¶ The second part of Don Quixote is indeed a great deal more amusing than the first, largely because it redeems the one-damned-thing-after-another quality of what goes before. Quixote and Don Sansón, a student at Salamanca who has read the account of the knight errant’s adventures in the First Part — the publication of which, when “the blood of the enemies he had slain was not yet dry on the  blade of his sword,” our hero has no difficulty attributing to enchanters — talk about the book’s reception among the reading public.

“Now I say,” said Don Quixote, “that the author of my history was no wise man but an ignorant gossip-monger who, without rhyme or reason, began to write, not caring how it turned out, just like Orbaneja, the painter of Ubeda, who, when asked what he was painting, replied ‘Whatever comes out.’

(This was indeed my judgment of the narrative of the First Part.)

Pderhaps he painted a rooster in such a fashion and so unrealistically that he had to write beside it, in capital letters, ‘This is a rooster.’ And that must be how my history is: a commentary will be necessary in order to understand it.”

“Not at all,” responded Sansón, “because it is so clear that there is nothing in it to cause difficulty: children look at it, youths read it, men understand it, the old celebrate it, and, in short, it is so popular and widely read and so well known by every kind of person that as soon as people see a skinny old nag they say: ‘There goes Rocinante.’ And those who have been fondest of reading it are the pages. There is no lord’s antechamber where one does not find a copy of Don Quixote: as soon as it is put down it is picked up again; some rush at it, and others ask for it. In short, this history is the most enjoyable and least harmful entertainment ever seen, because nowhere in it can one find even the semblance of an untruthful word or a less than Catholic thought.”

But what one could find it was a massive critique of aristocratical foolishness. Might this explain why the first translation into any language was Thomas Sheltons, of 1612, into English?

¶ Matins: Bernard Madoff is expected to plead guilty to 11 felony counts — enough to put him away for several lifetimes. How very dissatisfying!

¶ Lauds: Movie box office is up — so why are the studios laying people off? Because they’re part of ailing bigger conglomerates. Take GE, for example … (via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Meet Kate McCully, Boston’s Grammar Vandal.

¶ Tierce: I try to avoid writing about stories that I don’t understand, but Stephen Labaton’s “Some Banks, Citing Strings, Want to Return Federal Aid” has me scratching a hole in my scalp.

¶ Sext: John Tierney focuses his skepticism on the meaning of dreams. (No surprise: he makes it sounds kinda like Ouija.)

¶ Nones: General de Gaulle’s withdrawal from the military command of NATO, in 1966, made great sense. So does President Sarkozy’s return.  

¶ Vespers: Alexander Chee’s “Portrait of My Father,” at Granta Online.

¶ Compline: Christopher Shea shares the outrage of the latest stretch of academic exploitation: not only do TAs have to do a full-time job, but they have to waive all the benefits that go with full-time work.

Read the rest of this entry »

¶ In Moby-Dick, a flurry of short chapters about whale butchering, culminating in “The Sphynx,” in which Ahab addresses the head of the decapitated leviathan. His poetical and rather awful gush is interrupted by the sighting of another ship.

“Aye? Well, now, that’s cheering,” cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. “That lively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better man — where away?”

The ship is another whaler, the Jeroboam. Although the captain and crew are healthy, the ship has been commandeered by a madman on board who calls himself Gabriel. Gabriel has convinced the “ignorant” crew that he is indeed archangelic, and the state of things aboard the Jeroboam might best be characterized as ongoing but non-violent mutiny. A boat from the Jeroboam pitches alongside the Pequod. Gabriel is among the oarsman; Stubb has heard his story from the Town-Ho. For the first time since beginning the book, I am thrilled and terrified by the scene that Melville conjures. Difficult as it is to shout over high seas, Captain Mayhew is continually interrupted by the lunatic.

“Think, think of thy whale-boat stoven and sunk! Beware of the horrible tail!”

“I tell thee again, Gabriel, that — ” But again the boat tore ahead as though borne by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices of the sea were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm whale’s head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to warrant.

The raving madman, the roiling sea, and the invocation of Moby-Dick left me queasy and ill at ease.  

