Monday, March 23, 2009



In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that's why you're not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable.
-Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

Submission in advance Such, Such Was Eric Blair
George Orwell saw the problem for a fixed human nature as “how to prevent power from being abused.” Till we solve that one, he’ll remain a living writer...

You have to feel a little sorry for Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan Wilkes, or "Sambo" and "Flip" as they were known to their charges. During the first decades of the twentieth century, they ran St. Cyprian's, a preparatory school in Eastbourne, on the south coast of England. It was no worse than many other such establishments: the food was bad, the building underheated, physical punishment the norm. Pupils learned "as fast as fear could teach us," one alumnus later wrote. The day began with a frigid and fetid plungebath; boys denounced one another to the authorities for homosexual practices; and daily morale was dependent on whether a boy was in or out of favor with Flip. In some ways the school was better than many: it had a good academic record, Sambo nurtured contacts at the most important public schools, especially Eton, and clever boys from decent families of modest income were accepted on half fees. This was a calculated act of generosity: in return the boys were meant to reward the school by gaining academic distinction.


Englishmen of a certain class—especially those sent away to boarding schools—tend toward obsessive memory; [Charles Dickens founded Urania Cottage for fallen women – mostly whores and thieves. He loved the stories they told him, which he wrote down Dickens's Refuge for Fallen Women; Deep in one writer’s soul, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are having their bourbons and hammering away at their typewriters. The bourbon is important Under the Literary Influence ; Why is it that novels about men in boats (Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn) are treated as important, while ones about women in houses (House of Mirth) are not?... Why can't a woman write the Great American Novel? ]
• · Lalu Yadav, a corrupt and unapologetic yokel, is also eerily canny. He now heads the Indian Railway System, with its 2.4 million employees.. The Indian Railway King; Baby Boomers had it all: the jobs, the safe money, luxurious retirement at 55. Watching it fall apart can be amusing for their children. Watching boomers in turmoil is worth a recession
• · Niceness is a political sentiment that has undermined discipline and authority in family and classroom. Kenneth Minogue explains how To Hell with Niceness; Workaholic professionals, whose minds 24/7 race ahead to the next encounter, are always elsewhere – the twitterati... Agonies of the Twitterati
• · · Most of what scholars need for research these days is on the Internet. Oh yeah? So you’re trying to trace a judicial duel held before the French King in 1386... Lost in the Archives; Are men really funnier than women? Here are one or two theories of men’s vs. women’s humor. Or is it three, or seven, theories? Beaten to the punchline; >; Ian McEwan once tried to give away novels in a park. Only women took them, not men. He predicts, “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead” The Background Hum
• · · · What are the most ancient words still in our vocabulary? Some of the words we use every day derive from a prehistoric tongue we might call “Ice Age” A handy little guide to small talk in the Stone Age; River and road novels, stories, and gangster films of the 1930s depicted American social mobility as a bitter cheat. We may now relive 1930s art Will This Crisis Produce a 'Gatsby'?
• · · · · “Like Pascal, like Kierkegaard and Tolstoy, indeed like Nietzsche....” Who are you reading? Must be George Steiner. If you don’t care much for high culture, Steiner will care on your behalf.. Our George Steiner Problem -- and Mine ; Every generation is given the annotated Dracula it deserves. Ours is a postmodern version, one with a playful disdain for any claim of truth … In the Blood