tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17102473217412148592024-02-07T11:01:27.689-08:00Harvard Classics ProjectA comedy writer takes 2008 to go through the Daily Reading Guide of the Harvard Classics. What could go wrong?Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.comBlogger451125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-10466839980552558902009-02-11T21:25:00.000-08:002018-05-01T22:15:55.489-07:00Now featuring organization!
What is at the core of Western Tradition? For what paramount value did Socrates die drinking hemlock and Bacon die freezing chickens? Why, end-user convenience, of course! And so dig, if you will, this picture: all my entries organized by volume. I include the titles of the volumes, direct from great-grandfather's spines, in order to give you an idea of what the HC is all about -- an Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-69548405851212452292009-02-10T08:41:00.000-08:002009-02-10T10:02:02.263-08:00And now it's really overThe press of work (office jobs suck) has prevented me from really engaging with the legacy of this project. In some ways, when thinking about it, I fold it into the general experience of my year of un- and under-employment, instead of evaluating it on its own terms. But I have to come to terms with it, and soon, because I promised I would write an essay about it for some anthology of Manly Men Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-37879777822662568092009-02-02T10:11:00.000-08:002009-02-02T10:21:03.684-08:00Slightly OT: Perfection WastedToday would have been my dad's birthday, so he is very much on my mind, as he was for every entry here at the end. Here's an Updike poem (so even more apropos) he had read at his memorial service: Perfection Wasted And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-83141223450978211772009-02-01T17:54:00.000-08:002009-02-01T18:20:41.844-08:00Arrears blogging: November 17 -- Make It BigAs a critic, I'm a little too timid. That's what comes from being a dilettante -- no confidence. I could be talked out of anything. But this was not Carlyle's problem. He felt that sick people were losers: We say not that; but we do say, that ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat, is battle (in a good or in a bad cause) with bad success; that health alone is victory. Let all men, if theyDelicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-73139266686079090682009-02-01T08:17:00.000-08:002009-02-01T12:20:54.074-08:00Arrears blogging: November 16 -- UngovernableI've remarked before about the similarities between Richard Henry Dana's description of the Mexican-run California of the 1830s and the current version that I live in, and in today's reading, the parallels continue to be downright eerie : In their domestic relations, these people are no better than in their public. The men are thriftless, proud, and extravagant, and very much given to gaming; Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-17350778346753730492009-01-31T17:32:00.000-08:002009-01-31T17:59:25.255-08:00Arrears blogging: November 15 -- Hard TimesI am often amused by the disconnect between the Daily Reading and the Guide's description of it. Today, for example, we're promised: Food profiteering was as active in plague-stricken Milan 300 years ago as in modern times. Shops were stormed for food. Read how the Council strove heroically to fix fair rates.And in the actual reading (from Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi"), we read how it wasn't Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-25511015575234208322009-01-29T20:25:00.000-08:002009-01-29T20:40:39.504-08:00Arrears blogging: November 14 -- Our High-Strung PlanetOne of the things about the science stuff in the Harvard Classics is that it's difficult for the non-scientist to figure out how outdated it is. Take Charles Lyell, giant of geology (apparently), and stimulator of Darwin. In today's reading he makes an argument that the geologic processes we've seen are the same ones that made the geologic world we dig into and puzzle about, or at least he Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-4799676435248067592009-01-27T20:39:00.000-08:002009-01-27T21:53:03.927-08:00Arrears blogging: November 13 -- Portrait of a Puritan As A Young ManIn the opening of today's passage (which I first encountered in an Updike short story, coincidentally enough) St. Augustine is hard (heh, heh) on himself:TO CARTHAGE I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-23639542430108854542009-01-25T19:19:00.000-08:002009-01-25T19:47:04.031-08:00Arrears blogging: November 12 -- Everybody Loves AdamA friend of mine who grew up in France