tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17102473217412148592011-08-12T20:43:53.803-07:00A comedy writer takes 2008 to go through the Daily Reading Guide of the Harvard Classics. What could go wrong?Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.comBlogger4511100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-10466839980552558902009-02-11T21:25:00.000-08:002009-02-15T22:55:31.666-08:00

What my mind isn't.What is at the core of Western Tradition? For what paramount value did Socrates die drinking hemlock and Bacon die freezing chickens? Why, end-user convenience, of course! And so dig, if you will, this picture: all my entries organized by volume. I include the titles of the volumes, direct from great-grandfather's spines, in order to give you an idea of what the HC is all

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-69548405851212452292009-02-10T08:41:00.000-08:002009-02-10T10:02:02.263-08:00

The press of work (office jobs suck) has prevented me from really engaging with the legacy of this project. In some ways, when thinking about it, I fold it into the general experience of my year of un- and under-employment, instead of evaluating it on its own terms. But I have to come to terms with it, and soon, because I promised I would write an essay about it for some anthology of Manly Men

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-37879777822662568092009-02-02T10:11:00.000-08:002009-02-02T10:21:03.684-08:00

Today would have been my dad's birthday, so he is very much on my mind, as he was for every entry here at the end. Here's an Updike poem (so even more apropos) he had read at his memorial service: Perfection Wasted And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-83141223450978211772009-02-01T17:54:00.000-08:002009-02-01T18:20:41.844-08:00

As a critic, I'm a little too timid. That's what comes from being a dilettante -- no confidence. I could be talked out of anything. But this was not Carlyle's problem. He felt that sick people were losers: We say not that; but we do say, that ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat, is battle (in a good or in a bad cause) with bad success; that health alone is victory. Let all men, if they

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-73139266686079090682009-02-01T08:17:00.000-08:002009-02-01T12:20:54.074-08:00

I've remarked before about the similarities between Richard Henry Dana's description of the Mexican-run California of the 1830s and the current version that I live in, and in today's reading, the parallels continue to be downright eerie : In their domestic relations, these people are no better than in their public. The men are thriftless, proud, and extravagant, and very much given to gaming;

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-17350778346753730492009-01-31T17:32:00.000-08:002009-01-31T17:59:25.255-08:00

I am often amused by the disconnect between the Daily Reading and the Guide's description of it. Today, for example, we're promised: Food profiteering was as active in plague-stricken Milan 300 years ago as in modern times. Shops were stormed for food. Read how the Council strove heroically to fix fair rates.And in the actual reading (from Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi"), we read how it wasn't

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-25511015575234208322009-01-29T20:25:00.000-08:002009-01-29T20:40:39.504-08:00

One of the things about the science stuff in the Harvard Classics is that it's difficult for the non-scientist to figure out how outdated it is. Take Charles Lyell, giant of geology (apparently), and stimulator of Darwin. In today's reading he makes an argument that the geologic processes we've seen are the same ones that made the geologic world we dig into and puzzle about, or at least he

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-4799676435248067592009-01-27T20:39:00.000-08:002009-01-27T21:53:03.927-08:00

In the opening of today's passage (which I first encountered in an Updike short story, coincidentally enough) St. Augustine is hard (heh, heh) on himself:TO CARTHAGE I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-23639542430108854542009-01-25T19:19:00.000-08:002009-01-25T19:47:04.031-08:00

A friend of mine who grew up in France introduced me to the phrase "A Mr. and Mrs." to describe a marital fight, and today we have the first one in history, at least according to the Biblical literalists: Adam and Eve's spat in Book IX of Paradise Lost. If I were a thoughtful person I would be drawn to the little colloquium between Satan and Eve ("Resolved: The Fruit Is Delicious"), or I might

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-90636607196631473212009-01-25T11:44:00.000-08:002009-01-25T11:46:36.662-08:00

The Daily Reading Guide uses the old-style and more graceful term of "Armistice Day" to describe November 11, and, in the war-to-end-wars-has-ended style that people might still have had in 1930, does not flinch from giving us Whitman, who didn’t flinch either:On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush’d head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away), The

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-57499785448961829832009-01-23T08:47:00.000-08:002009-01-23T09:05:03.667-08:00

When you click on the online Reading Guide for this date, you get Cantos 24 and 25 of Dante's Inferno, filled with monsters and curses and people being turned into snakes and forced to meld with each other. Sick, right? But it turns out that's not the actual reading. The actual reading is Cantos 24 and 25 of the Paradiso, and instead of mindbending creatures, we get scholastic philosophy:

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-85029661386329988842009-01-21T22:29:00.000-08:002009-01-21T22:46:25.768-08:00

What to say about a Robert Burns poem that the Robert Burns website says "becomes tedious in spite of the lively movement and the skilfully manipulated verse"? But don't take my word for it, take these incomprehensible words: They hoy’t out Will, wi’ sair advice; They hecht him some fine braw ane; It chanc’d the stack he faddom’t thrice Was timmer-propt for thrawin:As they say in

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-28729142397503690742009-01-18T17:39:00.000-08:002009-01-18T17:52:28.901-08:00

