It is often said that Moby Dick is difficult to read. I don’t intend to disagree. It’s the kind of book that really can’t even be classified with clarity these days. It is in no way…
Posts tagged moby dick
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…
What is a Metaphysic?
Evolution may be considered as a fairly straightforward metaphysical theory with a long history which was not so much confirmed by the theory of natural selection as embarrassed by it. The difference between the two…
Raising Workers for Poverty’s Sake!
Why do “philanthropists” want to “deliver on the American promise of equal opportunity by working to attack the achievement gap that takes root early in life and puts children in poverty at great disadvantage?” (Educare…
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,…
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…
Lord of the Level Loadstone
Thou Vain Toy, Part II [ PDF Link ] How can we be done perspectivizing? Yesterday I offered a load of underlinings from an essay by Morse Peckham. As a kind of “proof” text I suggested Ahab’s…
Where Be Your Tygers?
Let this serve as a kind of literary addendum to yesterday’s post. And let us first mark out some territory. Perhaps there are two ways that humans MEAN as beings. 1. The animal that may…