Baby, it’s cold outsideBaby, it’s cold outside
“We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.” – Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
Category: Lit & Crit
Surprise, surpriseSurprise, surprise
“The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty.” – Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
In case you’ve lost trackIn case you’ve lost track
“You never merely write; you write to someone.” – Deborah E. Bouchoux, Aspen Handbook for Legal Writers (emphasis in original)
A meet and joyful noyseA meet and joyful noyse
“Reasons briefely set downe by the auctor to perswade every one to lerne to singe.
First, it is a knowledge easely taught, and quickly learned, where there is a good master, and an apt scoller.
Second, the exercise of singing is delightful to nature, and good to preserve the health of Man.
Third, it doth strengthen all parts of the brest, and doth open the pipes.
Fourth, it is a singular good remedie for a stutting and stamering in speech.
Fifth, it is the best meanes to procure a perfect pronunciation, and to make a good orator.
Sixth, it is the onely way to know where Nature hath bestowed the benefit of a good voyce; which guift is so rare, as there is not one among a thousand, that hath it: and in many, that excellent guift is lost, because they want Art to expresse Nature.
Seventh, there is not any musicke of instruments whatsoever, comparable to that which is made of the voyces on Men, where the voyces are good, and the same well sorted and ordered.
Eighth, the better the voyce is, the meeter it is to honour and serve God therewith: and the voyce of man is chiefely to be employed to that ende.
Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learne to singe.”
— William Byrd, Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs
Come falling downCome falling down
“The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other’s company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower
Busybody do-goodersBusybody do-gooders
“Like a crack in a plank of wood which cannot be sealed, the difference between the worker and the intellectual was ineradicable in Socialism. Organized Socialism bore the name Workingmen’s Association but in fact it was never any such thing. It was a movement not of, but on behalf of, the working class, and the distinction remained basic. Although it spoke for the worker and made his wants articulate, goals and doctrine were set, and thought, energy and leadership largely supplied by, intellectuals. The working class was both client and ultimately, in its mass strength, the necessary instrument of the overthrow of capitalism. As such it appeared as Hero; it was sentimentalized. In the illustrations for an English pamphlet commemorating the London Congress of 1896, the workingmen appeared as handsome strong-muscled Burne-Jones figures in smocks accompanied by indomitable women with long limbs and rippling hair.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower
Join the union while you may, don’t wait till your dying day, for that may not be far awayJoin the union while you may, don’t wait till your dying day, for that may not be far away
“For unskilled and unorganized labour, working conditions matched the slums. At the Shawfield Chemical Works in Glasgow in 1897, year of the Diamond Jubilee, workmen received 3d. or 4d. an hour for a twelve-hour day, seven days a week, spent amid poisonous vapors without a lunch-hour rest. They ate lunch standing at the furnaces and if they took Sunday off were fined the next day’s wages. Lord Overtoun, owner of the Works, a philanthropist who gave ℒ 10,000 a year to charity, was a leading member of the Sunday Observance and Sunday Rest Societies. In other industries workers could be arrested for taking a day off without permission. If they applied for it, the request could be refused; if they took it anyway they could be, and often were, hauled off to a day in gaol. Skilled workers organized in England’s craft unions, the oldest in Europe, were better off. Numbering about one-fifth of all adult male workers, a larger proportion than in any other country, they had their own insurance and pension systems backed by large funds and they benefited from lower prices in their own cooperatives. Nevertheless, vis-à-vis capital, they were still on the defensive and the dark persistent presence of unemployment at their backs made them vulnerable.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower
All the children left behindAll the children left behind
“In the slums people lived three to a bedroom of 700 cubic feet or, with children, eight and nine in a space of 1,200 cubic feet. Vermin lived with them, a piece of paper on the floor served as a toilet, fish on Sundays was the weekly protein for a family of eight, at two and a half ounces per portion. Children were stunted and pale, with rotting teeth, and if they went to school, sat dully at their desks or fell asleep. Ignorance and apathy as much as ill health were poverty’s product; the slums were sloughs of wasted lives.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower
We got it from the FrenchWe got it from the French
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied on, regulated, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, ruled, censored, by persons who have neither wisdom nor virtue. It is every action and transaction to be registered, stamped, taxed, patented, licensed, assessed, measured, reprimanded, corrected, frustrated. Under pretext of the public good it is to be exploited, monopolized, embezzled, robbed and then, at the least protest or word of complaint, to be fined, harassed, vilified, beaten up, bludgeoned, disarmed, judged, condemned, imprisoned, shot, garroted, deported, sold, betrayed, swindled, deceived, outraged, dishonored. That’s government, that’s its justice, that’s its morality!” – Pierre Proudhon, Idée générale de la révolution au vingtième siècle (as quoted by Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower)
The dream lingers long after dawnThe dream lingers long after dawn