Regular readers will have noted the scarcity of Morning Reads since the New Year. It is a matter of late nights, I’m afraid; it has never been so difficult to get to bed at a decent hour. Two o’clock in the morning menaces as the new eleven at night. One of these days, the “Morning” descriptor may become altogether notional.

¶ Matins: Now that health care reform is back in the news, an aspect of the much-maligned Canadian system ought not to be overlooked.

¶ Lauds: Call it Cats and Rats — or whatever! Just write the book about the buck that stopped with Cai Mingchao, the Chinese dealer who had “second thoughts.” Now he’s having thirds: tears.

¶ Prime: Jean Ruaud went to Hyères, and took a load of great pictures comme d’hab’; but did he see Mrs Wharton’s place?

¶ Tierce: China’s unlucky number: 6521. These are “interesting times.”

¶ Sext: They call this “counter-cultural”? Flash-mob pillow fights irk San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department. (via Morning News).

¶ Nones: President Obama’s first visit to a Muslim country will take him to Turkey. Great news indeed.

¶ Vespers: Michiko Kakutani’s review of William Cohan’s House of Cards — the Bear, Stearns post-mortem — makes compelling reading in its own right.

¶ Compline: Franchise Christianity? Robert Wright recasts early-Christian history in terms of business models and globalization.

Read the rest of this entry »

Very late last night, I was seized by a fit of giggles. I’d finally gotten round to Michael Lewis’s Vanity Fair piece on Iceland.

The investigators produced a chart detailing a byzantine web of interlinked entities that boiled down to this: A handful of guys in Iceland, who had no experience of finance, were taking out tens of billions of dollars in short-term loans from abroad. They were then re-lending this money to themselves and their friends to buy assets—the banks, soccer teams, etc. Since the entire world’s assets were rising—thanks in part to people like these Icelandic lunatics paying crazy prices for them—they appeared to be making money. Yet another hedge-fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets.

What’s amazing is that so much of the piece could have been written last year, or even earlier. Tony Shearer resigned his post at a venerable City firm in 2005, when it was acquired by one of the Icelandic banks. He quit “out of fear of what might happen to his reputation if he stayed.” Last October, Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander (Mr Shearer’s old firm) collapsed — just as Mr Shearer feared, three years earlier.

Is it possible that kids are growing up so fast today that even they don’t see what the emperor’s new clothes are made of?

¶ Matins: As a big believer in the effectiveness of no-fly zones, I agree with this proposal for dealing with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

¶ Lauds: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest lady in the West End? The answer? A whole deck of baseball cards, leading with playwright Bola Agbaje as “The New Voice” but with plenty of room for “Queen Bee” and “Eternal Siren.”  (via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Over the weekend I discovered a constellation of Web sites that seem to be keeping the preppie flame burning. The Trad, for example…

¶ Tierce: A caption from the print edition: “Similarities (and differences) exist in David Axelrod’s relationship with the current president and Karl Rove’s with the past.”

¶ Sext: Great news: Chuck Norris talks of running for President of Texas. (via Joe.My.God.)

¶ Nones: Good news (sort of): Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, insists that the collision that killed his wife, and sent him to the hospital, had to have been an accident.

¶ Vespers: At Emdashes, Martin Schneider has a go at cutting Ian McEwan’s reputation down to size. What might have been an irritating exercise is rather worth reading.

¶ Compline: Now that the “Consumer Society” is on its deathbed, it’s safe for critics to take hitherto unfashionable pokes at sacred cows, and Jonathan Jones, at the Guardian, has his needle out.   Read the rest of this entry »

If you had any idea how much stuff had to be moved to make it possible to put that lamp in the corner behind my desk, you would say, “RJ! You have too much junk!”

You’re probably saying it anyway.

I don’t know how I came into possession of the stegosaurus jigsaw puzzle. I mean, why; I’m sure that I bought it. When Ari Newell visited, a while back, I thought it might amuse him (“This is your idea of a puzzle, mon ami?” the young man, then aged four, would have quizzed), but I couldn’t find it. It was out in plain sight, but I couldn’t see it because I have too much junk.

I can’t let it go.

