I’m here in the Real O.C.! I haven’t seen Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows anywhere, nor Kristin Cavallari’s roots, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
During the flight, I watched No Maps for These Territories, a documentary about William Gibson. I’m ruminating on that one, and might write a lengthy, rambling take on it next weekend. Harass me about it, so I can formulate some more.
Also, I read a pair of short columns that I think you might like, and that seem somehow intertwined. I haven’t gone to Arts & Letters much lately; not sure why. But Amy hit it this weekend and came across both of these pieces, so all credit goes to the official VM wife.
The first is a review of Harold Bloom’s Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, which explores Bloom’s visions and revisions on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments:
Bloom interprets the trinity as an essentially polytheistic “structure of anxiety” in which God the Fatherâ€â€whom Bloom finds “lacking in personality”â€â€is a mere shade of Yahweh. Yahweh, “the West’s major literary, spiritual, and ideological character,” has not, according to Bloom, “survived in Christianity.” In J’s portraitâ€â€the earliest biblical layerâ€â€Yahweh is “anxious, pugnacious, aggressive, ambivalent,” not to mention all too often absent. But unlike Jesus Christ and God the Father, he is emphatically not a theological God. Indeed, Bloom asserts that “no God has been more human.”
The other piece is about wet shaving, Homer, and the possibility of redemption. I can’t begin to do it justice.
thanks for posting; knew about the bloom/bloom lovefest (from glancing through the wisdom book); strauss, however, was a revelation to me.
The Nets will get swept by Miami if they get to the second round. Shaq went into hibernation, but he’s awake now.
one other thing: I haven’t watched an nba game in a while, but did something bad happen to Ernie Johnson’s head? He looks like the elephant man.
He’s got follicular (non-Hodgkins) lymphoma in the node under his ear. It’s treatable and non-aggressive, but the treatment causes that massive swelling.
Glad you liked the Bloomstuff. I never read anything connecting HB and LS either, but it’s neat to see how his map of misreading gets applied to that neocon movement.
My buddy H at broodingpersian.blogspot.com (now defunct, but the site still works) is a big Straussian who also detests the quick-and-easy version. And the Iliad’s his favorite book. I probably oughtta hook you guys up sometime.
does he read Greek?
H? Yeah, I’m pretty sure he does. He also got into a near-knock-down, drag-out brawl at his oral exam at St. John’s, with that tutor who was an incomprehensible genius; I’m blanking on the guy’s name right now.
H was discussing the Melian dialogues, and this tutor went after him in a pretty underhanded way. It was a hoot, esp. considering H once belonged to a paramilitary group of Aristotelians in Texas.
You meet some interesting people at St. John’s.