… who reportedly died at 62 late on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011.
Related material — The "What As Is" link above, and a Sept. 14 post
quoting art critic Roberta Smith on a current exhibition —
"You grab your experiential richness where you find it."
— Roberta Smith, "Postwar Art Gets a Nervy Makeover"
in the online New York Times
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.
Christopher Hitchens on J. K. Rowling—
“We must not let in daylight upon magic,” as Walter Bagehot remarked in another connection, and the wish to have everything clarified is eventually self-defeating in its own terms. In her correct determination to bring down the curtain decisively, Rowling has gone further than she should, and given us not so much a happy ending as an ending which suggests that evil has actually been defeated (you should forgive the expression) for good.
Greater authors— Arthur Conan Doyle most notably— have been in the same dilemma when seeking closure. And, like Conan Doyle, Rowling has won imperishable renown for giving us an identifiable hero and a fine caricature of a villain, and for making a fictional bit of King’s Cross station as luminous as a certain address on nearby Baker Street. It is given to few authors to create a world apart, and to populate it as well as illustrate it in the mind.
"A fictional bit of King's Cross Station"—
Throughout the series, Harry has traveled to King's Cross Station, either to depart for Hogwarts or return to London on the Hogwarts Express. The station has always symbolized the crossroad between the Muggle world and the Wizarding realm and Harry's constant shuffling between, and his conflict with, the two extremes. As Harry now finds himself at a transition point between life and death, it is purely to be expected that he would see it within his own mind as a simulacrum of that station. And though Dumbledore assures Harry that he (Harry) is not actually dead, it seems Harry can choose that option if he so wishes. Harry has literally and figuratively been stripped bare, and must decide either to board a train that will transport him to the "other side", or return to the living world…. — Wikibooks.org
Two recent quotes in this journal—
"Hoban once ruefully observed that death would be a good career move:
'People will say, "Yes, Hoban, he seems an interesting writer, let’s look at him again."'"
"This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level."
— "Paradoxes and Oxymorons" in Shadow Train
Michael Kinsley in The New York Times on Sunday, May 13, 2007—
Kinsley on the career of Christopher Hitchens—
Interesting! …. Interesting!! …. Interesting!!! …. Interesting!!!!
Where was this train heading?
Kinsley on a book in which Hitchens …
… pronounces the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” “engaging but abysmal” (a typical Hitchens aside: cleverly paradoxical? witlessly oxymoronic? take your pick)….
"Just the facts." — Attributed to Joe Friday
A search in this journal in honor of the late
Christopher Hitchens yields links to two of his reviews—
a review of the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and
a review of a work by a rather different author—
"On the one-ton temple bell
a moon-moth, folded into sleep,
sits still." — Haiku by Buson
From the day author Stieg Larsson died—
The Nine (November 9th, 2004).
See also Pandora's Box (September 16th, 2006).
The Ring of Gyges
10:31:32 AM ET
Commentary by Richard Wilhelm
on I Ching Hexagram 32:
“Duration is… not a state of rest, for mere standstill is regression.
Duration is rather the self-contained and therefore self-renewing
movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole, taking place in
accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending.”
Related material
Jung and the Imago Dei
| Log24 on June 10, 2007:
WHAT MAKES IAGO EVIL? some people ask. I never ask. —Joan Didion Iago states that he is not who he is. —Mark F. Frisch |
“Not Being There,”
by Christopher Caldwell,
from next Sunday’s
New York Times Magazine:
| “The chance to try on fresh identities was the great boon that life online was supposed to afford us. Multiuser role-playing games and discussion groups would be venues for living out fantasies. Shielded by anonymity, everyone could now pass a ‘second life’ online as Thor the Motorcycle Sex God or the Sage of Wherever. Some warned, though, that there were other possibilities. The Stanford Internet expert Lawrence Lessig likened online anonymity to the ring of invisibility that surrounds the shepherd Gyges in one of Plato’s dialogues. Under such circumstances, Plato feared, no one is ‘of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice.’Time, along with a string of sock-puppet scandals, has proved Lessig and Plato right.” |
“The Boy Who Lived,”
by Christopher Hitchens,
from next Sunday’s
New York Times Book Review:
| On the conclusion of the Harry Potter series:”The toys have been put firmly back in the box, the wand has been folded up, and the conjuror is discreetly accepting payment while the children clamor for fresh entertainments. (I recommend that they graduate to Philip Pullman, whose daemon scheme is finer than any patronus.)” |
I, on the other hand,
recommend Tolkien…
or, for those who are
already familiar with
Tolkien, Plato– to whom
“The Ring of Gyges” may
serve as an introduction.
“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato:
bless me, what do they
teach them at these schools!”
— C. S. Lewis
Symbol from a
website on
“Presbyterian
Creedal Standards”
The above symbol
appeared here
on 11/8/02.
Related material:
1. The remarks of
Bradley Whitford
at Princeton’s
Class Day yesterday:
2. An illustration from
Log 24 on 11/10/06:
|
|
|
|
Paul Robeson in |
3. The Whirligig of Time
(1/5/03):
4. Natalie Angier, priestess of Scientism
(5/26/07), and her new book
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of
the Beautiful Basics of Science
(available as a special from
Amazon.com):
| Better Together Buy this book with God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens today!
|
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