Irritatingly, I can't find it now, but I was just reading an interview with Michael Emerson from Lost where he was talking about the theater, and how much he likes it when language is more than just a means of communication. And then I had a Shakespeare reading, and it's easy to see exactly what he's talking about. Or, as Lady Macbeth puts it: To feed were best at home; From thence, the

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-73378157603696625402009-01-17T21:17:00.001-08:002009-01-17T21:37:36.261-08:00

First of all, I apologize for being so dilatory with the arrears blogging (I still owe about 10 days) -- it's just that real work has come, and not a moment to soon. I do intend to finish the thing so I can gather it all in one place. You have my half-assed guarantee on it! The thing that charms me about Darwin is that he's not afraid to look ridiculous (remember when he hung out watching

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-46025152711305935212009-01-13T16:59:00.000-08:002009-01-13T17:13:14.420-08:00

You know that film cliche where the angel appears on one shoulder and the devil on the other one? I think we may have a source for it right here in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Faust is on the verge of repenting and this random old man comes out to urge him to do so. I puzzled over who this old man might be, and, smiling at the idea that I might read the rest of the play, decided that maybe he's

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-64969551250752370542009-01-12T21:15:00.000-08:002009-01-12T21:50:27.450-08:00

I guess Memorial Day weekend was American poetry weekend (and why not), so I might as well quote one of my favorite United Statesean lines that has the added benefit of being true. It's from William Carlos Williams:The pure products of Americago crazy--And we happen to have Exhibit A right here, Walt Whitman, writing a preface to Leaves of Grass that's so nutty you wonder how anyone ever went

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-16923664785875937852009-01-11T17:19:00.000-08:002009-01-11T20:39:52.820-08:00

Back when they were putting the Harvard Classics together Longfellow was classed with the poets, but I think he should be classed (instead? no, also!) with the pop artists -- like Capras or Goffin/King, guys who know how to put the hay down where the goats can get at it. While artists like these have cooler contemporaries (Whitman, Sturges, Holland/Dozier/Holland), there's still something

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-77505752959522307982009-01-10T11:25:00.000-08:002009-01-11T14:28:04.484-08:00

One thing about the Thousand and One Nights, they sure know how to keep a story moving. And, even better, they know the virtues of a slow introduction -- here, in The Tale of the Barber's Fifth Brother (must focus-group that title), we begin with a long daydream of wealth -- and not just of wealth, but of the things wealth buys, such as repercussion-free meanness to women: I will command her to

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-62067653207844433912009-01-08T13:59:00.000-08:002009-01-08T15:04:04.110-08:00

In resolution, he plunged himself so deeply in his reading of these books, as he spent many times in the lecture of them whole days and nights; and in the end, through his little sleep and much reading, he dried up his brains in such sort as he lost wholly his judgment.First Faust, and now Don Quixote: the great authors seem to agree that getting way into books is a good way to go crazy. But

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-27274288941957393332009-01-07T10:24:00.000-08:002009-01-07T10:44:55.945-08:00

I see by Wikipedia that Faustwas played recently by Bruno Ganz, who I remember seeing as the soulful, soulful angel in "Wings of Desire" just before I fell asleep in it. Based on this translation, anyway, I think someone more skittish is appropriate. Hugh Laurie, maybe, but then I think he'd be good in anything -- and not serious "House" Hugh Laurie, but Bertie Wooster-goes-to-graduate-school

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-59206958379204227962009-01-05T15:30:00.000-08:002009-01-05T22:09:38.288-08:00

In order to complete the year I have 24 days of readings to do. Why not blog them? Here's a dialogue from my least favorite writer in the Harvard Classics, the good Bishop Berkeley. I'm not into the Bish because I don't like arguing about God, and I don't like arguing about God because the history of the human race shows that it is a generally unprofitable activity. Not that there's really any

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-63537582437825323892009-01-01T09:51:00.000-08:002009-01-01T09:51:00.268-08:00

Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and religious zeal have diffused, among the savages of the Old and New World, those inestimable gifts: they have been successively propagated; they can never be lost. We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-82178994972864239672008-12-31T11:11:00.000-08:002008-12-31T11:11:00.452-08:00

New Year's Eve 1952, from the Life photo archive on Google Images. This woman won the "Prettiest Teacher in America" contest sponsored by "Our Miss Brooks." Who the guy was or what he did is not mentioned. I'm sure they both went on to loathe hippies.When my sister used to live in Troy, one of the highlights of my visits to her was reading "Sound Off!" in the Troy Record. A lot of small-town

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-46930832928978254092008-12-30T11:26:00.000-08:002008-12-30T12:02:24.025-08:00

The state, the lifestyle, the tablecloth. You spilled gravy on San Diego!Today Richard Henry Dana's ship is trading in Monterey in 1835, I think it is. While Dana is taking pains to show his East Coast audience how different the place is, the modern California resident can read it looking to see what's the same.Prejudice against California, first of all: "The Californians are an idle,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-76269435192171382402008-12-30T09:35:00.000-08:002008-12-30T09:35:01.050-08:00

