"Right through hell there is a path . . . ." — Malcolm Lowry

This quotation is from a Log24 search for "1966."

That search was suggested by the now-streaming film
"MaXXXine" and by . . .

* Title of a book by Nanavira Thera.

See Design Theory and Sustainable in this journal.

Continues.  (In memory of a Music Master.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=
%22ihre+Achtel+und+Sechzehntel%22+Glasperlenspiel&tbm=bks

RA Wilson —”[Submitted on 20 Apr 2021 (v1),
last revised 23 Apr 2021 (this version, v2)]”

SH Cullinane — See as well
box759.wordpress.com.

From the previous post —

Psychiatrist Irvin Yalom on Philip Roth's Exit Ghost ,
in an undated interview published in 2008:

"Philip Roth has got a new book out called Exit Ghost ,
which I find touching. He’s ageing and pursuing the
question of what ageing does to a writer’s skills. I’m
dealing with that myself so that book speaks for me
a great deal."

Related material from October 2, 2007 —

See as well this  journal on the days before and after
the Kakutani review above:

October 1, 2007 — Bright as Magnesium

October 3, 2007 — Janitor Monitor .

"I need a photo opportunity . . ." — Paul Simon

The title is that of an exhibition at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts
that opened on Sunday, September 24.

See the previous post and some Chinese background
from The Cornell Daily Sun  today —

"John W. Lewis, the University’s first professor of Chinese government
and one of the first major China specialists who came out against the
Vietnam War, died on Sept. 4 in Stanford, California. He was 86."

Still enough for you?

From Wikipedia —

"Emily Eden … a hardened New York City homicide detective,
goes undercover to investigate the murder of a Hasidic 
diamond-cutter."

Midrash — See "Diamond + Dust + Glitter."

Details from yesterday's "Ities" image —

Some less abstract imagery —

* For James Joyce fans, a phrase suggested by the "ities" of the title —

Itty Bitty Titty Ditty.

Google reveals that this phrase was used as a poem title on 
September 3, 2011 . . .

Some may enjoy seeking the significance of the poem's date .

"Remarkable in the collection–and indeed in contemporary short fiction–
is the title story, whose tequila-sodden and heart-heavy protagonist,
Bernard Corunna Coote, is a lapsed Ulster Protestant seeking traces of
a lost Celtic civilization in South America."

— Publishers Weekly  on Death of a Chieftain  by John Montague 

See as well a related obituary.

Related material — Yesterday's post "Desperately Seeking Comedy."

"Clog, therefore, purple Jack and crimson Jill." — Wallace Stevens

See as well a note on "Joyce's Use of Kubla Khan"
and remarks from Jesus College, Oxford , on 
"Seeking the Sirens' Song."

Today's guitar news suggests the following —

"… sometimes what we are seeking
is not that which reason can impose…."

For the source, see a Log24 search for Innocence + Experience.

Maureen Dowd on "Downton Abbey"
(yesterday's online NY Times) —

"Watching the saga from the beginning this week,
I saw the extent of the subversive fantasy:
The servants rule the masters."

"I have only come here seeking knowledge."

— Sting, "Wrapped Around Your Finger"

"Hans Castorp is a searcher after the Holy Grail.
You would never have thought it when you read
his story—if I did myself, it was both more and
less than thinking. Perhaps you will read the
book again from this point of view. And perhaps
you will find out what the Grail is: the knowledge
and the wisdom, the consecration, the highest
reward, for which not only the foolish hero but
the book itself is seeking. You will find it in the
chapter called 'Snow'…."

— Thomas Mann, "The Making of
     The Magic Mountain "

In related entertainment news…

Click image for some backstory.

Mann's tale is set in Davos, Switzerland.
See also Mayer  at Davos.

On the author of a novel published August 14th,
 "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"—

"Semple moved to the Pacific Northwest several years ago
seeking refuge from Los Angeles, but that doesn't mean
that the Emerald City gets a free pass from Semple's
sharp, satirical eye." 

