Numéro Cinq at the Movies: Chips Rafferty, Suvla Bay, the Australian Light Horse and The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda — Douglas Glover

Jun 172013
 

Watching movies is a sentimental education. They work through images and change the way we feel, especially if they come at an impressionable moment. Strange how, for reasons of history and empire, a boy in southwestern Ontario grew up humming an Australian bush song and learned his politics watching the Australian actor Chips Rafferty in Eureka Stockade (1949), fighting for justice  in the Ballarat Goldfields on the family’s first black and white TV in the late 1950s. I don’t suppose anyone else remembers Chips Rafferty, and looking at him now he is hardly leading man material. But there you are. Much later the great Australian films Gallipoli and Breaker Morant served to upend my view of self and history, my historical self, with their mutinous revision of Australia’s glorious Imperial past (which, it seemed, applied equally to Canada’s Imperial past). I give you here first Eureka Stockade, the entire movie [actually, the entire movie has disappeared from Youtube; I can only give you a clip for now, and not the final battle scene at that], made at the famous Ealing Studios in England. I was a boy when I saw this, as I say, completely enthralled with Chips Rafferty, my hero-idol for years (though I only saw the movie once). Then the famous Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle performing his song “The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda” which turns the famous bush ballad upside down, into a lament for the gallant spirit of a country that bought the British imperial blarney about loyalty to the Mother country and saw its boys wasted in an unforgivable debacle. Then I give you the last scene from Gallipoli where the Australians have been ordered to attack across open ground against Turkish machine guns (this is at Suvla Bay, the operational area referred to in Eric Bogle’s song). It’s a gorgeous sequence. Mel Gibson is racing with a message to call off the attack; his race against Death mirrors the boyhood race at the beginning of the movie — he loses both races. (Watches and time-keeping imagery throughout as well.) Then I give you last scene of Breaker Morant, the two Australians being executed as an example during the Boer War to save Imperial face after a so-called atrocity. Beautiful irony in the dialogue about “pagan.” The pagan trooper cites the precise Bible verse to cover his case; the chaplain has to look it up. As I say, these films educated me, not intellectually at first so much as sentimentally, changed the templates, transformed my view of Canadian history, the official version never to be trusted again, authority(ies) never to be trusted again. Just as I am sure these imaginary geographies will always be more real to me than the ones you find on maps (which are truly Imaginary). For Canadians, I suggest getting a copy of Tony Wilden’s The Imaginary Canadian, a Lacanian analysis of Canadian history now out of print.

dg

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG48Ftsr3OI[/youtube]

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI7KJnRlsS4[/youtube]

 

I can’t understand why everyone isn’t attracted to modernism | Darran Anderson Interviews Deborah Levy @ 3:AM Magazine

Jun 162013
 

I can’t understand why everyone isn’t attracted to modernism. How can we disagree with the idea that there is subjective as well as chronological time? One of the things that really fascinates me about the novels of Anita Brookner is that I regard her male and female characters as 18th century characters living in the 20th century. This is not a dig at a skilled writer — it genuinely interests me. How can anyone who is engaged with literature be arrogant and dumb enough to dismiss the writing of (in no particular order) Whitman, Baudelaire, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Pound, Stein, Eliot, Genet, Beckett, Woolf, and Mansfield as an irrelevant experiment? I was born into a world that was utterly changed by modernism. Modernism is the soft typewriter of the womb that made me. How can point of view not be multi-angled? Don’t they have to blinker horses with a leather blind to stop them from having a multi-angled point of view?

Read the rest at In the Soft Typewriter of the Womb » 3:AM Magazine.

Spanking and the Enlightenment, or Punishment and Desire and the Eight-Year-Old Male @ The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau

Jun 142013
 

One of the world’s great memoirs, The Confessions is a constant delight (earlier we find out how the young Rousseau peed in the housekeeper’s kettle). I set these passages of intimate self-exposure next to the glorious bits that deal with Rousseau and his father, how they would read romances (novels) together, sometimes getting so involved they would stay up till dawn reading to each other. [I am on the road again; listening to this in the car.]

In this passage, Rousseau has been sent away to a private tutoring situation and is living in the home of the Lamberciers, brother and sister. Miss Lambercier is about thirty. And to be serious about it, he is trying, in his confessions, to get at the secret, most intimate underpinnings of consciousness and desire. How does the sexual wiring get fixed? Why do the most trivial events have such permanent, risible and even tragic consequences in our relations with other?