This weekend, while I was musing on the end of this project, this poem by James Merrill popped into my head. In my spaniel-like devotion to my readings, I identify with the title character; I'm aware it's very self-dramatizing for me to do so. However, I wouldn't be the first person to be self-dramatizing around the holidays. Anyway:The Victor Dogfor Elisabeth BishopBix to Buxtehude to

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-89017016866101194362008-12-29T17:41:00.000-08:002008-12-29T18:21:05.257-08:00

From "Drunken Master," an epic for our time.You know how you'll be watching an action movie, or a kung fu movie especially, and the hero is like one on six, and you're wondering, "Why don't they all fight him at once?" It's just the same in the slam-bang conclusion to the Odyssey -- killing time has come, and the suitors decide to fight Odysseus one at a time:Therewith he [some suitor guy] drew

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-42672378020631894842008-12-28T14:59:00.000-08:002008-12-28T15:27:34.353-08:00

A great Bullet.• Sir Francis Drake mucks around with the Spaniards some more today -- part of the general superviolent "Deadwood"-like environment which characterized the Old World's beginnings in the New World: In all the time of our being here, neither the governor for the said King of Spain, which is a Portugal, neither the bishop, whose authority is great, neither the inhabitants of the

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-41319141011323773222008-12-28T10:00:00.000-08:002008-12-28T10:01:27.428-08:00

Of the WKCR Bach Festival, that is. It ends Tuesday. Click on the link to listen. (Thanks to The Agonist for reminding me.)

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-41203574314009671192008-12-27T21:12:00.000-08:002008-12-27T21:37:26.219-08:00

Via Arts & Letters Daily, a review of a book about the Harvard Classics' successor project -- The Great Books of the Western World. (You must say the title in your deepest voice.) It's interesting. Here's a quote: Beam is a columnist for the Boston Globe, not a cultural theorist. He correctly locates the Great Books among other middle class diversions like the Saturday Review of Literature

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-7548187601004840202008-12-27T10:29:00.000-08:002008-12-27T10:56:22.235-08:00

You may have seen this picture before:These are Darwin's finches -- similar birds with different beaks and so, different species. Darwin encountered them on his famous visit to the Galapagos and he writes: The remaining land-birds form a most singular group of finches, related to each other in the structure of their beaks, short tails, form of body and plumage: there are thirteen species, which

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-51935980230476918272008-12-26T14:08:00.000-08:002008-12-26T14:19:37.572-08:00

What better family to spend Boxing Day with than the Lears? And when I got to this part of today's reading:Through tatter’d clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sins with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.I remembered that it had struck home with me before -- because I've read it already! (Here.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-56263623342266456262008-12-25T11:36:00.000-08:002008-12-25T12:05:07.797-08:00

Not Jesus's arm.In front of my own open fire I discover that the good people at Collier's have given me Luke 2. It's hard to read parts of it without hearing Linus from a "Charlie Brown Christmas." The thing I always remember from church is this line: "But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart." How cagey of Mary, one might think, especially since this line comes after the

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-80360110941867752912008-12-24T14:42:00.000-08:002008-12-24T14:59:45.551-08:00

It's not the bread of life, but on Christmas Eve I make very plain babka that looks a little less nice than this.The task of compiling these readings was sometimes too much for the compiler, so he pulled this Holinshed excerpt out of thin air and hoped that it would describe Christmas in England in 1577. Instead it describes the C of E post-Reformation: As for our churches themselves, bells

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-3472886365429310832008-12-23T20:11:00.000-08:002008-12-23T20:56:01.708-08:00

I don't really have a good photo that goes with the reading, so here's a Christmasy picture of the house with all the Davids in front of it in my neighborhood. I remember reading someone who used this quote from Renata Adler: "Sanity is the most profound moral option of our time." Then I read the actual Renata Adler novel ("Speedboat," maybe) and didn't like it. But I still like the quote,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-28498409925935007402008-12-22T17:32:00.000-08:002008-12-22T21:40:44.914-08:00

I guess when you've been at sea for four years, ocean views no longer do it for you.I'll just give away the ending of today's excerpt from "Voyage of the Beagle" -- though I realize I did this yesterday: I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-88755872023084343772008-12-21T20:54:00.000-08:002008-12-21T21:23:13.673-08:00

Madame Bubble's husband, here seen with a child who was forced into modelling when his parents defaulted on their Henderson, Nev. condo.So now I know how Pilgrim's Progress ends: everyone dies. It's like Hamlet, but with a gloss in the margin where the author tells you what everything means -- something Shakespeare, for all his brilliance, failed to do. Like, our travelers come upon a guy

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-2663906701832206222008-12-20T14:03:00.000-08:002008-12-20T16:19:04.297-08:00

This translation of Herodotus is not bad, but I wish it were better -- chattier. Herodotus seems chatty to me. Today he's talking about Egypt, and it sort of hops from one thing to the other, including doing that talkative-person thing where he brings up a subject in order to say that he's not going to talk about it:Those of their narrations which I heard with regard to the gods I am not