A simple mnemonic (I just made it up): Turandot loves Camelot; she’d never show in Tuckahoe. Read the rest of this entry »

The synergy between The Daily Blague and Portico fascinates me, I like to think, as much as it would if the sites belonged to someone else. So it’s a good thing that I don’t buy everything that I like! Still, there’s a deep satisfaction in watching the various parts click together — when they do.

The Week at Portico:  From now on, leads to new pages at Portico will appear in a roundup on Friday. This week’s Book Review review, for example. A book that I’ve written up myself: The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Last Friday’s movie, Entre les murs. And, finally, for the first time: Paul Taylor Dance Company. I’ve gathered these notices into one convenient entry so that you won’t have to bookmark them for weekend reading.

Housekeeping Note:    Oops! I don’t know when I did it, but I managed to fold the Images folder at Portico‘s server into another folder — and I have no idea how to undo the mistake. That’s why most images at Portico won’t show.

That’s “most” as in “older pages.” Recently, I’ve created Images subfolders for each of the site’s branches, and that is how I am going to “fix” this problem — by updating the site to conform with current standards and practices. “I was going to do it anyway.”

¶ Matins: Second only to Flint, MI as a GM-dependent town, Anderson, IN is piecing itself together with small businesses —

¶ Lauds: The Walker Evans postcard show at the Museum ought to be a permanent installation in the American Wing.

¶ Prime: George Snyder reports on the anxiety of celebrity — direct from Hollywood. (There’s a rapper called “Flo Rida”?)

¶ Tierce: Can anyone tell me what a report on the ideological intransigence of academic economists is doing buried in the Arts/Books section of the Times?

¶ Sext: Did you know that a chunk of asteroid as big as fifty metres missed hitting Sidney by only 60,000 miles the other day? (via Morning News.)

¶ Nones: In news that you probably thought can’t be news, the first rail link between Laos and Thailand (or anywhere) is inaugurated,  crossing the Mekong River.

¶ Vespers: Jeremy Denk hates Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, calling the author “one of the most gifted writers of boring sentences in the last decade.”

¶ Compline: The new railroad connecting Santa Fe and Albuquerque, unlike the Interstate Highway, will  cut through pueblo lands. Conductors have been asked to request passengers to refrain from drive-by photography.  

Read the rest of this entry »

¶ If there’s one thing that Lord Chesterfield and I disagree about, it’s laughter.

Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob, who are only pleased with silly things; for true wit or good sense never excited a laugh, since the creation of the world. A man of parts and fashion is therefore only seen to smile, but never heard to laugh.

¶ In Moby-Dick, a horrible chapter, “Stubb’s Supper.” Between complaining about his overcooked slice of whale meat and ordering the black cook to “preach” to the sharks feeding on the capture’s carcass, Stubb lurches with deranged, operatic swagger.

“Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch. D’ye hear? away you sail, then — Halloa! stop! make a bow before you go. — Avast heaving, again! Whale-balls for breakfast — don’t forget!

¶ The second part of Don Quixote really is a second beginning. The priest and the barber visit Don Quixote in his chamber, where he is recovering from all the mishaps of the first part. The three men have an amiable and reasonable discussion, and all seems well until our hero firmly makes it quietly clear that he has not given up on being a knight errant or stopped believing in the historical existence of such figures of Felixmarte of Hyrcania. At no point, however, is he held up to ridicule. The barber’s tale of the mad canon of Seville is a far more engaging challenge to Don Quixote’s delusions than another tumble in the dust.

¶ In Squillions, Noël Coward is surprisingly disapproving of Margaret Rutherford’s highly popular performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit.

The great disappointment is Margaret Rutherford, whom the audience love, because the part is so good, but who is actually very, very bad indeed. She is indistinct, fussy and, beyond her personality, has no technical knowledge or resources at all. She merely fumbles and gasps and drops things and throws many of my best lines down the drain. She is despair to Fay, Cecil and Kay and mortification to me because I thought she would be marvellous. I need hardly say that she got a magnificent notice.

I doubt very much that I’ll be saying anything like this sort of thing of Angela Lansbury, when I see the revival in a few weeks.