— Stewart Oksenhorn yesterday in The Aspen Times

Related art—

See also a detail from Thursday's 1.3 MB image
"Search for the Lost Tesseract"—

Update of 9 PM EDT (6 PM LA time) the same day, Saturday, Aug. 18—

Actually, that one is hers.

The New York Times  online opinion today—

"Merit has been traditionally equated with intelligence, industriousness, educational attainment, creativity and competency. In a meritocracy, formal qualifications provide opportunity, position is no longer ascribed by birth, and rewards flow to those who excel.

The rise of meritocratic competition as the preeminent means of social stratification in America has been hailed as a welcome advance because it replaced a society dominated by an upper class dependent on inherited wealth and status. The transition to meritocracy has, however, had unintended consequences. In the business sector, particularly, other less benign qualities emerge as essential to meritocratic success: aggressiveness, ruthlessness, dominance-seeking, victimizing behavior, acquisitiveness and the disciplined pursuit of self-interest." 

— Journalism professor Thomas B. Edsall discussing remarks last December by Mitt Romney

Note the subtle shift here from "merit" to "meritocracy." Romney used the former word, not the latter.

Note also this sentence, aimed particularly at meritocratic New York Times  readers—

"In a meritocracy, formal qualifications provide opportunity… and rewards flow to those who excel."

Edsall lies. In a meritocracy, rewards flow to those who rubber-stamp "formal qualifications." See particularly Walter Kirn on meritocracy.

Edsall is pandering to Times  readers. Romney was pandering to a different group—

A Story That Works “There is the dark, eternally silent, unknown universe; there are the friend-enemy minds shouting and whispering their tales and always seeking the three miracles — that minds should really touch, or that the silent universe should speak, tell minds a story, or (perhaps the same thing) that there should be a story that works, that is all hard facts, all reality, with no illusions and no fantasy; and lastly, there is lonely, story-telling, wonder-questing, mortal me.” – Fritz Leiber in “The Button Molder“

Dichtung ist Stiftung.

University Diaries  today—

"Educated people— with some exceptions, like Nader— like to explore the senses, and indeed many of your humanities courses (like the one UD ‘s teaching right now about beauty, in which we just read Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation,” with its famous concluding lines: In place of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art ) feature artworks and ideas that celebrate sensuality."

This suggests a review lecture on the unorthodox concept of lottery hermeneutics .

Today's New York Lottery—

A quote suggested by the UD  post—

"Sainte-Beuve's Volupté  (1834) introduced the idea of idler as hero (and seeking pleasurable new sensations as the highest good), so Baudelaire indulged himself in sex and drugs."

— Article on Baudelaire by Joshua Glenn in the journal Hermenaut

Some reflections suggested by Hermenaut  and by the NY evening numbers, 674 and 1834—

(Click images to enlarge.)

Cool Mystery:

Detective Cruz enters Planck's Constant Café in "The Big Bang."

As for the midday numbers—

For 412, see 4/12, and for 1030, see 10/30, Devil's Night (2005).

For further background, consult Monday's Realism in Plato's Cave.

Feed them on your dreams…

Cocktail Party Physics yesterday— "Desperately Seeking Sonya"

Related material: Kovalevskaya's Top and Roger Cooke's

The Mathematics of Sonya Kovalevskaya.

See also "Math class is  tough, Barbie."

Click image to enlarge.

The “Boy’s Life” illustration is of an Arthur C. Clarke story, “Against the Fall of Night.” This, according to the review quoted below, was Clarke’s first story, begun in 1936 and first published in 1948. The title is from a poem by A. E. Housman, “Smooth Between Sea and Land.” See Log24 on the Feast of St. Mark, 2003.

From a book review by Christopher B. Jones:

“Against the Fall of Night describes well how it often takes youth to bring forth change. The older mind becomes locked in a routine, or blocks out things because it has been told that it shouldn’t think or talk about them. But the young mind is ever the explorer, seeking out knowledge without the taboos placed on it by a rigid society. Alvin is a breath of fresh air in the don’t-look-over-the-wall society of Diaspar.