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-75846052045964291082008-12-20T12:00:00.000-08:002008-12-20T12:04:52.161-08:00

But now I'm giving away the ending. The first thing I think of when hearing the name Samson is that of a noirish tale of a high and mighty man done in by a dame. But then there's the third act of the Samson story, the revenge, and the end of it is what we get today in Milton's hit adaptation Samson Agonistes, which is a poem in play form -- the surprising things you learn when you're not an

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-38679846960469098112008-12-19T18:08:00.000-08:002008-12-19T18:09:30.500-08:00

I don't think I'll get to finish today's post today. Hopefully there'll be two tomorrow.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-1786807995437258392008-12-18T17:03:00.000-08:002008-12-18T21:39:19.483-08:00

I wonder if spelling will count even more in the URL era. The classics can be relevant. Here's John Locke holding forth on how to teach your child Latin. The best way, as we all know, is to hire someone who will do nothing but talk to your kid in Latin, then he'll pick it up. This would be the most incredible career niche ever. Here's the second-best, but first-best in terms of sanity, way

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-14042486724835837282008-12-17T10:13:00.000-08:002008-12-17T23:31:39.986-08:00

Amazingly, St. Monica is not the patron saint of sport fishing, or boating. Unless your kids cut school to take up these activities, because she is the patron of disappointing children. St. Augustine's, in his Confessions, wants to make you think that it was all a big struggle, his progress to sainthood. But it turns out he was a legacy all along! His mother was a saint too-- St. Monica, who

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-77992505058233179242008-12-16T17:19:00.000-08:002008-12-16T20:01:50.006-08:00

From "The 18th Century: Too Hot For Portraiture"The Burke reading is very long today. Maybe it just seems long because it's philosophy, and it's meticulous, and meticulousness seems long. I mean, it shouldn't feel like a slog -- not with sex right in the first section: On the other hand, the generation of mankind is a great purpose, and it is requisite that men should be animated to the

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-14752578762413212552008-12-15T18:02:00.000-08:002008-12-15T19:20:29.051-08:00

I took an intellectual history course in college, but it was at 9 am so I can't claim to remember much of it. Nevertheless I am aware of the battle between the Ancients and Moderns back in the 17th century -- the time when there was suddenly a big pile of non-Ancient writing, which, for lack of a better label, was called modern. It's confusing because all the stuff that was in the Modern

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-11596948163093693062008-12-14T14:19:00.000-08:002008-12-14T17:55:47.225-08:00

As the Daily Mail article said, "Presumably spelled this way for the benefit of Sean Connery imitators." I've hardly read Andrew Marvell, outside of "To His Coy Mistress," which I guess many people have run into in English class ("Mistress"! So spicy!). But he's a Metaphysical poet, and I like the Metaphysicals, so I liked his poems, all of which were new to me.(Digression: I almost wrote "I

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-5720414326035499732008-12-13T17:20:00.000-08:002008-12-13T17:32:26.320-08:00

Today we're talking about Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation, 1577-80. Here's a routine occurrence in the travelogue: The 7. day we were driven by a great storm from the entering into the South Sea, 200 leagues and odd in longitude, and one degree to the southward of the Strait; in which height, and so many leagues to the westward, the 15. day of September, fell out the eclipse of the moon at

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-40884339427845530162008-12-12T19:07:00.000-08:002008-12-14T13:45:29.312-08:00

Ruffian, another horse ridden to death like the ones in the poem. I found her death more shocking than Barbaro's, maybe because I'm more callous than I was in 1975. This will have to be quick, as I have lots of homework this weekend. (I think it was Lawrence Kasdan who said that being a writer means you have homework for the rest of your life.)So, first of all, I always hated this poem, which

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-48864702254213876772008-12-11T09:10:00.000-08:002008-12-11T11:35:32.183-08:00

I think we know what the article "Fun In A Hot Tub" was about, especially in 1978.Way up at the top of his description of Alcibiades, Plutarch says this: It is not, perhaps, material to say any thing of the beauty of Alcibiades, only that it bloomed with him in all the ages of his life, in his infancy, in his youth, and in his manhood; and, in the peculiar character becoming to each of these

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-4892882732759574282008-12-10T17:07:00.000-08:002008-12-10T17:41:29.622-08:00

Cellini himself. Not pictured: all his fine ladies.My love for Cellini is well documented. I have come to respect that blowhard Emerson and admire Darwin's thoroughness and appreciate Tennyson's craft, and all that probably contributed to my growth as a human being. [Ed. note -- not really.] But those volumes will stay on my shelves untouched. Cellini, however, a terrible, selfish person,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-53307395315445234822008-12-09T22:52:00.000-08:002008-12-09T22:53:41.533-08:00

I think Christina Rossetti is the only woman I've had to read all year.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-90053008255897976312008-12-09T11:21:00.000-08:002008-12-09T12:26:43.664-08:00

The Fugitive Slave Act (part of the Bummer December Reading Event) doesn't mention slavery. It mentions "fugitives," but they are "fugitives from service or labor" -- a phrase that could describe someone reading a sports blog at their desk. But we all know what it means. It's pretty heinous, of course -- "In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-20916399285113599022008-12-08T22:02:00.000-08:002008-12-08T22:02:00.799-08:00

