redresssing effect of poetry comes from its being a glimpsed alternative, a revelation of potential ... denied or threatened by circumstances."
"...where the co-ordinates of the imagined thing correspond to and allow us to contemplate the complex burden of our own experience..."
"... reminded of a remark once by an Irish diplomat with regard to the wording of a certain document, "This ... is a minor point of major importance." In a similar way, the successful outcome of any work of art depends upon the seemingly effortlessness and surefingeredness with which such minor points are both established and despatched."
Some of Heaney's lectures focus on one or more poets, Marlowe, Wilde, Hopkins, but he always elevates his interpretation of them into something like this when he writes about his early love to Dylan Thomas: "...Thomas had gradually come to represent a longed-for prelapsarian wholeness, a state of the art where the song of the autistic and the acostic were extenive and coterminous, where the song of the self was effortlessly choral and its scale was a perfect measure and match for the world it sang it."
Heaney does quote entire poems or whole sections to make his points on how readily a poet creates redress. His lecture that I read at the same time I was reading The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a translation of pyramid hieroglyphics,a chapter entitled Joy or Night about man's understanding of life and death, included all of Yeats' The Man and the Echo, that drew a marginal note of WOW. I never heard of much less read Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court, written in 1780 and still echoed loudly in the demeanor of the Irish women I encountered beyond the pale 200 years later.
I am passing this book on to my most literate book club members and then leaving on the shelves within easy reach to reread almost like seasonal psalms.
So here is the best book I've read all year, maybe longer. Finishing up my delving into Heaney's works, I tackled his Literature Nobel Prize, a series of ten lectures at Oxford, The Redress of Poetry. Wow. Maybe the rest of my year should be devoted to prize winning books.
Flat out, Heaney composes as beautifully in prose as poetry. He makes me think about how much I miss reading for structure, voice, and intent instead of plot. He makes me break out old high school literary magazines when we were challenged to tackle a particular meter, style, voice or some little used challenging device and like eager Catholic teenagers in the mid '60s, we did. I can only quote verbatim and at length because these sections are not only thought provoking but exquisite.
"... Plato's world of ideal forms also provides the court of appeal through which poetic imagination seeks to redress whatever is wrong or exacerbating in the prevailing conditions .. whereas poets are typically more concerned to conjure with their own and their readers' sense of what is possilbe or desirable, or indeed imaginable ... It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality ... This redresssing effect of poetry comes from its being a glimpsed alternative, a revelation of potential ... denied or threatened by circumstances."
"...where the co-ordinates of the imagined thing correspond to and allow us to contemplate the complex burden of our own experience..."
"... reminded of a remark once by an Irish diplomat with regard to the wording of a certain document, "This ... is a minor point of major importance." In a similar way, the successful outcome of any work of art depends upon the seemingly effortlessness and surefingeredness with which such minor points are both established and despatched."
Some of Heaney's lectures focus on one or more poets, Marlowe, Wilde, Hopkins, but he always elevates his interpretation of them into something like this when he writes about his early love to Dylan Thomas: "...Thomas had gradually come to represent a longed-for prelapsarian wholeness, a state of the art where the song of the autistic and the acostic were extenive and coterminous, where the song of the self was effortlessly choral and its scale was a perfect measure and match for the world it sang it."
Heaney does quote entire poems or whole sections to make his points on how readily a poet creates redress. His lecture that I read at the same time I was reading The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a translation of pyramid hieroglyphics,a chapter entitled Joy or Night about man's understanding of life and death, included all of Yeats' The Man and the Echo, that drew a marginal note of WOW. I never heard of much less read Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court, written in 1780 and still echoed loudly in the demeanor of the Irish women I encountered beyond the pale 200 years later.
I am passing this book on to my most literate book club members and then leaving on the shelves within easy reach to reread almost like seasonal psalms.
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Don't Count this One: Utopia Parkway the Life and Work of Joseph Cornell
The is a review of a book that instead of not being able to put down is a book that I must admit I cannot bring myself to pick up. It is already several weeks overdue at the library so I feel I must write something and bring the damn thing back and pay the fine tomorrow.
Now I do not fancy myself to be an art critic and my limited undergraduate electives in American Art History (and my subsequent not accepting my offer for a graduate program at U Delaware/Winterthur) certainly does not qualify me as understanding any American artist after 1900. I never heard of Joseph Cornell and took out the book primarily because of my silly six degrees of separation meandering when I saw it was Utopia Parkway (heavens prevail I actually never have to go to Queens).
So what did Joseph Cornell do? He made boxes of trinkets with some surreal or esoteric theme, like a tribute to female movie stars or ballerinas, chock block full of pieces of tutus and sequins and old playbills. Apparently back in the days of Dali and Duchamp, he was regarded as a valid if somewhat lesser star, NYC gallery shows and all that. But mostly in the smaller, back rooms where is boxes where shown almost as trinkets and appropriate holiday gifts.
Cornell was an underemployed adult, living in Queens with his mother, scavenging remnants and old books to make his three D collages in the basement. His work comes across as a miniaturist, a collector and because the author Deborah Solomon writes what appears to be the seminal biography of a little remembered artist, I made me question the merit of my own hobbies: why do I obsess in perfect rooms for my multitude of doll houses, especially when I am the only female within miles of our family members? Why did I spend years needle pointing both sides of pillows? I know I am a crafter and do not intend to display my efforts (even though Monday I am bringing the only needlepoint I made ever to win a first place to hang in the new office space) (hey, office art is pretty awful anyway and I have not budget for amenities).
But to validate as higher are a medium that never moved beyond a niche genre in an almost 400 page book with another 25 pages of bibliographic notes was too much of a time investment for little return. I made a valiant effort to get to page 178. Why does the library keep calling me for its return ... who else could possible have put it on hold?
I have to juxtapose Utopia Parkway against Interlock because I cannot expand my mental concept of art to include highly personal trinket boxes and political corruption flow charts. Call me a bore, call me someone who does not get modern art. I don't. I just had a flashback to Hammagrael and I going to the Skidmore Tang museum this summer to look at 1980s hard edge acrylics. Now, I admit I took a class in hard edge acrylics and anyone with a roll of blue painters' tape can try it out themselves. But these newer medium do not inspire, do not reveal lofty human questions.
