Friar: Humor’s a relief! It shows the truth.Every Laugh’s a window on the void—crack jokes with me, and by them crack the world’sfacade to show the bedlam underneath!…Rabelais: Humor is no chaos, but the verydrip and flow of everything, the stickyfluid carrying life up from stodgysoil to all these many moistening bodies…humor is our unity, […]
Category: Notes
Love Wisdom, say I, but not with what’s above!She’s a pretty girl, and ripe; lover herwith your body, your skin and bones, the gurgleof your gut; love her with your rutting heart.We’re all little pigs, rooting in the dirtafter something—the slut, the priest, the lord,magister, mother, student, tenant, doctor,bishop, king, pope—saints and sinnersall rooting in […]
Menus, by definition, promise to serve as guides for diners, presenting or at times clarifying food choices. But in Tastes and Traditions I have argued that menus are also—and even more so—strategic documents: they shape diners’ choices, guide diners towards particular decisions and enhance their dining experiences. … This exploration was driven by four central […]
I have some projects I have been wanting to start but first I’ll share a few books I’ve recently enjoyed, starting with this book. When I was homeschooling my kids I thoroughly enjoyed going through Holes by Louis Sachar with them. The writing was fun, plus the book lent itself to additional assignments tangential to […]
Radio Prague International dedicated a podcast to a short story by Karel Čapek titled “On the Decline of the Times.” Čapek’s Apocryphal Tales (1932) is a collection of short pieces such as this that he composed in the 1920s and early 1930s. The translation is by Vít Pohanka, who reads the story, and is followed […]
One can learn a lot about a society from its legends—and every society has them, whether it is King Alfred burning the cakes or George Washington vandalizing cherry trees. The protagonists of these legends often embody the qualities which a society believes its best members once had, and which they should strive to have again. […]
Most of the Athenians perished in the stone quarries of disease and evil fare, their daily rations being a pint of barley meal and a half-pint of water; but not a few were stolen away and sold into slavery, or succeeded in passing themselves off for serving men. These, when they were sold, were branded in the […]
The day was losing shape. It was bleeding at the edges, hemorrhaging purpose. Subchapter 1.4 of the SDP Manual: “Demoralization and Disintegration Procedures—Goals.” His life’s work: planting rumors of infidelities, rumors of sexual deviance, rumors of unknown origin. Origin unknown—that’s how thankless the job had been. Forged photographs depicting the subject in a questionable embrace with children, […]
Despite over 20 books published, mostly collections of essays and articles, I believe this to be Karl-Markus Gauß’s first book translated into English. Originally published in German in 2010, this book collects essays and musings of towns and districts in a part of Europe that remain off the beaten path. His wanderings along the stray […]
[Peter Case writing] One night I was over at Jeffrey [Lee Pierce]’s house, writing songs and drinking, and we decided to go get some more of everything up at Turner’s on the strip. We stumbled out to my car and headed to Sunset, where the light was red, so we made a right on the […]
From The Film Stage press release: We’re delighted to exclusively announce that KimStim has acquired all North American rights to the Quay Brothers’ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. A stop-motion/live-action masterpiece inspired by the works of Jewish-Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz, this personal passion project is their first feature since 2005’s The Piano Tuner of […]
The other day I wanted to look up something in Shakespeare in Swahililand by Edward Wilson-Lee but couldn’t find my copy of the book. Searching online, I stumbled across the podcast of Shakespeare Unlimited’s Episode 83: Shakespeare in Swahililand from October 2017, with Edward Wilson-Lee and Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o as guests. From the episode: Edward […]
The War on the Poor by Éric VuillardTranslation by Mark PolizzottiOther Press, 2020 I have been reading a few books about the Peasants’ War of 1524-25, a somewhat timely endeavor since we’re at the 500 year mark of the war’s culmination. I was going to post on one book I thought extremely well done and […]
This book tells the story of Cicero and his rise to prominence as a trial lawyer, from his debut in the courts in the late 80s BC to his death nearly four decades later. Cicero’s successful defense of many influential men accused of murder, extortion, and other crimes earned him wealth, favors to call in, […]
Phocion (402–318 BCE) won Athens’s highest public office by direct democratic election an unmatched forty-five times and was officially honored as a “Useful Citizen.” A student at Plato’s Academy, Phocion gained influence and power during a time when Athens faced multiple crises stemming from Macedonia’s emergence as an international power under Philip II and his […]
This book is decidedly not a work of scholarship, stubbornly not. It offers a holistic interpretation of Plato’s Symposium, as is conventional among scholarly books, but departs by presenting it as a series of musings, beginning with the puzzles of the dialogue’s various parts, long perplexing to me, and ascending therefrom in the direction of […]
The sky is our songand we begin with Zeus, for men cannot speakwithout giving Him names. The streets are filled,the sea and its harbors are flooded with Zeus,and in Him we move and have all our being.For we are His children, and He blesses our racewith beneficent signs, and wakes man to his work,directing his […]
This is a study of the study, the personal workspace where we think, read, and write. I argue for the following: Transhistorically, our inner lives are shaped by our interior spaces. Historically, the studiolo was created in the Renaissance. Conceptually, the studiolo is a pharmakon, a cure or poison for the soul. In its highest aspirations, the studiolo, as […]
Then began the abominable days of Paradise. Our Parents’ tireless, desperate efforts were devoted entirely to surviving in the midst of a Nature that was ceaselessly, furiously plotting their destruction. And Adam and Eve spent those days—which Semitic texts celebrate as delightful—always trembling, always whimpering always fleeing! The Earth was very much a work in […]
So griefs and various disasters shall grip them, as they mourn their destiny of no return, the requital for my ill-wedded violation. Not even those who jouyfully arrive home at last will light votive flames of sacrifice, paying thanks to Kerdylas, the Larynthian. [Zeus] (lines 1087-1092) The glory of the race of my grandfathers will be […]