Also we can see here the genre crossover from private confession to a priest to the modern version, public confession in detail to the whole world via the book.

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As Miss Lambercier felt a mother’s affection, she sometimes exerted a mother’s authority, even to inflicting on us when we deserved it, the punishment of infants. She had often threatened it, and this threat of a treatment entirely new, appeared to me extremely dreadful; but I found the reality much less terrible than the idea, and what is still more unaccountable, this punishment increased my affection for the person who had inflicted it. All this affection, aided by my natural mildness, was scarcely sufficient to prevent my seeking, by fresh offences, a return of the same chastisement; for a degree of sensuality had mingled with the smart and shame, which left more desire than fear of a repetition. I was well convinced the same discipline from her brother would have produced a quite contrary effect; but from a man of his disposition this was not probable, and if I abstained from meriting correction it was merely from a fear of offending Miss Lambercier, for benevolence, aided by the passions, has ever maintained an empire over me which has given law to my heart.

This event, which, though desirable, I had not endeavored to accelerate, arrived without my fault; I should say, without my seeking; and I profited by it with a safe conscience; but this second, was also the last time, for Miss Lambercier, who doubtless had some reason to imagine this chastisement did not produce the desired effect, declared it was too fatiguing, and that she renounced it for the future. Till now we had slept in her chamber, and during the winter, even in her bed; but two days after another room was prepared for us, and from that moment I had the honor (which I could very well have dispensed with) of being treated by her as a great boy.

Who would believe this childish discipline, received at eight years old, from the hands of a woman of thirty, should influence my propensities, my desires, my passions, for the rest of my life, and that in quite a contrary sense from what might naturally have been expected? The very incident that inflamed my senses, gave my desires such an extraordinary turn, that, confined to what I had already experienced, I sought no further, and, with blood boiling with sensuality, almost from my birth, preserved my purity beyond the age when the coldest constitutions lose their insensibility; long tormented, without knowing by what, I gazed on every handsome woman with delight; imagination incessantly brought their charms to my remembrance, only to transform them into so many Miss Lamberciers.

via THE CONFESSIONS OF JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU.

What You Didn’t Know About Gombrowicz… @ Culture.pl

Jun 092013
 

The other day I put up a link to a piece about the posthumous publication of Witold Gombrowicz’s diary quarry or pre-diary (what are now published as his diaries were actually magazine or newspaper columns, sort of blog posts before there was an Internet). In the published diaries, there is practically no mention of sexual activity, though one can read between the lines here and there. But in Kronos there is full disclosure of sorts. My interest here is not prurient (moi?) but somewhat provoked by my reading of the diaries, which are wonderful in themselves (I copied out long passages in my notebooks: texts about the construction of the self by language, by social interaction, and the self being thrown back on the negative position, defining itself as NOT-THAT; I find that I go through life refining myself against roles and definitions into which I find I cannot fit myself). But in the diaries the veiled references seem almost to taunt the reader, inspire curiosity. And then, of course, late in life, soon before he died actually, Gombrowicz did marry (a French-Canadian woman). All very curious.

In any case, after I posted the note and link, Ewa Bender at a wonderfully informative (about all things literary, cultural and Polish) site called Culture.pl sent me the link to the following overview of Kronos. The author is Mikołaj Gliński. Fascinating. Lists of lovers, male, female and those who could be either. Abbreviations. Circles to connote intercourse.

Just so you know: I am working on an essay on Gombrowicz, long time coming.

dg

The beginnings of this erotic chronology, as well as Gombrowicz’s bisexuality, can be traced to a note from 1934. It was next to this date that, years later, in an attempt at reconstructing the period, Gombrowicz jotted down “The first ‘pe’ attempts”. We can guess that “pe” is short for pederastic, but can learn nothing more. Subsequent pages of this reconstruction consist in prewar lists of his partners, often presented with an invective: the hysteric whore from Hala (during the stay in Zakopane), a servant from Zaborow, Gelbardowa’s servant, a waitress from Zodiac, Jadźka’s friend, two whores from Mokotowska Street, a whore with gonorrhea, a virgin, Franek, and the one with legs in rubber slippers.

via What You Didn’t Know About Gombrowicz… – Full Resource Library of Literature and Writers from Poland – Culture.pl – Culture.pl.

