Today's Issue
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This month we are back on track, it is all about art and literature. What I had to say of politics and the devil's triangel is said and I really wish not to add to it - three millennia of incessant grief and stupidity leave a bad taste in the mouth. But of course there is no clean escape from these things. Censorship, for instance, is an old issue and it doesn't seem to bypass our blessed day and age as well. Somebody always has an agenda he thinks he has to foist on the rest of us; somebody is always so arrogant that he thinks he alone knows better. Somebody is always so self-righteous that he thinks he alone has a special channel and can't be touched. Curiously the two motivations behind such behavior are fear of knowledge and condescending benevolence - sometimes a mix of both. We dummies out there just need to be protected from ourselves for our own good, don't we? Imagine the chaos that would ensue, if suddenly everybody had the temerity to think for himself? God forbid! My own position on literature and art is entirely aesthetic, but sometimes it is good to remember that even the most exclusive work of art somewhere down the line is also a victory in the fight for the liberation of the human spirit. Which doesn't change the fact, if literature is not enjoyable for its intrinsic grace of delivery it is not worth our time. It is all about style and rhetorics, about the fun of reading. The academic sourpusses can stew in their own juices and continue masturbating over Derrida, great ideas, Nobel-laureates, social issues and the meaning of life. Be my guest! Just don't tell me this has anything to do with genuine art! Just don't! So get yourself one of those frozen things from the icebox or grab a six-pack and if you feel sophisticated pour yourself a good drop, unsheathe the smuggled havanna, slowly lit up - make a ceremony of it, gently roll the cigar between your fingures - and have a pleasant read.
Michael SympsonThe Koran Mynyard-Smith: "Evolution and the Theory of Games" Nabokov, Vladimir: "Lolita" Stone, I. F.: "The Trial of Socrates" Symmachus (c.340-405) - "Letters"The Evil in the Beholder's Eye I The Evil in the Beholder's Eye II, Rob Boston: "The Wizard of Oz" The Evil in the Beholder's Eye III, Rob Boston: "Harry Potter" Dark Ages Dark ages of Antiquity Methods of Literary Criticism John Milton: "To the Pure all Things are pure" Stephens & Ottaway, "The Seed of Hypocrisy - from U.S., the ABC's of Jihad" Tolstoy, a chapter from "Peace and War" What Goethe couldn't knowJohann Wolfgang von Goethe "Israel in the Desert"
cold war credulity dairymaid account ecclesiastic history Ernest Hemingway Eucharist Everett's Universe even Aristotle had his moments fact & fiction the giveaway God? inside out I.Q. blues it's there for everyone who can read our constitutional dilemma shaken not stirred the 'Stone of Destiny' the storybook oh those were the days a valid question
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I wonder whether I should change the entire format and unite the review and feature section under one title. But then, web-pages are like a growing weed. Once you establish a structure, you better go by it. And by and large I am happy with the way I do things here. Why I do it is a different matter. I guess the page functions a bit like a subterranean sewer system to keep stuff out of my novel. A matter I've spent a lot of time thinking about. How does a novelist keep track on his own material? How did Marcel Proust do it, with nothing but notebooks and handwriting at his disposal? Tolstoy's novels too are handwritten. Would a typewriter have made a difference? It did for Hemingway. Stephen King in his earlier period, when some of his income still went into the bottle, took pride in the fact that he didn't use a computer. Now he has changed his mind. In fact computers are one of the finest writing instruments ever invented. Theoretically a writer could store his entire reference library on the hard-drive and quotes are only a click away without any need of tedious typing or driving to the library to ask for a book over the interlibrary exchange. "How long will it take?" - "Not sure, 2, 3 weeks perhaps." - "Hey, at home I have a novel boiling away, I need the juice! - "Sorry, nothing I can do!" No: computers, especially portable PowerBooks, are a good thing.
Michael SympsonSt. Augustine: "The Confessions" Harold Bloom: "The Western Canon" Cavelli-Sforza:"The History and Geography of Human Genes" Celine:"Journey to the End of Night" Charles Dickens: "Bleak House" Emily Dickinson: "Poems" by Gary Sloan Ferguson: "The Penguin Rhyming Lexicon" William Harris: "Ancient Literacy" Sappho / Mary Barnard: "Poems" Jonathan Swift: "Gulliver's Travels"authors in bad taste a recent archaeological discovery Buddhism cogite intrare pieces of the puzzle the Devil's triangle if E.T. is out there why doesn't he visit us? What is Gnosticism? the Horatian George Bernard Shaw's toast to Einstein Gary Sloan: The Jesus Question translating Greek by Benjamin Jowetteternal recurrence? gun lobby a keen observation the New Testament opinions papal encyclicals these parochial obsession of ours reflection on Marcion worth a study the scariest news of recent timesThe New Testament in Detail A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States Cosmic Ray Muons and Relativistic Time Dilation
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It is not a new idea, but it seems Edgar Allan Poe deserves credit for the invention of modern literature.
"The material in an epic is not the sort of thing that of itself would yield a climactic linear plot. Why is it that the lengthy climactic plot comes into being only with writing, first in the drama, where there is no narrator, yet does not make its way into lengthy narrative until more than 2000 years later with the novels of the age of Jane Austin? Why was all lengthy narrative before the early 1800s more or less episodic, so far as we know all over the world? Why had no one written a tidy detective story before E.A. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in 1841, which creates the climactic linear plot in its plenary form? Until print appeared and took full effect, the oral allegiance to the episodical always remained in command. But in print the story is not for listeners but for readers, each one alone in his or her world. Writing too, is very reflective and slow and the sense of isolation and closure imposed on the author by the printed word encourages the analytical consciousness to take charge. In the ideal detective story, ascending action, climactic recognition, reversal and denouement give significance to every single detail in the story and before reaching the climax are used effectively to mislead." (Walter J. Ong "Orality & Literacy" p.144; 149-151.)
