Born on this day — the radical individualist that was FZ. Look out for the forthcoming Who the Fuck is Frank Zappa? movie and also The Bizarre World Of Frank Zappa hologram tour. Also well-worth a read is Barry Miles’ excellent biography reviewed by the redoubtable Camille Paglia in the NYT.
Born on this day. Toole’s life and times is brilliantly set out in this bio on which a forthcoming bio-pic is being based. I also have an edited volume in the works dealing with several aspects of the novel and that should be published next summer or autumn.
Born on this day: here are his SEP and IEP entries. Oddly enough neither lists Noël O’Sullivan’s nice little book, an overview by Max Teichmann here.
“Catholic freethinker” was the playful label Bertrand Russell affixed to George Santayana, and a back-handed tribute to the readiness of the Spanish-American to examine, respectfully, many other systems of thought – Eastern as well as Western – systems quite different from his own Catholic position. And an equal readiness to examine Catholic doctrine itself, its philosophy, its history and his own religious point of view.
The very excellent Josh Rust won the publisher’s prize for his chapter.
For those who’ve never read that most subtle, cultivated, humane and refined of minds Michael Oakeshott’s concerns resonate as deeply as ever. For the novice, I’d recommend his mid-career Rationalism in Politics, a most elegant collection of essays. A more difficult, but for me the vital underpinning cutting across all his work, is his equally elegant and bold young man’s Experience and its Modes, a book that would easily feature on a list of my favourite philosophical/literary works. Oakeshott’s magnum opus, On Human Conduct, is a late dense and difficult book but well worth the effort, once one has assimilated the aforementioned two titles. Other very accessible works include On History and Other Essays and The Voice of Liberal Learning, the latter especially salient given the “grievance studies” bile that has now fully erupted within academia but which has been percolating for at least a generation. If one is looking for some guides, below are two mutually complementary “companions” and an online conspectus. Imprint Academic has the largest holding of posthumously published Oakeshottiana and the largest holding of secondary literature. If you’ve never heard Oakeshott speak, here is a very rare 13 minute BBC recording from 1948: The University Programme: Arts – Philosophy of History.
Fernand Gobet has a new book out that, as a (very rusty) chess player, has piqued my interest. As a cognitive scientist and a highly skilled player himself, there are few (if any) better placed than Fernand to write on this topic. Visitors to this site might recall Fernand’s excellent essay on Herb Simon. Here is Fernand’s interview with Chess Life. I’d say that the greatest treatment of chess in literature still falls to Zweig’s The Royal Game (the title translation that I’m most familiar with) which deserves another read in tandem with Fernand’s new book: Zweig is mentioned in Fernand’s book below. I especially appreciated Fernand’s devoting some time to New Orleans’ very own Paul Morphy.
Jonathan Pie’s (Tom Walker) brutal and delicious scathing of regressives of all stripes but his full on excoriation (from around 36:30) is reserved for the regressive Left — check it out. (If this is blocked, it’s available here, at least for the time being).
manwithoutqualities 