Log24

See Shoshana, Frame Tale, and Artistic Vision.

Ben Brantley reviewing a show by the X-Men patriarchs
that opened on Sunday:

"This isn’t just a matter of theatergoers chuckling
to show that they’re smart and cultured and had
damn well better be having a good time after
forking out all that money…."

I prefer reality (which includes the life of Fred Kavli) :

See also Saturday's posts Chess and Frame Tale.

Whether the patriarch Kavli, pictured above, is now having
a good time, I do not know. I hope so.

(Continued from Frame Tale (Oct. 1) and 
this morning's Church with Josefine.)

See Trinity Knot in this journal.

From this date in 2010—

The title is from a column by Stanley Fish
on The Hunger Games  books in today's
online New York Times . The column
was posted at 9 PM EDT on May 7th, but I
did not see it until this morning.

Fish says—

"In the end… [spoiler details omitted]…
children… 'don’t know they play
on a graveyard'…."

For some literary background, see last night's post
on the May 7th, 2012, NY Times  obituaries as well
as the May 7th, 2006, Log24 post featuring 24 squares
arranged in a rectangular frame.

See also Frame Tales and, more generally,
The King and the Corpse.

"Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." — Yul Brynner

(Continued from Tuesday's "A Story")

Tuesday's story, a collection of four random posts, was
suggested by Tuesday's NY lottery numbers.

That story leads, by association, to Frame Tale in
a post of 2:02 AM on Sunday, May 23, 2010. For related
material, see Death Story, a post of 9:40 PM that same Sunday.

Wednesday's numbers—

—suggest a counter-story…

Escape to Pine Mountain

A website on films about Latter-Day Saints (i.e., Mormons) asks

Was "Escape to Witch Mountain"
based on Zenna Henderson's "People" stories?

The lottery numbers above suggest the names of three women—
none, as far as I know, with any Mormon background—
who might rightly be called, without capital letters,
"latter-day saints"…

1. Madeleine L'Engle (see 529 as the date 5/29),
2. June Christy (a singer first recorded on 5/4/45), and
3. Mary Rockwell Hook, architect of Pine Mountain
   Settlement School, who died on 9/8/78.

These three lives, taken together, may serve as
an antidote to the Death Story mentioned above.

"We tell ourselves stories…" — Joan Didion
"Therefore choose life." —God

"…the farther back we manage to wiggle
 the more we need the loan of a lens…." —Finnegans Wake

For some background on the lens below, see the sermon on February 20th, 2011.

Finnegans Wake –

“The quad gospellers may own the targum but any of the Zingari shoolerim
 may pick a peck of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne.”

The above "Zingari shoolerim" passage was quoted here in Frame Tales (November 10th, 2008).

That post concerned the Heinrich Zimmer tale "The King and the Corpse." Some related material—

A sequel to "A Reappearing Number," "Reappearing Continued," and "Classical Requiem"—

A connection to the numerology of today's date, The Seventh— "Frame Tale." (Click, then scroll down.)

McGee Thanks the Academy:

“The ulterior motive behind this essay [“Reading Authority,” above], the purpose for which I seize this occasion, concerns the question or problem of authority. I stress at the outset my understanding of authority as the constructed repository of value or foundation of a system of values, the final effect of fetishism– in this case, literary fetishism. [Cf. Marx, Das Kapital] Reading– as in the phrase ‘reading authority’– should be grasped as the institutionally determined act of constructing authority….”

Wikipedia:

“[In Peter Pan] Smee is Captain Hook’s right-hand man… Barrie describes him as ‘Irish’ and ‘a man who stabbed without offence‘….”

Background: In yesterday’s morning entry, James Joyce as Jesuit, with “Dagger Definitions.”

A different Smee appears as an art critic in yesterday’s afternoon entry “Design Theory.”–

Smee Stabs Without Offence:

“Brock, who has a brisk mind, is a man on a mission. He read mathematical economics and political philosophy at Princeton (he has five degrees in all) and is the founder and president of Strategic Economic Decisions Inc., a think tank specializing in applying the economics of uncertainty to forecasting and risk assessment.

But phooey to all that; Brock has deeper things to think about. He believes he has cracked the secret of beautiful design. He even has equations and graphs to prove it.”

A Jesuit in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

“When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question?”

Beckett Bethicketted:

“Our entanglement in the wilderness of Finnegans Wake is exemplified by the neologism ‘Bethicket.’ This word condenses a range of possible meanings and reinforces a diversity of possible syntactic interpretations. Joyce seems to allude to Beckett, creating a portmanteau word that melds ‘Beckett’ with ‘thicket’ (continuing the undergrowth metaphor), ‘thick’ (adding mental density to floral density)…. As a single word ‘Bethicket’ contains the confusion that its context suggests. On the one hand, ‘Bethicket me for a stump of a beech’ has the sound of a proverbial expletive that might mean something like ‘I’ll be damned’ or ‘Well, I’ll be a son of a gun.’….”

— Stephen Dilks

At the Oscars, 2009

Related material:

Frame Tales and Dickung

A Story
for Madeleine

Part One: Frame Tale

Part Two: A Little Princess

Part Three: Happy Birthday