Fifty Shades of Grey Matter: Fiction @ Andrew Gallix

Jun 082013
 

Droll, mischievous and wonderfully intelligent confection, a Modernist riposte to the vacancy (absence) of E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, in which Gabriel Josipovici has a walk-on role and the protagonist imagines himself as Caspar Friedrich’s Wanderer AND Roy Scheider in Jaws in the same instant and someone wears a Clarice Lispector frock. It all begins with a mother telling a bedtime story, yes, yes, a scene of sadistic psychic violence like none other. Brilliantly witty. Deploys many of the Modern erotic  positions: sex and text, love as desire for absence, and self as ghost (we all have that sense of the self being something that haunts itself). The teaser below accurately describes love and art, or maybe not. By Andrew Gallix who edits 3AM Magazine.

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Your heart still skips like a trip of jackrabbits in the Arizona desert, where we carved our names on a bench close to the abyss. But when I look at you, well, I just feel dead inside. It has to be like this and no other way; otherwise it wouldn’t be art, would it? I’m in love with Jay now: I feed him mini Milano cookies and give him snug harbor. Anyway, I was never quite all there, was I? Long before we met, I was a character in one of your stories — ‘Sweet Fanny Adams.’ Young man goes looking for girl of his dreams in order to break up straight away. ‘At last,’ he says upon meeting her, ‘I have found my sense of loss.’ See? I haven’t forgotten. I started off as fiction, and to fiction I have returned. Our relationship was only a movement towards my disappearance. I am your sense of loss: the self-effacing subject of your work…”

“Emilie…” said Valentin.

“When you say my name, you retain nothing of me but my absence. And nobody is present behind these words I speak.”

Read the rest at Fifty Shades of Grey Matter | ANDREW GALLIX.

Finding the Best Place to Submit Essays by Reading Best American Essays — Adam Regn Arvidson

Jun 072013
 

AdamRegnArvidson

Former NC contributor Adam Regn Arvidson makes a return visit with some salutary advice for the beginning essayist (and maybe the not-so-beginning essayist) on where to find submission venues. The advice he gives happens to accord with my own practice in the dark eons before time, the years of my apprenticeship. The  best way to give your story or essay or poem a chance at a life is to submit to magazines that are reviewed by the standard anthologies: Best American/Canadian (Stories, Essays…), Pushcart, O’Henry, etc. While you’re here, check out Adam’s Nature Writing in America series on NC and his short craft essays in the NC Craft Book.

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BAE2012BAE2011BAE2010BAE2009

Like it or not, the Best American series has a certain gravity. Whether you feel it actually publishes the best American writing, this annual compendium is eagerly awaited by writers everywhere. It’s a little easier to digest than the Pushcart doorstop, and somehow the overall system—regular editors that winnow down and pass along a selection to a guest editor that makes the final selections—seems to have the right combination of consistency and nuance, populism and expertise.

But this isn’t a review of the Best American vehicle.  This is an analysis.

A while back, when I started thinking maybe, just maybe, a couple of my essays might be “ready,” I asked the essayist Patrick Madden where I should submit them. As always at the ready with sage advice, Patrick told me (and I’m taking some liberties with the quote here): “Most places you publish will doom your essay to an inglorious death: one issue that few people read, and then the trash heap. Sure you can list it in your cover letters, but wouldn’t you like people to actually see your essay. I’d recommend looking at the Best American Essays—especially the back section, the “Other Notable Essays”—and find out which journals are represented there. At least you know that a BA editor is (possibly) reading your stuff.”

So, like a good student (and the data-curious, research-driven writer I am), I went ahead and catalogued a few years of Best American Essays, and Best American Science and Nature Writing, and Best American Travel Writing. Then I went back and did a few previous years, just to flesh out the sample size. Yes, I have a spreadsheet of each journal that has appeared in these three BA series and the number of times it has appeared. Give me a journal and I can tell you exactly how many times it has had included essays and notable essays in any year since 2008.

BASNW2012  BATW2012

I can hear the “holy crap, that guy’s got too much time on his hands” echo through the datasphere. But wait, because I tell you it helps.  First, this is how I find journals. That lesser known annual magazine creeping up in numbers of notable essays: perhaps a good up-and-coming venue for a newer writer. Second, this is how I work some hierarchy into my submissions. Maybe I send something out to one of the more represented journals first, then, upon rejection, work my way downward on the list.

I know this is an imperfect science, but essay (or short story or spiritual writing or poem) submission is inherently imperfect. This gives me a guide.  And it’s kind of fun to know how everybody’s doing. So I’d like to share my data with you.