Myths play a big role, and an interesting religious overtone pervades the story with a long since departed being whose origins are unknown and who played an important part in Earth’s past. Parallels to Jesus can easily be drawn, and the forecast shown for the longevity of religions in general seems to me to be rather accurate….

Finally, when Alvin uncovers part of the truth he has been looking for, he learns of the dangers and stagnation that can befall a xenophobic society. There are still a few such societies in the world today, and this characteristic almost always comes with negative effects– even if it has been cultivated with the intention to protect.”

An example of such a xenophobic society is furnished by the Hadassah ad currently running in the New York Times obituaries section: “Who will say Kaddish in Israel?”

Another example:

Tom Stoppard, in the London Times of Sunday, March 16, 2008, on the social unrest of forty years ago in 1968–

“Altering the psyche was supposed to change the social structure but, as a Marxist, Max knows it really works the other way: changing the social structure is the only way to change the psyche. The idea that ‘make love, not war’ is a more practical slogan than ‘workers of the world unite’ is as airy-fairy as the I Ching.”

Airy-fairy, Jewey-phooey.

Clarke’s 1948 story was the basis of his 1956 novel, The City and the Stars. In memory of the star Richard Widmark, here are two illustrations from St. Mark’s Day, 2003:

Housman asks the reader
to tell him of runes to grave
or bastions to design
“against the fall of night.”

Here, as examples, are
one rune and one bastion.

Neither part of this memorial suits the xenophobic outlook of Israel. Both parts, together, along with his classic film “The Long Ships,” seem somehow suited to the non-xenophobic outlook of Richard Widmark. As for the I Ching… perhaps Widmark has further voyages to make.

 Best Wishes for a
C. S. Lewis
Christmas

 

Image of Lewis from Into the Wardrobe

“What on earth   is a concrete   universal?” — Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance For one approach to an answer, click on the picture at left.

Update of 4:23 PM:

The Lewis link above deals with the separation of Heaven from Hell.  The emphasis is on Heaven.  A mysterious visitor to this website, “United States,” seems to be seeking equal time for Hell.  And so…

Today in History
(via The Associated Press)

Joan Didion, The White Album:

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live….

We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition but one I found troubling.”

An Alternate History

(based on entries of
the past three days):

“A FAMOUS HISTORIAN:

England, 932 A.D. —
A kingdom divided….”

— Introduction to “Spamalot”

Mathematics and Narrative
continued…

“Now, at the urging of the UC Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff, liberal America’s guru of the moment, progressive Democrats are practicing to get their own reluctant mouths around some magical new vocabulary, in the hope of surviving and eventually overcoming the age of Bush.”

“… the right’s language is now the default language for everyone.
     On the way to proposing a counterstrategy (it never really arrives), Nunberg pauses to engage in a polite disagreement with his fellow linguist George Lakoff, who has provided a rival account of the conservative ascendancy. Lakoff argues that Republicans have articulated– first for themselves and then for others– a conceptual framework that allows them to unite apparently disparate issues in a single coherent worldview …  woven together not in a philosophically consistent framework but in a narrative ‘that creates an illusion of coherence.’
     Once again, the Republicans have such a narrative– ‘declining patriotism and moral standards, the out-of-touch media and the self-righteous liberal elite … minorities demanding special privileges … disrespect for religious faith, a swollen government’– but ‘Democrats and liberals have not offered compelling narratives that could compete’ with it. Eighty pages later he is still saying the same thing. ‘The Democrats need a compelling narrative of their own.'”

Lakoff is the co-author of a book on the philosophy of mathematics, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being.  From Wikipedia’s article on Lakoff:

“According to Lakoff, even mathematics itself is subjective to the human species and its cultures: thus ‘any question of math’s being inherent in physical reality is moot, since there is no way to know whether or not it is.’ Lakoff and Rafael E. Nunez (2000) argue at length that mathematical and philosophical ideas are best understood in light of the embodied mind. The philosophy of mathematics ought therefore to look to the current scientific understanding of the human body as a foundation ontology, and abandon self-referential attempts to ground the operational components of mathematics in anything other than ‘meat.'”

