"... and realized that as the sounds faded I had become stuck, almost against my will, in someone's head as began the torturous recounting of her sex life, legs firm, my mouth tight, I firmly withdrew myself from the dark spaces I was then inhabiting, back into the light. No thank you, NY Times, not this time. And coffee in hand, I went about my day, proud I had not succumbed yet again."
Writes MDH, a commenter over at the NYT Magazine, spoofing an essay that that I didn't read either.
How can you spoof — or recognize a spoof of — something that you haven't read? If one person can write about the sex she hasn't had, another can write about the essay she hasn't read.
But can you believe going an entire year without sex? I don't know if she made it, but we're told she tried, and we can see that she extracted an entire book, apparently full of descriptions of her pleasure, out of this ordeal.
Note: The topic of the distinction between "celibacy" and "chastity" has already been addressed on this blog, back in 2010, here. Why do edited publications use "celibacy" for "chastity"? I think "celibacy" feels spiritual/philosophical and "chastity" sounds prudish. I don't know who they're trying to impress.
"Intentionally or not, by being an author of a major book on the subject, Mr. Tapper has allowed himself to become a symbol of the establishment press that conservatives have long accused of hiding the former president’s frailty from the public. [Megyn] Kelly, the former Fox News star, subjected Mr. Tapper to intense grilling on her popular podcast in an interview that went viral online. 'You covered the Biden presidency aggressively throughout the four years, and you didn’t cover mental acuity, hardly at all,' Ms. Kelly said at one point. 'I mean, time and time again when issues came up, you seem to be running cover for the president.' Mr. Tapper denied the charges. 'Conservative media absolutely has every right to say, "We were hip to this, and the legacy media was not,"' he said later in the interview. 'Now, I do not accept that I was part of a cover-up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden.'"
Why not? And why would I read a book written by such an out-of-touch, unobservant, slow learner? Or should I ask why would I read a book written by such a liar?
"The word 'workable' is used so many times in the book that it becomes a poignant refrain — that of an optimistic, pragmatic liberal jurist who wants to believe that if only he is clear enough, he can get his fellow justices to recognize that they are ultimately committed to the same thing. Does Breyer, who is so attuned to the irreducible complexity of the world outside the Supreme Court, truly believe that the world inside is so simple? Given his decades of experience, I find it hard to imagine he does — but then he still seems flummoxed by the Supreme Court’s right-wing turn. At his most baffled, he starts firing off strings of rhetorical questions, asking plaintively how anyone could ever want 'a world in which no governmental effort is made to cure environmental, medical or safety-related ills?'"
I'm only reading this review because Meade texted me the link. My response:
I'm only blogging this because, having ended up in "Jabberwocky," I took the occasion to check my memory — do I still have it memorized? — and wanted to ask those of you have memorized it, if you have found that there is one word that is the stubborn last holdout. For me, the word is "whiffling." If you're not like me, and it's not "whiffling," then I bet it's "uffish."
But if you're ever trapped in a cabin in the woods and a monstrous man is trying to kill you, look around — try to find something vorpal.
The students' use of the word" implores" makes it sound like a mere request, but there was also the resolution that "students who choose to opt-out of exposure to triggering content will not be penalized, contingent on their responsibility to make up any missed content."
"... and 99 times out of 100 it’s not — it’s just not the right book for me in that moment. I sometimes get tweeted by people who are not enjoying my books but are forcing themselves on, and I always want to say, don’t! I give you permission to stop! It’s very strange; we don’t feel bad about turning off the TV if we’re not enjoying a show, but books are too often still treated like medicine. You’ve got to finish the course, even if you’re not enjoying it. I don’t think books should be anything other than enriching. That doesn’t always mean fun, or easy reads — sometimes a book is upsetting or challenging or difficult to read. But if you’re not getting anything out of a book, I think you should absolutely feel free to drop it and walk away."
And shortly thereafter, I threw "The Golden Notebook" aside.
I don't know if Ruth Ware will ever, like Doris Lessing, win the Nobel Prize, but I always remembered Lessing's advice to throw the book aside, and I had to go back and reread what Ware said to do with the book — "drop it and walk away." The book gets to stay and I'm supposed to leave? I prefer Lessing's advice. I stay where I am and the book gets flung.
"... and that it is time for Republicans to focus on rising new leaders in the party.