But first, a few parameters. I’m an essayist—a nature and environment essayist. The data here deal just with the “Essays” and “Science and Nature” volumes of BA.  Next, I make no distinction whatsoever between the “notable” essays in the back of the book and the 20 or so actually printed. The notables are selected by the main editor. The 20-or-so are the result of one annually selected big-name’s own sensibilities. Getting printed is a crap-shoot, in my opinion.

Some of the names in these lists won’t be surprises to any of you (what! The New Yorker dominates the Best American series??!). Some will.  So without further dithering, here we go:

Top 10 Journals: Best American Essays, 2008-2012

1. The New Yorker, 47
2. Harper’s, 42
3. American Scholar, 23
4. Fourth Genre, 23
5. Granta, 20
6. Southwest Review, 20
7. The Sun, 18
8. Missouri Review, 17
9. Michigan Quarterly Review, 16
10. New York Times Magazine, 16

Frankly, I was surprised to see Missouri Review and Michigan Quarterly Review on this list, considering how few essays they publish in each issue. Might be interesting to discover the journal with the best percentage of total essays that appear in BA…  Hmmm.

SciAm2013

Top 10 Journals: Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2008-2012

1. The New Yorker, 48
2. National Geographic, 41
3. Discover, 36
4. Scientific American (with this one’s name, it ought to be here), 32
5. Orion, 22
6. OnEarth (including on-line), 19
7. The Atlantic, 18
8. Outside, 18
9. Harper’s, 17
10. Wired, 17

Ok, so this batch can barely be called literary magazines. There’s not a university journal among the top ten. And frankly (though I hate to be critical of a particular magazine, even if I read it religiously), I wonder if all the pretty pictures are skewing everyone’s opinion of the actual writing in National Geographic…

Ecotone_14_CoverLooking down through the top 25, the only literary journals here are Ecotone (#19, 7 inclusions) and Isotope (#23, 5 inclusions), but the latter is defunct. (Oddly, just above Isotope is the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, perhaps publishing lively essays on gluons and quarks!)

I have done different methods of totaling these two series, but honestly the Science and Nature tends to dominate and skew the number, since a much smaller set of journals appears in that series. For you generalist essayists, it is probably more useful to dig a little deeper into the BAE rankings.  So here are all the journals that averaged at least two appearances per year (at least 10 appearances total) for the five years I have kept track. These are probably middle-of-the-road submission venues for you. Not the most incredible work, but still credible according to BAE. (Also, plenty of literary magazines here.)

Gettysburg Review, 15
Massachusetts Review, 15
Orion, 15 (ooh, they can do S&N AND Essays!)
Salmagundi, 15

The Atlantic, 14
Ecotone, 14
Georgia Review, 14
New York Review of Books, 14
Southern Review,14
Iowa Review, 13

Alaska Quarterly Review, 12
Boulevard, 12
Harvard Review, 12
Kenyon Review (and KR Online), 12
Ninth Letter, 12

Colorado Review, 11
Image, 11
New Letters, 11
Oxford American, 11
River Teeth, 11
Washington Post Magazine, 11

Creative Nonfiction, 10
Hotel Amerika, 10
New Republic, 10
Sewanee Review, 10
Under the Sun, 10
Vanity Fair, 10

CNF2013

Of course, how you use this data is up to you. If you’re curious about a particular magazine, or want to know all those with a certain total number, just comment here. At the very least, think about subscribing to some of these. They are consistently publishing excellent essays.  Support them so they can perhaps some day support you.

— Adam Regn Arvidson

—————————–

AdamAdam Regn Arvidson is an essayist, editor, and landscape architect based in Minneapolis. His work, including his Nature Writing in America series, has appeared previously in Numéro Cinq, as well as in Creative Nonfiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, flyway, and Briar Cliff Review. He is a recent MFA graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Salut d’Amour — Edward Elgar

Jun 062013
 

I watched this lovely movie on the weekend, Mademoiselle Chambon. A building contractor falls for his son’s teacher, a violin player, despite being already married to, er, his son’s mother. The clincher comes when the teacher hesitantly plays Elgar’s “Salut d’Amour” with her back turned. What a scene. Later in the movie the teacher comes to a birthday party for the contractor’s dying father and plays the piece again (she starts about three minutes into the segment). This is where the wife figures everything out (what a great actress she is). I seemed only to be able to find a version that is dubbed in German, which somewhat spoils the effect. I also offer David Garrett playing the piece in the second video.

dg

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHAOmaoLNPE[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEoZBbv3Q2M[/youtube]

