Here’s my review of Cory MacLauchlin’s Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces.
Hammer of the Gods
Listening again to the O2 concert it has became clearer than ever that Led Zep’s sound is of Wagnerian proportions, dragging you through the Mississippi delta up to Norse and Celtic mythology and much in between and then back down to the delta.
Here are two decent enough interviews — the first is with Jimmy “biological research” Page (what a career, what a life!); the second with the three original members. They articulate, insofar as one can, what made them so musically special, as a group that is. The mysticality of the O2 performance is almost palpable devoid of some of the tiresome pomposity that marred The Song Remains the Same some thirty years earlier.
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 54
Beloved Myrna:
I have received your offensive communication. Do you seriously think that I am interested in your tawdry encounters with such sub-humans as folk singers? In every letter of yours I seem to find some reference to the sleaziness of your personal life. Please confine yourself to discussing issues and such; thereby you will at least avoid obscenity and offense.
On the dark night of that dubious lecture, the sole member of your audience will probably be some desperately lonely old male librarian who saw a light in the window of the lecture hall and hopefully came in to escape the cold and the horrors of his personal hell. There in the hall, his stooped figure sitting alone before the podium, your nasal voice echoing among the empty chairs and hammering boredom, confusion, and sexual reference deeper and deeper into the poor wretch’s bald skull, confounded to the point of hysteria, he will doubtlessly exhibit himself, waving his crabbed organ like a club in despair against the grim sound that drones on and on over his head.
The comments upon my personal life were uncalled for and revealed a shocking lack of taste and decency.
Actually, my personal life has undergone a metamorphosis: I am currently connected in a most vital manner with the food merchandizing industry, and therefore I doubt quite seriously whether I shall have much time in the future to correspond with you.
Busily,
Ignatius
(p. 158).
Karl Ove Knausgaard
A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 53
Have you abandoned your project to form a political party or nominate a candidate for president by divine right? I remember that when I finally met you and challenged your political apathy, you came up with this idea. I knew that it was a reactionary project, but it at least showed that you were developing some political consciousness. Please write to me about the matter. I am very concerned. We need a three-party system in this country, and I think that day by day the fascists are growing in strength. This Divine Right Party is the sort of fringe-group scheme that would syphon off a large part of the fascist support (p. 157).
David Malet Armstrong
My chum Andrew Irvine has a terrific piece “David Armstrong and Australian Materialism” along with a Reader’s Guide in the latest issue of Quadrant. Andrew mentions that Armstrong attended Oakeshott’s History of Political Thought lectures earlier on his career when he had a stint at Birkbeck. I’d forgotten this unlikely connection: Armstrong had mentioned this to me in the early days of setting up the MOA.
Also in this issue there is a heretofore unpublished tribute to DMA by David Stove.
Latest issue of C+T
Paul Bloom on The War on Reason
Paul Bloom in The Atlantic
For the most part, I’m on the side of the neuroscientists and social psychologists—no surprise, given that I’m a psychologist myself. Work in fields such as computational cognitive science, behavioral genetics, and social neuroscience has yielded great insights about human nature. I do worry, though, that many of my colleagues have radically overstated the implications of their findings. The genetic you and the neural you aren’t alternatives to the conscious you. They are its foundations.
Knowing that we are physical beings doesn’t tell us much. The interesting question is what sort of physical beings we are.
Picking Holes in the Concept of Natural Selection
Evan Thompson reviews two of the most controversial books of recent years:
What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel.
Dennett: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers
This was supposedly published on the 12th . . . now the 14th. I have two long reviews in this collection, items 48 and 104.
manwithoutqualities 