Saturday, January 02, 2021

More than a few writers have been drunks


Every Lover admires his Mistress, though she be very deformed of herself, ill-favored, wrinkled, pimpled, pale, red, yellow, tann’d, tallow-fac’d, have a swoln juglers platter face, or a thin, lean, chitty face, have clouds in her face, be crooked, dry, bald, goggle-eyed, blear-eyed or with staring eyes, she looks like a squis’d cat . . .”

 

Keep in mind, Keats is sharing this with his brother and his brother’s wife. To no one's surprise, Burton was a bachelor (1577-1640). The parade of grotesqueries continues:

 

“. . .  a sharp chin, lave-eared, with a long crane’s neck, which stands awry too, pendulis mammis her dugs like two double jugs, or else no dugs in the other extream, bloody-falln fingers, she have filthy, long, unpaired, nails, scabbed hands or wrists, a tan’d skin, a rotton carcass, crooked back, she stoops, is lame, splea footed, as slender in the middle as a cow in the wast, gowty legs, her ankles hang over her shooes, her feet stink, she breed lice, a meer changeling, a very monster, an aufe imperfect, her whole complexion savors, an harsh voice, incondite gesture, vile gate, a vast virago, or an ugly tit, a slug, a fat fustilugs, a trusse, a long lean rawbone, a Skeleton, a Sneaker . . .”

'Every Lover Admires His Mistress'

“I have been reading lately Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy; and I think you will be very much amused with a page I here coppy [ sic ] for you...


THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO DON’T LIKE ESCAPE ARE JAILERS. WHICH IS WHAT MOST OF OUR WOULD BE PUBLISHING ESTABLISHMENT IS. THANK HEAVENS FOR INDIE:  Escapism.

Charm, patience, and a big budget for cognac and cigars: how John le Carré got sources to tell him everything 



Does Sex Count As Exercise?


Articles of Note

Is our sedentary lifestyle slowly killing us? Is sitting the new smoking? "Let’s relax. The chair is not the enemy"  ... more »


New Books

"I am a Christian," insisted Thomas Jefferson. But he had no patience for metaphysical claims. So he went about reinventing Jesus... more »


Essays & Opinions

More than a few writers have been drunks. Is their drinking part of a negotiation with their own impossibly high standards? ... more »


Dec. 28, 2020

Articles of Note

Being Roger Penrose. At the heart of the Nobel-winning physicist's work are his artistry and his ideas about beauty... more »


New Books

The survival of a moderate conservatism may have become inextricable from the survival of liberal democracy itself  ... more »


Essays & Opinions

Graham Greene, steeped as he was in bleak moral choices, was delighted that French attempts to pronounce his name sounded like “Grim Grin” ... more »


Dec. 26, 2020

Articles of Note

Prisons are everywhere in the work of Charles Dickens, who knew the costs of confinementand the ubiquity of sequestered lives   ... more »


New Books

"Demons are more than crazed hypotheses or ungrounded thought experiments; they are quietly central to our very understanding of the world"   ... more »


Essays & Opinions

Every year, David Brooks compiles a list of the best long-form essays of the year. Here are his 2020 Sidney Awards... more »


Dec. 25, 2020

Articles of Note

Fifty years ago, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice. Is it still possible to reason together about the common good? ... more »


New Books

A.J. Ayer quipped that the problem with logical positivism was that “nearly all of it was false.” But it was "true in spirit" ... more »


Essays & Opinions

What was so different about Beethoven? The novelty of his rhythms, which turned into plot, into argument, into speech ... more »


Dec. 24, 2020

Articles of Note

Does instant communication mean the death of the literary letter? It depends on how you define a letter  ... more »


New Books

Harold Bloom viewed literature as a contest, measuring writers against a yardstick of purportedly timeless values  ... more »


Essays & Opinions

America, writes David Blight, is polarized in a cold civil war. The core questions of the original Civil War and Reconstruction era remain unanswered ... more »


Washington Post: “Like all of you, we’ve been at home for most of 2020, cooking more meals in our own kitchens than we ever expected to. Many of us have turned to familiar ingredients and recipes time and time again, when we just needed to get dinner on the table or couldn’t run out to the store. Thankfully, we’ve also had cookbooks to help us get out of the rut. They introduced us to new dishes, new people and new ways to “go somewhere” without actually leaving our homes. Great cookbooks do a lot of things. They inspire us. They make us think. In 2020, our favorite books were tasty and timely, providing us with satisfying meals and food for thought about underrepresented voices and cuisines, how to make do with what you have, and more. We think you’ll find these 12 cookbooks, each selected by a staffer, just as inspiring this year — and beyond…” [And 12 holiday cookie recipes to end the year on a sweeter note.]


BRIEFLY IN SIXTH GRADE I HAD NEW MATH INFLICTED ON ME. I FOUND IT BIZARRE AND INSANE. HOWEVER, IN ITS DEFENSE, IT WAS MUCH BETTER THAN LEFTIST MATH:  When Political Hatred Runs So Deep, Reality Doesn’t Matter.

Send a basic arithmetic book to a journalist today!


The Murder of 2020

During the weeks and months of restrictions this year, I became addicted to the British TV crime series Vera. Vera is moody and temperamental, but she gets results, with no sex, no romance, no ghosts or extra-terrestrial influence, just terrific acting and good mystery. So let’s ask the question of Vera, “Who killed 2020?” Continue reading