“But the list is artful…” (Harold Beaver) Melville opens Moby Dick, often considered the greatest book written by an American, with a list of extracts. That is, our greatest author offers as opening gambit the…
Posts tagged melville
The Poet Attempts To Explain His Poem
Common Errant: What goes into the making of your poems? Nemesis-Poet: Who knows? CE: One presumes you know. Or perhaps that you know something of this. NP: Well, I can only offer an interpretation and…
Listening to Literature, or Hearing Hard Words
I believe I’ve said somewhere else that I really only discovered a “fecundity” of thinking in myself* when I started listening to audiobooks while walking. You know how you need to justify reading to yourself…
Discipline and Punish
Maybe you’re not 44 and so are not conversant with the movie Reality Bites (its genesis and presentation 20 years past), but I am. The down-and-out 20-something “losers” (heed my punctuation, please) in that film…
Controlling Signs
Applicable in any century, be it 19th, 20th or 21st (or 21st BCE)–Language controls behavior. *** If Professor Booth goes into his usual coffee shop to get his morning coffee, and says to the waiter,…
Master-ful-less-ly Supercilious
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the…
Unseconded Coming
Unseconded Coming* Returning I sallied out upon my special errand the sky changed and charged drivingly sleeting stubbornly storming I fought and found and entered a reigning silence of sailors wives and widows congregational against…
Judge Not Lest…
From a letter by Morse Peckham in response to a New York Review of Books piece by Christopher Ricks on five of his works, “Out of Order (1971).” Judging Art: (1) Any proposition can be used…
Common Core Is Authority On Steroids
Peg with Pen wrote yesterday about a product offered by the designer of Common Core, David Coleman (more from me on that here, “Occupy Common Core Standards“). I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to examine…