The release of the former attorney general’s 600-page book, 'One Damn Thing After Another,' is coming as Mr. Trump, who remains the GOP’s dominant figure, contemplates another presidential run. Mr. Barr writes that he was convinced that Mr. Trump could have won re-election in 2020 if he had 'just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.' 'The election was not "stolen,"' Mr. Barr writes. 'Trump lost it.' Mr. Barr urges conservatives to look to 'an impressive array of younger candidates' who share Mr. Trump’s agenda but not his 'erratic personal behavior.' He didn’t mention any of those candidates by name."
A 600-page book called "One Damn Thing After Another"? It sounds like a caption for a New Yorker cartoon. But it's really perfect, isn't it? This isn't a book to be read — what political book is? — but a thing to wave around as the author/"author" appears on TV. Steel yourself for Barr appearances on shows advising Republics to pick someone less old and less divisive than Trump. Or just don't watch the shows. That's my approach.
I read. I don't watch the news on TV. But if I wanted to laugh at these people in their ludicrous scrambling for dignity and a way to keep hating on Trump, I'd watch it on TV. I'd do what you can see Scott Adams doing in this video, watch them on TV and laugh at them. Look at their faces! They're so unhappy! But — maybe a bit like Trump himself, with his cheerful simple tweets this morning — I don't want to get bogged down in their dismal, entropic experience. It's too time-consuming. I watched a little. Laughed a little. But my thing is blogging, and I mostly use text.
But I scan the headlines and I pretty much know what's in the text. I don't drop into reading unless my senses tell me there's some rich material. And I feel that I already know the Trump haters' talking points about the Mueller report and Barr's letter about it. I'm not putting my time into counting the repetition of talking points I already know. If I applied myself, I could go deep — oh, so deep! — into all the perseveration about the word "exonerate." Do you know that the word means to relieve of a burden (an onus)? I am lightening my load by not reading all that stuff.
“Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media,” Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi wrote in a column published Saturday, a day before Barr nailed the collusion coffin shut. He added: “Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population.”...
Journalist and commentator Glenn Greenwald — a longtime skeptic of the collusion angle — tweeted his contempt for the media coverage on Sunday, too: “Check every MSNBC personality, CNN law ‘expert,’ liberal-centrist outlets and #Resistance scam artist and see if you see even an iota of self-reflection, humility or admission of massive error.... While standard liberal outlets obediently said whatever they were told by the CIA & FBI, many reporters at right-wing media outlets which are routinely mocked by super-smart liberals as primitive & propagandistic did relentlessly great digging & reporting.”...
“Russiagate” has been a news media obsession since Trump’s victory in November 2016.... The cable news networks, particularly CNN and MSNBC, have added hundreds of hours of discussion about the topic, too. The story undoubtedly was an important factor in shaping voters’ perceptions before the 2018 midterm election, in which Democrats won control of the House. But the conclusion of the inquiry has put a question once hazily debated into sharp focus: Did the mainstream news media mislead?..
I call fake news on the assertion that the question is just coming into focus! The question has been there all along, but the Trump-resistance media has deliberately blurred it and actively diverted us from it. I don't even want to spend my time watching this phony hand-wringing over what went wrong. Either you did it on purpose or you're so insane and incompetent that you're not worth reading at all.
I spent 5 minutes looking at the details of that photograph — which is by Damon Winter — and thinking and talking about it with Meade. I still haven't read anything more than the words you see there, the caption — "Erik Hagerman heads out for his morning ritual, a thirty minute drive into town for coffee and a scone, at his favorite coffee shop in Athens" — and the byline — "Glouster, Ohio" (so the Athens is Athens, Ohio not Athens, Georgia). I really haven't read anything more, even now, as I write this. I just love the image. I feel like saying — creative-writing-ishly — there, now, you make up the story.
I can't get over how much I love that image. I love the way the curve of the ground makes the house look like it's on its own little planet. I think of:
Searching for that image, which I knew I'd put up on the blog before, I found the 2010 post, "Obama plan to land on asteroid may be unrealistic for 2025." I had totally forgotten about that going-to-an-asteroid business, hadn't you? I was skeptical at the time. I wrote the sentence: "Go 5 million miles to paddle your gloved hands across the surface of a rock and stir up a cloud of razor-sharp dust particles that will — once you leave — hang there endlessly."
