by John Holbo on October 26, 2004
Brian and Matt are quite right about this. “While others quiver with pre-election anxiety, their mood rising and collapsing with the merest flicker of the polls, he alone radiates certainty.” Whatever can be the point of writing such a stupid column on this theme?
In unrelated news, I’m sure, the invaluable Ray Davis has thoroughly Repressed a simply gorgeous online edition of Andrew Lang’s Prince Prigio.
Can you imagine anything more cruel and unjust than this conduct? for it was not the prince’s fault that he was so clever. The cruel fairy had made him so.
The story has a very wise moral.
UPDATE: Disappeared comment now appearing, but something is wonky with comments. Are other people having troubles?
by Henry Farrell on October 22, 2004
try Dean R. Koontz’s “The Face,” as “described”:http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/random07.html by David Langford.
bq. Koontz gives us an effectively alarming villain with a set policy of disrupting society via acts of chaos, a dark Merry Prankster; but the book seems inflated far beyond its natural length by … demonstrating this fellow’s wickedness again and again as he remorselessly kills a whole series of accomplices to his ultimate Big Bad Plan, while — being a deconstructionist professor — he naturally passes his spare time starving and tormenting a kidnapped colleague who gave offence by admiring such classics as Mark Twain. But of course.
by John Holbo on October 16, 2004
A month ago John Quiggin posted about his basically happy experience downloading from Amazon an e-copy (PDF) of China Miéville’s new novel, Iron Council. Let me offer my own happy Amazon/China Miéville’s new novel-related tale.
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by Chris Bertram on September 27, 2004
Michael Brooke has “a post up today about Ladybird books”:http://www.michaelbrooke.com/2004/09/ladybird-rarities.html and their value to collectors. This sent my scurrying to look for an old post of mine on the subject from back when I was Junius. It had disappeared from the archives! I eventually managed to locate the source in blogger and republish — so “here it is”:http://junius.blogspot.com/2003_01_05_junius_archive.html#390156623 — but I wonder how much else has faded out of existence due to the general flakiness of blogger. Anyway it was one of my favourite posts, and resulted in “an interesting reaction by Kieran”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000224.html . An important moment in the prehistory of Crooked Timber.
by Kieran Healy on September 26, 2004
Here is one of the many footnotes from Susanna Clarke’s novel, “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582344167/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/, which Henry “reviewed”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002484.html recently:
bq. Horace Tott spent an uneventful life in Cheshire always intending to write a large book on English magic, but never quite beginning. And so he died at seventy-four, still imagining he might begin next week, or perhaps the week after that.
“Publish-or-perish” is hardly the best motto for good scholarship, but if the alternative is to perish without publishing at all then perhaps it might not be so bad. This footnote may find itself stuck above my desk come Monday. Or Tuesday, at the latest.
by John Q on September 20, 2004
The death of the book, like the paperless office, has been predicted so many times that people have given up paying attention. But, for me, at least, it came a big step closer today, at least in one sense, when I downloaded a PDF version of China Mieville’s Iron Council from Amazon.
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by Henry Farrell on September 12, 2004
I’ve just finished Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582344167/henryfarrell-20 and can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s “being marketed”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/magazine/01CLARKE.html?ei=5090&en=2fea0b3cbfbd17d9&ex=1249099200&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=print&position= as Harry Potter for grown-ups; the comparison is a little misleading (among children’s writers, Clarke is much closer to Dianna Wynne-Jones than to Rowling), but it captures the novel’s likely appeal to people who don’t usually read fantasy. _JSAMN_ lacks most of the usual apparatus of the genre (dragons, rings and what-have-you), but still has something of its flavour. It’s a sly, funny, intelligent novel, and in its own way, quite subversive.
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by Henry Farrell on September 6, 2004
Just came across a reference in a discussion board to one of my favourite bits from one of my favourite books – Robert Irwin’s “Arabian Nights Companion”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1860649831/henryfarrell-20 – and thought it was worth quoting.[1]
bq. Other [thieves] used to make use of a tortoise with a lighted candle on its back. They sent this creature ahead of them into the house they proposed to burgle. If the house was currently occupied, then the owner would surely exclaim in surprise on seeing the tortoise (‘Oh look! There’s a tortoise with a candle on its back. I wonder what it’s doing in my house’) and the thieves would be warned off. If, however, the house was unoccupied, then the candle would help to guide the thieves as they went about their work.
fn1. I blogged last year about Irwin’s related, and wonderfully tricky novel, “The Arabian Nightmare”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1585672173/henryfarrell-20 .
by Kieran Healy on August 20, 2004
Draft review of “A Man After His Own Heart”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565847709/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/, by Charles Siebert. (Final version to appear in “The Drawing Board”:http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/.)