Sorry, readers. I will search for another "C."
Now I do not fancy myself to be an art critic and my limited undergraduate electives in American Art History (and my subsequent not accepting my offer for a graduate program at U Delaware/Winterthur) certainly does not qualify me as understanding any American artist after 1900. I never heard of Joseph Cornell and took out the book primarily because of my silly six degrees of separation meandering when I saw it was Utopia Parkway (heavens prevail I actually never have to go to Queens).
So what did Joseph Cornell do? He made boxes of trinkets with some surreal or esoteric theme, like a tribute to female movie stars or ballerinas, chock block full of pieces of tutus and sequins and old playbills. Apparently back in the days of Dali and Duchamp, he was regarded as a valid if somewhat lesser star, NYC gallery shows and all that. But mostly in the smaller, back rooms where is boxes where shown almost as trinkets and appropriate holiday gifts.
Cornell was an underemployed adult, living in Queens with his mother, scavenging remnants and old books to make his three D collages in the basement. His work comes across as a miniaturist, a collector and because the author Deborah Solomon writes what appears to be the seminal biography of a little remembered artist, I made me question the merit of my own hobbies: why do I obsess in perfect rooms for my multitude of doll houses, especially when I am the only female within miles of our family members? Why did I spend years needle pointing both sides of pillows? I know I am a crafter and do not intend to display my efforts (even though Monday I am bringing the only needlepoint I made ever to win a first place to hang in the new office space) (hey, office art is pretty awful anyway and I have not budget for amenities).
But to validate as higher are a medium that never moved beyond a niche genre in an almost 400 page book with another 25 pages of bibliographic notes was too much of a time investment for little return. I made a valiant effort to get to page 178. Why does the library keep calling me for its return ... who else could possible have put it on hold?
I have to juxtapose Utopia Parkway against Interlock because I cannot expand my mental concept of art to include highly personal trinket boxes and political corruption flow charts. Call me a bore, call me someone who does not get modern art. I don't. I just had a flashback to Hammagrael and I going to the Skidmore Tang museum this summer to look at 1980s hard edge acrylics. Now, I admit I took a class in hard edge acrylics and anyone with a roll of blue painters' tape can try it out themselves. But these newer medium do not inspire, do not reveal lofty human questions.
Sorry, readers. I will search for another "C."
Sunday, February 21, 2016
And Yet by Christopher Hitchens
Talking with Hammagrael the other day, when we were comparing what we are reading, and I mentioned Hitchens' essays. "That atheist!" was the retort. How was I to know ... I don't remember ever reading anything which probably says a lot about my not regularly reading Vanity Fair, Slate and the Atlantic. I guess most honorable blog member remembers his god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."
So picking up Hitchens (was he hitch-hiking) seems to run contrary to my last blog that said I was pursuing the need to write poetry with the human need to discover the divine. But thankfully, there is little religion baiting in this collection of essays, other than a rant against commercialized months long Christmas. But then again, maybe if I had read the back flap of awards he received, to wit, the Lennon-Ono Grant for Peace (oddly post-mortum) and his teaching at the New School and Berkeley, I might have returned the book unread to the library.
So there are essays herein that are dated, that opine on political events that still fail to pique my curiosity, but there are enough fantastic ones that I repeatedly passed it on to whichever family member was sitting across the table from me as I laughed out loud or commented on a right-on interpretation of something on subsequent history.
But first for the laughs: the book includes three personal essays On the Limits of Self Improvement. Part I Of Vice and Men which begins with his self assessment of his physical features at 59. I will quote the pieces and parts that cumulatively had me laughing out loud:
"...as glimpsed in the shaving mirror ... only a respectable minimum of secondary and tertiary chins ...the fabled blue eyes and long, curled eyelashes ... somewhat obscured by the ravages of rosacea ... which ... lend a flaky aspect to the picture ... and at other times give the regrettable impression of a visage that is actually crumbling to powder like a dandruffed scalp ...The fanglike teeth are what is sometimes called 'British:' ... unevenly spaced ... an alarming shade of yellow and brown, attributable perhaps to strong coffee as well as to nicotine, Pinot Noir, and other potations ... a thickly furred chest, that together with a layer of flab, allows the subject to face winter conditions with an almost ursine insouciance ... the upper part of this chest, however, has slid deplorably down to the mezzanine floor."
Sounding almost like I wanted to find in Dorothy Parker, Hitchens conitnues "Smoking is a vice, I will admit, but one has to have a hobby ... There now exists a whole micro-economy dedicated to the proposition that a makeover is feasible, or in other words to disprove Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that there are no second acts in American lives." Immediately, Hitchens starts to describe his adventures at spas: "... The trouble with bad habits is that they are mutually reinforcing. And just as a bank won't lend you money unless you are too rich to need it, exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside baggy garment. In my case, most of my bad habits are connected with the only way I know how to make a living. In order to keep reading and writing, I need the junk energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply." You see where this is not going. Yoga, smoking cessation programs, Brazilian wax treatments, facials and saunas and excuses galore. "I also take the view that it's a mistake to try to look younger than one is, and that the face in particular ought to be a register of a properly lived life. I don't want to look as if I have been piloting the Concorde without a windshield ..."
On to Part II - Vice and Versa, Hitchens begins ".... My keystone addiction is to cigarettes, without which cocktails and caffeine (and food) are meaningless." But this essay avoids smoking cessation (it will take many more quips and pages to reach that decision) and details his torture of getting dental veneers and depilation. Part III subtitled Mission Accomplished where he finally accedes that "... all cosmetic questions had become eclipsed by the need to survive in the very first place." Obviously Part III has taken on a much less flippant tone.
