Log24

From The New York Times —

4^TH NIGHT FREE

From this journal —

Sunday, November 5, 2006

Sybil on the Beach

"I was waiting for you," said the young man. "What's new?"

"What?" said Sybil.

"What's new? What's on the program?"

Part I:

"…although a work of art 'is formed around something missing,' this 'void is its vanishing point, not its essence.' She shows deftly and delicately that the void inside Keats’s urn, Heidegger’s jug, or Wallace Stevens’s jar forms the center around which we tend to organize our worlds."

— Harvard University Press on Persons and Things (April 30, 2008), by Barbara Johnson

Part II:

"Did you see more glass?"

Part III:

From the date of Barbara Johnson's death:

"Mathematical relationships were
enough to satisfy him, mere formal
relationships which existed at
all times, everywhere, at once."

– Broken Symmetries, 1983

The X's refer to the pattern on the
cover of a paperback edition
  of Nine Stories, by J. D. Salinger.
Salinger died on Wednesday.

"You remember that book he sent me
from Germany? You know–
those German poems."

In Germany, Wednesday was
Holocaust Memorial Day, 2010.

Home Delivery

"But wait, there's more!"
— Stanley Fish, NY Times today

For a larger image, click on The Catcher.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around– nobody big, I mean– except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff– I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I'd do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 22

Recent Log24 entries on Hamlet suggest a look at on the Web.

There is a useful transcription by Clifford Stetner. See also an excellent review of Hamlet's Mill by Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.

The work of Giorgio de Santillana (like that of Stetner) suggests in turn the following recently quoted advice–

"…you should read Middlemarch every five years or so. Every time… it's a different book, and an even more powerful one."

— Robert Weisbuch, quoted at Critical Mass on Jan. 23.

Related material: Mr. Casaubon and the Key to All Mythologies.

For a simpler key, see On Linguistic Creation.

Sting as Hamlet

Detail, cover of Synchronicity album, 1983

Further details of the text on the album cover–

Continued from yesterday
and from March 28, 2008–

Being and Nothingness

Jean Simmons and Laurence Olivier, 1948

"Ophelia’s story becomes the Story of O…."
– Elaine Showalter, "Representing Ophelia:
Women, Madness, and the
Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism."
Pp. 220-238 in
Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford.
Boston: Bedford Books, 1994.

"…something is rotten in Denmark. And nothing I have read in the news headlines is going to solve it.

Rant over.

Back to our regular programming."

— A Circle of Quiet today

Our regular programming:

Anne Applebaum in the current New York Review of Books on Arthur Koestler—

"At the moment, he still seems like yesterday's man, unfashionable and obsolete."

Rather like God. See this journal yesterday– Darkness at Noon.

See also David Levine's portrait of Koestler (Dec. 30, 2009)–

— and an objective correlative to yesterday's post —

Click to enlarge.

A NY Times review dated Jan. 20 has the headline

Trying to Paint the Deity by Numbers
Against a Backdrop of Jewish Culture

By JANET MASLIN

"…this novel’s bracing intellectual energy never flags. Though it is finally more a work of showmanship than scholarship, it affirms Ms. Goldstein’s position as a satirist…."

The title of the book under review is
36 Arguments for the
Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.

Related "by the numbers" material–

From the I Ching, commentaries on the lines of Hexagram 36–

"Here the Lord of Light is in a subordinate place and is wounded by the Lord of Darkness…."

"The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration."

The Times review of 36 Arguments notes that the book's chapters of fiction number 36, as do the 36 philosophical arguments in the book's title and appendix.

The reviewer– "So much for structure. It is not Ms. Goldstein’s strong suit…."

Some structure related to the above occurrence of 36 in the I Ching—

Another example of eightfold symmetry:

The Large Hadron Collider

See also Angels & Demons in
Hollywood and in this journal.

"I need a man who knows
how the story goes."
— Shania Twain

"The causal story is that a crippled epistemology leads to fanaticism, which then leads to the urge for governmental control…

It is only through gaining control of a state in the modern era that a fanatical group could expect to exclude contrary views and thereby maintain the crippled epistemology of their followers. With the power of a state behind them, they can coerce."

— P. 18 in Russell Hardin, "The Crippled Epistemology of Extremism" (Pp. 3-22 in Political Rationality and Extremism, Albert Breton et al., eds., Cambridge University Press, 2002).

This is the source of more recent uses of the phrase "crippled epistemology."

Cognitive Infiltration

"Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups."

— Cass R. Sunstein, Harvard Law professor,
abstract of "Conspiracy Theories," Jan. 15, 2008

Critical Mass Monday, Jan. 18, 2010, 7:06  AM–

Here you've got three high-powered academics… all engaged in highly pernicious and mutually enabling forms of professional dishonesty. Sunstein comes up [with] what Timothy Burke calls a "consensus-politics liberal-leaning version of COINTELPRO," — Erin O'Connor

Critical Mass? Campaigns Work to Get Voters to Polls

— Washington Wire:
Political Insight and Analysis from
The Wall Street Journal Capital Bureau
January 19, 2010, 11:17 AM ET

David Weigel, "Attacks on Sunstein Frustrate Conservative Fans,"
The Washington Independent, 9/9/09–

"The campaign against Sunstein has largely written itself."

Two classics of politics–

1956– The Ninth Wave, by Eugene Burdick

2010– "Scott Brown" in Google's new "As It Happens" format

American Literary Historical Society

Robert Redford and Brad Pitt
in "Spy Game" (2001)

James Dean in LIFE, 1955.

Photo by Dennis Stock,
who died on Monday.

"The eye you see him with
is the same eye
with which he sees you."

— Father Egan on page 333
of the classic Robert Stone novel
A Flag for Sunrise
(Knopf hardcover, 1981)

Death and the Apple Tree
continued from January 4

— "Araby," by James Joyce.
 Joyce died on this date in 1941.

New York Times, January 12, 2010, 12:26 PM–

"Spider-Man" Musical Will Refund Tickets

"With… direction by Julie Taymor ['Frida'], 'Spider-Man' has been marred by delays….

The musical’s troubles have unfolded at the same time that the next “Spider-Man” movie has been descending into disarray…."

Related material:

"No Great Magic," by Fritz Leiber–

"The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint tattoo in the form of an 'S' styled like a yin-yang symbol left a little open.

'Snake!' he hissed. 'Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent!'"

“Ay que bonito es volar  
    A las dos de la mañana….”
— “La Bruja“

A sermon for the father of Kal-El.
See also related material in this journal
on Vegas and on Maniacs.

Rock's top 40 on Jan. 9, 1982