Showing posts with label Meta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meta. Show all posts
Typically belated realization
I think Christina Rossetti is the only woman I've had to read all year.
Quarterly report: The wall
This project is becoming irksome, but not necessarily in the way you think.
What's becoming irksome is that as I go from un- to under- to employed writer these readings goad me, not because I have to do them, but because I won't be able to savor them as much as I used to. I'm squeezing them in, and I don't like it.
Not that I don't do some not-this-again eye-rolling; even the stuff I like, by the nature of my water-beetle breeziness, there's only so much I can gin up by the fifth or sixth reading. On the other hand, when I do gin something up that I'm semi-satisfied with, it's gratifying. Like Shahrazad (pedantic spelling which I learned doing this project), I've escaped death one more time.
Other than that I don't have any big thoughts on What It All Means this time. Or maybe I would, if I didn't feel so beset.
What's becoming irksome is that as I go from un- to under- to employed writer these readings goad me, not because I have to do them, but because I won't be able to savor them as much as I used to. I'm squeezing them in, and I don't like it.
Not that I don't do some not-this-again eye-rolling; even the stuff I like, by the nature of my water-beetle breeziness, there's only so much I can gin up by the fifth or sixth reading. On the other hand, when I do gin something up that I'm semi-satisfied with, it's gratifying. Like Shahrazad (pedantic spelling which I learned doing this project), I've escaped death one more time.
Other than that I don't have any big thoughts on What It All Means this time. Or maybe I would, if I didn't feel so beset.
Update
While tying my shoes I realized that, the other day, I put that picture up of Calvin peeing on the Red Wings' logo, and I forgot to link to the great Sam Johnson's riff on the Calvin-peeing-on-logos phenomenon.
Apologies in advance to any American Studies majors reading this who have already written papers on the Calvin-peeing-on-logos phenomenon.
Apologies in advance to any American Studies majors reading this who have already written papers on the Calvin-peeing-on-logos phenomenon.
Update: I think I should start a museum
In this post, I mentioned that I had decided against putting in a picture of a woman with a rolling pin in her hand, and now I find that my friend Julia Ruchman has sent me the following (entitled "Angry Wife Has Doctor On Standby"):
I think this might be the beginning of a collection. But why have the doctor there? Maybe he's prescribing her steroids.
I think this might be the beginning of a collection. But why have the doctor there? Maybe he's prescribing her steroids.
Always scribble scribble scribble
I am looking into having the first half of the book printed up, which means taking each month's archive and turning it into a Word file, which is painstaking (in the sense that it's a pain). I find that, in January, I wrote about 17,000 words. That seems like a lot for someone whose original goal in life was to be a feuilltonist. Of course, the total would only be 2500 words if all the times I used "interesting" only counted as one.
Hello Sweeneyites
I see where my old friend Julia Sweeney, with whom I have shared the occasional Bacardi, has sent folks my way. Hello, and enjoy the dilletantism!
Today's reading (the Koran!) to follow sometime, maybe tonight.
Today's reading (the Koran!) to follow sometime, maybe tonight.
Quarterly report: Motto of the Work
Last quarter I wondered if I was learning anything, and decided that I wasn't, much. This quarter I realize that much of what I have gleaned can be summed up this way: "The fundamental things apply/As time goes by."
(Digression: the bridge of that song has a lyric touch I've always appreciated: "Moonlight and love songs, never out of date/Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate/Woman needs man, and man must have his mate..." Murderous darkness gets slipped in there, in the moonlight!)
Note that this is not exactly the same thing as "There is nothing new under the sun," because, of course, our material circumstances are radically different from even that anonymous grad student or, more likely, Collier's employee who had the thankless task of compiling this reading guide. And having new physical and mental furniture around changes the thinking we do in them, no question. But Socrates can still go out like a champ, and Adam Smith can super-dryly note what we do for cash, and Harvey can, like a tinkerer, still put his saliva-y finger on a pigeon's dying heart, and it's still interesting and relevant and reassuring, for they did all these things without air conditioning, which is getting really expensive.
Whether, as a practical matter, this means we should be making Our Youth Read More Great Books is a different question, because I'm convinced I'm reading them wrong; I suspect myself of using them to confirm what I already believe. Besides, when I've read works in this project that I remember reading in school, I despair of the usefulness of making our youth read anything at all.
It's still fun, though. My feeling of accomplishment at getting halfway home still outweighs, a little, my feeling of dread at only being halfway home.