For a long list of related leftist philosophy, see The Thinking Meat Project.

Democrats seeking narratives may also consult The Carlin Code and The Prime Cut Gospel.
 

Not Harvard Bound

“Some of America’s most promising youth are seeking an even higher education.”

— Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity

From James A. Michener‘s The Source:

“Trouble started in a quarter that neither Uriel nor Zadok could have foreseen.  For many generations the wiser men of Zadok’s clan had worshipped El-Shaddai with the understanding that whereas Canaanites and Egyptians could see their gods directly, El-Shaddai was invisible and inhabited no specific place.  Unequivocally the Hebrew patriarchs had preached this concept and the sager men of the clans accepted it, but to the average Hebrew who was not a philosopher the theory of a god who lived nowhere, who did not even exist in corporeal form, was not easy to comprehend.  Such people were willing to agree with Zadok that their god did not live on this mountain– the one directly ahead– but they suspected that he did live on some mountain nearby, and when they said this they pictured an elderly man with a white beard who lived in a proper tent and whom they might one day see and touch.  If questioned, they would have said that they expected El-Shaddai to look much like their father Zadok, but with a longer beard, a stronger voice, and more penetrating eyes.

Now, as these simpler-minded Hebrews settled down outside the walls of Makor, they began to see Canaanite processions leave the main gate and climb the mountain to the north, seeking the high place where Baal lived, and they witnessed the joy which men experienced when visiting their god, and the Hebrews began in subtle ways and easy steps to evolve the idea that Baal, who obviously lived in a mountain, and El-Shaddai, who was reported to do so, must have much in common.  Furtively at first, and then openly, they began to climb the footpath to the place of Baal, where they found a monolith rising from the highest point of rock.  Here was a tangible thing they could comprehend, and after much searching along the face of the mountain, a group of Hebrew men found a straight rock of size equal to the one accorded Baal, and with much effort they dragged it one starless night to the mountain top, where they installed it not far from the home of Baal….”

Rabbi Chitrik died on
Valentine’s Day, 2006,
having had a heart attack
on Feb. 8, 2006–

Grammy Night.

The above monolith is perhaps more
closely related to El-Shaddai than to
Madonna, Grammy Night, and Baal.
It reflects my own interests
(Mathematics and Narrative)
and those of Martin Buber
(Jews on Fiction):
 

“Among Buber’s early philosophical influences were Kant’s Prolegomena, which he read at the age of fourteen, and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.  Whereas Kant had a calming influence on the young mind troubled by the aporia of infinite versus finite time, Nietzsche’s doctrine of ‘the eternal recurrence of the same’ constituted a powerful negative seduction.  By the time Buber graduated from Gymnasium he felt he had overcome this seduction, but Nietzsche’s prophetic tone and aphoristic style are evident in Buber’s subsequent writings.”

— Plato.stanford.edu

Martin Buber

Rabbi Chitrik

“… the Board of Education went as far as to redefine what science is: it’s no longer just a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Now it’s a search for… well, that’s a bit hard to say. Any sort of explanation, apparently. Pixies, ghosts, telekinesis, auras, ancient astronauts, excesses of choleric humor, they all seem to be fair game in the interest of ‘academic freedom.'”

“A teacher is an important role model for  demonstrating respect, sensitivity, and civility. Teachers should not ridicule, belittle or embarrass a student for expressing an alternative view or belief.”

Judeo-Christian Heritage:
The Wiener Kreis

The meditation below was suggested by this passage:

“… the belief that any sensible discourse had to be formulated within the rules of the scientific language, avoiding the non sense of the ordinary language. This belief, initially expressed by Wittgenstein as aphorisms, was later formalized by the Wiener Kreis [Vienna Circle] as a ‘logical construction of the world’….”