 

Peter Orner on Mavis Gallant @ The Atlantic

Jun 042013
 

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I don’t think I found Mavis Gallant through anybody—one day I just picked up My Heart Is Broken, somehow, on my own. It had a girl on the cover, that much I remember. The first story I read is called “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street.” It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it changed my reading life forever. The story is about how the love of a couple changes over a long period—from early hope to beautiful, even comic, resignation. No, all their dreams didn’t pan out, but hell, we’ve got our stories and they’re good stories, and nobody can take those away from us. Rather than belittle her characters’ failures, Gallant celebrates them. It’s the sort of story that makes you pause, breathe, and take in all that you have as opposed to worrying over what’s missing.

Gallant’s work reminds you to think more deeply about the people you deal with—as a writer, with your characters, and in your life. She reminds us of how fathomless we are, how there is always more to know.

So it’s character that moves me about Gallant’s work. It isn’t her plots—which are wonderful—but her obsession with the infinitely strange ways we people behave. Gallant’s characters are complex and inconsistent: Their most deeply held beliefs easily dissolve in the face of what it takes to simply get through the day. And lets be honest, don’t they? In the morning, yes, we’ll wake up and do our best to believe again…And Gallant has faith in that too, in our ability to pick ourselves back up. But she’s peerless at showing all the ways we fall apart.

Via The Atlantic

—Jason DeYoung

§

See also:

“The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street” by Mavis Gallant

FRANCINE PROSE

Perhaps one reason why I so love the ending of Mavis Gallant’s story “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street” is that I’ve never quite understood it. I always think that if I reread it one more time, its meaning will disclose itself. Like the story it concludes, the ending seems perfect, mysterious, profound. It is also wildly original, almost “experimental.” I can’t think of anything else, in fiction, remotely like it.

Via Brick.

§

And, of course, read Jason DeYoung’s interview with Gallant at Numéro Cinq.

Burial Rites and the loneliness of the long-distance writer @ UK Guardian Books

Jun 032013
 

Just over two years ago, I was – to put it plainly – shitting myself. It was January 2011, and the novel I needed to write, the historical novel that was to be the creative component of my PhD, could no longer be avoided. The problem was, I had no idea how to write a book.

I first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir when I was an exchange student in the north of Iceland. It was 2002, I was 17 years old, and I had left Adelaide for Sauðárkrókur an isolated fishing village, where I would live for 12 months. This small town lies snug in the side of a fjord: a clutch of little buildings facing an iron-grey sea, the mountains looming behind.

via Burial Rites and the loneliness of the long-distance writer | Books | guardian.co.uk.

The Heart of the Great White Queen is Heavy With Sorrow!

May 312013
 

I remember this movie, one of the first I ever saw. Another connection: My father went to Mexico for a vacation with the town doctor some time after WW 2 but before I was born. They went out for dinner, and Tyrone Power, who was in  Mexico filming, was eating at the same restaurant. Things got mixed up. My father got served Power’s meal by mistake. He went over and said, I think this is yours. I think Power invited them over, and they all sat around for a while. This was my brush with greatness. I have been trying to turn it into a story ever since.

This is a very authentic movie about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The dialogue is authentic. “The white dog has killed my brother.” “The Long Knives are as many as the pine needles in summer.” James Joyce never wrote lines like that. And the anthropological detail is obviously authentic. Even the trees look authentic. Some day they will study this movie to know how things were in early Canada.

Actually, things haven’t changed much.

dg

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35AEqxUpyL0[/youtube]

Where love goes; right, wrong, unknowing, confused or even weird: Douglas Glover’s 16 Categories of Desire — Steven Buechler @ The Library of the Found Inkwell

May 302013
 

16 Categories of Desire

Coincidentally — never happened before — after yesterday’s affectionate review of my story “The Obituary Writer,” I found Steven Buechler’s informal (and affectionate) review/notice of my story book 16 Categories of Desire at his site The Library of the Found Inkwell. Yes, yes, a discriminating and saintly reviewer is  Steven Buechler. I love it when people quote me back to myself. I remember writing those words! I think. I was never happier.

dg

Douglas Glover’s 16 Categories of Desire is a collection of short stories that detail where love goes; right, wrong, unknowing, confused or even weird. Although the plots of each story are wonderful, Glover writes great paragraphs to each piece that detail the emotions of the human heart that speak to the reader. (And the reader should learn from those examples to apply to their lives.)…Douglas Glover’s 16 Categories of Desire is a book about love and its passions. It is a book that any adult can learn from and maybe understand themselves  and perhaps forgive themselves a bit.