De Quincey's school days (artist conception).The Harvard Classics Bummer December reading event continues! Here's a typical sentence from today's Thomas de Quincey:Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a stepmother,—as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-50378715978320369882008-12-08T09:07:00.000-08:002008-12-08T09:35:31.720-08:00

I got this image from a blog called "World Haircuts." Because I am a scholar.Okay, here's what we do: We sneak the character-building lessons of Plutarch to the young by taking Plutarch's name off the book and putting a celebrity's name on it. That way the book is no longer a classic, which we all know is the kiss of death; instead it would be a celebrity writing a book for young people, which

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-89552242090279825742008-12-07T17:36:00.000-08:002008-12-07T17:38:29.242-08:00

All the various bustlings and whatnot -- the whatnot especially -- and now the wife and I are going to see "The Little Dog Laughed" in Culver City so no post today. It's Plutarch, so I'll try to double up tomorrow, but no promises.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-74444067597439033812008-12-06T12:02:00.001-08:002008-12-06T12:04:19.824-08:00

Addison and Steele's "Spectator" is available as a blog. 17th century fans will have to continue to content themselves with Pepys (which my dad loved).

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-26936368397891040472008-12-06T11:37:00.000-08:002008-12-06T12:15:05.512-08:00

No offense to Joseph Addison (something Pope could not say, of course), but these are terrible times, and it's dark up in this hemisphere, and it's supposed to be getting Christmasy, so who has the stomach to enjoy what the anonymous Complier of this reading guide has served up for us today, an overelaborate metaphor about death? (Summary: life is a bridge that's supposed to be longer than it

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-88363027122426690572008-12-05T11:11:00.000-08:002008-12-05T11:45:18.429-08:00

Writing poetry is a lot harder than it used to be; which doesn't stop everyone from writing poetry, but it does stop everyone from reading it. The four very sad poems by Christina Rossetti provide a clue as to why. Three of them are on the same subject -- how sad Death is. Or, more precisely, how sad it's going to be for you when I am dead: WHEN I am dead, my dearest,Sing no sad songs for me

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-36698410418133413882008-12-04T17:46:00.000-08:002008-12-04T22:39:20.527-08:00

From an Inferno paper doll set. Readers may remember that, after dying, Virgil found a job in the tourism industry. (Am I really ruining things with a pun title this close to the end? Damn right I am.) The woman in question is poor Dido, who had the bad luck of falling in love with Aeneas, only to find that he was really married to his work. Wasn't that a big dilemma on "Sex and the City"

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-35859025096229928162008-12-03T15:38:00.000-08:002008-12-03T17:36:14.939-08:00

Later the Barbary Coasters come and sing "I Want A Monkey For Christmas". In a free-from-desire way, of course. Who knew that Buddhism had a nativity story? Buddhists, that's who, but now me also! Only it turns out Buddha is picky -- he's not going to be born to just anybody: “The Buddhas,” thought he [that is, pre-pre-natal Buddha -- ed], “are never born into a family of the peasant caste,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-36222657215187804182008-12-02T09:57:00.000-08:002008-12-02T10:30:53.075-08:00

Yeah, that's right -- two movie pictures in a row. We support all forms of cultural literacy.Like before, it's impossible to read Malory without thinking of Monty Python. In fact my opinion of the movie has been improved, because I thought they were making up the Castle of Maidens, and yet here it is right in the text.There's even more stuff they omitted, naturally. Stuff like:• Launcelot (I

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-8957653742534234902008-12-01T20:01:00.000-08:002008-12-01T20:40:29.061-08:00

Reading all the way to the end of this excerpt? Moronic!It's the last month, and just when I can smell the finish line, along comes my least favorite Harvard Classic, Bishop Berkeley: PHILONOUS. Good morrow, Hylas: I did not expect to find you abroad so early. Hylas. It is indeed something unusual; but my thoughts were so taken up with a subject I was discoursing of last night, that finding

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-76033889569524899472008-11-30T17:44:00.000-08:002008-11-30T17:56:55.944-08:00

Why the Harvard Classics wants to preserve failures so bad I can't say, but today Jonathan Swift tries to correct people's faults in conversation, and I think it's safe to say that his attempt failed utterly. Or, to put things sarcastically, "Did you know that some people used to be pedantic?" Well, fortunately for us, fantasy sports changed all that!Or this: Where company hath met, I often

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-83418845301319700152008-11-29T11:35:00.001-08:002008-11-29T11:52:10.248-08:00

Hume. The toga is not slimming.This will be brief because it's David Hume and, as noted, I don't cotton to philosophy. But, in all honesty, Hume doesn't seem to care too much for it either: All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas;...On the contrary, all impressions,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-16579460517032854372008-11-28T22:19:00.000-08:002008-11-28T23:30:33.585-08:00