“Deeply Vulgar”

— Epithet applied in 2003 to
Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

“Examples are the stained-glass
windows of knowledge.”
— Vladimir Nabokov

In today’s Crimson:   Only moderately vulgar, with its sniggering pop-culture reference. But it  should be Frankfurter Professor of Law.

Deeply vulgar.

Those seeking relief from
Judeo-Christian vulgarity may enjoy
the Buddhist Suzanne Vega’s

“Mercilessly tasteful”
— Andrew Mueller

Real Enemies, Part I

“Even paranoids have real enemies.”
— Saying attributed to Delmore Schwartz

According to the Washington Post and Newsday today, the President’s persecutors now include

Paul O’Neill,
   formerly Bush’s Treasury Secretary

Richard A. Clarke,
   formerly Bush’s counterterrorism chief

Rand Beers,
   Bush’s counterterrorism chief after Clarke

Flynt Leverett,
   former member of the Bush national security staff

Richard Foster,
   Bush Medicare accountant

John DiIulio,
   former director of Bush’s faith-based initiatives

“Others who have fallen out of favor over Iraq include former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki. All voiced concerns about either the expense or number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. All were treated dismissively by the White House. All are gone, but their estimates proved accurate….

Not every White House attempt at damage-control works. Last summer, White House officials tried to pin the blame on CIA Director George Tenet for not waving Bush off his State of the Union claim that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons.

Political analysts rushed to proclaim Tenet a goner, but those obituaries proved premature.”

— Tom Raum in Newsday today

Truth and Style

From today’s New York Times obituary for Amy M. Spindler, former fashion critic of The New York Times and style editor of its magazine, who died yesterday at 40:

“Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, whom Ms. Spindler regarded as a competitor when she became style editor of The Times Magazine, in 1998, said: ‘She took criticism in a new direction. She wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.’ “

“I don’t believe in truth. I believe in style.”
— Hugh Grant in Vogue magazine, July 1995

Again from Spindler’s obituary:

“In a front-page article on Sept. 5, 1995, she [Spindler] noted a new piety on parade, marked by store windows and catalogs full of monastic robes, pilgrim’s boots and dangling crosses. Perhaps, she wrote, ‘the financially strained fashion industry is seeking salvation from above.’ “

Perhaps.

Amy M. Spindler

See also
Strike That Pose (August 1995)
and the two previous log24.net entries
on art and religion at Harvard.

For even more context, see
Truth and Style: ART WARS at Harvard.

Deeply Deep

“Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria?”

— James Joyce, Ulysses, “Proteus”

James Joyce may or may not have been a saint.  Today is, accordingly, either his feast day or his secular day of remembrance.

With Joyce in mind, I surfed the Heckler & Coch weblog archives this afternoon and found a link to a page that credits

“Jørn Barger, an amateur
  James Joyce scholar….”

with the first use of the term “weblog” in its current sense.

Seeking more on Barger and Joyce, I found that Barger has gone into seclusion and that his Joyce website is no longer online.

Google has a cache of his Joyce portal, however, and the portal and its sub-pages are also available at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/2003*/
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/*

These pages from Barger’s labor of love, though neither green nor oval, may serve as this year’s Joyce memorial.

Personal Jesus

For an excellent dramatic portrayal of C. S. Lewis, see the film “Shadowlands,” starring Sir Anthony Hopkins.

For Sir Anthony Hopkins
on his birthday —

Your Own Personal Jesus:

Mark Vonnegut in
British Columbia, 1970

The Jesus figure above is,
if not the Son of God,
the son of novelist Kurt Vonnegut —
not a bad alternative.

As for “the sort of things Jesus said,”
consider this from a summary of
the younger Vonnegut’s
The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity —

“At one point, he decides that
his thoughts are responsible for
an earthquake in California….”

See the rather similar remarks of Jesus
in Mark 11:23.

