Daily Office:
Friday, 20 August 2010
Matins
¶ Colm Tóibín’s review of The Pope Is Not Gay is an eloquent discussion of the Church’s problem, not so much with pedophilia as with power as well as with homosexuality. As we read it, we began to think that the scandal of priestly abuse is coming to light now, and not at some other time, because it has only just ceased to be a double crime. If homosexual acts as such are no longer condemned by society, then that exposes the other half of the act — forcing minors to engage in them — as a crime with only one perpetrator, not two. As always, Mr Tóibín writes with wry generosity of spirit. (LRB)
Lauds
¶ Peter Campbell writes about the portrait art of Alice Neel so eloquently that we may just buy the catalogue of the exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. (LRB)
Prime
¶ The most obvious way in which the government can ease unemployment is to facilitate small-business credit with grants to banks that then make loans that, at first blush, sound vaguely sub-prime, but that wind up in paychecks, not worthless assets. Sounds great all round, and there’s a generous piece of legislation in the Congress. Whose against it? Big Oil. The money to fund the grants will come from the repeal of a discreditable tax boondoggle. Shamelessly, Big Oil has found cerebral prostitutes to argue plausibly that the repeal with “cost jobs.” Felix Salmon attacks.
Tierce
¶ At Science Not Fiction, Kyle Munkittrick retails the colorful analogy that Johns Hopkins neuroscientist David Linden spins, between the layered history of our brains’ origins and an ice cream cone with three scoops. Lest this comparison sounds appetizingly luxurious, Professor Linden reminds us that evolution is “the ultimate tinkerer and cheapskate.” That ice cream has been previously owned — by lizards, mice, and apes. The cone? It’s a jellyfish. As the ancient philosophers understood so well, we fall in love because our brains are poorly designed.
Sext
¶ The sixteenth edition of Chicago Manual of Style is out, and principal reviser Russell David Harper talks about it with Carol Saller at her blog, The Subversive Copy Editor. One nugget shone particularly brightly for us, because it seems to glint with a new understanding of authority.
Nones
¶ At the NYRBlog, Ahmed Rashid raises the topic that has worried us most about the aftermath of the flooding in Pakistan: the creation of ideal conditions for a fundamental Islamist takeover of significant parts of the country — if, indeed, not the whole. (More than religion would be at stake; a new regime would almost certainly dissolve the extensive feudal holdings of farmland.) We agree that, without super-fast responses by the West and the government that it supports, Pakistan as we know it is doomed.
Vespers
¶ How richly just it will be if David Markson’s place in the literary firmament is nailed by the dispersal of his personal library at the Strand, a posthumous wake-up call unlike any other. Colin Marshall, already an admirer, takes us through Markson’s work as it progresses from ostensible (but intelligent) pulp to anti-fiction, and makes it clear that, while it is easy to read, it is easy to read only for erudite readers. It seems that the reading of all those books at the Strand was composted into the writing.
Compline
¶ We figured that Maud Newton was taking a summer break, but, no: her father-in-law, with whom she was close despite many ideological differences, died in June, a few chapters short of completing a book on Macbeth. Never have we read an “I’m back” blog entry that opened so many windows. It’s not long, either.
Have a Look
¶ $500,000 will buy you the world’s largest record collection. The seller, 88 year-old Murray Gershenz, wants to go into character acting full-time. (LA Times; via MetaFilter)
¶ Ryan Freitas’s 35 Life Lessons. (via The Morning News)