Log24

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Dirda Dancing

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:48 am

See Dirda in this journal.  See also . . .

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Dark Humor

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:09 am

Arts and Letters Daily  today links to a July 17
Washington Post  review of two books on the
occult and the enlightenment. The review, by
Michael Dirda, ends on a cheerful note:

"Happy synchronicity."

In related news, a Walpurgisnacht obituary also
ends cheerfully:

"He was still trying to get out a joke
with his final breath."

That obituary describes a life that reportedly ended
on April 21, 2013. Synchronicity involving that date—

The posts of April 21, 2013 (and related material in
this morning's previous post).

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Sunday March 29, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am
Auerbach, Purdy;
Purdy, Auerbach

The 4-day annual meeting
of the American Comparative
 Literature Association
concludes today.
This year the the meeting
is held at Harvard University.
(Program– pdf, 256 pp.)

“But the spirit of rhetoric– a spirit which classified subjects in genera and invested every subject with a specific form of style as one garment becoming it in virtue of its nature [i.e. lower classes with the farcical low-style, upper classes with the tragic, the historic and the sublime elevated-style]– could not extend its dominion to them [the Bible writers] for the simple reason that their subject would not fit into any of the known genres.”

— Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton edition of 1953, p. 45, as quoted at Wikipedia)

The Washington Post on its literary columnist Michael Dirda:

“… he holds a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell….”

Dirda on author James Purdy (April 5, 2000):

QUESTION: “What do you make of Purdy and his place in 20th century American fiction?”
 
“A small sidetrack in American literature– a camp novelist, something of a cult figure. Will probably be forgotten in a generation. Malcolm is probably his best bet for survival, but a lot will depend on his readers and whether they can keep his name and fiction before the public. So far they haven’t been doing much of a job. Personally, I think Purdy is a funny, brilliant writer, but that doesn’t assure immortality.”

Steven H. Cullinane on Purdy,
“Radical Emptiness,”
 Friday, March 13th, 2009 —

“See you in the
  funny papers, Purdy.”

Powered by WordPress