March 2011
60 posts
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“I prefer to talk about the meaning in a story rather than the theme of a story....”
– Flannery O’Connor, from “Writing Short Stories,” 1961 (via petitchou)
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“While still in college [Elizabeth] Bishop met the poet Marianne Moore, who was...”
– Charles Simic, The Power of Reticence (via winesburgohio)
I lament the fact that I was not that friend.
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To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee
berezina:
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.
~Emily Dickinson
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“The novel was born with the modern era that made of man, to cite Heidegger, the...”
– Milan Kundera, Une Rencontre, Gallimard, p. 53, my transl.
* “subjectum” is one of those fancy philosophical terms I’ve heard people throw around way too casually. I was a little confused when I came across it here and decided to hunt down a good definition. The dutch philosopher...
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"Condemned to Joy" by Pascal Bruckner →
A French writer and philosopher ponders our joyless pursuit of happiness.
“You can come down here and fight for free, Senator, and [I] would knock you on...”
– Ernest Hemingway in a letter to Senator Joseph McCarthy, 8 May 1950 (via chriscantwell)
away-abaddon asked: Concerning your last Aron quote: I can understand calling Sartre an ideologue or a true believer to explain not condemning the Soviet Union. But a moralist? Wouldn't the contrast be ideology or idealism vs. (political) realism instead of moralism vs. politics? Or do I just not know my definitions? (If I'm displaying my ignorance here, it certainly isn't the first time.) It seems as...
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“Sartre was a moralist. He couldn’t admit that the positions I took,...”
– Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, Éditions de Fallois, p. 236, my transl.
In what is essentially a book-length interview, Aron, here, attempts to answer the question: Why didn’t Sartre condemn the Soviet Union even after he had learned about the gulags and other horrors?
Which is to say:...
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“The Essence of the Game is Deception” →
My friend Yago Colas has posted a review of Leonard Koppett’s book on basketball, The Essence of the Game is Deception.
This is a review; but it’s so much more, and if you listen carefully (it’s just about ten minutes long), you will learn why, in order to understand basketball:
deception matters
fun matters
style matters; and
Nietzsche matters
among much, much else
You...
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“To have political opinions is not to have a be-all end-all ideology; it’s...”
– Raymond Aron, Le Spectateur engagé, Éditions de Fallois, p. 249, my transl.
[Avoir des opinions politiques, ce n’est pas avoir une fois pour toutes une idéologie, c’est prendre des décisions justes dans des circonstances qui changent.]
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What Makes Us Human? Apparently, We Mostly Got Rid... →
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Stop Spending So Much Time With Others →
The Boston Globe reports on recent research indicating how, when, and why spending time alone is good for you.
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Google Person Finder for earthquake in Japan →
David Simon, Creator of The Wire, Speaks on... →
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“It’s just the style for Tyrian girls to sport a quiver and high laced...”
– Virgil, The Aeneid, ln. 336 - 337, Robert Fagles transl.
…virginibus Tyriis mos est gestare pharetram
purpureoque alte suras vincire cothurno.
It just so happened that Mrs. Tragos was relaxing at home listening to Robert Fagles’ translation of The Aeneid, when she came across this...
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Readers may be divided into four classes
aperfectcommotion:
1. Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable ...
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“Today I rarely read anything — book, magazine, newspaper — without a writing...”
– Sam Anderson on marginalia, ‘What I Really Want Is Someone Rolling Around in the Text’ (via austinkleon)
I finally feel just that much less alone in the world, as of now.
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An Ape's Letter to the Academy (by Kafka)
“I’m worried that people do not understand precisely what I mean by a way out. I use the word in its most common and fullest sense. I am deliberately not saying freedom. I do not mean this great feeling of freedom on all sides. As an ape, I perhaps recognized it, and I have met human beings who yearn for it. But as far as I am concerned, I did not demand freedom either then or today....
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We are evolving into a shorter, fatter human race →
“What we have found with height and weight basically is that natural selection appears to be operating to reduce the height and to slightly increase their weight.”
— Evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns on recent findings related to human natural selection patterns.
From the Monday, February 28 edition of The Independent Science section.
To Celebrate Shrove Tuesday: I Give You Orwell on... →
Next to Christmas, what holiday is bigger than Shrove Tuesday? None, of course, and there is no subject more important on this day than pancakes. The Tragoses plan to serve a helping or two this very evening.
Orwell had his opinions on the subject. In this same opinion piece, you’ll also find his opinions on British eating habits, class, coffee, tea, mint, and lemon juice.
Happy Shrove...
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“Although not everyone in the world of French fashion fell in line with fascist...”
– From today’s Times’ Op-Ed piece drawing the connection between high fashion and fascism.
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“Prague German is nothing but embers which can be brought to a semblance of life...”
– Franz Kafka, in a letter to his friend Max Brod in June of 1921.
“Prague German” is a somewhat blander version of the language found in Germany and Austria, lacking the coloring of slang, colloquialisms, and dialectical influences found in High German. Kafka was aware that his Prague German was...
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