John Lennon’s letters

The Los Angeles Times reports that in 2012 Little, Brown will publish a book of John Lennon’s letters, edited by Beatles biographer Hunter Davies. From the publisher’s announcement:

Pen and ink were his medium. John wrote letters and postcards all of his life; to his friends, family, strangers, newspapers, organisations, lawyers and the laundry — most of which were funny, informative, campaigning, wise, mad, poetic, anguished and sometimes heartbreaking. . . . many of the letters are reproduced as they were, in his handwriting or typing, plus the odd cartoon or doodle.

[I haven’t thought of Hunter Davies in years. Anyone else remember this book?]

Virgil out of context

Caroline Alexander on the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and a line from Virgil:

The impulse to turn to time-hallowed texts, like the classics or the Bible, is itself time-hallowed. In the face of powerful emotions, our own words may seem hollow and inadequate, while the confirmation that people in the past felt as we now feel holds solace. And the language of poets and great thinkers can be in itself ennobling.

But not in this case. Anyone troubling to take even a cursory glance at the quotation’s context will find the choice offers neither instruction nor solace.

Out of Context (New York Times)

Roger Ebert on Donald Trump

From a post on wealth in America:

[T]he most visible plutocrat in America is Donald Trump, a man who has made a fetish of his power. What kind of sick mind conceives of a television show built on suspense about which “contestant” he will “fire” next? What sort of masochism builds his viewership? Sadly, I suspect it is based on viewers who identify with Trump, and envy his power over his victims. Don’t viewers understand they are the ones being fired in today’s America?

The One-Percenters (Chicago Sun-Times)

Antique Packaging

From Josep Maria Garrofé, Antique Packaging (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2008).

Antique Packaging is a book of photographs of old cardboard boxes. Francesc Serra found these boxes, which now form a collection at the Spanish packaging firm Tribu-3. Is Serra a founder of the firm? Does he work there? The book does not explain. I like this sentence from an endnote about Sr. Serra: “There is no way he will reveal to us where he has found the boxes and how.”

My son Ben gave me this beautiful book. Thanks, Ben!

Van Dyke Parks, “the epic opportunity”

The question: whether he plans more live performances. The answer, or part of it:

I have lived through McCarthyism, through riots with race at the core. I have seen dark times, but nothing to match the complacency, materialism, triviality, and Stone Age beliefs that dominate our current state of affairs. So I turn to the epic opportunity — the song form. Songs interest me that much.

The 405 Interview (The 405)

In Chicago last year, Parks also spoke of the work of the songwriter as “epic.”

A related post
A new Van Dyke Parks project

Digital nostalgia

The New York Times reports on the return of the Commodore 64. Says Commodore president and chief executive Barry Altman,

“There are a lot of really young computer users who want to own a retro-looking computer. And of course there are those 30- to 40-year-olds who owned the original Commodore 64 and want the nostalgia of their first machine.”

From the Commodore website:

Commodore OS 1.0, along with emulation functionality and classic game package, will be mailed to purchasers when available. In the meantime, units come with the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS operating system on CD ready to install. Don’t forget that the new Commodore 64 is a fully functional PC compatible, so you can even install and use the latest versions of Windows if you really feel you need to.

That’s a new one: the operating system is in the mail.

A related post
Digital natives and typewriters

A “spect-op”

In the world of Infinite Jest, ninety-four percent of all entertainment is consumed at home:

Hence the new millennium’s passion for standing live witness to things. A whole sub-rosa schedule of public spectation opportunities, “spect-ops,” the priceless chance to be part of a live crowd, watching. Thus the Gapers’ Blocks at traffic accidents, sewer-gas explosions, muggings, purse-snatchings, the occasional Empire W.D.V. with an incomplete vector splatting into North Shore suburbs and planned communities and people leaving their front doors agape in their rush to get out and mill around and spectate at the circle of impacted waste drawing sober and studious crowds, milling in rings around the impact, earnestly comparing mental notes on just what it is they all see.

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996).

On Monday, life in an English town came to a halt as crowds gathered to look at an object floating in a river.

Mystery object brings town to standstill (Bridgwater Mercury, via Boing Boing)

[W.D.V.: Waste Displacement Vehicle. E.W.D. vehicles send American garbage flying into Canada. Yes, it’s part of a new world order.]

Words of the day: pith, gist

I started wondering about the word pith yesterday, which I associate with essences and concision. I’m suprised to discover that the word comes to us from plant life:

I think I should have known that. I think I should have also known that a pith helmet is made of the stuff.

Pith made me wonder about gist: does it too have a literal referent in nature? Maybe in geology? Nope:

I remember hearing the word gist often in kidhood. “I’ll give you the gist of it,” my dad would say. (He still does.) Gist and pith go together in my mind because of a sentence in Ezra Pound’s ABC of Reading (1934):

A Japanese student in America, on being asked the difference between prose and poetry, said: Poetry consists of gists and piths.

This post too.

[Definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary.]

Elayne Clift on academic entitlement

Adjunct faculty member Elayne Clift ponders academic entitlement after a semester of “appallingly poor papers and presentations”:

As the semester continued, I slipped further into despair. . . . [W]hy couldn't they write in sentences? Why were they devoid of originality, analytical ability, intellectual curiosity? Why were they accosting me with hostile e-mails when I pointed out unsubstantiated generalizations, hyperbolic assumptions, ungrounded polemics, sourcing omissions, and possible plagiarism?

From Students, a Misplaced Sense of Entitlement (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Here’s the kicker: she was teaching a graduate class.

A related post
AE (academic entitlement)

“Probability” (xkcd)

Today’s xkcd: “Probability.”