and I love the outfit
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Baseball is over . . .
at least for the sox. So I reminded myself that I actually work at a university -- with access to a tremendous amount of books. We'll see if I get through them.
Nixonland by Rick Pearlstein: I really have heard terrific things about this book. I am not even looking forward to it from a Watergate perspective. I think that it actually depicts the environment of the country at the time of the rise of Nixon. These books always reveal political landscapes that are more similar to today then I think we realize. Reading Hunter Thompson's book about the campaign in 1972 really drives that point home. So many of the divisions are the same. While we use different code words and different scapegoats -- we are really still fighting taking on McCarthy, sadly without a Murrow.
The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux: This is not the recent book by Theroux, but the original, from 1973. He takes a train from London to Japan and back. First on a southerly route, through much of the land that is in our current chaos. He returns traveling through the Soviet Union. If I enjoy this book, I am sure that I will read his current follow-up. For the same reasons that he wrote it. What makes them most interesting (if they are) are the differences that have taken place.
My pretentious pick for the day is, What is Literature by Jean-Paul Sartre. Kind of on a whim. I used to enjoy Sartre's writing, but haven't visited in a while. I am guessing I will not finish this, but thought I'd give it a shot.
Nixonland by Rick Pearlstein: I really have heard terrific things about this book. I am not even looking forward to it from a Watergate perspective. I think that it actually depicts the environment of the country at the time of the rise of Nixon. These books always reveal political landscapes that are more similar to today then I think we realize. Reading Hunter Thompson's book about the campaign in 1972 really drives that point home. So many of the divisions are the same. While we use different code words and different scapegoats -- we are really still fighting taking on McCarthy, sadly without a Murrow.
The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux: This is not the recent book by Theroux, but the original, from 1973. He takes a train from London to Japan and back. First on a southerly route, through much of the land that is in our current chaos. He returns traveling through the Soviet Union. If I enjoy this book, I am sure that I will read his current follow-up. For the same reasons that he wrote it. What makes them most interesting (if they are) are the differences that have taken place.
My pretentious pick for the day is, What is Literature by Jean-Paul Sartre. Kind of on a whim. I used to enjoy Sartre's writing, but haven't visited in a while. I am guessing I will not finish this, but thought I'd give it a shot.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
a cross between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc
so said Michael Gerson of Sarah Palin. The name Gerson rang a bell -- now that I see his face on the Washington Post site, I remember reading various inane ramblings.
The New Yorker has an article on the choosing of Palin.
The New Yorker has an article on the choosing of Palin.
Sartre - my favorite quote
The quote ends Peter Novick's book -- That Noble Dream -- a history of the notion of objectivity in the American Historical Profession and is originally from Sartre's Between Existentialism and Marxism.
"In the domain of expression success is necessarily failure. It is impossible to succeed, since at the outset you set yourself the goal of failure (to capture movement in immobile objects, for instance).
The moment comes when you just can't take the work any further ... At this point, my friend Giacometti explains, you can throw your piece of sculpture in the rubbish bin or exhibit it in a gallery. So there it is. You never quite grasp what you set out to achieve. And then suddenly it's a statue or a book. The opposite of what you wanted. If its faults are inscribed methodically in the negative which you present to the public, they at least point to what it might have been. And the spectator becomes the real sculptor, fashioning his model in thin air or reading the book between the lines."
"In the domain of expression success is necessarily failure. It is impossible to succeed, since at the outset you set yourself the goal of failure (to capture movement in immobile objects, for instance).
The moment comes when you just can't take the work any further ... At this point, my friend Giacometti explains, you can throw your piece of sculpture in the rubbish bin or exhibit it in a gallery. So there it is. You never quite grasp what you set out to achieve. And then suddenly it's a statue or a book. The opposite of what you wanted. If its faults are inscribed methodically in the negative which you present to the public, they at least point to what it might have been. And the spectator becomes the real sculptor, fashioning his model in thin air or reading the book between the lines."
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