October 2010

Eating Poetry (XXV) – We Say God and the Imagination Are One

October 30, 2010

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour Wallace Stevens Light the first light of evening, as in a room In which we rest and, for small reason, think The world imagined is the ultimate good. This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. It is in that thought that we collect ourselves, Out of all the indifferences, into [...]

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Who

October 29, 2010

Arriving home from an evening out a few weeks ago, I sat down at the computer for one last check of email, Facebook, Twitter, all the disparate and convergent paths of communication. I discovered an email that made me cry out. (How soon, already, in resemblance to a long-form letter of lore seems an email [...]

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What’s Coming to Us

October 28, 2010

Are you an optimist? Then what are you reading me for? Seriously. (No, I’m just joking.) Optimism and pessimism are about reading signs. They are tilts of the head as we read. P goes this way, O that. Sometimes, it seems to me, O is tilting so far he’s practically looking up from below, spying [...]

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The First Casualty of War…

October 27, 2010

…is truth. Attribute it to whomever you like. War, though, as we know from Clausewitz, is not just physical combat, and war and politics, we might say, are different, more or less heightened modalities of the same material and ideological contention. So maybe less neatly, and with the greater complexity of reality, we have Samuel [...]

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Quote of the Day

October 27, 2010

[Keith] Richards is a working class lad from Dartford – amongst other things, he was probably rebelling against being patronised by men called Dorian. via Mick Hartley: Keef on Iraq. Related articles Life, by Keef (ickmusic.com) With No Ax to Grind (online.wsj.com) Share Tweet Subscribe to comments on this post Email

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Jazz Is: 14 – Eartha Kitt, “C’est Si Bon”

October 27, 2010

Absolute perfection. (Grrrr.) Share Tweet Subscribe to comments on this post Email

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The High Spark of the Low Heels, Boys

October 26, 2010

Politics is a contemptible business. Public service, that’s something else. Government? That’s not what politics is. Politics is a sewer. It leads those who participate in it, especially in any regular form, to employ every low human behavior except, generally, murder, though accusations even of it are not now unheard of. And because the politicians [...]

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Ten Questions for Monday

October 25, 2010

All right, move it along. The weekend is over. Get back to work. A person is asked whether the many tens of millions of dollars in anonymously donated funds being spent in this election year by third party organizations corrupts the political process. His response is “When people are losing on the issues, they talk [...]

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The Personal Is Not Political

October 22, 2010

I have been traveling on the East Coast all week, and will be for a while longer, which is why blogging has been light, except for my definitive statement on postcolonialism, the literary canon, and Newt Gingrich, rendering the first two no longer necessary subjects of discussion and, with any justice, ending the puny political [...]

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Nation, Culture, and Identity

October 19, 2010

The truth is that none of the ideas against which Adam Levick argued last week in response to my “The Churchill Doctrine” and “Incoherence on Race and Culture“ are positions that I hold. How can that be? Adam is the estimable managing editor of CiF Watch, a blog finely dedicated to exposing the rampant, ugly [...]

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How We Lived on It (27) – L’Eclisse

October 16, 2010

The ending of Michelangelo Antonioni‘s 1962 L’Eclisse. The two lovers do not come to each other in the end. New music: “Wavy Gravy” by DJ Sasha. Related articles Famous and Celebrity Birthdays for September 29, 2010 (blippitt.com) ‘Numbers’ adds up for helmer (variety.com) Five things to do today: January 21 (timeoutny.com) Share Tweet Subscribe to [...]

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Bankers Bust the Economy, Borrow Money, Blame You

October 15, 2010

See if you can follow the logic. Banks knowingly make high risk mortgage loans, market them deceptively within the financial community, taking out insurance bets against foreclosures and loss of value in the securities they created from the bad, bundled mortgages. They bust the world economy – and these captains of laissez faire capital accept [...]

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Chile Rescues 33, Rand Paul of 2 Kentucky Miners: “Sometimes Accidents Happen”

October 15, 2010

You have to wonder if American conservatives and libertarians feel somehow constitutionally repelled by the joint effort, championed by the Chilean national government, to save the 33 Copiapo miners. In the Right’s laissez faire of life, death, and the general welfare, should the company and the miners – they knew the risks, the took their [...]

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The ‘U.S.’ Chamber Of Foreign Commerce

October 15, 2010

“What’s the matter with Kansas?” What’s the matter with K H Street? That would be 1615 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20062-2000 the main office of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, working against the American worker and in the interests of secret foreign donors. Further brought to you by Citizens United, by the judgment of [...]

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Writers Write

October 13, 2010

“Oh! It is only a novel! … only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.” Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (1818) Related articles Howard Jacobson on taking comic novels [...]

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“We shouldn’t have expected a banker to play by the rules.”

October 13, 2010

Follow the link. See the cartoon. Sigh in recognition. Move on. via “We shouldn’t have expected a banker to play by the rules.” at The New Yorker Store. Share Tweet Subscribe to comments on this post Email

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Pamela Geller: “I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did”

October 13, 2010

Well, that’s a relief. I was beginning to think she’d lost it. via HOW COULD STANLEY ANN DUNHAM HAVE DELIVERED BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA JR. IN AUGUST OF 1961 IN HONOLULU, WHEN OFFICIAL UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON RECORDS SHOW HER 2680 MILES AWAY IN SEATTLE ATTENDING CLASSES THAT SAME MONTH? – Atlas Shrugs. Share Tweet Subscribe to [...]

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Jazz Is: 13 – A Blue Monk ‘Round Midnight

October 13, 2010

Thelonius A twofer in honor of what would have been his 93rd birthday, October 10. You can play piano like that. ————— Related articles Thelonius Monk: Straight No Chaser (uptownflavor.com) Jazz Museum in Harlem Schedule (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com) Music Review: Thelonious Monk – The Definitive Thelonious Monk On Prestige and Riverside (blogcritics.org) Abbey Lincoln, the All-in-One Jazz [...]

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On love, loyalty, patriotism, and human nature

October 12, 2010

(The following is a guest post by Adam Levick of CiF Watch. Adam responds to two of my recent posts. I will reply, answering Adam’s questions and furthering the discussion, next week.) ————— There’s much to dissect in Jay’s “Churchill Doctrine“, as well as his follow-up, “Incoherence on Race and Culture.” I’ll stay clear of [...]

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The Problem with J Street

October 11, 2010

The problem with J Street is that it doesn’t make sense. It is conceptually self-implosive. This was never really very hard to see. Last year, during the 2009 J Street Conference, Jonathan Chait wrote. The problem, though, was that J Street had loosened the definition of “pro-Israel” to the point where it had virtually no [...]

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Eating Poetry (XXIV) – Giacomo Leopardi

October 9, 2010

The New Yorker, September 13, 2010 Share Tweet Subscribe to comments on this post Email

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