Before I hit page 169 however,and a few times thereafter, there were other essays I liked tremendously "Bring on the Mud" from 2004 about nasty politics followed by a 2005 Vanity Fair article about suspicious election results in Ohio which was timely given the coin flipping in Iowa; another article from The Atlantic in 2006, Blood for No Oil, which has me redrawing my six degrees of separation with The Devil's Chessboard and Interlock; a 2008 essay that should be republished monthly titled "The Case against Hillary Clinton;" another Atlantic essay from 2009 'Barack Obama: Cool Cat" which after his veiled reprisal against Chuckie Chuckie Chuckie by cutting New York's anti-terrorism funds and his appalling bad breeding in not attending Scalia's funeral makes the top feline qualities that emerge as those related to clawing, scratching, biting and otherwise spreading toxo coupled with the sphinxlike qualities of absolute reign, aloofness and caste superiority.
I hope dear Hammagrael that this review might spur you to thumb through And Yet. I hope to track down his National Book Critics awarded autobiography Hitch-22.
So picking up Hitchens (was he hitch-hiking) seems to run contrary to my last blog that said I was pursuing the need to write poetry with the human need to discover the divine. But thankfully, there is little religion baiting in this collection of essays, other than a rant against commercialized months long Christmas. But then again, maybe if I had read the back flap of awards he received, to wit, the Lennon-Ono Grant for Peace (oddly post-mortum) and his teaching at the New School and Berkeley, I might have returned the book unread to the library.
So there are essays herein that are dated, that opine on political events that still fail to pique my curiosity, but there are enough fantastic ones that I repeatedly passed it on to whichever family member was sitting across the table from me as I laughed out loud or commented on a right-on interpretation of something on subsequent history.
But first for the laughs: the book includes three personal essays On the Limits of Self Improvement. Part I Of Vice and Men which begins with his self assessment of his physical features at 59. I will quote the pieces and parts that cumulatively had me laughing out loud:
"...as glimpsed in the shaving mirror ... only a respectable minimum of secondary and tertiary chins ...the fabled blue eyes and long, curled eyelashes ... somewhat obscured by the ravages of rosacea ... which ... lend a flaky aspect to the picture ... and at other times give the regrettable impression of a visage that is actually crumbling to powder like a dandruffed scalp ...The fanglike teeth are what is sometimes called 'British:' ... unevenly spaced ... an alarming shade of yellow and brown, attributable perhaps to strong coffee as well as to nicotine, Pinot Noir, and other potations ... a thickly furred chest, that together with a layer of flab, allows the subject to face winter conditions with an almost ursine insouciance ... the upper part of this chest, however, has slid deplorably down to the mezzanine floor."
Sounding almost like I wanted to find in Dorothy Parker, Hitchens conitnues "Smoking is a vice, I will admit, but one has to have a hobby ... There now exists a whole micro-economy dedicated to the proposition that a makeover is feasible, or in other words to disprove Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that there are no second acts in American lives." Immediately, Hitchens starts to describe his adventures at spas: "... The trouble with bad habits is that they are mutually reinforcing. And just as a bank won't lend you money unless you are too rich to need it, exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside baggy garment. In my case, most of my bad habits are connected with the only way I know how to make a living. In order to keep reading and writing, I need the junk energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply." You see where this is not going. Yoga, smoking cessation programs, Brazilian wax treatments, facials and saunas and excuses galore. "I also take the view that it's a mistake to try to look younger than one is, and that the face in particular ought to be a register of a properly lived life. I don't want to look as if I have been piloting the Concorde without a windshield ..."
On to Part II - Vice and Versa, Hitchens begins ".... My keystone addiction is to cigarettes, without which cocktails and caffeine (and food) are meaningless." But this essay avoids smoking cessation (it will take many more quips and pages to reach that decision) and details his torture of getting dental veneers and depilation. Part III subtitled Mission Accomplished where he finally accedes that "... all cosmetic questions had become eclipsed by the need to survive in the very first place." Obviously Part III has taken on a much less flippant tone.
Before I hit page 169 however,and a few times thereafter, there were other essays I liked tremendously "Bring on the Mud" from 2004 about nasty politics followed by a 2005 Vanity Fair article about suspicious election results in Ohio which was timely given the coin flipping in Iowa; another article from The Atlantic in 2006, Blood for No Oil, which has me redrawing my six degrees of separation with The Devil's Chessboard and Interlock; a 2008 essay that should be republished monthly titled "The Case against Hillary Clinton;" another Atlantic essay from 2009 'Barack Obama: Cool Cat" which after his veiled reprisal against Chuckie Chuckie Chuckie by cutting New York's anti-terrorism funds and his appalling bad breeding in not attending Scalia's funeral makes the top feline qualities that emerge as those related to clawing, scratching, biting and otherwise spreading toxo coupled with the sphinxlike qualities of absolute reign, aloofness and caste superiority.
I hope dear Hammagrael that this review might spur you to thumb through And Yet. I hope to track down his National Book Critics awarded autobiography Hitch-22.
The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney
After reading his translation of Antigone for the Abbey Theater, I found that the only other Greek tragedy Seamus translated was Sophocles' Philoctetes. As with Antigone, this is a slim book of beautiful poetry that, like an amuse bouche, is a pleasurable diversion from the tomes I typically carry around.
Of course, apologies to my classicist son, I had no idea who Philoctetes was (although I think my pronunciation of Greek names has improved tremendously under his tutelage). And his carrying around all of Homer as a teenager at least lets me recognize the cast of characters.
But what I enjoy most about these two short plays are: (1) Seamus' poetry. The thought just flitted through my head that he is sort of a precursor to the current hip hop version of Hamilton on the Broadway stage in that he seamlessly converts history into something that a contemporary audience can understand, appreciate and feel its relevance to their lives. Like Antigone, Philoctetes is a victim of war crimes and bad politicians ... what could be more au courant? Issues of forced isolation, betrayal of alliances, and conspiracies over powerful weapons unfortunately resonate now and someone unfamiliar with the Iliad and Odyssey could misread the story as contemporary anti-war propaganda. But back to the meter and rhyme: I'd love to see either play produced but on the blank page, his verses are beautiful.