“The Anarchists believed that with Property, the monarch of all evil, eliminated, no man could again live off the labour of another and human nature would be released to seek its natural level of justice among men. The role of the State would be replaced by voluntary cooperation among individuals and the role of the law by the supreme law of the general welfare. To this end no reform of existing social evils through vote or persuasion was of any use, for the ruling class would never give up its property or the powers and laws which protected ownership of property. Therefore, the necessity of violence. Only revolutionary overturn of the entire malignant existing system would accomplish the desired result. Once the old structure was in rubble, a new social order of utter equality and no authority, with enough of everything for everybody, would settle smilingly upon the earth. So reasonable seemed the proposition that once apprised of it the oppressed classes could not fail to respond. The Anarchist task was to awaken them.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower
Conditions that are reckoned incentivesConditions that are reckoned incentives
“They came from the warrens of the poor, where hunger and dirt were king, where consumptives coughed and the air was thick with the smell of latrines, boiling cabbage and stale beer, where babies wailed and couples screamed in sudden quarrels, where roofs leaked and unmended windows let in the cold blasts of winter, where privacy was unimaginable, where men, women, grandparents and children lived together, eating sleeping, fornicating, defecating, sickening and dying in one room, where a teakettle served as a wash boiler between meals, old boxes served as chairs, heaps of foul straw as beds, and boards propped across two crates as tables, where sometimes not all the children in a family could go out at one time because there were not enough clothes to go round, where decent families lived among drunkards, wife-beaters, thieves and prostitutes, where life was a seesaw of unemployment and endless toil, where a cigar-maker and his wife earning 13 cents an hour worked seventeen hours a day seven days a week to support themselves and three children, where death was the only exit and the only extravagance and the scraped savings of a lifetime would be squandered on a funeral coach with flowers and a parade of mourners to ensure against the anonymity and last ignominy of Potter’s Field.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower
All we would need would be killingAll we would need would be killing
“So enchanting was the vision of a stateless society, without government, without law, without ownership of property, in which, corrupt institutions having been swept away, man would be free to be good as God intended him, that six heads of state were assassinated for its sake in the twenty years before 1914.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower
A sport and a pastimeA sport and a pastime
“Friends, let me tell you: Sitting outside and reading is not a difficult art to master.” – Matt Bell, Facebook, June 25, 2014.
They have their favesThey have their faves
“Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.” – Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August
The parental controls of the nanny-stateThe parental controls of the nanny-state
“The internet is, in effect, a library of unimaginable size—full, as all libraries are, of news, gossip, archive material and other stuff which may to varying degrees be irrelevant, wrong or mad. It has made the best and worst of such information more freely available than ever before. Search engines should be like library catalogues—comprehensive and neutral, and without fear or favour of what the contents may reveal, or how they may be used. It should be up to individuals, not governments, to distinguish what is right or wrong, useful or immaterial. People should be wary of ceding the power to make that judgment, even to a court that thinks hard about it and backs the underdog. As James Madison said, ‘I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.’” – The Economist, May 17th, 2014
The metatextThe metatext
“Metaphor and metonymy both, it strikes me, are devices of the lover; they are the devices of one who seeks to render or capture the other. What are the devices of the beloved? We don’t know, because it always the lover, never the beloved, who speaks. Why? Perhaps it’s the orientation toward unhappiness of literary work — the orientation toward trouble. If you were happily loved, literature implies, you would have nothing to say. Ask: why do you always write of unsatisfied desire? Where do you find such a continual source for that lack?” – Lightsey Darst, “The Anne Carson Workout”
Watch yourself sleepingWatch yourself sleeping
“The beloved is sleeping. The trivial, intimate things that you find out as a matter of course one night and from then on cannot help treasuring: how the other one sleeps, with this arm here or there, with a deep athletic breath or as if dead. Dreams — visible, like a cat’s, or sunken. How expression falls from the face and what it leaves there. Dressed, undressed, with the covers kicked off in the heat or twined around one leg. Nothing like these closed eyelids and slightly open mouth. Nothing like the soft notch in the throat, undefended, or the dream-sweaty scattered hair.” – Lightsey Darst, “The Anne Carson Workout”
Tilting at windmills, tooTilting at windmills, too
“Science is the one culture that’s truly global — protons, proteins and Pythagoras’s Theorem are the same from China to Peru. It should transcend all barriers of nationality. It should straddle all faiths too. The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.” – Martin, Lord Rees (interview in Wired)
His pen name was DavidHis pen name was David
“Three thousand years ago, David, according to the tradition, was the poet who wrote the Psalms. Even if you can’t believe that someone named David literally wrote the Psalms, the fact is that someone wrote them.” – Zachary Lazar, “In the Presence of My Enemies”
The definition of algorithmThe definition of algorithm
“An algorithm is defined by a sequence of steps and instructions that can be applied to data. Algorithms generate categories for filtering information, operate on data, look for patterns and relationships, or generally assist in the analysis of information. The steps taken by an algorithm are informed by the author’s knowledge, motives, biases, and desired outcomes. The output of an algorithm may not reveal any of those elements, nor may it reveal the probability of a mistaken outcome, arbitrary choice, or the degree of uncertainty in the judgment it produces. So-called ‘learning algorithms’ which underpin everything from recommendation engines to content filters evolve with the datasets that run through them, assigning different weights to each variable. The final computer-generated product or decision—used for everything from predicting behavior to denying opportunity—can mask prejudices while maintaining a patina of scientific objectivity.” – Executive Office of the President, Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values