¶ Matins: Between this and this: I just had one of my big ideas: Libraries in France are bookstores. (Bibliothèques are libraries, but never mind.) What if we altered the English definition, and publicly funded small bookshops?

¶ Lauds: The world’s “largest concert“: the Hamburg State Orchestra plays Brahms — all over Hamburg.

¶ Prime: It took me forever to realize what Formenwandlungen der &-Zeichen means. “&-Zeichen” is the (rather klutzy) German term for “ampersand.”

¶ Tierce: The good news is also the bad news: Orient-Express Hotels wants to back out of a deal with the New York Public Library that may leave the Donnell Library building standing.

¶ Sext:  Keith McNally, owner of Balthasar and other eateries, would like to swat the bloggers who are swarming around his latest venture (which doesn’t open until next week), Minetta Tavern. Buzz, buzz!  

¶ Nones: Amazing news: “Arrest warrant issued for Sudan leader.”

¶ Vespers: Maud Newton reconnects with Katherine Anne Porter, who has just appeared in the Library of America.

¶ Compline: This is a joke, right? The United Transportation Union objects to surveillance cameras in railroad engine cabs; recommends staffing same with two people.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quatorze (shown at right), alarmed by unexpected presence of gangster-level garden ornaments on pricey Upper East Side real estate (not to mention in such close proximity to Museum!), challenges Apollonian wannabe to pop apricot into his open mouth.

¶ Matins: A collection of lucid responses to last week’s story about academic humanities (covered here).

¶ Lauds: Have a look at but it does float — a tumble log noted by Things Magazine, an apparently anonymous curation noted, in turn, by Robin at Snarkmarket.

¶ Prime: I’ve been following David Galbraith’s Smashing Telly(!) for a while now, and I’ve linked to or through it a couple of times. It’s a great site, because Mr Galbraith is a very strong writer. I have never once been inspired to watch the TV show under review, however. (I hope to read Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Money eventually….)

¶ Tierce: Bergen County Academies, a limited-admissions public school in New Jersey, is changing the debate (or at least reviving it) about vocational schools. Completely.

¶ Sext: V X Sterne, at Outer Life, has some creative thoughts about tax avoidance. (They’re also perfectly legal; commendable, even!)

¶ Nones: When I first glanced at headlines about the story about the cricketer shootings in Lahore, I thought that it involved a ramping up of Tamil violence on Sri Lanka. But no; it’s rather worse — yet another gash in the fabric of Pakistani society.

¶ Vespers: Patrick Kurp writes so persuasively about Zbigniew Herbert’s essay collection, Barbarian in the Garden, that I’ve got to havea copy.

¶ Compline: More than thirty years later, Spain is purging monuments to the Franco régime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for a book yesterday, I came across one that I hadn’t even opened, much less begun to read: Edward Mendelson’s The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life. It was immediately clear that this was a book that I ought to have looked into a while ago, and, retiring with it to my reading chair, I was soon so engrossed that I forgot all about updating the Daily Office. I have never seriously considered reading Frankenstein, the first of Mr Mendelson’s choices, but his chapter on the novel left me feeling something of a booby. Right now, though, I want to share a paragraph from his introduction. Because it could serve as a mission statement for this Web log, I wish I’d said it myself.

One of the themes of this book is its argument that the most intellectually and morally coherent way of thinking about human beings is to think of them as autonomous persons (the plural noun “persons,” not the collective noun “people”) instead of as members of any category, class or group. A second theme, inseparable from the first, is that persons exist only in relations with other persons, that the idea of an absolutely isolated and independent person is intellectually and morally incoherent, that all ideas of personality and society that emphasize stoicism and self-reliance are at best only partially valid, while ideas that emphasize mutual need and mutual aid have the potential to be true.

Like Mr Mendelson, my perspective lies between that of the soul-stuck solipsism of individualism viewpoint and the mechanical oversimplification of collectivism. I am not ashamed to label this perspective socialist. Whatever the political connotations of that term, it correctly denotes the focus of my values: mutual need and mutual aid, distributed in the society with which I’m familiar, which happens to include folks at many socio-economic levels.

¶ Matins: In a foreseeable development that few wanted to think about very much, the downside inequalities of European Union constituents threatens to pull the EU apart. Steven Erlanger and Stephen Castle report.