The chorus introduces the theme "Between the gods' and human beings' sense of things. And that's the borderline that poetry operates on too, always in between what you would like to happen and what will -- whether you like it or not." I think these lines alone tipped the scale for me to order The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a book that translates the hieroglyphics of the pyramids. I peaked into the prologue yesterday to find "Poetry and religion arise from the same source, the perception of the mystery of life." Susan Rind Morrow notes the importance of how a writer says something as vital to what is said; of course, her work is overlaid with pictures as well. I am meandering here, but these thoughts are directing my readings beyond biographics this year into how things are written and expressed and why humans need to verbalize the common questions on life and death, loyalty and treachery, will and group reins, manhood and deity.
But back to Heaney quotes.moving freely between classic theatrical iambic pentameter, Seamus has the chorus shift into almost a doggerel of six beats to lines of five verses that almost seem like a syncopated rap:
"Human beings suffer
But not to this extent:
You would wonder if it's meant.
Why him more than another?
What is the sense of it?"
The more lofty lines of IP becomes more "street culture" and the audience sees themselves with the chorus trying to relate this tale of war to their own personal issues. Heany also drops in straight prose paragraphs so that Philoctetes curse of Odysseus sounds like a dictum, completely void of the finesse of poetry. I wish there were Heaney translated plays to read but I have been led to read his Nobel prize winning series of lectures at Oxford and also further explore the relationship between the need for poetry vis a vis the search for the spiritual.
Of course, apologies to my classicist son, I had no idea who Philoctetes was (although I think my pronunciation of Greek names has improved tremendously under his tutelage). And his carrying around all of Homer as a teenager at least lets me recognize the cast of characters.
But what I enjoy most about these two short plays are: (1) Seamus' poetry. The thought just flitted through my head that he is sort of a precursor to the current hip hop version of Hamilton on the Broadway stage in that he seamlessly converts history into something that a contemporary audience can understand, appreciate and feel its relevance to their lives. Like Antigone, Philoctetes is a victim of war crimes and bad politicians ... what could be more au courant? Issues of forced isolation, betrayal of alliances, and conspiracies over powerful weapons unfortunately resonate now and someone unfamiliar with the Iliad and Odyssey could misread the story as contemporary anti-war propaganda. But back to the meter and rhyme: I'd love to see either play produced but on the blank page, his verses are beautiful.
The chorus introduces the theme "Between the gods' and human beings' sense of things. And that's the borderline that poetry operates on too, always in between what you would like to happen and what will -- whether you like it or not." I think these lines alone tipped the scale for me to order The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a book that translates the hieroglyphics of the pyramids. I peaked into the prologue yesterday to find "Poetry and religion arise from the same source, the perception of the mystery of life." Susan Rind Morrow notes the importance of how a writer says something as vital to what is said; of course, her work is overlaid with pictures as well. I am meandering here, but these thoughts are directing my readings beyond biographics this year into how things are written and expressed and why humans need to verbalize the common questions on life and death, loyalty and treachery, will and group reins, manhood and deity.
But back to Heaney quotes.moving freely between classic theatrical iambic pentameter, Seamus has the chorus shift into almost a doggerel of six beats to lines of five verses that almost seem like a syncopated rap:
"Human beings suffer
But not to this extent:
You would wonder if it's meant.
Why him more than another?
What is the sense of it?"
The more lofty lines of IP becomes more "street culture" and the audience sees themselves with the chorus trying to relate this tale of war to their own personal issues. Heany also drops in straight prose paragraphs so that Philoctetes curse of Odysseus sounds like a dictum, completely void of the finesse of poetry. I wish there were Heaney translated plays to read but I have been led to read his Nobel prize winning series of lectures at Oxford and also further explore the relationship between the need for poetry vis a vis the search for the spiritual.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Madness in Civilization by Andrew Scull
I guess I should have read the full title of the book ... Madness in Civilization - A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine.
Yes that describes the book. I was hoping (delude?) into thinking it would be more like my favorite one word history books, Salt, Cod, and would give more of a global, multinational national, or at least geographic summary of how various cultures regarded the "mad." The book is heavily Western Civilization focused and the cultural aspect deals with art and poetry, not a sociological, immediate and extended family analysis or summary.
I wanted a historical reprise showing how families, tribes and towns deal with the mad. At what point did abandonment or exile become succor and care? How does a community change its group response based on the mad individual's behaviors? Are the reclusive dealt with better than the accusatory?
Instead, I am left with an impression after 400 pages that the expedient response of hiding the mad away, whether to save a family's reputation or to protect a village from violence, was universally chosen.
Scull splits the mad early on into the melancholic and the maniac mad and one is left concluding that spectrum of behaviors may well be many more than one mental illness. His history of how the behavioral aspects of syphilis were long in being identified and helped institutions at least properly categorize if not treat their patients.
I (compulsively?) dog-eared too many pages to reprise Scull's observations or interpretations so I will go directly to the book's last paragraph:
"...much of Western medicine embraced ... that madness had its roots in thee body ... at least for the most severe forms of mental aberration .. biology will not prove to play an important role in their genesis. But will madness, that most solitary of afflictions and most social of maladies, be reducible at last to biology and nothing but biology? ... The social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders ... are unlikely ... to prove to be nothing more than epiphenomenal features of ... human experience"
There was a short article in the New York Times this past week about some research into the early onset or accelerated degeneration of the ends of chromosomes and a lack of adequate telomerase to repair them as a factor in mental illness. Like a discovery that proteins building up in the brain was a cause of Alzheimer's, where will this finding lead? Does it trigger Big Pharma to make synthetic telomerase or does it lead the medical community to a conclude it is a chronic disease that cannot be reversed or halted?
So I am questioning how best do humans care for someone they care for with "madness." I have resolved that madness or mental illness is used too broadly (Scull's chapters on the evolution of the diagnostic manuals surely emphasizes that the more "diseases" identified, the more cures doctors and druggists need to work on. Similarly, his perspective on the increased labeling of autism and attention deficit in children appalls me as a mother when there are centuries of parents who could modify family life and distract or engage a child who was a live wire or shrinking violet.
Finally, Scull does not discuss the most current sociological or at least common cultural pressures to accept behaviors that in days of old were considered "mad" or threatening to community morals. If we define mental illness as thought patterns that deviate substantially from the "accepted norm," isn't it a person's brain rather than their physical features and hormones that is telling them what gender they are and/or whom they should mate with? Are addictions and substance abuse in part a function of availability of misused chemicals? Scull discounts the theory of prior centuries which in essence deemed madness as a consequence on the child for the sins of the father ... why is there no discussion about latter centuries, the present, where society is attempting to abolish the recognition of dissimilar or in fact, unique physical attributes and traits to the demise of genealogical heritage, yet minutely striating mental expressed phenomena to a point where almost everyone can be labeled as deviating from the "norm." We will all be the same ... uniformly crazy.
Yes that describes the book. I was hoping (delude?) into thinking it would be more like my favorite one word history books, Salt, Cod, and would give more of a global, multinational national, or at least geographic summary of how various cultures regarded the "mad." The book is heavily Western Civilization focused and the cultural aspect deals with art and poetry, not a sociological, immediate and extended family analysis or summary.
I wanted a historical reprise showing how families, tribes and towns deal with the mad. At what point did abandonment or exile become succor and care? How does a community change its group response based on the mad individual's behaviors? Are the reclusive dealt with better than the accusatory?
Instead, I am left with an impression after 400 pages that the expedient response of hiding the mad away, whether to save a family's reputation or to protect a village from violence, was universally chosen.
Scull splits the mad early on into the melancholic and the maniac mad and one is left concluding that spectrum of behaviors may well be many more than one mental illness. His history of how the behavioral aspects of syphilis were long in being identified and helped institutions at least properly categorize if not treat their patients.
I (compulsively?) dog-eared too many pages to reprise Scull's observations or interpretations so I will go directly to the book's last paragraph:
"...much of Western medicine embraced ... that madness had its roots in thee body ... at least for the most severe forms of mental aberration .. biology will not prove to play an important role in their genesis. But will madness, that most solitary of afflictions and most social of maladies, be reducible at last to biology and nothing but biology? ... The social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders ... are unlikely ... to prove to be nothing more than epiphenomenal features of ... human experience"
There was a short article in the New York Times this past week about some research into the early onset or accelerated degeneration of the ends of chromosomes and a lack of adequate telomerase to repair them as a factor in mental illness. Like a discovery that proteins building up in the brain was a cause of Alzheimer's, where will this finding lead? Does it trigger Big Pharma to make synthetic telomerase or does it lead the medical community to a conclude it is a chronic disease that cannot be reversed or halted?
So I am questioning how best do humans care for someone they care for with "madness." I have resolved that madness or mental illness is used too broadly (Scull's chapters on the evolution of the diagnostic manuals surely emphasizes that the more "diseases" identified, the more cures doctors and druggists need to work on. Similarly, his perspective on the increased labeling of autism and attention deficit in children appalls me as a mother when there are centuries of parents who could modify family life and distract or engage a child who was a live wire or shrinking violet.
Finally, Scull does not discuss the most current sociological or at least common cultural pressures to accept behaviors that in days of old were considered "mad" or threatening to community morals. If we define mental illness as thought patterns that deviate substantially from the "accepted norm," isn't it a person's brain rather than their physical features and hormones that is telling them what gender they are and/or whom they should mate with? Are addictions and substance abuse in part a function of availability of misused chemicals? Scull discounts the theory of prior centuries which in essence deemed madness as a consequence on the child for the sins of the father ... why is there no discussion about latter centuries, the present, where society is attempting to abolish the recognition of dissimilar or in fact, unique physical attributes and traits to the demise of genealogical heritage, yet minutely striating mental expressed phenomena to a point where almost everyone can be labeled as deviating from the "norm." We will all be the same ... uniformly crazy.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
The Burial at Thebes
Aah, a 79 page book that I could read while dinner was baking. Yesterday's New York Times reviewed a production of The Burial at Thebes. The critic panned the costume and scenery as chintzy and a distraction to the beautiful translation of the tale of Antigone by Seamus Heaney.
That was all I needed to read to jump on the library's web site, reserve it and pick it up on the way home from work (a transaction that was just as smooth and efficient as on-line orders of cases of wine at Empire).
It really was a nice intermezzo to all the political intrigue I have been plowing through in The Devil's Chessboard and then Interlock. Also a bit of a segue to Madness in Civilization which I hoped to have finished last night but didn't. Obviously, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus so there's the interlock between books and her plight is a confrontation with absolute governmental authority versus human laws.
And of course, Seamus is magnificient. Greek drama in a brogue. The explicit conscientiousness of meter determined by character. This morning I just ordered this play The Cure at Troy (Sophocles Philoctetes). Plan also on looking online for copies to send to Houston for those lucky prep school scholars who my son treats to Greek after they finish Latin IV by midterm.
So a review as short and sweet as the playscript. All the world's a stage and the plot is always recurring.
That was all I needed to read to jump on the library's web site, reserve it and pick it up on the way home from work (a transaction that was just as smooth and efficient as on-line orders of cases of wine at Empire).
It really was a nice intermezzo to all the political intrigue I have been plowing through in The Devil's Chessboard and then Interlock. Also a bit of a segue to Madness in Civilization which I hoped to have finished last night but didn't. Obviously, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus so there's the interlock between books and her plight is a confrontation with absolute governmental authority versus human laws.
And of course, Seamus is magnificient. Greek drama in a brogue. The explicit conscientiousness of meter determined by character. This morning I just ordered this play The Cure at Troy (Sophocles Philoctetes). Plan also on looking online for copies to send to Houston for those lucky prep school scholars who my son treats to Greek after they finish Latin IV by midterm.
So a review as short and sweet as the playscript. All the world's a stage and the plot is always recurring.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Interlock - Art, Conspiracy and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi
This was supposed to be my "L" biography, another artist, one famous as a conceptual artist. Like my reading of Cornell who only did his little boxes, both of them were unknown to me before I assembled my 2016 alphabetic list.