via The Library of the Found Inkwell: Review; “16 Categories of Desire” by Douglas Glover (2000), Goose Lane Edition, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

One of the great unsung story writers: Douglas Glover — Steven Beattie @ That Shakespearean Rag

May 292013
 

Obviously a discriminating critic (possibly a saint), Steven Beattie writes and curates That Shakespearean Rag where he has just published this appreciation of my short story “The Obituary Writer” from which, coincidentally, the name Numéro Cinq is taken (you can read about that in the About page underneath the testimonials). The story is from my book A Guide to Animal Behaviour.

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Glover, one of the great unsung story writers this country has ever produced, tips his hand with the epigraph, from Philippe-Paul de Ségur, an aide-de-camp to Napoleon during the disastrous French invasion of Russia: “We drifted along in this empire of death like accursed phantoms.” Glover’s story locates itself in an “empire of death,” in which the inhabitants do, for the most part, drift along like accursed phantoms, not cognizant of their essential mutability and ephemerality.

Read the rest @ 31 Days of Stories 2013, Day 28: “The Obituary Writer” by Douglas Glover | That Shakespearean Rag.

Susan Sontag on Simone Weil @ The New York Review of Books

May 272013
 

susan-sontag

All that is necessary is that we not be hypocritical, that we recognize why we read and admire writers like Simone Weil. I cannot believe that more than a handful of the tens of thousands of readers she has won since the posthumous publication of her books and essays really share her ideas. Nor is it necessary—necessary to share Simone Weil’s anguished and unconsummated love affair with the Catholic Church, or accept her gnostic theology of divine absence, or espouse her ideals of body denial, or concur in her violently unfair hatred of Roman civilization and the Jews. Similarly, with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; most of their modern admirers could not, and do not embrace their ideas. We read writers of such scathing originality for their personal authority, for the example of their seriousness, for their manifest willingness to sacrifice themselves for their truths, and—only piecemeal—for their “views.” As the corrupt Alcibiades followed Socrates, unable and unwilling to change his own life, but moved, enriched, and full of love; so the sensitive modern reader pays his respect to a level of spiritual reality which is not, could not, be his own.

Via The New York Review of Books

—Jason DeYoung

Iris Murdoch on Philosophy & Literature

May 262013
 

Fascinating, but I am of two minds. The way Murdoch dismisses abstract art raises a red flag for me (and reminds me of the time I had dinner with Joyce Carol Oates and she startled me by casually dismissing all experimental literature as work done by lazy writers). It tells me that she is speaking out of a stance (philosophical, ideological, aesthetic) that one might call Anglo-Realism, or maybe Shopkeeper Realism, the kind of stance that suggests the novel begins with Defoe, not Cervantes. Nonetheless, I value Murdoch’s words. She wrote a little book of essays called The Sovereignty of Good that changed the way I composed my thesis at Edinburgh, these many years ago. A brilliant little book that speaks of art, love, and prayer and makes sublime sense of the three together.

dg

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Tadeusz Różewicz Interviewed at 3:AM Magazine

May 252013
 

I‘m going back to 1945. I found myself in Krakow. I was going to study Art History at the Jagiellonian University, and it wasn’t accidental that what I chose to study was the history of art. It was in order to reconstruct the Human Being bit by bit. It was as if I had two different men living inside me then. One was full of admiration and respect for ‘fine’ arts – music, literature, poetry; the other was full of mistrust of all the arts. The site for this struggle inside me, between those two personae, was my poetic practice. I felt admiration, reverence, for works of art – the aesthetic experience replaced the religious experience – but at the same time I felt a growing disdain for those ‘aesthetic’ values. I felt something had ended forever – for me, for humanity – and it was something that religion or science or art hadn’t protected. As a young poet – and one who worshipPed all the great poets, living and dead, like gods – I came to understand Mickiewicz’s words, too soon: ‘It’s harder to live well through a day than to write a book’.

via Maintenant #97 – Tadeusz Różewicz » 3:AM Magazine.

Not Waving But Drowning — Stevie Smith

May 252013
 

A gorgeous, sad poem that’s been on my mind, plus the poet’s own introduction, a bit about the provenance of the poem, the lonely struggle of existence…

I love that line, “I was much too far out all my life.”