The language of the heart is all-pervasive. Art and everyday life are full of emotions expressed through talk about the heart, be it given or joined, singing or broken, closed or kind. The Ancient Greek view that the liver is the seat of the soul can seem plausible on a good Friday night, and Descartes’ case that it’s our head that matters may be felt with some force the following morning. For sheer range of metaphor, though, the heart has no serious competitors. But what about the thing itself? The cheerful curve of a Valentine’s heart does not convey what a real heart looks like. A heart ache is not a heart attack. We all know that the heart is a pump that moves blood around the body, but very few of us could give an accurate account of how it happens. The dynamic interplay of all those chambers, arteries and valves is difficult to picture, hard to explain, and took a very long time to discover.
Yet, at the same time, we are more familiar than ever with the risks of cardiac arrest and the danger of heart disease. Coronary bypasses are routine and a heart transplant these days is a standard (if difficult) option rather than an exotic experiment. So there are two ways of talking about the heart: as a metaphor for ourselves and our innermost feelings, and as a key bit of internal plumbing, in need of maintenance and regular upkeep. Advances in medicine over the past century or so, and especially in the last thirty years, have made it difficult to keep the two separate. The real heart intrudes more and more on its imagined counterpart.
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by Daniel on August 19, 2004
Finally, with the Google IPO pricing way below expectations and with a serious arbitrage[1] showing up on the Iowa Electronic Markets, I get round to reviewing James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds”. I’ll save the suspense; it’s a cracking read and well worth buying. To give you an idea of the style, I’ll start this review with my own shockingly unfair parody …
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by Harry on August 16, 2004
Since you don’t all listen to BBC7 religiously, and since the obit for Anthony Buckeridge obviously touched a nerve for some of you, you might want to know that, contrary to my speculation, the irresponsible BBC has managed to hold onto at least one of the early Jennings recordings, and played it yesterday as a tribute to the great man. Scroll down to 09.00. It actually lasts just over 50 minutes (not 45 as the page suggests), and stars Buckeridge himself as Wilkins, and, according to the announcer, a prepubescent incarnation of the appalling Jeremy Clarkson as Atkinson. It’s wonderful, and will be archived till next Saturday.
I’ve recently read some of the Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. Few who have picked them up will be surprised to hear that I’m finding them to be very, very good. But it occurred to me, while reading them, that virtually all of the non-human characters so far seem to act like humans.
They do things that real people can’t do, but they all seem to share the same motivations as people- pride, jealousy, duty, family ties, anger, love of power, and so on. Despite all the things separating them from humans- immortality, immense power, the obligation to hop around the universe picking up people when they die- the non-humans can be psychologically understood as super-people. They don’t seem noticeably less human than, say, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, or Humbert Humbert from Lolita.
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by John Q on July 30, 2004
Tyler Cowen says
If I could have the answers to five questions in political science/sociology, the appeal of Stalinism to intellectuals would be one of them.
I don’t think this is as difficult a question as is often supposed.
Most of the intellectuals who professed support for Communism during the rule of Stalin (and Lenin) were primarily victims of (self-)deception. They supported the stated aims of the Communist Party (peace, democracy, brotherhood), opposed the things the Communists denounced (fascism, racism, exploitation) and did not inquire too closely into whether the actual practice of the Soviet Union and the parties it controlled was consistent with these stated beliefs. I developed this point, and the contrast with the relatively small group of intellectuals who supported the Nazis, in a review of[1] Mark Lilla’s book The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics
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by John Holbo on July 29, 2004
Henry and I always make sure to post about China Miéville-related matters (here, for example; click from there for earlier posts. Here’s a more recent one by Henry.) So I have to make sure this exceedingly snarky Adam Lipkin review of Iron Council catches his eye, and gets a comment box (via the Mumpsimus).
I haven’t read Iron Council yet, so it may seem absurd to say I am sure this review is too harsh. But I’m sure it is, so I’ll just clear the air of this sour stuff before – sometime soon – Henry and I have our obligatory exchange.
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by John Q on July 27, 2004
Ever since I learned to read, there’s been nothing better than to find a new author with a shelf full of books that I haven’t read[1]. Inevitably, though the day arrives when she (or he) becomes an old favourite with a shelf full of books I have read. The first I can remember was Rosemary Sutcliff; the most recent has been Patrick O’Brian. I’ve just reached the end of the Aubrey-Maturin series, though there are still a couple I’ve missed. I’ve always found finishing a series an ambiguous experience, and the following exchange from my blog has finally clarified the mixture of feelings.
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