Mark Lombardi, a good Catholic boy from Syracuse (whose relative was Tarky Lombardi of nYS Legislature fame), eventually an SDSer, eventually a Houstonian, could not draw despite his masters from Syracuse. Yet he wanted to be a famous artist so his life's work was a series of interconnected webs, hubs of who's who of the political, banking and criminal worlds. He was an investigator with boxes full of index cards (much like Cornell's boxes of scraps of fabric and paper) but his became a volatile mine of trails of corruption. Sort of a Jack Anderson with a French curve.
I really can't say this is art. This is superb investigative reporting accomplished only with names and lines.
What engaged me most about this book is how close it followed The Devil's Chessboard in terms of conspiracies, movement of confiscated gold from WWII, spies, etc etc. There is not much humor in the book, save for the food fight at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston in 1977 where the Kilgore Rangerettes entertained and Lombardi punched W.
The bushes, from Prescott to Jeb, are not depicted as good politicians, rather as money-grabbing oilmen, interlocked with too many other infamous people. But it is not just the Republicans who fare poorly from Lombardi's research, so do the popes.
What is unusual about the book is the analytical re-interpretation and verbal restructuring of all the intrigue Lombardi drew into a more classical chronology by the author, Patricia Goldstone, which is easily half of the book's length. Many she felt this was necessary as she was not granted permission to include any of Lombardi's drawings in the biography. In addition, most of fhis work is either under lock and key at MOMA or scurried away to private collections in Germany.
Lombardi was found dead in his NYC apartment under mysterious circumstances in 1999 shortly after a successful exhibit and major sales of his art. Goldstone questions whether it was suicide or murder, but lacks a "French curve" to tie motives and associations together.
It is a book to read during an election year. The candidates could all become a part of this international banking scandal if they are not profiting from it already. Advisers and federal agency heads whose names splatter the news are here in this book. Voting for someone outside this web is naive, dangerous and probably necessary, damn the monetary crisis and pending worldwide depressions.
Not an easy book to read.
Addendum: after writing this, Goldstone's digressions on history as a rhizome kept angling through my thoughts and decided to comment on that analogy. At book club Tuesday night discussing The Boy Kings of Texas, some members did not like the "bouncing around" of Domingo's memoir, looking for more chronology. Instead he writes about events in family members lives and their impacts on him as something happening reminds him of a predecessor like occurrence. Such is the way everyday people explain themselves to strangers ... "did I ever mention when such and such happened to me/my family." But the me and or my family is a node in an interlock. People are born, live and die so there is an imposed time dimension to humanity but it those associations and passing on of history, making connections for the future while drawing on a past that is the basis of a human history rhizome without easily perceived beginning or end. I would like to think it will be an iris rhizome, spreading beauty and pleasure; the Goldstone/Lombardi interlocking rhizome seems more like the underground colony that surfaces in puffball mushrooms.
Mark Lombardi, a good Catholic boy from Syracuse (whose relative was Tarky Lombardi of nYS Legislature fame), eventually an SDSer, eventually a Houstonian, could not draw despite his masters from Syracuse. Yet he wanted to be a famous artist so his life's work was a series of interconnected webs, hubs of who's who of the political, banking and criminal worlds. He was an investigator with boxes full of index cards (much like Cornell's boxes of scraps of fabric and paper) but his became a volatile mine of trails of corruption. Sort of a Jack Anderson with a French curve.
I really can't say this is art. This is superb investigative reporting accomplished only with names and lines.
What engaged me most about this book is how close it followed The Devil's Chessboard in terms of conspiracies, movement of confiscated gold from WWII, spies, etc etc. There is not much humor in the book, save for the food fight at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston in 1977 where the Kilgore Rangerettes entertained and Lombardi punched W.
The bushes, from Prescott to Jeb, are not depicted as good politicians, rather as money-grabbing oilmen, interlocked with too many other infamous people. But it is not just the Republicans who fare poorly from Lombardi's research, so do the popes.
What is unusual about the book is the analytical re-interpretation and verbal restructuring of all the intrigue Lombardi drew into a more classical chronology by the author, Patricia Goldstone, which is easily half of the book's length. Many she felt this was necessary as she was not granted permission to include any of Lombardi's drawings in the biography. In addition, most of fhis work is either under lock and key at MOMA or scurried away to private collections in Germany.
Lombardi was found dead in his NYC apartment under mysterious circumstances in 1999 shortly after a successful exhibit and major sales of his art. Goldstone questions whether it was suicide or murder, but lacks a "French curve" to tie motives and associations together.
It is a book to read during an election year. The candidates could all become a part of this international banking scandal if they are not profiting from it already. Advisers and federal agency heads whose names splatter the news are here in this book. Voting for someone outside this web is naive, dangerous and probably necessary, damn the monetary crisis and pending worldwide depressions.
Not an easy book to read.
Addendum: after writing this, Goldstone's digressions on history as a rhizome kept angling through my thoughts and decided to comment on that analogy. At book club Tuesday night discussing The Boy Kings of Texas, some members did not like the "bouncing around" of Domingo's memoir, looking for more chronology. Instead he writes about events in family members lives and their impacts on him as something happening reminds him of a predecessor like occurrence. Such is the way everyday people explain themselves to strangers ... "did I ever mention when such and such happened to me/my family." But the me and or my family is a node in an interlock. People are born, live and die so there is an imposed time dimension to humanity but it those associations and passing on of history, making connections for the future while drawing on a past that is the basis of a human history rhizome without easily perceived beginning or end. I would like to think it will be an iris rhizome, spreading beauty and pleasure; the Goldstone/Lombardi interlocking rhizome seems more like the underground colony that surfaces in puffball mushrooms.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
A more unusual type of biography to this year's efforts: Homage to Catalonia focuses on a brief period of time in 1937 when George Orwell went to Spain and fought in the Spanish Civil War. I guess I selected this book because I have a gaping whole in my knowledge of history; I never could figure out what they were fighting for nor who were the good and bad guys, except for wanting to get rid of Franco. And why was there such an allure and attraction?
