Who started this damn story in the first place???
The redoubtable Ricky Riccardi looks deeper. His conclusion: apocryphal!
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 75
“Oh, my God!” Ignatius stared at what he saw. Once in high school someone had shown him a pornographic photograph, and he had collapsed against a water cooler, injuring his ear. This photograph was far superior. A nude woman was sitting on the edge of a desk next to a globe of the world. The suggested onanism with the piece of chalk intrigued Ignatius. Her face was hidden behind a large book. While George evaded indifferent slaps from the unoccupied paw, Ignatius scrutinized the title on the cover of the book: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. “Do I believe what I am seeing? What brilliance. What taste. Good grief.”
“Give that back,” George pleaded.
“This one is mine,” Ignatius gloated, pocketing the top card. He handed the torn package back to George and looked at the piece of torn wrapping between his fingers. There was an address on it. He pocketed that, too. “Where in the world did you get these? Who is this brilliant woman?”
“None of your business.”
“I see. A secret operation.” Ignatius thought of the address on the piece of paper. He would do his own investigating. Some destitute woman intellectual was doing anything for a dollar. Her worldview must be quite incisive, if her reading material were any guide. It could be that she was in the same situation as the Working Boy, a seer and philosopher cast into a hostile century by forces beyond her control. Ignatius must meet her. She might have some new and valuable insights. “Well, in spite of my misgivings, I shall make my cart available to you. However, you must watch the cart this afternoon. I have a rather urgent appointment.”
Review of Penn State Oakeshott Companion
Terry Nardin reviews the “Companion.” Pleased to see Terry take on John Kekes’ shrill hatched-job.
Nor is one surprised to learn that the chapter provoked an angry response from a reviewer of the Companion, who reproaches Grant for writing and the editors for publishing it. The implication is that there is no place for a biographical chapter in a volume of this kind, or that such a chapter should stay away from love, or at least from sex, which are irrelevant to a thinker’s “work.” Such judgments would be hard to defend. There is a connection between life and work, even though the reviewer missed it.
Leonard Liggio (1933-2014)
A personal obit in Forbes. (I met Leonard in Portsmouth, NH)
Silent Risk
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has freely made available a collection of his lectures.
How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness
Russ Roberts’ latest getting some high-profile press, and endorsed by some top-notch names including the redoubtable Nassim Taleb. Here is an extended interview with Reason. On this general approach to Smith see this forthcoming collection.
Adam Smith, didn’t think the pursuit of wealth was a very good idea, thought it was corrosive, thought it was bad for you, thought ambition was bad for you, thought the pursuit of fame would destroy your character and your happiness, your serenity, your tranquility.
Can Government Be Self-Organized?
A new co-authored paper by the very versatile Tom Froese.
The model is in agreement with the traditional assumption that collective action is faced by serious problems without centralized hierarchical control, but it also clearly shows that spontaneous cooperation is feasible without it. At least in principle, there is no necessity to assume the existence of a lineage of powerful rulers to explain the origins of Teotihuacan.
The Moviegoer – quotes and extracts – 6
“I no longer pretend to understand the world.” She is shaking her head yet still smiling her sweet menacing smile. “The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears. The things we hold dear are reviled and spat upon.” She nods toward Prytania Street. “It’s an interesting age you will live in—though I can’t say I’m sorry to miss it. But it should be quite a sight, the going under of the evening land. That’s us all right. And I can tell you, my young friend, it is evening. It is very late.”
For her too the fabric is dissolving, but for her even the dissolving makes sense. She understands the chaos to come. It seems so plain when I see it through her eyes. My duty in life is simple. I go to medical school. I live a long useful life serving my fellowman. What’s wrong with this? All I have to do is remember it.
“—you have too good a mind to throw away. I don’t quite know what we’re doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fiber of my being. A man must live by his lights and do what little he can and do it as best he can. In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.”
She is right. I will say yes. I will say yes even though I do not really know what she is talking about.
But I hear myself saying: “As a matter of fact I was planning to leave Gentilly soon, but for a different reason. There is something—” I stop. My idea of a search seems absurd.”
“To my surprise this lame reply is welcomed by my aunt.
“Of course!” she cries. “You’re doing something every man used to do. When your father finished college, he had his Wanderjahr, a fine year’s ramble up the Rhine and down the Loire, with a pretty girl on one arm and a good comrade on the other. What happened to you when you finished college? War. And I’m so proud of you for that. But that’s enough to take it out of any man.”
Wanderjahr. My heart sinks. We do not understand each other after all. If I thought I’d spent the last four years as a Wanderjahr, before “settling down,” I’d shoot myself on the spot.
“How do you mean, take it out of me?”
“Your scientific calling, your love of books and music. Don’t you remember how we used to talk—on the long winter evenings when Jules would go to bed and Kate would go dancing, how we used to talk! We tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. Don’t you remember discovering Euripides and Jean-Christophe?”
“You discovered them for me. It was always through you that—”All at once I am sleepy. It requires an effort to put one foot in front of the other. Fortunately my aunt decides to sit down. I wipe off an iron bench with my handkerchief and we sit, still arm in arm. She gives me a pat.”
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 74
Unaware that he was being trailed, Ignatius pushed his cart against the traffic down St. Charles toward the Quarter. He had stayed up so late the night before working on his lecture for the kickoff rally that he hadn’t been able to move from his yellowed sheets until almost noon, and then it had only been his mother’s violent pounding and screaming that had awakened him. Now that he was out on the streets, he had a problem. Today the sophisticated comedy was opening at the RKO Orpheum. He had been able to bleed ten cents out of his mother for carfare home, although she had even begrudged him that. Somehow he had to sell five or six hot dogs quickly, park the wagon somewhere, and get to that theater so that his disbelieving eyes could drink in every blasphemous technicolored moment.
Classic Mint Julep Recipe
After the first long swallow — really a slow and noiseless suck, because the thick crushed ice comes against your teeth and the ice must be kept out and the liquor let in — Cap Mac would say: “Very fine, Camille, you make the best julep in the world.” She probably did. Certainly her juleps had nothing in common with those hybrid concoctions one buys in bars the world over under that name. It would have been sacrilege to add lemon, or a slice of orange or of pineapple, or one of those wretched maraschino cherries. First you needed excellent bourbon whisky; rye or Scotch would not do at all. Then you put half an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampened it with water. Next, very quickly — and here was the trick in the procedure — you crushed your ice, actually powdered it, preferably in a towel with a wooden mallet, so quickly that it remained dry, and, slipping two sprigs of fresh mint against the inside of the glass, you crammed the ice in right to the brim, packing it with your hand. Last you filled the glass, which apparently had no room left for anything else, with bourbon, the older the better, and grated a bit of nutmeg on the top. The glass immediately frosted and you settled back in your chair for half an hour of sedate cumulative bliss. Although you stirred the sugar at the bottom, it never all melted, therefore at the end of the half hour there was left a delicious mess of ice and mint and whisky which a small boy was allowed to consume with calm rapture.
— William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee, pp. 65-66.