This just makes me think of how many of these entries must be past their expiration dates.Actually, when it comes to leftovers I have a huge appetite; what I have never hungered for is William Blake, what with the piping and the bleating lambs and the geographical features talking to each other. Nor is the question of who framed the tiger's fearful symmetry strike me as a whodunit of the

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-85079218771914021002008-11-28T16:10:00.000-08:002008-11-28T16:46:20.075-08:00

The Seelbach. "Bourbon does more than More could do/ To bring Utopia into view."How was everyone's Thanksgiving? I made Seelbachs which went over big. There was also turkey of some sort. And, the most American thing of all, Ritz Cracker dressing. I had also read the excerpt from More's Utopia but was a little too wiped out to write about it.I'm not going to beat myself up too much, though,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-26896950453642022322008-11-27T09:00:00.000-08:002008-11-27T09:00:02.533-08:00

The Wall Street Journal has its Thanksgiving traditions, and I have mine:There's also something hilarious to me that this song is about not having a Cadillac, yet the video here shows nothing but Cadillacs. I don't think that's balm for the wound of not having one, especially not one with the TV antenna in the back.Still, happy Thanksgiving y'all. This has been a lean, sad year for me in many

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-60722529281797224432008-11-26T14:19:00.000-08:002008-11-26T16:21:33.080-08:00

Remember that radio show Shakespeare had in the 30s? The "Snyder's Codpieces Pentameter Hour?" A great show, and also the launching pad for a man named Eddie Cantor (stage name -- his given name was Christopher Marlowe). Charles Lamb makes me rise to the defense of actors -- which isn't the default position of those who write for them, believe me -- by telling them they suck at Shakespeare: >

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-52991683112920759412008-11-25T16:23:00.000-08:002008-11-25T21:42:46.291-08:00

Some comedy, however, is timeless. Really, any day of the year would be OK to start a stunt like this. New Year's Day is a little obvious, even, but I was on strike and not picketing. (Digression: It really is remarkable how much show business shuts down over the holidays. You could totally Basil E. Frankweiler inside CAA from like the 23rd till after New Year's, but it would be no fun.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-85694745801866332112008-11-24T18:26:00.001-08:002008-11-24T18:30:59.577-08:00

The Crackers. A dated reference, I know, but it still makes me smile. Today Darwin shows the difficulty of talking about a subject — in this case genetics — before the jargon for that subject has been fully invented. Generally, of course, jargon is odious, but here, swimming through this prose, I kind of feel the lack of it: Many laws regulate variation, some few of which can be dimly seen,

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-9852174225276608822008-11-23T17:27:00.000-08:002008-11-23T19:59:45.930-08:00

A portion of the proceeds of this movie went to Cheech Marin's formidable art collection.Of course there's been some progress over the centuries. Why, in the 1800s, it used to take forever to get anywhere in Manhattan! And as for the ruthless exploitation of prison labor -- well, now that takes place a whole ocean away from where we can see it. As a comedy writer my temperament makes me root

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-13232243961502392152008-11-22T19:55:00.000-08:002008-11-23T16:26:25.272-08:00

So in this Guardian article Jeanette Winerson is saying So when people say that poetry is merely a luxury for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read much at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-23551248985934622482008-11-22T09:00:00.000-08:002008-11-22T09:00:08.344-08:00

Full prank here.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-46463498537305265272008-11-21T21:05:00.000-08:002008-11-21T22:00:50.513-08:00

I think I found a mascot. How do newspaper columnists do it? Here I was all set to type up some fresh insight about Voltaire, and at the last minute I remembered it was an insight I'd had two months ago. That insight was probably not all that fresh then, either, but my lack of knowledge about Voltaire prevents me from knowing who's had what insights about him. (The reason ignorance is bliss

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-15151480568355368802008-11-20T09:12:00.000-08:002008-11-20T10:33:43.285-08:00

Right. Wrong.One of the things I don't like about comedy writers, as a class, is that they dress in a low-status way, with their baseball hats and flannel shirts, which is what I'm wearing right now. Plus pants, I hasten to add. On the other hand, you can't dress too fancy out here, or you're weird, and it's hard

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-18282894641521598302008-11-19T19:36:00.000-08:002008-11-19T21:59:38.335-08:00

The Excalibur in Vegas. It was not of this that Tennyson wrote: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,/And God fulfils Himself in many ways,/ As here, where the town's loosest slots reside."Tennyson can't be fashionable. As discussed, he is superfruity and Victorian. And it is impossible to read today's poem, "Morte d'Arthur", and not think in parts of "Monty Python and the Holy

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-37147304793664445402008-11-19T10:01:00.000-08:002008-11-19T10:07:57.635-08:00

Our Girl In Chicago, who really should post more, has an excellent appreciation of "To Autumn" (dealt by me very superfically here last month). This is how it's supposed to be done

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-25271771814448797512008-11-18T09:38:00.000-08:002008-11-18T10:12:38.295-08:00

Old-school parenting.• He apparently did not exist.• But if he had existed, the reason he shot the apple off his son's head, according to Schiller, was because he was made to do so by an evil colonial official.• This led to Swiss independence because people finally saw how evil colonial officials are: Rud. My people I forsook—renounced my kindred—Broke all the ties of nature, that I