Orwell's book is rather like a diary. He relates where he is, who he is with, and the boredom of war. They have no uniforms, few guns, miserable weather, and enemies who when the fighting stops meet you at the cafe back in the city. So I am even more baffled about the entire cataclysm.
I do on the other hand have a different perspective on Orwell. I hope my impression was not too colored by the introduction from Lionel Trilling (felt I was back in English Lit class) who describes Orwell as a virtuous man. His commentary often seems like a back-handed compliment: that his stylistic approach to the book is overly simple showing the mundane concerns of an average man with ideals that are personal not lofty.
Against the bombast and grandeur of Allen Dulles, George Orwell is a pleasant contrast, someone you might want to meet often at the above mentioned cafes. For a bit now, I will quote several sections that not only convey the ambiance of the shifting sides but more importantly are written with such clarity and humanity that elevate the man, if not the war itself.
" ... this was the kind of thing that happened every year in Barcelona ... an Italian journalist, a great friend of ours (Orwell's wife was in Spain with him), came in (see cafes above) with his trousers drenched in blood. He had gone out to see what was happening and had been binding up a wounded man on the pavement when someone playfully tossed a hand-grenade at him, fortunately not wounding him seriously. I remember his remarking that the Barcelona paving stones ought to be numbered; it would save such a lot of trouble in building and demolishing barricades. And I remember a couple of men from the International Column sitting in my room at the hotel when I came in tired, hungry, and dirty after a night on guard. Their attitude was completely neutral, If they had been good party-men they would, I suppose, have urged me to change sides, or even have pinioned me and taken away the bombs of which my pockets were full; instead they merely commiserated with me for having to spend my leave in doing guard duty ..."
After trying to get information about a jailed officer at a police station, Orwell writes: "He would only tell me that the proper inquiries would be made. There was no more to be said; it was time to part. Both of us bowed slightly. And then there happened a strange and moving thing. The little officer hesitated a moment, then stepped across and shook hands with me. I do not know if I can bring home to you how deeply that action touched me. It sounds like a small thing, but it was not. You have to got to realize what was the feeling of the time -- the horrible atmosphere of suspicion and hatred, the lies and rumours circulating everywhere, the posters screaming ... that I and everyone like me was a Fascist spy ... I record this, trivial though it may sound, because it is something typical of Spain -- of flashes of magnanimity that you got from Spaniards in the worst of circumstances ... They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility, that do not really belong to the twentieth century."
And as he wraps up his brief book: "When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this ... the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings. And I hope the account I have given is not too misleading. I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan."
Which brings me full circle to my unresolved matter of the partisanship woven into The Devil's Chessboard. I needed a simple book in a human voice after that intrigue.
Orwell's book is rather like a diary. He relates where he is, who he is with, and the boredom of war. They have no uniforms, few guns, miserable weather, and enemies who when the fighting stops meet you at the cafe back in the city. So I am even more baffled about the entire cataclysm.
I do on the other hand have a different perspective on Orwell. I hope my impression was not too colored by the introduction from Lionel Trilling (felt I was back in English Lit class) who describes Orwell as a virtuous man. His commentary often seems like a back-handed compliment: that his stylistic approach to the book is overly simple showing the mundane concerns of an average man with ideals that are personal not lofty.
Against the bombast and grandeur of Allen Dulles, George Orwell is a pleasant contrast, someone you might want to meet often at the above mentioned cafes. For a bit now, I will quote several sections that not only convey the ambiance of the shifting sides but more importantly are written with such clarity and humanity that elevate the man, if not the war itself.
" ... this was the kind of thing that happened every year in Barcelona ... an Italian journalist, a great friend of ours (Orwell's wife was in Spain with him), came in (see cafes above) with his trousers drenched in blood. He had gone out to see what was happening and had been binding up a wounded man on the pavement when someone playfully tossed a hand-grenade at him, fortunately not wounding him seriously. I remember his remarking that the Barcelona paving stones ought to be numbered; it would save such a lot of trouble in building and demolishing barricades. And I remember a couple of men from the International Column sitting in my room at the hotel when I came in tired, hungry, and dirty after a night on guard. Their attitude was completely neutral, If they had been good party-men they would, I suppose, have urged me to change sides, or even have pinioned me and taken away the bombs of which my pockets were full; instead they merely commiserated with me for having to spend my leave in doing guard duty ..."
After trying to get information about a jailed officer at a police station, Orwell writes: "He would only tell me that the proper inquiries would be made. There was no more to be said; it was time to part. Both of us bowed slightly. And then there happened a strange and moving thing. The little officer hesitated a moment, then stepped across and shook hands with me. I do not know if I can bring home to you how deeply that action touched me. It sounds like a small thing, but it was not. You have to got to realize what was the feeling of the time -- the horrible atmosphere of suspicion and hatred, the lies and rumours circulating everywhere, the posters screaming ... that I and everyone like me was a Fascist spy ... I record this, trivial though it may sound, because it is something typical of Spain -- of flashes of magnanimity that you got from Spaniards in the worst of circumstances ... They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility, that do not really belong to the twentieth century."
And as he wraps up his brief book: "When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this ... the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings. And I hope the account I have given is not too misleading. I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan."
Which brings me full circle to my unresolved matter of the partisanship woven into The Devil's Chessboard. I needed a simple book in a human voice after that intrigue.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
The Devil's Chessboard - Allen Dulles
Being nagged by the library to bring back this overdue book. Finished reading it days ago, but taking days as well to process it and figure out what I want to blog about it.
Let's go back to the mid-60s and career aptitude tests in high school. The counselor is shocked and unprepared because I am the only one whose suggested career comes out as "spy." This does not seem unusual to me; it seems natural and something I want to do and excel at, notwithstanding the first couple of 007 movies. I have an essence inside me that longs to serve my country, preserve it, defend it without being in the military. Naively, I assumed there would be borderline actions as I spy I would have to take, but the end goal seemed to justify them.
