It is way too cold for late April. I must migrate to the south, if I can. Last night was some discussion of what I would do to get a job at the University of Hawaii. It may not get as dire as that but Chicago weather isn't helping right now.
- Friday was the 400th year anniversary of Don Quixote. I totally missed it.
- Speaking of windmills, in the New York Review of Books Thomas Frank asks, rather boringly, What's the Matter with Liberals?. He writes, "The backlash narrative is more powerful than mere facts, and according to this central mythology conservatives are always hardworking patriots who love their country and are persecuted for it, while liberals, who are either high-born weaklings or eggheads hypnotized by some fancy idea, are always ready to sell their nation out at a moment's notice." Kennedy was such a whiny wuss.
- In the Boston Globe, is a piece on our very own Ron Suny and the Armenian genocide; about the ways historians are remembering it. I wrote something about this a while ago. Maybe I will track that and re-post it.
- In India Express, the secrets of film scripts. Almost, but not quite as, informative as this [keep hitting reload].
- I am a big fan of H. P. Lovecraft and his tales of blobs and globs from beyond. Others complain that he is not scary. What do they know?
- I leave you with two things: One: LRB personals ROCK. Two: Army posters ROCK.
COMMENTS
Morcy | April 25, 2005
Kennedy was such a whiny wuss. Oh come on. That's so not Frank's point--he's making a claim about epistemology (or perception), not one of history, though we could argue about how the two differ. I can't tell if you're just kidding around or what, but to lob JFK (or, better, LBJ) as a counter-example to the narrative Frank is describing is totally useless. That said, I don't know how on earth the Dems could have made the case that the GOP would abandon values voters right after inauguration. But we are, in fact, seeing it. Also, if you hear of any high-end inebriation...
sepoy | April 25, 2005
Wasn't lobbing a counter-example at Frank but at the Right's rhetoric. Despite the rhetoric of the Repubs, Dems can field candidates who are high-born or hypnotized by some fancy idea. And it work out in their favor. Or now that I think about '63, maybe not. Go Obama?
Jonathan Dresner | April 26, 2005
I had the same reaction you did to the Lovecraft discussion: obviously feeling a cultural gap due to his lack of understanding of the Lovecraftian mythos, he dove into the entire published works of the man at once as if for a term paper. It's really the term paper we always wished we could write as students: this stuff stunk, even though everyone else thinks it's so great. Just because it's a common impulse, doesn't make it right. Lovecraft understood power and powerlessness, awe and wonder, shame and failure, which are the essential elements of fear, terror; that he expressed them in the way he did just makes it a bit harder to grasp, but then any author has to be taken a bit on their own terms, right?