Orwell on Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon”

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That Wendell Berry takes on the campus commissars (and their complicitous willingly martyred cannon-fodder individual manqué bidders) offers some inkling of hope for preserving liberality. But I fear we are just entering the beginnings of a Darkness at Noon moment — the prospect of a total eclipse is immanent. Check out Orwell’s article on Koestler’s Darkness at Noon reprinted in The New Statesman.

If the passion for truthfulness is merely controlled and stilled without being satisfied, it will kill the activities it is supposed to support. This may be one of the reasons why, at the present time, the study of the humanities runs a risk of sliding from professional seriousness, through professionalization, to a finally disenchanted careerism — Williams

If forgetting history is now the purpose of higher education, I may be taking some risk by reminding the flagship censors of the persecution of Boris Pasternak by Soviet officials when Dr. Zhivago was published in the West and awarded the Nobel Prize. I will go further into danger and remind them also that Thomas Merton wrote a brilliant appreciation of that novel and its author. Among much else of value Merton said this: “It is characteristic of the singular logic of Stalinist-Marxism that when it incorrectly diagnoses some phenomenon as ‘political,’ it corrects the error by forcing the thing to become political” — Berry

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts — Russell

Those who say that all historical accounts are ideological constructs (which is one version of the idea that there is really no historical truth) rely on some story which must itself claim historical truth — Williams

Pride and Profit: The Intersection of Jane Austen and Adam Smith

Jane Austen

Coming soon . . .

Pride and Profit explores the ways in which Austen’s novels reflect Smith’s ideas. More than this, they provide colorful illustrations of Smith’s ideas on self-command, prudence, benevolence, justice, and impartiality as well as vanity, pride, and greed.

A freely available symposium on Jack Russell Weinstein’s Adam Smith’s Pluralism: Rationality, Education And The Moral Sentiments available here.

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Maggot Brain

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George Clinton famously told Hazel to play “like your momma had just died,” and the resulting evocation of melancholy and sorrow doesn’t merely rival Jimi Hendrix’s work, but arguably bests a lot of it.  Accompanied by another softer guitar figure providing gentle rhythm for the piece, the end result is simply fantastic, an emotional apocalypse of sound. — AllMusic

Ok, so all guitarists worth their salt have “technical tricks” and “customization” but this really is unusual.

Speaking of acid, who recalls The Teardrop Explodes? Though tinged with that awful wimpy early 80s English sound, it’s the brass and the Acid King (Julian Cope) that lifts it. “Bless my cotton socks I’m in the news” must rate as one of the most suitable slogans for the now fuckwits who are either on TV or who aspire to be on it.

Theology + Geometry: A Gentleman’s Worldview 3

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“The Semiotics of Footwear” by Gustav Temple and Vic Darkwood in The Chap Almanac.

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The Oxford: As eloquent as a letter of recommendation from the Marquis de Sade, the Oxford singles a man out as a fellow worth serious consideration. A foot clad in well-polished and immaculately-crafted leather acts as a passport to the realms of the sublime.

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The Trainer: What vile barbarism is afoot here? The perfidious ailments known as “youth” and “sport” can so damage a fellow’s critical faculties that cladding one’s feet in tawdry plastic and rubber presents itself as a perfectly reasonable dress option. It is not.

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The Brogue: If Dionysus were to be incarnated as an Englishman he would undoubtedly favour the brogue as a fitting accompaniment to his robust lifestyle. Ideally suited to outdoor activities such as dashing about in Arcadian glades in hot pursuit of nymphs and dryads.

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The Brothel Creeper: Favoured by crazed ragamuffins addicted to Thunderbird wine, duck’s bottoms and rock ‘n roll, these crepe-sided absurdities are the calling-card of callow and virgin youth. A mature man attends his assignations at the bordello with certitude and pride.

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The Loafer: Despite its promising name, the Loafer is chiefly the domain of hard-working middle-management who signify their leisure hours through the sickly cult of the tassel. A man skilled in the art of lassitude has no need of shoes that advertise the fact.

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The Sandal: These flimsy artifacts may seem perfectly acceptable to antipodean back-packers fundamentalist Christians and hirsute environmentalists, but in truth they are only suitable for wear in the hotter colonies. They certainly have no place north of Gibraltar.

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The Slipper: Langour is the badge of all right-thinking men, and slipper-usage (in conjunction with a brocade dressing gown) is a daily staple. They should not, however, be worn for dining — such a practice marks the wearer out as either bourgeois or dangerously eccentric.

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The Winkle-Picker: Though a trifle outré, this pointy-nosed creation can, if accompanied by acerbic wit, wads of cash and a 5000-acre estate in Hampshire, single its wearer out as a man of charming unconventionality and creative genius.

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The Exotique: The only acceptable mode of dress for a night in with one’s hookah and friends from North Africa, this festive adornment takes up where the slipper leaves off. Exceptionally effective in establishing one’s decadent credentials when worn during business meetings.

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The Over-Designed: Concepts such as “fashion” and “designer labels” have no place in the wardrobe of a gentleman. A designer who claims to have “reinvented the concept of the shoe” is a charlatan and singles his customers out as gullible or, even worse, nouveau riche.

Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain

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Patricia Churchland talking at the very excellent Santa Fe Institute.

Army ants ‘mind the gap’ efficiently

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BBC popular write up of Simon Garnier’s co-authored Army ants dynamically adjust living bridges in response to a cost–benefit trade-off.

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Walker Percy Wednesday 60

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When I was in the open ward and working on staff, he was very good to me. He immediately saw what I was getting at and helped me wire up my first lapsometer, read my article and refused to take credit as coauthor. “Too metaphysical for me,” he said politely, knocking out his briar. “I’ll stick to old-fashioned tumors and hemorrhages”— and off he went humping it down the hall squee-gee.

But we were always wary of each other. Our eyes never quite met. It was as if there was something between us, a shared secret, an unmentionable common past, an unacknowledged kinship. We were somehow onto each other. He recognized my Southern trick of using manners and even madness guilefully and for one’s own ends. I was onto his trick of covering up Alabama hambone with brave old Amherst and humping it like a Brooklyn interne. What is more, he knew that I knew and I knew that he knew. We were like two Jews who have changed their names.

. . .

Doctors, you may know, have a somewhat retarded sense of humor. In medical school we dropped fingers and ears from cadavers on pedestrians. Older doctors write doggerel and satirical verse. When I was a young man, every conservative proctologist in town had a cartoon in his office showing a jackass kicking up his heels and farting a smoke ring: “LBJ has spoken!”

. . .

(No idle speculation this: once, before Colley and I fell out, I measured his pineal region. He had good readings at layer I, little or nothing at layer II. Diagnosis: a self successfully playing at being a self that is not itself.

 

Is Japan Finally Coming to Terms With Mishima?

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Mishima once famously told his wife that “even if I am not immediately understood, it’s OK because I’ll be understood by the Japan of 50 or 100 years time.”

The short answer according to the very excellent Mishima scholar Damian Flanagan is “no”. Today marks the 45th anniversary of Mishima’s death. Speaking of which see Yourcenar’s thoughts on Mishima (she’s a French translator) and in one of the sections of the documentary about her, she talks about what a profound affect seeing Mishima’s head was) and she expresses her distaste for Schrader’s bio-pic.

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