Of course, at that time Allen Dulles was securely ensconced in the CIA. Although the book details all the Skull and Bones Yalies who got almost automatically recruited, the book does not mention hiring female undercover agents.
I remember more news stories about his brother John Foster than anything untoward about Allen Dulles ... just goes to show you how perfect his reign and control were. The book traces his career from the inauguration of the CIA under Truman through LBJ's presidency. David Talbot goes back to the beginning and lays over 400 pages of foundation to lead up to the second half of the book which is another reprise of the JFK assassination. All that goes before does make a conspiracy seem more plausible than other attempts.
I am left with two problems I still cannot settle in my mind. Dulles comes off as worse than Machiavelli, worse than Rasputin, worse than Cardinal Richelieu, and one is left feeling that there are not enough circles in hell to place him. Yet where does patriotism and defense of country against nations determined to end democracy become evil. Dulles saw the danger of Communism but did not see its failures to keep an internal economy going. He seemed to fight institutions and theories with his powerful intellect and ability to align allies and pull together multiple self-serving motives. I cannot fathom how he could cope with the rise of religious fanaticism and lone assassins.
The second gnawing problem I have with the book is my well developed skepticism that all political writings advocate one extreme position or another. A quarter of a century working for the budget office ingrained in me a sense of "neutral competence" writing, one that articulates the pros and cons, makes a recommendation, but has sufficient thought behind it to comfortably entertain a change in policy. As a "historical" biography, I got skeptical about David Talbot's ultimate neutrality.
Here are several quotes from the Devil's Chessboard that struck me and made me rethink my spy above all else mindset:
From the prologue: "Our country's cheerleaders (don't like this word) are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalsim. But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us. There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history. And no matter where power rules. there is the same determination by those in high places to keep their activities hidden."
Describing Dulles' relationship with his wife: "But many years later, Clover (his wife) would write a more honest assessment of her husband in a diary that she left for her children. By then, she felt no obligation to window-dress their marriage. 'My husband doesn't converse with me, not that he doesn't talk to me about his business, but that he doesn't talk about anything ... I took me along time to realize that when he talks it is only for the purpose of obtaining something ... He has either to be making someone admire him, or to be receiving some information worth his while; otherwise he gives one the impression that he doesn't talk because the parson isn't worth talking to."
"Dedicated to the dark necessities of expanding American power, the security complex began to take on a hidden life of its own, untethered from the checks and balances of democracy. Sometimes CIA officials kept the White House and Congress informed; often they did not. When ... NBC News asked Dulles if the CIA med its own policy, the spymaster insisted that during his tenure he had regularly briefed congressional committees about the agency's budget and operations. But, he added. Congress generally preferred to remain blissfully ignorant of the distasteful things down in the government's name."
This was a book to read before a presidential election ... who has the talents to hold our own, vis a vis the world and our citizens and governmental agents.
Let's go back to the mid-60s and career aptitude tests in high school. The counselor is shocked and unprepared because I am the only one whose suggested career comes out as "spy." This does not seem unusual to me; it seems natural and something I want to do and excel at, notwithstanding the first couple of 007 movies. I have an essence inside me that longs to serve my country, preserve it, defend it without being in the military. Naively, I assumed there would be borderline actions as I spy I would have to take, but the end goal seemed to justify them.
Of course, at that time Allen Dulles was securely ensconced in the CIA. Although the book details all the Skull and Bones Yalies who got almost automatically recruited, the book does not mention hiring female undercover agents.
I remember more news stories about his brother John Foster than anything untoward about Allen Dulles ... just goes to show you how perfect his reign and control were. The book traces his career from the inauguration of the CIA under Truman through LBJ's presidency. David Talbot goes back to the beginning and lays over 400 pages of foundation to lead up to the second half of the book which is another reprise of the JFK assassination. All that goes before does make a conspiracy seem more plausible than other attempts.
I am left with two problems I still cannot settle in my mind. Dulles comes off as worse than Machiavelli, worse than Rasputin, worse than Cardinal Richelieu, and one is left feeling that there are not enough circles in hell to place him. Yet where does patriotism and defense of country against nations determined to end democracy become evil. Dulles saw the danger of Communism but did not see its failures to keep an internal economy going. He seemed to fight institutions and theories with his powerful intellect and ability to align allies and pull together multiple self-serving motives. I cannot fathom how he could cope with the rise of religious fanaticism and lone assassins.
The second gnawing problem I have with the book is my well developed skepticism that all political writings advocate one extreme position or another. A quarter of a century working for the budget office ingrained in me a sense of "neutral competence" writing, one that articulates the pros and cons, makes a recommendation, but has sufficient thought behind it to comfortably entertain a change in policy. As a "historical" biography, I got skeptical about David Talbot's ultimate neutrality.
Here are several quotes from the Devil's Chessboard that struck me and made me rethink my spy above all else mindset:
From the prologue: "Our country's cheerleaders (don't like this word) are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalsim. But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us. There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history. And no matter where power rules. there is the same determination by those in high places to keep their activities hidden."
Describing Dulles' relationship with his wife: "But many years later, Clover (his wife) would write a more honest assessment of her husband in a diary that she left for her children. By then, she felt no obligation to window-dress their marriage. 'My husband doesn't converse with me, not that he doesn't talk to me about his business, but that he doesn't talk about anything ... I took me along time to realize that when he talks it is only for the purpose of obtaining something ... He has either to be making someone admire him, or to be receiving some information worth his while; otherwise he gives one the impression that he doesn't talk because the parson isn't worth talking to."
"Dedicated to the dark necessities of expanding American power, the security complex began to take on a hidden life of its own, untethered from the checks and balances of democracy. Sometimes CIA officials kept the White House and Congress informed; often they did not. When ... NBC News asked Dulles if the CIA med its own policy, the spymaster insisted that during his tenure he had regularly briefed congressional committees about the agency's budget and operations. But, he added. Congress generally preferred to remain blissfully ignorant of the distasteful things down in the government's name."
This was a book to read before a presidential election ... who has the talents to hold our own, vis a vis the world and our citizens and governmental agents.
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