Searching the blog for the Little Prince, I also came up with this November 2017 post (which has a "Little Prince" image): "Trump and the elephants — what just happened?" ("So you've probably heard that Trump made an announcement that had to do with killing elephants, people got upset — because people love elephants — and then Trump took it back — kind of.") Coincidentally, Trump and the elephants is back in the news this week. "Trump’s cave to elephant and lion hunters" is deplored by the editors of the Chicago Tribune:
Some African governments allow [elephants] to be taken by trophy hunters.... Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tried to discourage this macabre pastime by outlawing imports of elephant trophies from specified countries. African elephants are listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, and the law says their body parts may be brought in only if “the killing of the trophy animal will enhance the survival of the species.”
I think those words "Under President Barack Obama" bring tears to some eyes. There was a time! Once our quills were made to temporarily lie flat, but that time is gone.
But speaking of temps perdu, we left Erik Hagerman, walking down his ranch-house asteroid, nearing the bottom of the paved drive, which ends abruptly, like the end of a dreamlike Obama presidency. He must continue onto the rougher way of the gravel road. Where is he going? To the endless coffee cup and the scone.... Dare I step off the image I've said I love and walk onto the gravel path of the article?
Mr. Hagerman begins every day with a 30-minute drive to Athens, the closest city of note, to get a cup of coffee — a triple-shot latte with whole milk. He goes early, before most customers have settled into the oversize chairs to scroll through their phones. To make sure he doesn’t overhear idle chatter, he often listens to white noise through his headphones. (He used to listen to music, “but stray conversation can creep in between songs.”)
Why? Why drive 30 minutes to get coffee if you don't want the company of other human beings? Surely, the whole point is to "overhear idle chatter"! But he plays "white noise" — nothingness. Not even music, because with music, there are spaces of silence, and "stray conversation can creep in between the songs." Why come down from your asteroid? It can't be the triple-shot latte with whole milk. Is it to truly experience loneliness, to see and need to defend against the others? To really feel your distance, you must approach.
At Donkey Coffee, everyone knows his order, and they know about The Blockade. “Our baristas know where he’s at so they don’t engage him on topics that would make him uncomfortable,” said Angie Pyle, the coffee shop’s co-owner.
I'd skipped to the middle of the article, looking for coffee, and now I need to puzzle out Hagerman's problem:
Mr. Hagerman has also trained his friends. A close friend from his Nike days, Parinaz Vahabzadeh, didn’t think he was quite serious at first and, in the early days of The Blockade, kept dropping little hints about politics.
The new administration compelled her to engage more deeply in politics, not less. She had only recently become a United States citizen, and she was passionate about the immigration debate. She did not let Mr. Hagerman opt out easily. “I was needling him,” she said.
Ah! He built a wall — The Blockade. I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me... I will build a great, great wall...
How to write about articles you've never read.... makes me think about how to make art about the stray chatter you overheard in the coffee shop...
1. You're obviously trying to help Hillary with her effort to come across as "fun," but you have absolutely nothing to report. Candidates have books, and they're always trying to get these books out. It's the essence of nonnews.
2. Hillary sends out a lot of copies of a book about herself. What is the "gag"? Why are you saying "gag"... other than to make it more obvious that you're propagating the message that Hillary is such a fun, fun lady.
3. "Gag" is not a good word to use when talking about the woman whose husband got the most famous blow job in the history of the world.
Anyway... the word "gag" does not appear in Hillary's "Hard Choices," but the memoir does contain some discussion of jokes. She writes:
In politics a sense of humor is essential. There are countless reasons why you have to be able to laugh at yourself.... In diplomacy, with its carefully scripted conversations across language and cultural divides, there’s less room for humor. But occasionally it comes in handy. This felt like one of those times.
In a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President Biden had said, “It is time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.” I liked the idea of a “reset”... Why not present [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey]Lavrov with an actual reset button? It might get people laughing— including Lavrov— and ensure that our commitment to a fresh start, not our disagreements, made the headlines. A little unconventional, maybe, but worth a try. Lavrov and I met in the InterContinental Hotel’s Salon Panorama, named for its panoramic view of Geneva. Before we sat down, I presented him with a small green box, complete with a ribbon. While the cameras snapped away, I opened it and pulled out a bright red button on a yellow base that had been pulled off the whirlpool in the hotel.
It's Robert Stacy McCain's book about feminism. I'm resistant to his extreme form of aversion to feminism, but he's plowed (wrong word??) through a lot of books I can't be troubled with. Ah, there, I used his word: trouble. Why go looking for trouble? One reason is: to write a book about trouble, sex trouble. Why buy such a book? One reason is: to blog about it. Also, it's only $1.99 in Kindle, whence I can cut and paste things here for you.
