A podcast about books & life — not necessarily in that order
Later today, the MLB 2009 Hall of Fame class will be announced, and Rickey Henderson will likely have the most votes of anyone in nearly 10 years. I’m sure pre-steroid Barry Bonds would beg to differ, but I think Rickey’s the greatest player I’ve ever seen. I’d love to see him give a 2-hour induction speech in which he lobbies to get on an major league roster for the upcoming season.
What I’m reading: I tried Richard Flanagan’s novel, The Unknown Terrorist
What I’m listening to: A new Mad Mix I just finished putting together.
What I’m watching: Finishing up season 2 of Arrested Development
What I’m drinking: Blue Point’s Toasted Lager and my above-standard G&Ts.
What Rufus is up to: No hike this week, due to snow! Aaiee!
Where I’m going: Nowhere in particular.
What I’m happy about: Getting birthday wishes from a bazillion friends and my family yesterday. Thanks, everybody! I hope 38 is as fun as 37 was!
What I’m sad about: That my uncle in Israel is likely going to need bypass surgery. This means that Dad and both of his brothers have needed this procedure. Looks like I better add red wine to my What I’m drinking section. (Oh, and the Giants lost to the Eagles. Grr.)
What I’m pondering: Whether Sting knows how bad he looks.
(AP Photo/NBC,Paul Drinkwater)
Just because the NYTimes’ architecture critic lives on another planet (lemme tell you, Nicolai: the problem with starchitecture is not that it failed to focus on public housing), that doesn’t mean there isn’t good writing about architecture in other newspapers. Dwell’s blog offers up a bunch of them!
I’m not sure I agree with the writer’s point — that post-crash poverty freed Rembrandt do pursue his art for its own sake — but it’s been a long time since I posted a Rembrandt link up here, so enjoy.
It’s the pre-birthday edition! Celebrate my 38th by enjoying some great links! And buy me stuff! Or at least wish me a happy birthday on Sunday!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Jan. 9, 2009”
A lot of these entries have focused on the publishing industry, because I read about it and its constituents tend to whine a lot. I haven’t written so much about the financial crisis in that context, so I’ll remedy that now.
Here’s an article about the SEC branch chief who managed to find no problems at Bernie Madoff’s hedge fund in a recent investigation. Rather than say, “I sure screwed up on that one,” she asked, “Why are you taking a mid-level staff person and making me responsible for the failure of the American economy?”
She added, “If someone provides you with the wrong set of books, I don’t know how you find the real books.” That’s why it’s called an investigation, you whining f***.
So, if you’re looking to pull an accounting scam on someone, make sure she attended Yale undergrad and Fordham law.
After giving me the double kick in the nuts of closing down both the New York Sun and my favorite Thai restaurant in NYC last year, the universe offers up a handy made-for-Gil-Roth moment: the My Year of Flops writer reviews With Nails
Plus, the makers of the awesome Q Tonic were so happy that I offered some feedback on their product that they just sent me a 4-pack of the stuff!
It seems the cosmos has made a New Year’s resolution to be nicer to me! (I promise I’ll get around to reading The Wah-Wah Diaries
We return to Louisiana for this week’s edition! Cooking is an important part of the conversation between my wife & her dad, so our visits involve supermarket visits that invariably result in my stumbling across “food” I never imagined I’d see on a shelf. To wit:
“ALWAYS ask for the BEST”. Because you really don’t want to cut corners on your pickled pork lips.
See the whole Lost in the Supermarket series
Editors and publishers must now learn how to use telephones.
(In a bonus piece of cluelessness, this article also focuses on publishers’ debilitating problem of returns from bookstores . . . without ever mentioning e-publishing! God forbid you mention a distribution venue that eliminates the cost of physical production, shipping and returns in an article about cutting costs!)
I was flummoxed by Of diversion (pp. 764-774) and tempted to skip writing about it. Problem is, the next essay, On some verses of Virgil, is
So you’re stuck with Of diversion this week. The first two-thirds of this one discuss the various ways that individuals and the polis can be, well, diverted from unpleasant thoughts or feelings. Montaigne begins by telling us how he once consoled a sad woman, not by telling her that her sorrow was useless, but “very gently deflecting our talk and diverting it bit by bit to subjects nearby, then a little more remote, as she gave me more of her attention, I imperceptibly and entirely soothed for as long as I was there.” Once he left, she showed no improvement.
He brings up similar cases of diverting attention from a singular topic. M. being M., that subject tends to be death. He thinks there’s a rare person who can look death square in the eye; most men on the gallows will begin “praying aloud, with a violent and continual excitement,” and “busying their senses . . . as much as they can.” Facing death, we put ourselves elsewhere, in diversions of escape, or our children’s futures, or the lasting glory of our works.
The last third of the essay, as I said, goes off the rails for me. M. explains, “It takes little to divert and distract us, for it takes little to hold us.” From there, he launches into a digression about how we’re moved by lamentation in fiction, how actors and orators convince themselves of the sorrow of their speeches, and how people will mourn when they see a funeral procession, even if they don’t know who’s in the casket. He makes good points about the ease with which we get preoccupied, but it seems out of place in an essay that focuses on the implacability of grief and the difficulties we have diverting it.
Still, he offers up a wonderful little portrait of Keeping It Real after a loved one’s death:
In a region near our mountains the women play the part of Prester Martin [who spoke both parts at Mass]; for even as they magnify their grief for their lost husband by remembering the good and agreeable qualities he had, at the same time they also assemble and proclaim his imperfetions, as if to bring themselves to some sort of balance and to turn themselves aside from pity to disdain; with much better grace, at that, than we who, at the loss of a casual acquaintance, pride ourselves on lending him new and undeserved praises and making him quite another man, when we have lost sight of him, than he seemed ot use when we were seeing him. As if regret were an instructive thing, or tears enlightened our understanding by washing it. From this moment I renounce any favorable testimonials that anyone may want to give me not beause I shall deserve them but because I shall be dead.
On to Virgil!