Stevie Smith is great eccentric poet, very dry, melancholy and funny (sometimes). Even this poem exhibits a note of bizarre black humour. You should also take a look at her Novel Written on Yellow Paper.

dg

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mlC1Mafp2U[/youtube]

Not Waving but Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Introduction to the New Testament in 26 Lectures from Yale University

May 212013
 

1 Introduction: Why Study the New Testament?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtQ2TS1CiDY[/youtube]

2. From Stories to Canon

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7_yAB1Y8eQ[/youtube]

3 The Greco-Roman World

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecpn3bkVvv0&list=PLgmHcLCmuvqIefOLlp0-9ziGApQpl7IaB[/youtube]

4 Judaism in the First Century

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QIBB7gXHKc[/youtube]

5 The New Testament as History

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQaOlxhg8xg[/youtube]

6 The Gospel of Mark

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd5sXfFboxA[/youtube]

7 The Gospel of Matthew

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Ce3YZN59o[/youtube] 7

8 The Gospel of Thomas

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxi5-6LdSpE[/youtube]

9 The Gospel of Luke

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kULtaN4XZ4[/youtube]

10 The Acts of the Apostles

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Hq-0Ftq34[/youtube]

11 Johannine Christianity: The Gospel

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71fOqLomzIk&list=PLgmHcLCmuvqIefOLlp0-9ziGApQpl7IaB[/youtube]

12 Johannine Christianity: The Letters

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F82JssUTYzg&list=PLgmHcLCmuvqIefOLlp0-9ziGApQpl7IaB[/youtube] 12

13 The Historical Jesus

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_dOhg-Fpu0[/youtube]

14 Paul as Missionary

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V8NeoY2qB4[/youtube]

15 Paul as Pastor

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMVatCd_1xM[/youtube]

16 Paul as Jewish Theologian

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCUgkr2ohY[/youtube]

17 Paul’s Disciples

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaRXCg9PxxA[/youtube]

18 Arguing with Paul?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRWj6j2Dswc[/youtube]

19 The “Household” Paul: The Pastorals

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_m10CyD-fs&list=PLgmHcLCmuvqIefOLlp0-9ziGApQpl7IaB[/youtube] 19

20 The “Anti-household” Paul: Thecla

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htuls07h3CA&list=PLgmHcLCmuvqIefOLlp0-9ziGApQpl7IaB[/youtube]

21 Interpreting Scripture: Hebrews

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_vA1UeSjSo[/youtube]

22 Interpreting Scripture: Medieval Interpretations

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC7-MEwQccE[/youtube]

23 Apocalyptic and Resistance

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aBrXam36JE[/youtube]

24 Apocalyptic and Accommodation

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ9Gt_R5a-k&list=PLgmHcLCmuvqIefOLlp0-9ziGApQpl7IaB[/youtube]

25 Ecclesiastical Institutions: Unity, Martyrs, and Bishops

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BTUFjlg4KI&list=PLgmHcLCmuvqIefOLlp0-9ziGApQpl7IaB[/youtube]

26 The “Afterlife” of the New Testament and Postmodern Interpretation

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Bh_SAEU90[/youtube]

Introduction to the Old Testament in 24 Lectures from Yale University

May 202013
 

Yale University offers some amazing free courses online, not the least of which is this one on the Old Testament. I’m adding this to the NC Necessary Books page (which, megalomaniac that I am, I am considering turning into a treasure trove of literary and cultural history). In any case, this lecture series is a brilliant introduction to the Old Testament. Christine Hayes, the lecturer, is the kind of person you could listen to all day and long into the night, sharp, amiable, clear and engaging. What she teaches is just surprise after surprise.

If you want to, you can also go to the Open Yale site and download audio files of all the lectures.

dg

1 The Parts of the Whole

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo-YL-lv3RY[/youtube]

2 The Hebrew Bible in Its Ancient Near Eastern Setting: Biblical Religion in Context

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRPqtGywkCw[/youtube]

3 The Hebrew Bible in Its Ancient Near Eastern Setting: Genesis 1-4 in Context

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANUD8IK12ms[/youtube]

4 Doublets and Contradictions, Seams and Sources: Genesis 5-11 and the Historical-Critical Method

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK2PBAG3064[/youtube]

5 Critical Approaches to the Bible: Introduction to Genesis 12-50

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBSOn0MSrk8[/youtube]

6 Biblical Narrative: The Stories of the Patriarchs (Genesis 12-36)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW0Dw-9OIyw[/youtube]