Watch your mouthWatch your mouth
“It is impossible to fight any war wholly humanely. In most respects, the Western allies displayed commendable clarity in their conduct of total war against an enemy bereft of civilized sentiment. Aerial assault, however, provided the exception. It was a policy quite at odds with the spirit in which the Americans and British otherwise conducted their war effort. The remoteness of bombing rendered tolerable in the eyes of Western political leaders and military commanders, not to mention their aircrew, actions which would have seemed repugnant and probably unbearable had the Allies confronted the consequences at close quarters. Eisenhower’s soldiers frequently found themselves killing local inhabitants in the course of battles for Germany’s towns and villages. They would have surely revolted at the notion of systematically slaughtering civilians by artillery bombardment or machine-gun fire. This is what the Allied air forces did, nonetheless, protected by the curious moral absolution granted by a separation of some thousands of feet of airspace, together with the pragmatic excuse that it was impossible to hit targets of military relevance with air-dropped missiles without inflicting what is now called ‘collateral damage.’ We should recognize, however, that it is far easier to pass such judgements amid the relative tranquility of the twenty-first century than it seemed in 1945, when Hitler’s nation was still doing its utmost to kill American and British people, together with millions of Nazi captives, by every means within its power. Some Germans today brand the bombing of their cities as a war crime. This seems an incautious choice of words.” – Max Hastings, Armageddon
FlappingFlapping
“Our soul possesses two broad and strong wings, which can bring us better and more permanent possessions than gold, honour or health. Our sharp intellect allows us to penetrate the secrets of nature, and lets us pursue that way as long as we modestly recognize our human weaknesses. But as for the ultimate secrets, which are higher than angels and angelic spirits: no speculative reason can attain them, but only deep mystical contemplation. There where our thinking can come only slowly and with endless effort, our heart, our mystical faith rises with a single wingbeat.” – Will-Erich Peuckert, Pansophie (trans. Hanegraaff)
Watch closelyWatch closely
“A writer screwing around and a writer hard at work look exactly the same to the untrained observer.” – Averil Dean, “Groove”
Generate some heatGenerate some heat
“Too often, writers fear that in order to get attention in an over-stimulated world, they need to open with a car crash, a zombie apocalypse, an explosion of expletives, an alternate universe, or prose that turns cartwheels on the ceiling. It’s not that those things can’t work, but they’re certainly not necessary, and unless they’re done exceedingly well, they backfire. What the editor is really looking for is presence on the page—a feeling that you, the author, are in control; that you have a deep respect for language and a well-made sentence, no matter how plain or ornate; that something is at stake; and that in addition to whatever plot you are hatching, you can create friction in the simple act of rubbing two sentences up against each other.” – Dawn Raffel, “The Most Important Words”
There might be other reasonsThere might be other reasons
“I began thinking about what makes a life worthwhile. And I thought of Pessoa and Kafka. We look at the lives of writers and consider them important, but what if we never discovered Pessoa’s trunk of books? What if Kafka’s work was never published? Would their lives have been worth living? And I thought of my own strange neuroses. My friends take them for granted, because I’m a writer, so I’m supposed to be this way. But if I hadn’t been a writer and still had these neuroses, I’d be ignored. I’d never get laid.” – Rabih Alameddine, “This Is Also My World” (interview by Dwyer Murphy)
Back to schoolBack to school
“We have a War College, but no peace college.” – John Ketwig, …and a hard rain fell
And then we try to sell itAnd then we try to sell it
“According to language, race, or nation, we set ourselves apart, and each pile up our filth to overtower the other’s.” – Ödön von Horváth, The Age of the Fish (Jugend ohne Gott) (trans. Thomas)
Capital punishmentCapital punishment
“When the rich plebeians in old Rome feared that the people might succeed through their plan to reduce taxes, they sheltered behind a dictatorship. And they condemned to death for high treason the patrician Manlius Capitolinus, who with his riches had tried to free their plebeian debtors from their debts. They hurled him down from the Tarpeian Rock. Since the very existence of human society, the need for self-preservation has driven men to commit crimes. But those crimes were secret deeds; men hushed them up and were ashamed of them. But today men are proud of them. There is a pestilence among us. All of us are tainted, friend and foe alike. Our souls are great black sores, and life is dying in them. They die, and we live on.” – Ödön von Horváth, The Age of the Fish (Jugend ohne Gott) (trans. Thomas)
Rock gardeningRock gardening
“Marriage is like a garden I reckon. After a while, no matter what you do, it’s all too much work for not enough reward. One day you’re pulling out the same weeds you pulled out last month, or trimming the low branches off the same tree you trimmed them off last year, and you start thinking about why you’re doing it, and you can’t remember why you started to in the first place. Why you planted that particular tree, or chose that type of grass for the lawn, or why you even bothered with having a garden at all, cos the fact is, you haven’t sat your arse down out there and looked around and enjoyed it in years anyway. You was just going through the motions, doing what you did cos it’s what people do, what’s expected of you, so you just keep right on doing it.” – Harry Pants, Midlife
A pickaxe will doA pickaxe will do
“For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer.” – Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita