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Floridians Love Libraries


This article gives you numbers on how very beloved they are.

While growing up in Dunedin, my mother and I went to the library all the time. In high school, it was a place to read and relax. In college, it was where I hid away and did my reading.

My roommate and I always walked up the Gulfport Public Library to read periodicals and check on local events posted on the bulletin board.

Here in DC, there’s a library just across from Eastern Market where I will browse (I indulged big time at their last book sale).

In short, huzzah for libraries.

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In Defense Of Studying The Classics


Miranda Frum in defense of classical studies against that intellectual giant, Rush Limbaugh, published in the Huffington Post.

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

I see you have let your own educational insecurities shine through in your latest rant in which you “bravely” attempted to decipher the “sad-sack story” of a Classical Studies scholar. Bravo. If only you had taken a philosophy course about the Sophists, you might have been better at debating your point. Unfortunately, your rhetoric fails you and you blunder through your argument, proving the limited grasp you have on the concept of higher thinking.

You reference a picture you came across on the Internet (I believe, sir, that is called a ‘meme’). The picture shows a letter written by a Classics student, whom you assume is a woman (thus also managing to offend feminists and male Classical scholars worldwide), detailing the lack of prospects “she” has, even though this person has a degree and understands Latin. This is heartbreaking, but it’s not necessarily news. Nor does “she” speak for the numerous individuals currently studying Classics. These students know there is no money guaranteed from obtaining a degree in Classical Studies. They study Classics because they want to understand the roots of Western thinking (quite patriotic of them, isn’t is Mr. Limbaugh?), or they love the stories and works of great thinkers (works conservatives used to encourage others to read). They take Classical Studies for the same reasons other students study history or political philosophy — to widen and inform their thinking, and to better understand they world they live in. 


“What the hell is Classical studies? What classics are studied? Or, is it learning how to study in a classical way? Or is it learning how to study in a classy way as opposed to an unclassy way? And what about unClassical studies?”

 

All right Mr. Limbaugh, I’ll tell you. I was a Classical Studies student; I’m no expert, but I took the courses. Classics is a branch of the humanities that examines language, literature, philosophy, history, art, culture, and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean world. You know, the Greeks. The Romans. The guys who the Founding Fathers were crazy about. The guys who inspired… democracy. THOSE GUYS. The students who dream of having a Classics-based job understand that most of them will be in school for a majority of their lives and will have to be professors; others will take this knowledge into other fields with them — politics, physics, archaeology, medicine (it’s less socialist than you think Mr. Limbaugh), they can extend their education in terms of modern politics, writing, physics, and medicine. Those who believe in instant wealth if they study Classics are idiots — the exact same idiots in other classes who fully expect that a job and a $500,000 a year paycheque are in their immediate future.

Indeed, there are uses for Classical Studies in all aspects of life. Workplace politics are much less stressful if you can think to yourself, “Well, at least this isn’t the Roman Senate, and the jerk who steals my lunch from the communal fridge isn’t plotting my assassination! Whew!” Or, if you are wondering “Why on earth did the United States choose democracy over a monarchy?” Classical Studies has your answer. Classical Studies explains the basic concepts of math (I’m assuming then the Pythagorean theorem wasn’t easy for you, Mr. Limbaugh, just as you assumed the Classical Studies student was a woman. It hurts, doesn’t it?) as well as science.

You pointed out that there will be no degree to change a useless person into a useful person. This is true. There are hundreds of useless engineers, writers, politicians, historians, and mechanics. There is also at least one too many useless broadcasters. 


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Check Out My Review Of ‘Push Open The Window’


My review of ‘Push Open the Window’ is now available at The Rumpus.

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Art and Beauty


I just wanted to draw attention to this interview in order to highlight this quote:

Artists are not necessarily intellectuals. Intellectuals produce ideas. Artists produce beauty.

Obviously, I am taking this out of context, but even within the context, it doesn’t address the final sentence.

Do artists necessarily create beauty? Is there no great and compelling art which is not beautiful? Political art, art that comments on civilization’s failings. Are they then not the work of artists, at all, but of intellectuals trading in ideas disguised as art?

I don’t have the answer, but I firmly believe that if you limit the function of art to creating beauty, you are putting very unsettling limits upon it, indeed.

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Norman Spinrad


Norman Spinrad is a sci fi author who you probably haven’t read unless you read a lot of sci fi. Not that he’s not good, but he hasn’t been much of a crossover writer for a long time (crossover, in the sense of Ursual K LeGuin or Margaret Atwood crossing out of the genre trap into literary respectability or J.K. Rowling into widespread, if undeserved, fame).

While digging through the basement of my favorite local used bookstore, I picked up a book of his called Agent of Chaos. It was fast paced, decently written, leavened with an anarchist philosophy that was heavy handed, but not didactic. It was a slim, old fashioned sort of pulpy paperback that they just don’t make much of anymore. Love that kind of stuff.

After finishing it, I downloaded to my Nook a copy of Asimov’s Science Fiction, which is still a nice, pulpy magazine (at least in its physical format).  I did so simply because it had a story by Spinrad.

I like the idea of Spinrad. He writes politically tinged (charged?) sci fi, he lives in Paris now and sometimes publishes in French. He is a former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. And one of his novels was denounced on the floor of the House of Commons.

This particular story was very different, though, from Agent of Chaos, which is an old fashioned space opera at its heart. An odd story about the songs of whales and other cetaceans and a sort of eco-fable. Not sure what I thought about it. I certainly agree with its sentiments, but not exactly what I was looking for.

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Aegypt


Percolating around my brain was a frequently mentioned book (or at least frequently mentioned in the articles and reviews I read) was a series of books by John Crawley known as Aegypt.

I just finished the first, called sometimes Aegypt or, as Crowley preferred, The Solitudes (also the name of a long poem that the main character, Pierce Moffett, is supposed to review).

I am not sure what to think of it. I enjoyed. I will read the next book in the series (I already am, in fact), but I also don’t feel a strong urgency to power through them. Hard to explain. Good, but not compelling, perhaps?

What I do like about it is that is a book of arcane and occult conspiracies (Rosicrucians, alchemy, etc) for people who enjoy reading about arcane and occult conspiracies but absolutely do not believe in them. Which pretty much describes me.

The book is sometimes called a fantasy, but it isn’t. Or least the first book wasn’t. It’s more like reading a book about someone writing the kinds of novels that Umberto Eco. That’s a little convoluted, but that’s okay. Aegypt is also about a historian writing a history, which is kind of like a novel written by someone else, which we also read parts of in Aegypt, as well as both the historian’s and novelist’s process and life during the writing of their respective books. Makes sense?

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Bodhi Tree Sale Hits A Snag


I don’t know what is going on, but the sale of the struggling bookstore, the Bodhi Tree, appears to have stumbled.

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Happy Birthday, John Keats!


Little did I know that Keats was born on Halloween.

The little used bookstore on Capitol Hill with the cranky owner sold me a marvelous little leather bound collection of his complete poetry, just the right size for a jacket pocket.

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Happy Birthday, New Directions!


New Directions turned 75 years old last Friday!

In case you don’t know who they are, New Directions are they guys who keep modernist greats like Ezra Pound (including my Cantos), William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore in print.

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Ezra Pound: Canto LXIII


The Sixty-Third Canto, short though it is, confused me greatly.

In the first place, we have abandoned China. Well, mostly. There is the Chinese character (pictured) which Pound inserts something less than 2/3 of the way into the Canto.

So far as I can tell, it is the diary or correspondence of  a lawyer (that much is mentioned: …So that I/believe no lawyer ever did so much business/for so little profit as I did during the 17 years that I practiced) commenting on the various things he has read recently – from history to current news to literature.

Byron and Shakespeare are mentioned (Timon of Athens, specifically, in the latter case). Jefferson, Adams (pere et fils), Franklin.