"Every book's Kindle page lists the 5 passages most highlighted by readers," notes Jordan Ellenberg in The Wall Street Journal. If the highlights come from all over the book or near the end, it suggests people are actually reading it. When the highlights all come from the beginning, they probably are not.
Ellenberg — who's a UW-Madison math prof — does some calculations and declares that the most unread book of the summer is Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century":
Mr. Piketty's book is almost 700 pages long, and the last of the top five popular highlights appears on page 26.
Once you're on the iPad/Kindle Fire, it's so tempting to do other things too — email, Facebook, Googling here and there — that you lose the single-minded concentration that pulls you straight through a book.
Not that everyone reads books that way. You might have piles of paper books around the house that you dip into and keep meaning to finish. The nice thing about ebooks is you don't see them lying around and feel guilty.
Me, I've found a way to read ebooks that gives me that internetty feeling I love. I have hundreds of books in my iPad (where I use the Kindle app, and read books bought on Amazon). I keep my list of books in the order most recently read, and I like to pick something near the bottom of the list, read it until I get itchy for a distraction, then select another book near the bottom.
Why not? Well, the linked article takes the point of view of booksellers. They're worried people will stop reading things in book form. Me, I'm a blogger. It's a market. People will buy what they want. There are other choices that to be trapped in one author's mind for days on end.
do you consider the internet to be a nutopian space?
It is one of the nutopian spaces....
I recently watched the film LET IT BE and I wonder why you didn’t smile through the whole thing. You have such a lovely smile.
My smile was erased....
How do you always stay so grounded? So often I find myself floating away from all this.
Look at the steps we take when we walk. Our steps are made of floating and grounding, each time we take the step. So don’t worry. You are grounding and floating, every day, as you walk. You should walk more.
Ha ha. I like Yoko Ono. I was thinking of her today because I was thinking of my habit of thinking up ideas for books, which I don't write. That made me think of Yoko's old book "Grapefruit," which — yes, it is a book — describes projects, things that could be done easily, things that could be done but are too tedious or too hard to do, and things that are completely impossible. The descriptions are charmingly minimal. I'd quote some, but you'd get the wrong idea. Go over to the link and check some pages out. You can search inside the book. Try, for example, searching for "cloud."
It seems that the real project is stating one imagined project after another. Think of it, then let it go. Imagine all the unwritten books. Have you read them?
Feminists have persuasively shown the connection between sexualized violence, which, if we are being generous, might be the kind of "idea" First Amendment mucks are apparently concerned about (violence in the head), and real violence, inflicted through sex in the home or in the street, against women.
While Fitzpatrick makes some good points (e.g. about problems with the peer review process-- though I'm not sure I buy her solution), the main thrust of her argument makes me break out in hives. It's the Elizabeth Warren political vision, advocating the priority of "community" over "individual achievement." It's Warren's critique of the business world transposed to academia (where "professorial culture is infected by pride in individual achievements and prejudice against publishing models that would de-emphasize them"):
I'm noticing this book because Instapundit did one of his "IN THE MAIL" posts that acknowledge the receipt of a free book but express no opinion. Sending one free book is a frightfully cheap way to buy publicity. I get free books, but I wouldn't post about them unless I took the time to form some kind of opinion about them, and sending me a free book is a frightfully cheap way to buy my time, the time it would take to form an opinion of a book.
But I don't even need to look beyond the author and title of Ron Reagan's "My Father at 100" to form an opinion. It annoys me. I've seen too much — not all that much — TV commentary by Ron Reagan to want to read a book he wrote about the iconic conservative President. Example:
Reagan: My father knew what he stood for, you can agree with it or disagree with it, he knew how -- what he stood for, he could explain what he stood for. He was conversant in domestic and foreign policy -- [Sarah Palin is] neither! She can't explain where she stands on anything!
Geller: Your father would love her, and frankly I don't think you can speak for your father, because you -- you don't even espouse --
Reagan: No, Pam, actually, have you ever met my father, Pam? Pam, did you ever meet my father?... Did you ever meet my father? I'm asking you a simple question. You can't answer that because the answer is no. So why don't you rely on someone who knew him very well to tell you what he would think of Sarah Palin.
Yes, the 100th anniversary of his birth is an occasion, an excuse, but the birthdayness of it also says: twaddle.
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