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-37470469787020817522008-11-17T15:48:00.000-08:002008-11-17T16:50:07.970-08:00

Okay, so I'm doing last Monday's reading, which I had read but not written about, mostly because it saves me labor, but also because it's on a favorite topic of mine: the alleged virtues of the country over the city. Or, in Oliver Goldsmith's case, the superiority of The Deserted Village of Auburn over the stinking lanes of London.There's always been good money in this take. Hell, there still

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-30302384645170689502008-11-16T20:47:00.000-08:002008-11-16T21:03:58.318-08:00

Which will be either Carlyle on Scott (technically tomorrow's reading), or Oliver Goldsmith (which I had read last week but then didn't write on). I won't say when tomorrow, though: I have paying work to go through too.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-82770583687332769912008-11-10T15:39:00.000-08:002008-11-10T22:46:33.143-08:00

When I started this blog I knew my dad would love it; after all, they were his volumes that all my childhood were in the bookcase in the upstairs hall, before I shipped them across the country to the bookcase in this upstairs hall. After a couple of weeks, when I proved to myself that I could do this every day, I opened up the blog and told him. He did love it, and on days when I didn't feel

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-65116476599648220802008-11-09T15:50:00.000-08:002008-11-09T16:12:01.600-08:00

I can't really add to much to the two prior reading of Psalms that we've had this year, but one thing did strike me in this bunch, which is that of the nine Psalms (137 to 145) to read today, almost all of them make sure to add a little "and kill my enemies, Lord" there at the end; the Biblical equivalent of driving the car up onto the sidewalk to pick off someone who's looking at you funny.But

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-32862458026281760532008-11-08T10:39:00.000-08:002008-11-08T12:17:18.987-08:00

Milton's verse may linger in your brain, but Milton's Pop-Tarts stay in your arteries.Sequels now I sing, sequels MiltonicWith syntax grand, wherein the sentencesLike Slinkies cascading slowly downward,Traverse the lines, till wish’d-for periods --Those precious pausing drops that signal rest --Appear at last to bring them to a close.Since my skill in verse is like to Homer’sI should be brief.

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-32733482028703634642008-11-07T14:51:00.000-08:002008-11-07T15:33:17.997-08:00

They say the classics aren't relevant anymore, but today's story starts like this:O PRINCE OF THE FAITHFUL, my story is wonderful; for these two bitches are my sisters...But -- sorry hiphop fans -- it turns out the two bitches are just dogs. By now I should expect such transformations from "The Thousand and One Nights." As has often happened in the other readings from this volume, we have not

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-17435939110466208452008-11-06T09:31:00.000-08:002008-11-06T09:49:40.067-08:00

Figure 5. Mr. Faraday continues his lecture on gravity that he began back in May, and I continue to be completely beguiled by the illustrations, as you can see. It's hard to really form a blistering opinion about gravity -- I think we're all in favor of it, especially those of us who just pile things up on their desks instead of filing them -- so I will note that Faraday uses the word "beautiful"

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-6492887106870324472008-11-05T10:32:00.000-08:002008-11-05T11:05:15.295-08:00

Also, I believe that it will become fashionable again to join the Masons. You just watch.Today I will start off with a confession, and then hopefully it will wind around to the reading. The confession is this: I voted for Nader in 2000. My exculpations are as follows: 1) I wouldn't have done it if I'd been living in someplace like Pennsylvania instead of safely blue California, but 2) I was

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-77725018031957457452008-11-04T09:00:00.000-08:002008-11-04T09:00:00.877-08:00

Golden Age Beer -- For refreshment that complies with the dramatic unities.The Golden Age is now.At least it is for us upper-middlebrows with Internet connections. Classical music pours out of Pandora like nothing on earth. The WFMU blog brings us footage of Jack Benny interviewing Issac Hayes. A college professor who talks to journalists about Niebuhr and who's willing to be photographed

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-84438831821503716752008-11-03T13:57:00.000-08:002008-11-03T14:13:42.627-08:00

I am travelling without my books, and my Daily Reading Guide link can't possibly be right: I was assured that I was to get a ringside seat to Christian persecution, but instead I find letters from Pliny to Trajan about stuff like what the interest rates should be; interesting, in a way -- if only because it gives me the sense that the Christians were just another in a long line of pains in the

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-73336870753078875462008-11-02T08:22:00.000-08:002008-11-02T18:35:36.907-08:00

One of the things that characterizes really great people in any field, I think, is that they're conscious of their greatness. They have to be, or how would they dare to do what only the great can do?The problem is that one of the things that characterizes crazy people is that they're also conscious of their greatness. And, speaking for myself anyway, I have a default setting of preferring false

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-79445264815923810162008-11-01T20:40:00.000-07:002008-11-01T20:56:19.036-07:00

All the world's a mall. There’s a goodly amount of theater stuff in the Harvard Classics, which they choose to call by the more fancifying name of “drama.” But in the Daily Reading Guide – the “tasting menu” of the 50 volumes – you could call the drama selections “Act I, Scene i: An Anthology.”Not that that’s all bad. In fact it’s been educational. One thing I’ve learned as a TV writer