(Digression: the bridge of that song has a lyric touch I've always appreciated: "Moonlight and love songs, never out of date/Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate/Woman needs man, and man must have his mate..." Murderous darkness gets slipped in there, in the moonlight!)
Note that this is not exactly the same thing as "There is nothing new under the sun," because, of course, our material circumstances are radically different from even that anonymous grad student or, more likely, Collier's employee who had the thankless task of compiling this reading guide. And having new physical and mental furniture around changes the thinking we do in them, no question. But Socrates can still go out like a champ, and Adam Smith can super-dryly note what we do for cash, and Harvey can, like a tinkerer, still put his saliva-y finger on a pigeon's dying heart, and it's still interesting and relevant and reassuring, for they did all these things without air conditioning, which is getting really expensive.
Whether, as a practical matter, this means we should be making Our Youth Read More Great Books is a different question, because I'm convinced I'm reading them wrong; I suspect myself of using them to confirm what I already believe. Besides, when I've read works in this project that I remember reading in school, I despair of the usefulness of making our youth read anything at all.
It's still fun, though. My feeling of accomplishment at getting halfway home still outweighs, a little, my feeling of dread at only being halfway home.
Photographic evidence
Now that the site that used to have the Daily Reading Guide has been taken down, I wanted to show some proof that such a thing does exist & that I'm not randomly selecting these readings (not that I would ever do such a thing, I'm too lazy). There are also inspiring little verses at the beginning of each month which I will post if I remember.
This was a DRG that was being sold on ebay -- a nice maroon leather-bound one, not the green, merely cloth-bound set my great-grandfather got. I guess mine could be called "shanty classics".
Thank you Overthinking it
for my new visitors. I am always happy to be linked to by a blog that has "Anna Nicole Smith" and "dialectic" as two of its tags. (They recently got a lot of traffic from their "Lord of the Rings Nazgul Vs. A Labradoodle" post being linked to on IMDB.)
Meta -- Actual field conditions
Here's what one of my tomes actually looks like, photographed on the patio table where some of the reading gets done. Note the brilliant sunshine falling, perhaps for the very first time, somewhere other than the spine of the book. I suspect that the majority of the copies of the Harvard Classics are like this, outside perhaps of Volumes 1 or 2.
Quarterly report
Every now and again I wonder why I'm doing this. Unfortunately I'm still not quite sure. My standard answer has been the I'm-running-a-marathon one -- just something kind of challenging you do to prove to yourself you can.
Also, when I'd see those books sitting in the upstairs hall not doing anything, it bugged me.
But am I learning anything? I'm reading all these classics, for God's sake. And my answer to that would be "no." Or, more precisely, "I don't know." I don't walk around feeling like I am the possessor of more knowledge, nor have I gained any philosophy that helps on a day when I'm feeling blue. It's pretty impractical, in other words. What I tell myself is that you never know when it might come in handy -- I'm like an antique collector who's just buying randomly -- this small green and brown thing could turn out to be a Vermeer (to steal a joke from Monty Python).
Over and above that there's just the discipline of having something to write every day (very helpful for the unemployed man); and the odd sensation, when I think about it, of knowing I have something to read, but not knowing what it's going to be, except that it was chosen for me in 1909.
Also, when I'd see those books sitting in the upstairs hall not doing anything, it bugged me.
But am I learning anything? I'm reading all these classics, for God's sake. And my answer to that would be "no." Or, more precisely, "I don't know." I don't walk around feeling like I am the possessor of more knowledge, nor have I gained any philosophy that helps on a day when I'm feeling blue. It's pretty impractical, in other words. What I tell myself is that you never know when it might come in handy -- I'm like an antique collector who's just buying randomly -- this small green and brown thing could turn out to be a Vermeer (to steal a joke from Monty Python).
Over and above that there's just the discipline of having something to write every day (very helpful for the unemployed man); and the odd sensation, when I think about it, of knowing I have something to read, but not knowing what it's going to be, except that it was chosen for me in 1909.
Not only excerpts, but articles!
Because I must read my Malory, I don't really have time to comment on it, but here's kind of an overview/criticism of the whole Harvard Classics I Googled up awhile ago, but haven't read.
The story thus far
We're about 50 days in, right? Here's the volumes I haven't pulled down yet:
2: Plato/Epictetus/Marcus Aurelius
3: Bacon/Milton's Prose/Thos. Browne
5: Emerson (! -- I guess they're not as New England as you'd think over there)
10: The Wealth Of Nations
12: Plutarch's Lives
15: Pilgrim's Progress/Donne & Herbert/Bunyan/Walton
23: Two Years Before The Mast
30: Faraday/Helmholtz/Kelvin/Newcomb Etc.