introduced me to the phrase "A Mr. and Mrs." to describe a marital fight, and today we have the first one in history, at least according to the Biblical literalists: Adam and Eve's spat in Book IX of Paradise Lost. If I were a thoughtful person I would be drawn to the little colloquium between Satan and Eve ("Resolved: The Fruit Is Delicious"), or I might Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-90636607196631473212009-01-25T11:44:00.000-08:002009-01-25T11:46:36.662-08:00Arrears blogging: November 11 -- (The Lack Of) Arms and the ManThe Daily Reading Guide uses the old-style and more graceful term of "Armistice Day" to describe November 11, and, in the war-to-end-wars-has-ended style that people might still have had in 1930, does not flinch from giving us Whitman, who didn’t flinch either:On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush’d head I dress (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away), The Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-57499785448961829832009-01-23T08:47:00.000-08:002009-01-23T09:05:03.667-08:00Arrears blogging: September 14 -- OralsWhen you click on the online Reading Guide for this date, you get Cantos 24 and 25 of Dante's Inferno, filled with monsters and curses and people being turned into snakes and forced to meld with each other. Sick, right? But it turns out that's not the actual reading. The actual reading is Cantos 24 and 25 of the Paradiso, and instead of mindbending creatures, we get scholastic philosophy:Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-85029661386329988842009-01-21T22:29:00.000-08:002009-01-21T22:46:25.768-08:00Arrears blogging: October 31 -- FootnotesWhat to say about a Robert Burns poem that the Robert Burns website says "becomes tedious in spite of the lively movement and the skilfully manipulated verse"? But don't take my word for it, take these incomprehensible words: They hoy’t out Will, wi’ sair advice; They hecht him some fine braw ane; It chanc’d the stack he faddom’t thrice Was timmer-propt for thrawin:As they say in Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-28729142397503690742009-01-18T17:39:00.000-08:002009-01-18T17:52:28.901-08:00Arrears blogging: June 29: SaucyIrritatingly, I can't find it now, but I was just reading an interview with Michael Emerson from Lost where he was talking about the theater, and how much he likes it when language is more than just a means of communication. And then I had a Shakespeare reading, and it's easy to see exactly what he's talking about. Or, as Lady Macbeth puts it: To feed were best at home; From thence, the Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-73378157603696625402009-01-17T21:17:00.001-08:002009-01-17T21:37:36.261-08:00Arrears blogging: June 28: Charles Darwin, bumblling detectiveFirst of all, I apologize for being so dilatory with the arrears blogging (I still owe about 10 days) -- it's just that real work has come, and not a moment to soon. I do intend to finish the thing so I can gather it all in one place. You have my half-assed guarantee on it! The thing that charms me about Darwin is that he's not afraid to look ridiculous (remember when he hung out watching Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-46025152711305935212009-01-13T16:59:00.000-08:002009-01-13T17:13:14.420-08:00Arrears blogging: June 1: Let's go Devils!You know that film cliche where the angel appears on one shoulder and the devil on the other one? I think we may have a source for it right here in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Faust is on the verge of repenting and this random old man comes out to urge him to do so. I puzzled over who this old man might be, and, smiling at the idea that I might read the rest of the play, decided that maybe he's Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-64969551250752370542009-01-12T21:15:00.000-08:002009-01-12T21:50:27.450-08:00Arrears blogging: May 31: Exhibit A for AmericanI guess Memorial Day weekend was American poetry weekend (and why not), so I might as well quote one of my favorite United Statesean lines that has the added benefit of being true. It's from William Carlos Williams:The pure products of Americago crazy--And we happen to have Exhibit A right here, Walt Whitman, writing a preface to Leaves of Grass that's so nutty you wonder how anyone ever went Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-16923664785875937852009-01-11T17:19:00.000-08:002009-01-11T20:39:52.820-08:00Arrears blogging: May 30: Deep ShipBack when they were putting the Harvard Classics together Longfellow was classed with the poets, but I think he should be classed (instead? no, also!) with the pop artists -- like Capras or Goffin/King, guys who know how to put the hay down where the goats can get at it. While artists like these have cooler contemporaries (Whitman, Sturges, Holland/Dozier/Holland), there's still something Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-77505752959522307982009-01-10T11:25:00.000-08:002009-01-11T14:28:04.484-08:00Arrears blogging: May 29: No shortage of goreOne thing about the Thousand and One Nights, they sure know how to keep a story moving. And, even better, they know the virtues of a slow introduction -- here, in The Tale of the Barber's Fifth Brother (must focus-group that title), we begin with a long daydream of wealth -- and not just of wealth, but of the things wealth buys, such as repercussion-free meanness to women: I will command her toDelicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-62067653207844433912009-01-08T13:59:00.000-08:002009-01-08T15:04:04.110-08:00Arrears blogging: April 18 -- Reading is bad for you In resolution, he plunged himself so deeply in his reading of these books, as he spent many times in the lecture of them whole days and nights; and in the end, through his little sleep and much reading, he dried up his brains in such sort as he lost wholly his judgment.First Faust, and now Don Quixote: the great authors seem to agree that getting way into books is a good way to go crazy. But Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-27274288941957393332009-01-07T10:24:00.000-08:002009-01-07T10:44:55.945-08:00Arrears blogging: March 22 -- High-Strung Dudes Of LiteratureI see by Wikipedia that Faustwas played recently by Bruno Ganz, who I remember seeing as the soulful, soulful angel in "Wings of Desire" just before I fell asleep in it. Based on this translation, anyway, I think someone more skittish is appropriate. Hugh Laurie, maybe, but then I think he'd be good in anything -- and not serious "House" Hugh Laurie, but Bertie Wooster-goes-to-graduate-school Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-59206958379204227962009-01-05T15:30:00.000-08:002009-01-05T22:09:38.288-08:00Arrears blogging: March 12 -- Yes ManIn order to complete the year I have 24 days of readings to do. Why not blog them? Here's a dialogue from my least favorite writer in the Harvard Classics, the good Bishop Berkeley. I'm not into the Bish because I don't like arguing about God, and I don't like arguing about God because the history of the human race shows that it is a generally unprofitable activity. Not that there's really anyDelicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-63537582437825323892009-01-01T09:51:00.000-08:002009-01-01T09:51:00.268-08:00EnvoiSince the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and religious zeal have diffused, among the savages of the Old and New World, those inestimable gifts: they have been successively propagated; they can never be lost. We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-82178994972864239672008-12-31T11:11:00.000-08:002008-12-31T11:11:00.452-08:00December 31: And we liked it!New Year's Eve 1952, from the Life photo archive on Google Images. This woman won the "Prettiest Teacher in America" contest sponsored by "Our Miss Brooks." Who the guy was or what he did is not mentioned. I'm sure they both went on to loathe hippies.When my sister used to live in Troy, one of the highlights of my visits to her was reading "Sound Off!" in the Troy Record. A lot of small-townDelicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-46930832928978254092008-12-30T11:26:00.000-08:002008-12-30T12:02:24.025-08:00December 30: The More Things ChangeThe state, the lifestyle, the tablecloth. You spilled gravy on San Diego!Today Richard Henry Dana's ship is trading in Monterey in 1835, I think it is. While Dana is taking pains to show his East Coast audience how different the place is, the modern California resident can read it looking to see what's the same.Prejudice against California, first of all: "The Californians are an idle, Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1710247321741214859.post-76269435192171382402008-12-30T09:35:00.000-08:002008-12-30T09:35:01.050-08:00The last chord fades. The night is cold and fine.This weekend, while I was musing on the end of this project, this poem by James Merrill popped into my head. In my spaniel-like devotion to my readings, I identify with the title character; I'm aware it's very self-dramatizing for me to do so. However, I wouldn't be the first person to be self-dramatizing around the holidays. Anyway:The Victor Dogfor Elisabeth BishopBix to Buxtehude to Delicioushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06977221759266500786noreply@blogger.com0