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-8468907516282610332008-11-01T12:00:00.000-07:002008-11-01T12:00:01.003-07:00

I am called away from today thru Election Day so it is dicey whether I'll be able to post. Just think of every day that I do as a victory! In case I don't, though:

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-38955708308564788082008-10-31T16:10:00.000-07:002008-10-31T16:35:26.985-07:00

You people all look like ants...to the rocks! (In that case, admittedly, the photo should be shot from below.)One way to sum up what I've learned this year is that the human heart never changes but the human brain is always learning. And how mind-blowing it must have been once Darwin's message was taken to heart. Before that, though, there was Charles Lyell's similarly mind-blowing revelations

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-87462510164449826492008-10-30T15:48:00.000-07:002008-10-30T15:52:42.067-07:00

Blog post, anyway. There might be goal posts as I'm going to the Kings game tonight. However, I have done the reading (Charles Lyell) and may, repeat may, be able to write about it tomorrow, which would suit me fine because then I wouldn't have to read any more Robert Burns. In the meantime, enjoy Anze Kopitar:

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-53553101043935571182008-10-29T17:41:00.000-07:002008-10-29T20:52:32.351-07:00

Let me complain.In the Daily Reading Guide introduction -- highly recommended as a guide to early 20th-century advertising prose -- we read: PRESIDENT ELIOT wrote in his introduction to the Harvard Classics, “In my opinion, a five-foot shelf would hold books enough to give a liberal education to any one who would read them with devotion, even if he could spare but fifteen minutes a day for

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-27419309092199825692008-10-28T20:21:00.000-07:002008-10-28T21:38:44.212-07:00

"...good old reliable Nathan, who always plays as an orc/In the oldest established permanent floating D&D game in New York"Was John Locke all Dungeons-and-Dragons during a time when there were actual dungeons? Check it: For example, what if an ivory-ball were made like that of the royal-oak lottery, with thirty two sides, or one rather of twenty four or twenty five sides; and upon several of

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-61135494861677379802008-10-27T16:43:00.000-07:002008-10-28T09:05:36.314-07:00

It's doctrinally correct if the bottle's recycled, right? It is true that America in general, and Los Angeles in particular, is accused of vulgarizing the delicate tenets of Buddhism;And it is true that when the hearer is ready, the Word is understood;So I stand doubly condemned for not getting today's reading from the Buddhist writings: “The question is not rightly put,” said The Blessed One. “

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-13673254028715310302008-10-26T21:22:00.000-07:002008-10-26T21:45:02.771-07:00

What this blog needs are some more goddamn charts.Ben Franklin and his huge ego return after an absence of six months. I confess to be rather charmed by people who acknowledge their own huge egos -- it's what makes me well fitted for show business. And Franklin is never more disarming, and his ego never huger, than when he shows you how he conceals it: I continu’d...the habit of expressing

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-57075587038306884912008-10-25T19:01:00.000-07:002008-10-25T19:44:34.954-07:00

So it turns out the Harvard Classics are filled with the deathless works of literature that have endured for centuries -- plus book reviews! I think this is a good thing, myself, but then I'm someone who freely admits that he forms opinions on books and movies based solely on their reviews. But it's sort of funny to open these distinguished-looking volumes (except that I found an old blank golf

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-29620031069554243842008-10-24T20:43:00.000-07:002008-10-24T22:52:23.829-07:00

So cute! Who's a little prophet of doom? Who's a little prophet of doom?The fate of Cassandra is the topic of today's reading, a rather dreary translation of Aeschylus's Agamemnon (FACT: the original production was supposed to have songs written by a very young Noel Coward, but Aeschylus vetoed this. Gertrude Lawrence, however, was ravishing at Clytemnestra when it opened at, appropriately

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-13805449278320308052008-10-23T18:03:00.000-07:002008-10-23T22:33:40.699-07:00

Plutarch has a great farce-quality scene in today's reading featuring cross-dressing in pursuit of adultery: As Pompeia was at that time celebrating this feast, Clodius, who as yet had no beard, and so thought to pass undiscovered, took upon him the dress and ornaments of a singing woman, and so came thither, having the air of a young girl. Finding the doors open, he was without any stop

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-44137597954780095022008-10-23T08:31:00.000-07:002008-10-23T18:04:13.143-07:00

Is "Vanity Fair" any good? I can't imagine that it is after reading this excerpt from Thackeray's essay on Jonathan Swift's love problems. Note that this is economizing, Harvard Classics style -- this way they shove two classic authors in one entry. Way back earlier this year I read Robert Louis Stevenson on Pepys. What's interesting is that Thackeray and Stevenson smell much more strongly

Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-71903971472489432692008-10-22T19:52:00.000-07:002008-10-22T20:04:27.173-07:00

Father Knickerbocker understands. I'm sorry to get these things up so late but that's the price I pay for working these days. And I may not get to today's reading because I want to watch the World Series on Tivo. Don't tell me in comments who wins!

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