Check out the amazingly talented and sweet Doreen & Co.: she often can be found in The Quarter performing on Royal Street next to Rouses not far from St. Louis Cathedral. See a ton of stuff on YouTube.
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 79
“I doubt whether any hack, under pressure, could pen such atrocious melodrama,” Ignatius observed. “Now stop all of this, you two degenerates. Exercise at least a little taste and decency.”
If I were a suburban developer, I would attach at least one set to the walls of every new yellow brick ranch style and Cape Cod split level. When the suburbanites grew tired of television and Ping-Pong or whatever they do in their little homes, they could chain one another up for a while. Everyone would love it. Wives would say, ‘My husband put me in chains last night. It was wonderful. Has your husband done that to you lately? And children would hurry eagerly home from school to their mothers who would be waiting to chain them. It would help the children to cultivate the imagination denied them by television and would appreciably cut down on the incidence of juvenile delinquency. When father came in from work, the whole family could grab him and chain him for being stupid enough to be working all day long to support them. Troublesome old relatives would be chained in the carport. Their hands would be released only once a month so they could sign over their Social Security checks. Manacles and chains could build a better life for all. I must give this some space in my notes and jottings.”
Neuroscience Is Ruining the Humanities
This in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Is there a novelist today of whom we can we say, as someone said of Dostoevsky, he “felt thought”? To read Dostoevsky, as Michael Dirda pointed out, is to encounter “souls chafed and lacerated by theories.”
Yes, Walker Percy
Recent arguments about God or creationism are old hat, despite the sense of urgency expressed by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Lord, how far removed these trumpeting denunciations are from the nuanced considerations of Paul Tillich, Hans Jonas, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
Cognition Beyond the Brain
H/T to Marge Doyle
Propriety and Prosperity: Coming Soon
The Moviegoer – quotes and extracts – 9
I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see. Do not misunderstand me. I am no do-gooding Jose Ferrer going around with a little whistle to make people happy. Such do-gooders do not really want to listen, are not really selfish like me; they are being nice fellows and boring themselves to death, and their listeners are not really cheered up. Show me a nice Jose cheering up an old lady and I’ll show you two people existing in despair. My mother often told me to be unselfish, but I have become suspicious of the advice. No, I do it for my own selfish reasons. If I did not talk to the theater owner or the ticket seller, I should be lost, cut loose metaphysically speaking. I should be seeing one copy of a film which might be shown anywhere and at any time. There is a danger of slipping clean out of space and time. It is possible to become a ghost and not know whether one is in downtown Loews in Denver or suburban Bijou in Jacksonville. So it was with me.
EPISTEME 11:4
James Booker’s Goodnight Sweetheart
Goodbye Walker Percy
James Kurth and the Fate of Western Civilization
My chum Corey Abel’s usual elegance and eloquence. Kurth, by the way, is one of the great performers. Here is a free author’s copy.
Socrates pointed out that self-satisfaction is the death of philosophy. To pursue wisdom one must desire it. But to desire something, one has to understand not only its appeal but also one’s lack of it. We do not seek what we believe we already possess. Hobbes saw, like Socrates, that a major affliction of mankind was that everyone considers himself wise. So it is today. Only a brave few welcome bracing criticism and challenges to ideés reçus.
For decades Kurth has been a gadfly to the academic establishment and the cultural leadership of the United States, reminding them of unfashionable truths, and making the case to think fearlessly about the gravest problems facing the United States and Western powers generally.