However typographic culture has by now almost completely transmuted to electronic media. Tight plotting now is "too easy" ("too controlled," "too conscious,") so the day's catchword is "deplotting" and "deconstruction" and "post-modernism." Baloney!!! What we really do is hiding the plot under a thick veneer of impressionistic "spontaneity." Well from where I am standing: amateurs and geniuses are spontaneous. Anyone in between better has his toolbox handy. On reflection, Poe probably had no idea what he had set in motion. In fact his inflated style and often kitschy choice of words still belongs to a very different era. Poe did not anticipate the most important propellant of a good story: the rounded character that has the "incalculability of life" about it.
Michael SympsonBultmann: "Theology of the New Testament" Doherty: "The Jesus Puzzle" T.S.Eliot: "Four Quartets" L. Forward: "Dragon's Egg" James Joyce: "Ulysses" Immanuel Kant: "Critique of pure Reason" Lerner: "Big Bang Never Happened" The New Testament The New Testament in detail Edgar Allan Poe: "Eureka" Ezra Pound: "Personae" Pushkin: "Eugene Onegin" Salinger: "The Catcher in the Rye"Berkeley's club charcoal works dark night paradox the empire strikes back reading on the john Edgar Allan Poe the temperature of heaven What is a Classic?April 2002: synopsis Brecht: "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."his greatest fan the highwayman Mary's virginity no such thing as empty space not enchanted skeptical about Einstein that sums it up theoretical science in ancient RomeThe New Testament in Detail A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States
reviews |features | previews | barbs & wires"Every writer creates his own pedigree" says Jorge Luis Borges, and this is certainly true. In your nightgown, it is between you and your mirror, but on the paper you are the person you are meant to be. This issue carries two essays by Thucydides (c.474-c.400 BC) and Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866). Thucydides' introductory chapter to his "History of the Peloponnesian War," the so called "Archaeology," is a model of its kind to this very day. Thomas Love Peacock is the nearest thing to an English emulation of Voltaire. His essay was meant to be a joke, but the joke became the best exposition for a history of literature, I could think of.
Michael SympsonRudolph Hoess "Commandant of Auschwitz" Gerard Manley Hopkins: "Poems & Prose" Franz Kafka: "The Castle" Franz Kafka: "The Metamorphosis" Karl Keating: "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" Michael Korda: "Making the List" T.Lewis, F. Amini, R. Lannon: "A General Theory of Love" Herman Melville: "Moby Dick" Montaigne: "The Essays" Bertrand Russell: "A History of Western Philosophy" Virgil: "The Georgics" Virgil's "Aeneid" Virgil: "The Eclogues"Archimedes and Math Ian G. Barbour: "When Science meets Religion" Thomas Carlyle on life the universe and everything Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) "The French Revolution" Bart D. Ehrman "Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium" Kant's "First Antinomy" Thomas Love Peacock: "The Four Ages of Poetry" "realism" versus "nominalism" Thucydides: "The Peloponnesian War I: Archaeology"March 2002: Bertolt Brecht: biography Bertolt Brecht: "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."archaeology in His image I'm not making this up midlife no joy with all that Freud a paradox? the Piggy & Kermit show a public relations problem torture box experiments
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I have read a lot, so inevitably, I have read a lot of crap. I guess we all have. The problem for the good critic is to stay positive. By this I mean, to appreciate merits even in a book one doesn't like. This is the only way to develop a fair perspective. Another temptation for the critic is, to become the reader's surrogate reader. Not a good idea. The best critic encourages the reader to think for himself. All the good critic should do, is providing a map and the travel gear, so that the good reader can make it on his own. Needles to say, this is not the kind of critique, a publisher would like to see on the dust-jacket, because a good travel guide also warns of the unpleasant stretches: "don't go there."
Michael SympsonGood science on an ambiguous subject: Halton Apel "Seeing Red" If only they had skipped the New Testament: The 1611 King James Bible then it hit me, he is already dead! Joseph Brodsky: "Collected Poems in English" Lord Byron "Don Juan" a talented writer: Douglas Coupland "Microserfs" Was he for real? Descates, "Discourse on the Method" Truth or Fiction: Finkelstein & Silverman "The Bible Unearthed, Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel" the bible fryed crispy: Northrop Frye "The Great Code" Horace "Carmina" James Joyce, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" Geoff Puterbaugh "The Crucifixion of Hyacinth" Time to rewrite the Textbooks? "A Test of Time, Pharaohs and Kings" by David Rohl innuendo, elevated to an art form, Tacitus: "The Annals of Imperial Rome"St. Ambrose, Two Letters from a Saint Two thousand years of anti-Semitism in five minutes (James Carroll "Constantine's Sword") just a thought - Celsus (175 AD): "Against the Christians" an afterthought (on Celsus (175 AD): "Against the Christians") The Kennedy assassination (Friday November 22, 1963) Manicheism and Literature when the matriarchs ruled the earthFebruary 2002: Gottfried Benn (1896-1956) "Poem" Benn "Many Autumns" Benn "Chopin" Benn "September" Benn "Recollections" Benn "If something light" Benn "Pictures" Benn "Old Waiter" Benn "Primary Bloom" Benn "Pastor's Son"Buddhism a fact to be considered by their language ye shall know them the paradox our postmodern parochialism "every author creates his own pedigree" school prayer thank you, but no, thanks! Jean-Jacques Rousseau "A Discourse on Inequality" free willie Ludwig Wittgenstein "What would have been the looks of it?" Dawn's page is still under construction.