7 Israel in Egypt: Moses and the Beginning of Yahwism (Genesis 37- Exodus 4)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_UmuEBmS5k[/youtube]

8 Exodus: From Egypt to Sinai (Exodus 5-24, 32; Numbers)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX4oyeTD-3Y[/youtube]

9 The Priestly Legacy: Cult and Sacrifice, Purity and Holiness in Leviticus and Numbers

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URMs-17otFE[/youtube]

10 Biblical Law: The Three Legal Corpora of JE (Exodus), P (Leviticus and Numbers) and D (Deuteronomy)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q67Z6lgQObc[/youtube]

11 On the Steps of Moab: Deuteronomy

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5y0_aBvEtI[/youtube]

12 The Deuteronomistic History: Life in the Land (Joshua and Judges)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v07NFEstPjc[/youtube]

13 The Deuteronomistic History: Prophets and Kings (1 and 2 Samuel)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yETqNk0eMc[/youtube]

14 The Deuteronomistic History: Response to Catastrophe (1 and 2 Kings)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p1NZCjs0SU[/youtube]

15 Hebrew Prophecy: The Non-Literary Prophets

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erEeUi4f8yM[/youtube]

16 Literary Prophecy: Amos

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJd0Swp7d9Y[/youtube]

17 Literary Prophecy: Hosea and Isaiah

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzjskzxXTqk[/youtube]

18 Literary Prophecy: Micah, Zephaniah, Nahum and Habbakuk

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh8RM2zMONQ[/youtube]

19 Literary Prophecy: Perspectives on the Exile (Jeremiah, Ezekiel and 2nd Isaiah)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u85pHixyoOI[/youtube]

20 Responses to Suffering and Evil: Lamentations and Wisdom Literature

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCkV5nQDDuE[/youtube]

21 Biblical Poetry: Psalms and Song of Songs

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdjRz2b8BZo[/youtube]

22 The Restoration: 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDYJwHW1lsM[/youtube]

23 Visions of the End: Daniel and Apocalyptic Literature

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7I45uplcyQ[/youtube]

24 Alternative Visions: Esther, Ruth, and Jonah

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOTbn2HkX7I[/youtube]

Nostalgia for Lost Being: Wes Cecil Lecture on Martin Heidegger

May 192013
 

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8f3Y2KRfc[/youtube]

Since Descartes (whose Radical Doubt long preceded Nietzsche’s God is Dead moment), Western philosophy has been dominated by a nostalgia for lost Being, for the sacred cosmos that made our lives an epic drama of  interaction with the gods. The 20th century was dominated by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who turned mostly away from the problem and thought about how language constitutes the world we live in, and Martin Heidegger, who seems to have maintained the possibility of a romantic semi-mystical phenomenological intuition (for want of a better word) of Being.

When I was an undergraduate and graduate student at Edinburgh, the problem of lost Being did obsess me (probably more than was healthy); my solution was to throw myself into the study of Kant, who turned out not to have solved the problem. My son Jacob has inherited the family obsession, and, willy-nilly, has thrown himself into the study of Heidegger (and his student Gadamer). It’s a fascinating family dynamic; I only grasped it the other day walking the dog, who is a Cynic.{{1}}[[1]]I fear only Jacob will get this joke. The word “cynic” comes from the Greek kunikos, which means dog-like.[[1]]

Wes Cecil is, as I have said before, a remarkable, funny, passionate lecturer, a massively helpful Virgil in the Land of the Philosophical Shades.

dg

 

How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life: Proverb — Steve Reich

May 172013
 

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lgAUHVFC4[/youtube]

Reich wrote an undergraduate thesis on Wittgenstein, and a musical manifesto in a similarly aphoristic style, “Music as a Gradual Process.” The piece Proverb used a line from Wittgenstein’s writings – “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!” – as its lyrical inspiration. —Ian Lamont “Entry Level: Ludwig Wittgenstein” @ Totally Dublin

NC Contributor Jacob Glover Graduated Today

May 162013
 

Jacob Glover

Just a nice piece of news to share with everyone. NC Contributor Jacob Glover graduated with a BA in Combined Honours in Contemporary Studies and Classics from the University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, this afternoon. The ceremony took place in the Great Hall of All Saints Cathedral (Anglican) and concluded with the singing of “God Save the Queen” as is surely fitting on all such occasions. It is safe to say that the young man’s father was proud; he had a lump the size of a wheelbarrow in his throat.  Jacob is working on a new piece for NC (though probably not tonight.)

dg

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