From Salon.com today

Tuesday, Dec 20, 2011 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time

I knew Christopher Hitchens better than you

Every writer who had a drink with Hitch has now told his story. But even Rushdie and Amis didn't know him like this

By Neal Pollack

Have a great Bloomsday. I'm out of mutton kidneys, so I'll just have a Guinness.

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

It's Bloom's Day -- take a walk, drink a pint. Kidney breakfast optional.

Dylan Ratigan

I've made a conscious effort not to look for any reason to like or dislike this guy; he seems a pleasant enough fellow.  Then just moments ago he opines that  "the truth is usually somewhere in between."  This is one of the most bonehead phrases ever, regardless of the topic.  But maybe that's just the coffee speaking...

Take this fiber and shove it...

No I didn’t listen to the speech, but I must admit it was on in the background. Thus I was treated to hearing Obama refer to “every fiber of my being."  God I hate that phrase, whether it is from John “Mr. Sincere” Rothman or our current POTUS.   What the hell does it mean anyway?  What kind of fiber is one’s being made of?  How many fibers make up one being? Is a being a physical body or more like a spiritual thing – in which case why would fiber be involved?  Maybe the fiber reference is a metaphor; if so, for what? Being full of shit? Or the means by which to rid oneself of same? Now this is starting to make sense…

Who knew Yeats was such a fox?

So who knew, part two...

The term atavism (derived from the Latin atavus, a great-grandfather's grandfather; more generally, an ancestor) denotes the tendency to revert to ancestral type. An atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations ago.[2] Atavisms occur because genes for previously existing phenotypical features are often preserved in DNA, even though the genes are not expressed in some or most of the organisms possessing them. (from Wikipedia). My brother Chris threw this word at us. I’m still not sure what he meant.

Thanks to #1 Sis for turning me on to Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, a study of Mormon Fundamentalism and, by extension, the fundamental religious psyche in the United States. From the Prologue:

"The zealot may be outwardly motivated by the anticipation of a great reward at the other end – wealth, fame, eternal salvation –but the real recompense is probably the obsession itself. [snip]. As a result of his (or her) infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic’s worldview; a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture."


Remind you of someone??

(Subtle Hint)

Sometimes the Review is Better than the Book...

From Leon Wieselter's review of Martin Amis' "The Second Plane", NYT Book Review 4/27/08

-He [Amis] writes as if he, with his wrinkled copies of Bernard Lewis and Philip Larkin, is what stands between us and the restoration of the caliphate. He is not only outraged by Sept. 11, he is also excited by it. "If Sept. 11 had to happen, then I am not at all sorry that it happened in my lifetime." Don't you see? It no longer matters that we missed the Spanish Civil War.

-In Amis's account, the Islamist terrorists are guilty not only of slaughtering people. They are guilty also of proliferating "cliches" and "inherited and unexamined formulations" -- and in this respect they are "like all religions," which were exposed as "fossilizations of dead prose and dead thought," were they not, by "one of the greatest novels ever written, 'Ulysses.'" Why can't they just read "Ulysses"?

-Pity the writer who wants to be Bellow but is only Mailer

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/books/review/Wieseltier-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=the+catastrophist&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Gore and Me

Though he admired the magazine, it was clear from early on that his short stories did not meet the moral standards or fit the literary mold The New Yorker embodied. It “was a marvelous support group of middlebrow writers called John like Cheever and Updike,” Vidal observed. –Gore Vidal: A Biography – Fred Kaplan

Slogging through this biography, wishing I liked it more. Kaplan has done a tremendous amount of research, but could benefit from some judicious editing – the book is vastly overpopulated. Total indexing items under W: 52. Of these 50 are people, comprising 248 page references.

To be fair, all of Vidal’s literary works are indexed under “Vidal, Gore – writings of (fiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (nonfiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (plays, screenplays, and teleplays). Thus Julian would not be indexed under “J” (14 entries, Felix Jackson to Judith Jones, all people).

Though I do enjoy the references by Vidal and friends to Anais Nin as “stupid,”
55 pages (references to) are more than enough. I was sick of her after two.

There is no cineplex in Stinson Beach

I have decided that the best use of my new spare time would be to read books and watch DVDs – not for any personal pleasure but so my readers (of which I have none) will not have to suffer as I have.

Children of Men – Cliché and predictable, the casting is so good it was a lot of fun to watch. A satire made of this movie would do well to keep the same cast. No, really, I did like it.

Huey Long****: I adore Sean Penn. He’s a genius. (Steve says “He’s a God.) But I couldn’t watch this movie which had a pervasive ugliness and no pitch range. Sorry honey.

Pan’s Labyrinth: I don’t think I got up and puttered once during this movie, which is the highest praise I can give to a DVD .

The Constant Gardener: Heavy foreshadowing, a trifle long (3 putters) but well done with a good cast. Thumbs up as they say…