Log24

Detail of illustration by Frederick Alfred Rhead of Vanity Fair,
page 96 in the John Bunyan classic Pilgrim's Progress 
(New York, The Century Co., 1912)

Yesterday's posts Legend and Purple Requiem suggest a review
of John Bunyan.  A search for "Vanity Fair" + "Temple of Art" yields…

The above Vanity Fair  article was linked to here previously.

A death last Sunday —

Meanwhile . . .

Amy Adams attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party 
at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on
Sunday, February 24, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California.

"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!" 

             — Under the Volcano

"… I miss the black-and-whiteness of the 20th century."

Vanity Fair  editor Graydon Carter  in The New York Times  today

A note for Carter —

The previous post included an image of a group
of eleven women in the cover photo for the current
Vanity Fair  Hollywood Issue.

To be fair and balanced, here is a twelfth, rather different,
feminine figure …

Related philosophy by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in
remarks published July 12, 2016, on Plato and mathematical beauty —

"Thinking in a narrow and amoral way about our own self-interest
is, for Plato, almost the definition of irrationality. Our self-centeredness
makes us not only stupid but nasty."

"I'm with Nasty."

Or:  ♫ Are You Going to Vanity Fair ?

For those who prefer the red pill to the blue pill —

See as well this afternoon's related Vanity Fair  piece.

Thanks to Chris Matthews, who last night recommended
the book quoted below —

“I dislike the charlatan class, even if it is they who pay me,”
he said as we drove to my house. “To whom do you refer?”
I asked. He tapped his cigarette out of the cracked window
and looked at me with a sardonic smile: “The sort who
subscribe to Vanity Fair .”

— Taunton, Larry Alex (2016-04-12).
The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul
of the World's Most Notorious Atheist  (p. 115).
Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. 

See also Orson Welles in this journal.

On film director Stanley Kubrick:

On physics writer Peter Woit:

Illustration from a post of
Schicksalstag  2009

Continued from January 18, 2005 —

See Lili Anolik, "Tiger of the Week," in Princeton Alumni Weekly  
on April 29, 2015, and this journal on that date.

(This post was suggested by the following sentence
by Anolik in Vanity Fair 's current Hollywood issue —

"I think that for the city of Los Angeles,
Didion is the Ángel de la Muerte.")

The Cumberbatch Conundrum

A quote from Benedict Cumberbatch in this journal
on Nov. 15 last year:

"… this film’s been up my ass
      for the last five years.”

The quote, in connection with today's previous post,
suggests a check of this journal five years ago.

The check yields a paper at the new research site InvenZone.

For Dorothy Maharam Stone, mathematician, who reportedly
died on Sept. 27, 2014 (Gwyneth Paltrow’s birthday):

“When I die…. I want it to be Hollywood all the way.
I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want
Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents….”

— Joan Rivers

How about Meryl Streep as Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg
saying Kaddish in Angels in America ?

“If you can bounce high, bounce for her too.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Saint Faggot’s Day

“During the European Inquisitions, faggot referred to the sticks used to set fires for burning heretics, or people who opposed the teachings of the Catholic Church. Heretics were required to gather bundles of sticks (‘faggots’) and carry them to the fire that was being built for them. Heretics who changed their beliefs to avoid being killed were forced to wear a faggot design embroidered on their sleeve, to show everyone that they had opposed the Church.”

— Handout

Head White House speechwriter Michael Gerson:

“In the last two weeks, I’ve been returning to Hopkins.  Even in the ‘world’s wildfire,’ he asserts that ‘this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal diamond.’ A comfort.”
— Vanity Fair, May 2002, page 162

“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds….”

— William Butler Yeats, “Byzantium”

On this date in 1600, Saint Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy by the Roman Catholic Church.

He was resurrected by Saint Frances Yates, who went to her reward on the feast day of Saint Michael and All Angels, 1981.

Steering a Space-Plane

Head White House speechwriter Michael Gerson:

“In the last two weeks, I’ve been returning to Hopkins.  Even in the ‘world’s wildfire,’ he asserts that ‘this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal diamond.’ A comfort.”
— Vanity Fair, May 2002, page 162

Yesterday’s note, “Time and Eternity,” supplies the “immortal diamond” part of this meditation.  For the “matchwood” part, see the cover of The New York Times Book Review of February 2 (Candlemas), 2003:

See also the Times’s excerpt from Baker‘s first chapter,
about “steering a space-plane.”

For the relationship of Hopkins to Eastern religions,
see “Out of Inscape,” by Robert Morris.

Music of the Dark Lady

Two journal notes below deal with the general mythology of the Dark Lady.
This note, more personal, deals with a particular incarnation of this Lady
that certain songs from this 1981 album remind me of.

Waiting for a Girl Like You, Urgent, and especially Woman in Black:

She draws me in
But she teaches me well
I never need any explanation
From that woman in black
She’s a mystery
She’s everything a woman should be
Woman in black got a hold on me

For sample sound clips of the above, click here.

For a summary of the August 27 note below, see the quote from William Congreve on the cover of the September 2002 Vanity Fair magazine:

“There is in true beauty, as in courage,
somewhat which narrow souls
cannot dare to admire.”

Cruciatus in Crucem

From Battlefield Vacations, Edinburgh:

On the film “Braveheart” —

If you’ve ever wondered about what exactly “drawn and quartered” means, there’s a good demonstration at the end.