NY Times obituary of Knox Burger,
book editor and agent, who died at 87 on January 4—
"As a magazine editor in the 1950s, Knox Burger published Kurt Vonnegut’s first short story….
During Mr. Burger’s tenure at Collier’s, a short story by Vonnegut, whom he had known slightly when both were at Cornell and who was then working in public relations for General Electric, crossed his desk. He asked for changes, which Vonnegut made, and the story, 'Report on the Barnhouse Effect,' appeared in the magazine in February 1950. It was the first published work of fiction for Vonnegut, who recounted the episode decades later….
At least half a dozen authors… honored Mr. Burger by dedicating books to him. Vonnegut, who died in 2007, did, too. His dedication of Welcome to the Monkey House, a 1968 collection of short stories that included 'Report on the Barnhouse Effect,' read:
'To Knox Burger. Ten days older than I am. He has been a very good father to me.'"
A Jesuit at the
Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive—
"Bisociation": The Act of Creation
"Koestler’s concept of ‘bisociation’… enters into the very ‘act of creation.’ In every such act, writes Koestler, the creator ‘bisociates,’ that is, combines, two ‘matrices’– two diverse patterns of knowing or perceiving– in a new way. As each matrix carries its own images, concepts, values, and ‘codes,’ the creative person brings together– ‘bisociates’– two diverse matrices not normally connected."
– Joseph J. Feeney, S.J.
Robert Stone in A Flag for Sunrise
(Knopf hardcover, 1981)–
"The eye you see him with is the same eye with which he sees you."
– Father Egan on page 333
Pablo on page 425–
"'…You know, he told me– that old man told me– the eye you look at it with, well, that's the eye it sees you with. That's what he told me.'
Holliwell was moved to recall an experiment he had once read about; he had clipped the report of it for his class. An experimenter endeavoring to observe chimpanzee behavior had fashioned a spy hole in the door of the animals' chamber through which he might watch them unobserved. Putting his eye to it, he had seen nothing more than what he finally identified as the eye of a chimpanzee on the other side of the door. Ape stuff."
More ape stuff from a Jesuit–
"This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond."
— Gerard Manley Hopkins,
"That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire
and of the comfort of the Resurrection"
More ape stuff from myself–
Problem: Perform this transformation
by combining the sorts of permutations allowed
in the diamond puzzle. A solution: click here.
