Wrote Anne Carson, the new winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in "Poor Houdini," published in 2024 in The New Yorker.
Manistique, Michigan is a real place. It sounds made up, though, don't you think? Like a portmanteau of "man" and "mystique." There's no [famous] book called "The Masculine Mystique." But I see there's a NYT article titled "The Masculine Mystique: A New Kind of Trans Memoir," a review of a book called "Something That May Shock and Discredit You." The reviewer writes "At last, we have the work of transgender bathos we didn’t know we needed, but very much do. No, I don’t mean pathos. I mean the term coined by Alexander Pope to signify 'the art of sinking in poetry'...."
8:30: We've seen a film about Teddy Kennedy. It focused on his love for the sea. He encounters the sea on a beautiful yacht, with his elite family. But he's dying. I don't know what to think. It's supposed to be about Barack Obama and the future of the Democratic Party, but I'm hearing bathos about the sea... and then there is this terribly rich man with his yacht. But we are called to celebrate him. He's dying. We see that in the tear that Maria Shriver brushes off her razor-sharp cheek. Ah, woe beyond politics! But now he's speaking. He wants health care for everyone.
The reason not to use "bathos" is someone's always going to tell you you used it wrong. I was still clinging to the understanding I absorbed in high school English — something barely remembered from "Romeo and Juliet" — and now I know I've got to square up the meaning with Alexander Pope.
पोस्ट्स
२० टिप्पण्या:
“ I hate it when people tell me what I should write, she said.”
Now THAT would be the ultimate Althouse masthead motto! Of course, now you can’t use it. CC, JSM
Manistique is a nice town in the U.P., on the north shore of Lake Michigan. It's about 3-1/2 hours from Appleton, Wisconsin, where Houdini lived in his childhood. Houdini's fellow Appletonian, Willem Dafoe, told this joke on a talk show:
Q. What was Houdini's greatest escape?
A. Getting out of Appleton
Kliban Houdini Escaping from New Jersey
There is a book called "The Feminine Mistake," at the Internet Archive:
"Women are often told that it's too difficult to balance work and family, so if they don't really "have to" work, it's better for their families if they stay home. Not only is this untrue, journalist Bennetts says, but the arguments in favor of stay-at-home motherhood fail to consider the surprising benefits of work and the unexpected toll of giving it up. Combining work and family really is the best choice for most women, and it's eminently doable. Earning money and being successful make women feel great, and when women sacrifice their financial autonomy by quitting their jobs, they become vulnerable to divorce as well as the potential illness, death, or unemployment of their breadwinner husbands. But women who stop working sacrifice far more than financial security--Bennetts' research documents the steep toll when women forfeit the intellectual, emotional, psychological, and even medical benefits of self-sufficiency.--From publisher description."
Hmmm. Gemini tells me there is a book titled The Masculine Mystique written by author and activist Andrew Kimbrell, published in 1995 by Ballantine Books. Hooda thunk it?
YouTube woman said that masculinity is upset over the AI math problem solution flood. Wait, she said math community not masculinity.
Simulants are mainly a homo-geneous production.
Wilbur, is Andrew Kimbrella a gay activist? Because honestly, the reason we haven’t heard about a book called “The Masculine Mystique” is that men are utterly without mystique. They are forthright, by nature.
With all the Cornell business, I keep humming Professor Higgins’ Lament, “why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Truest lyrics ever written.
I read the story. She's definitely a Nobel caliber writer. Startling images in throwaway lines. Still, I would be in no big hurry to seek out more of her writing. I get the sense that she's only for people who are seriously into good writing as an accomplishment. On the plus side, although the sex was muted, the beheadings had a fair amount of gore. Quoth the raven, nevermore.
Ted's pet was a Portuguese water dog. He even named it "Splash." No f-ing kidding.
Like Harry Houdini, I have been to Manistique, on a trip to the U.P. in July 2021. There's a very scenic red lighthouse in the harbor, which is reachable by an L-shaped jetty. Getting onto the jetty itself is tricky, because there is a path of large broken concrete and rocks that runs about thirty feet from the shore to the jetty. Clambering over that uneven surface is a bit dangerous, and one slip could end up with a turned ankle or worse, but I made it safely out to the lighthouse and safely back.
We also visited Kitch-iti-kipi, which is mentioned if you click the Wikipedia link for Manistique, Michigan. It's a very interesting place, with the beautiful emerald water that stays 45 degrees year-round. The U.P. is a great place to explore on vacation. Other cool places included the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, Tahquamenon Falls, Seul Choix Pointe Lighthouse and Fayette Historic State Park, with a restored ghost town.
Clay or Buck in commercial reading said "gorgeous fall foilage" sic. I hadn't heard that for more than a decade on a human-read weather radio report. The guy always read it as foilage too.
There is also Manistique Lake, and South Manistique Lake, in the Michigan UP. I spent a week at a cottage up there for a couple of summers in my youth, near Curtis, MI. Among other things I learned how to water ski there. Good memories, nice place.
Buster Keaton wrote in his autobiography that Harry Houdini was his godfather and the man who gave him the name Buster. Wikipedia says Keaton was telling a whopper.
We drove through Manistique many times going to/from Wisconsin. Here's a piece of trivia:
"The Siphon Bridge in Manistique, Michigan, is the famous “bridge below water level” that once made headlines in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
What it is:
Built in 1919 by the Manistique Pulp and Paper Company, the Siphon Bridge crosses both the Manistique River and a concrete river flume built to carry the river’s flow at a higher elevation.The flume was engineered to supply the mill with a steady, high-volume water supply without flooding the town by building a dam."
Newspaper pic of Onassis looking to buy Buster Keaton's house "Aristotle contemplating the home of Buster"
"I bet, Vern said. But still."
Obviously, Vern knew what she meant.
Byron’s Don Juan exemplifies bathos. A lost literary technique.
Obama’s 2008 convention speech with the fluted pillars looming in the background was bathetic
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith. Also: No italics, even briefly. Use asterisks for emphasis. And don't play with the format by changing fonts or using boldface or all caps. Never include more than one extra line break between paragraphs.