While Western European countries are reluctant, with their own problems both at home and among the countries using the euro, there is a deep interconnectedness in any case. Much of the debt at risk in Eastern Europe is on the books of euro zone banks — especially in Austria and Italy. The same is true for the problems farther afield, in Ukraine.

Having watched the Soviet Union collapse, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe embraced the liberal, capitalist model as the price of integration with Europe. That model is now badly tarnished, and the newer members feel adrift.

¶ Lauds: In the Chicago Tribune, Mike Boehm asks, “Will the Obamas’ interest in the arts create an inflation of appreciation?” The prospect of presidential interest in theatre and dance is so dizzying that he doesn’t stop to ask why it would be a good thing.

¶ Prime: Perhaps you’ve already discovered Look At Me, the Web site of found photographs, but it’s new to me, and I’m checking it out every day. (I’ve linked to a recent posting that shows what has to be an old Howard Johnson’s — looking not so old.)

¶ Tierce: As usual on Monday mornings, I begin with the Times’s Business section, because that’s where the interesting stories are, even if they would fit just as comfortably in the first section, alongside the “regular” news. Two stories today that generate a certain twinned-snakes synergy:

• “In Obama, Labor Finds the Support It Expected” by Steven Greenhouse, and
•  “India Maintains Sense of Optimism and Growth,” by Heather Timmons.

¶ Sext: A party who signs himself “MDL Welder” seeks advice about a romantic “att[achment].” The Non-Expert replies in an odd demotic.

You are very att. To each other. Man we all know that, we can all see it. When you two are passing yes there will be kiss in return, geddit? So obv. Most people wish they were with someone who was so att. To each other. So you say “Do you think she is falling for me?” and all of us here are LOAO because YES YES YES she’s falling for you and she’s already falling so far down you have to reach down and catch up. You need to jump that diving board and triple flip and angle downwards for minimum air resist. She att. You att. To each other. It’s the best way to be, it’s the best way to start. And we say aww.

This drollery has me imagining a novel yet to be written, set, like Then We Came to the End and Personal Days, in the workplace — but not in a very literate workplace.

¶ Nones: I’ll be watching to see how the US press in general and the New York Times in particular cover this story (from the BBC): “Israel ‘plans settlement growth’.”

¶ Vespers: Charles McGrath paves the way for a revival of interest in John Cheever, soon to appear in the Library of America.

¶ Compline: The Infrastructurist lists the top ten hot infrastructure jobs, complete with tips about getting one. For example (“Smart Meter Installer”):

There are 150 million electric meters in the US. About 90 percent of them are “dumb.” Obama has offered a plan to upgrade 40 million of the meters, but eventually they will probably all be replaced. Some utilities are well under way: PG&E in California is putting in 10.3 million smart meters, while Oncor in Texas is planning to install 3 million in the next four years.

Read the rest of this entry »

We broke the “Never on Sunday” rule to take in the Paul Taylor Dance Company this afternoon. Better to say that I broke the rule when I bought the tickets in January. All I knew when I bought the tickets was that I wanted to see “Arden Court.” I couldn’t have told you why. It may have been a snapshot of the dance that was printed in a brochure several years ago; it may have been something that somebody said. According to this year’s brochure, “Arden Court” would be given three times, and the other two dates were for one reason or another impossible. So I broke the rule against doing things on Sundays and bought tickets for this afternoon’s performance. The result was not repentance, but a new rule.

Once a quarter, more or less, we’ll break the “Never on Sunday” rule and go to some matinee or other. Sunday matinees are usually at three in the afternoon; that leaves plenty of time for a late lunch — and for box-office crawling. Here’s how box-office crawling works:

Kathleen fills a few dozen large Post-It notes with information about plays that we want to see. (There are lots at the moment, more than we can afford to see.) Then she organizes the notes. Read the rest of this entry »

There are people who would never have accumulated the stuff that has piled up in our apartment over the years. I envy them.

It’s not that there wouldn’t be fifty times as much stuff if it weren’t for regular culls. But culling has never meant keeping the increase to zero. Until now.

Guess what I found! Read the rest of this entry »