36: Machiavelli/More/Luther
37: Locke/Berkeley/Hume
38: Harvey/Jenner/Lister/Pasteur
42: English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman
44: Sacred Writings 1
47: Elizabethan Drama 2
49: Epic and Saga
I make this list only because tomorrow I have to read Robert Burns for the third time.
2: Plato/Epictetus/Marcus Aurelius
3: Bacon/Milton's Prose/Thos. Browne
5: Emerson (! -- I guess they're not as New England as you'd think over there)
10: The Wealth Of Nations
12: Plutarch's Lives
15: Pilgrim's Progress/Donne & Herbert/Bunyan/Walton
23: Two Years Before The Mast
30: Faraday/Helmholtz/Kelvin/Newcomb Etc.
36: Machiavelli/More/Luther
37: Locke/Berkeley/Hume
38: Harvey/Jenner/Lister/Pasteur
42: English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman
44: Sacred Writings 1
47: Elizabethan Drama 2
49: Epic and Saga
I make this list only because tomorrow I have to read Robert Burns for the third time.
Toldja
As threatened, work is starting up again -- I have an interview today for a show. And among my first thoughts was, "How am I going to do my reading?" If I get hired, that is. I can always ruin my job prospects by talking about how I'm doing this.
More awesome prose from the Harvard Classics people
I'm coming down with a cold, so I'm blue. When I'm blue, nothing refreshes me more than Grog A L'Americane reading some of the awesome prose that the admen concocted for the Daily Reading Guide. Here, enjoy some with me:
The Harvard Classics Embrace the Sum-Total of Literature and Life
Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books free you from the limitations of your age...They take you out of the rut of life in the town you live in and make you a citizen of the world...they make it possible for you to travel without leaving home, and to have vacations without taking time from your work. The offer you -- if you will only accept their gifts -- friends, travel, the knowledge of life; they offer you education, the means of making your life what you want it to be."
There's so much to make fun of here, but my head hurts too much to do more than italicize the "you," and to note that many actual Harvard graduates of the time probably had plenty of time to travel without ever having read Pliny.
Also, how do you embrace a sum-total?
The Harvard Classics Embrace the Sum-Total of Literature and Life
Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books free you from the limitations of your age...They take you out of the rut of life in the town you live in and make you a citizen of the world...they make it possible for you to travel without leaving home, and to have vacations without taking time from your work. The offer you -- if you will only accept their gifts -- friends, travel, the knowledge of life; they offer you education, the means of making your life what you want it to be."
There's so much to make fun of here, but my head hurts too much to do more than italicize the "you," and to note that many actual Harvard graduates of the time probably had plenty of time to travel without ever having read Pliny.
Also, how do you embrace a sum-total?
One month in
Well, I'm pleased to have hacked through for one month at least. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I tried this project for three months back in 2000, when the books first made their residence in the upstairs hall. And this has been going better, because I know I have to write a post every day.
Of course, I don't think I've learned anything. I'm not even sure that learning is the goal; it feels more like an exercise, like running the steps of the stadium. It's interesting, however, and it does feel like I'm spending time in another era -- not the various eras (erae?) of the night's reading, but the era when the Harvard Classics were a fine vehicle for self-improvement. I guess I'm indulging in a little nostalgia for a bygone day, where it was socially desirable to fake Traditional High Culture.
Actually, I think it has altered one thing, and that is to make me more confident in hacky comedy setups. The timelessness of various literary ploys -- the henpecked hubby, the sidekick -- makes me feel better at my lack of ability to invent anything original. It's all the same cake, we just get a chance to decorate it differently.
Of course, I don't think I've learned anything. I'm not even sure that learning is the goal; it feels more like an exercise, like running the steps of the stadium. It's interesting, however, and it does feel like I'm spending time in another era -- not the various eras (erae?) of the night's reading, but the era when the Harvard Classics were a fine vehicle for self-improvement. I guess I'm indulging in a little nostalgia for a bygone day, where it was socially desirable to fake Traditional High Culture.
Actually, I think it has altered one thing, and that is to make me more confident in hacky comedy setups. The timelessness of various literary ploys -- the henpecked hubby, the sidekick -- makes me feel better at my lack of ability to invent anything original. It's all the same cake, we just get a chance to decorate it differently.
Heads up
Had a meeting with my agent today and the message was, basically, get to work. Owing to a pre-existing condition (mortgage), that means that once the strike ends I will have to grub for paying jobs, so enjoy the long luxurious posts while you can.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)