For further notes on
theology, lunacy, and earthquakes,
see the previous entries, starting with
The Longest Night, Dec. 21, 2003,
and ending with the two Dec. 28 entries
below, both related to the recent Iran
earthquake (and, by implication, to the
quote from Robert Stone in the entries
Stone, not Wood, and Riddle). 

Sunday, December 28, 2003  7:29 PM

Season’s Greetings from the
Institute for Advanced Study,
in keeping with the theme of
the previous entry.

HomerTheBrave:

“Warren Ellis’ Die Puny Humans….
  Worth looking at.”

DPH leads to Sohma G. Dawling

who in turn leads,
 via r. sakamoto, to

Oppenheimer’s Aria.
For the aria, after you click on
the above link, click on the
picture at the resulting site

Sunday, December 28, 2003  2:00 PM

Hostages Freed, Iran Says

The Associated Press,
December 28, 2003, 11:46 AM EST

TEHRAN, Iran — Three European hostages seized in southeastern Iran earlier this month have been released, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Sunday.

The $6 million ransom demand was not paid, another Iranian official said.

Drug smugglers seized the hostages — two from Germany and one from Ireland — Dec. 2… as they bicycled to the city of Zahedan from

Bam….    

Detail:

Thank you, Ma’am.

(See The Magdalene Code, 12/26.
For the “Wham,” see Rosebud, 12/22,
and later entries.)

Another entry not without relevance
is that of 3/07.

The Big Time

A Story That Works

• “There is the dark, eternally silent, unknown universe;
• there are the friend-enemy minds shouting and whispering their tales and always seeking the three miracles —
  • that minds should really touch, or
  • that the silent universe should speak, tell minds a story, or (perhaps the same thing)
  • that there should be a story that works, that is all hard facts, all reality, with no illusions and no fantasy;
• and lastly, there is lonely, story-telling, wonder-questing, mortal me.”

  — Fritz Leiber in “The Button Molder“

Self-Evident

Today many Americans celebrate a declaration of certain “self-evident” truths.  Others feel that these alleged “truths” are misleading.  Seeking a worthy opponent for the authors of the Declaration on this secular holy day, I settled on the following recently published book, a sort of Declaration of Dependence of government on God (an imaginary entity who speaks only through politicians, clergymen, and other liars):

Christian Faith
and Modern Democracy:
God and Politics in the Fallen World
By Robert P. Kraynak
Univ. of Notre Dame Press. 304p
$49.95 (cloth) $24.95 (paper)

From a review in the Dec. 24, 2001, issue of America, a Jesuit publication:

“The author, who identifies himself as a practicing Catholic, asserts that Christianity is weakened by its close alliance with the contemporary version of democracy and human rights…. 

The author states that ‘modern liberal democracy…subverts in practice the dignity of man.’  He defends his thesis relentlessly and persuasively…. 

Some readers of this well-organized volume will be disappointed that the author makes no mention of the four billion non-Christians among the world’s 6.1 billion inhabitants. The four billion Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists must be included in any attempt to make the modern state responsive to traditional and generally accepted norms of morality.”

— Robert F. Drinan, S.J.

Jefferson would probably appreciate Drinan’s remark on catholic (i.e., universal, or “generally accepted”) norms.

The “traditional and generally accepted norms of morality” Drinan mentions are discussed ably by Christian apologist C. S. Lewis in his book The Abolition of Man, which argues for the existence of a universal moral code that I am pleased to note he calls, rightly, the Tao.  As an Amazon.com reviewer notes, Lewis uses this term in the manner of Confucius rather than that of Lao Tsu.  I prefer the latter. 

For details, see the Tao Te Ching, (The Way and Its Power).  This is a far more holy scripture than the collections of lies called sacred by most other religions.  Both the leftist Jefferson and the rightist Kraynak wrongly assume that talk of a “Creator” means something.  It does not.  Classical Chinese thought is free from this absurd Western error.  Lewis at least had the grace to acknowledge the importance of non-Western thought, though he himself was unable to escape the lies of Christianity.