Sign of the Times

Aah, the Good Old Greeks!

In the history of Western Culture, every chapter begins with the Greeks. This is true of logic, of science, of art, of politics, and it is equally true of natural theology; but it is not at once clear where one should look, in the past of ancient Greece, for the origins of our philosophical notion of God.

(Étienne Gilson, God and Philosophy)

B/W

"Thirteenth Rule. To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it."

13ª regla. Debemos siempre tener, para en todo acertar, que lo blanco que yo veo, creer que es negro, si la Iglesia hierárchica así lo determina.

(Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 365)

Iron and Sulphur

I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in love with it. If I had had the money, as Gide had, I would have published it at my own expense. If I had had the courage that Whitman had, I would have peddled it from door to door. Everybody I showed it to said it was terrible. I was urged to give up the idea of writing. I had to learn, as Balzac did, that one must write volumes before signing one's own name. I had to learn, as I soon did, that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, even if everybody in the world advises you against it, even if nobody believes in you. Perhaps one does it just because nobody believes; perhaps the real secret lies in making people believe. That the book was inadequate, faulty, bad, terrible, as they said, was only natural. I was attempting at the start what a man of genius would have undertaken only at the end. I wanted to say the last word at the beginning. It was absurd and pathetic. It was a crushing defeat, but it put iron in my backbone and sulphur in my blood. I knew at least what it was to fail. I knew what it was to attempt something big.

(Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn)

Night

Tender is the night... but here there is no light.

• Keats, John. "Ode to a Nightingale".
  
• Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. "Tender Is the Night".

Groups

[David Foster] Wallace transcended Philip Rahv's famous division of writers into "palefaces" (like Henry James and T.S. Eliot, who specialized in cultivated works rich in symbolism and allegory) and "redskins" (like Whitman and Dreiser, who embraced an earthier, more emotional naturalism). He also transcended Cyril Connolly's division of writers into "mandarins" (like Proust, who favored ornate, even byzantine prose) and "vernacular" stylists (like Hemingway, who leaned toward more conversational tropes).

[Michiko Kakutani, NYT and IHT]

Valhalla Cup

The 37th Ryder Cup at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky.

Valhalla (Old Norse Valhöll) in Norse mythology is the hall of slain warriors, who live there blissfully under the leadership of the god Odin.

Valhalla is depicted as a splendid palace, roofed with shields, where the warriors feast on the flesh of a boar slaughtered daily and made whole again each evening. They drink liquor that flows from the udders of a goat, and their sport is not golf but to fight one another every day.

Thus they will live until the Ragnarök (Doomsday), when they will march out the 540 doors of the palace to fight at the side of Odin against the giants.

When heroes fall in battle it is said that Odin needs them to strengthen his forces for the Ragnarök.

[Valhalla in Encyclopædia Britannica, Valhalla Golf Club, Ryder Cup 2008]

Who's to Blame?

Want to see who's to blame for the state of your paper?



[BuzzMachine by Jeff Jarvis]

Weakness

"For when I am weak, then I am strong."
(Paul of Tarsus, 2 Corinthians 12:10)

"Soft and weak overcome hard and strong."
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 36)

Meanwhile, in Comics-Land...

"I'm being let go. After 33 years at the Post."

(Investigative reporter Rick Redfern, fictional character from Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip)

The Daily Good Turn

Please tell Italian newsreaders that the pronunciation of brother is \ˈbrə-thər\ and NOT \ˈbrō-der\ (listen to the pronunciation here).

Banks...

MACHEATH: We will not keep the people waiting. Ladies and gentlemen, you see here the vanishing representative of a vanishing class. We bourgeois artisans, who work with honest jimmies on the cash boxes of small shopkeepers, are being swallowed up by large concerns backed by banks. What is a picklock to a bank share? What is the burgling of a bank to the founding of a bank? What is the murder of a man to the employment of a man? Fellow citizens, I herewith take my leave of you. I thank you all for coming. Some of you have been very close to me. That Jenny should have given me up astonishes me greatly. It is a clear proof that the world will always be the same. The concurrence of several unfortunate circumstances has brought about my fall. Good — I fall.

(Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera)

The Right Thing

Periodismo es difundir aquello que nadie quiere que se sepa… es decir lo justo.

Journalism is publishing what someone doesn't want us to know... it's saying the right thing.

(Argentinian journalist Horacio Verbitsky)

The Semicolon Story

Roberts, Sam. "Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location", The New York Times, Feb 18, 2008. [NYT]

Macy, Beth. "Notice What You Notice", American Journalism Review, Aug/Sept 2008. [AJR]

New York Times urban affairs reporter Sam Roberts describes himself as somewhat shy, not apt to approach strangers on subways. Like many journalists, he's more likely to wander around looking for an irresistible, quirky nugget that's just waiting for some wide-eyed reporter to come along and claim it.

Roberts was on the subway one day in February when he noticed a New York City Transit public service placard reminding subway riders not to leave their newspapers behind.

"Please put it in a trash can; that's good news for everyone," the sign prompted.

A semicolon on a subway sign? Roberts chuckled at the novelty of it. Then he took another critical leap:

Roberts noticed that he noticed it.

Back at the office, he made a few calls — to writer Frank McCourt, to linguist Noam Chomsky, to Lynne Truss, the author of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves." The Google machine helped him turn up Famous Semicolon Wielders in History. Roberts even tracked down the erudite author of the subway prose and found, much to his delight, a civil servant with a sense of humor.

"I thought I'd be lucky if a few retired English teachers read it," Roberts says. But readers loved the story which became the most e-mailed Times story that week.

P2P

Pope to Paris.

A letter from M. de Voltaire to Pope Benedict XIV:

Most blessed Father—

Your holiness will pardon the liberty taken by one of the lowest of the faithful, though a zealous admirer of virtue, of submitting to the head of the true religion this performance, written in opposition to the founder of a false and barbarous sect. To whom could I with more propriety inscribe a satire on the cruelty and errors of a false prophet, than to the vicar and representative of a God of truth and mercy? Your holiness will therefore give me leave to lay at your feet both the piece and the author of it, and humbly to request your protection of the one, and your benediction upon the other; in hopes of which, with the profoundest reverence, I kiss your sacred feet.

Paris, August 17, 1745

Voltaire

The reply of Pope Benedict XIV to M. de Voltaire:

Benedictus P. P. dilecto filio salutem & Apostolicam Benedictionem.

This day sevennight I was favored with your excellent tragedy of Mahomet, which I have read with great pleasure: Cardinal Passionei has likewise presented me with your fine poem of Fontenoy. Signor Leprotti this day repeated to me your distich made on my retreat.

Yesterday morning Cardinal Valenti gave me your letter of the 17th of August. Many are the obligation which you have conferred on me, for which I am greatly indebted to you, for all and every one of them; and I assure you that I have the highest esteem for your merit, which is so universally acknowledged.

The distich has been published at Rome, and objected to by one of the literati, who, in a public conversation, affirmed that there was a mistake in it with regard to the word hic, which is made short, whereas it ought to be always long. To which I replied, that it maybe either long or short; Virgil having made it short in this verse,

Solus hic inflexit sensus animumque labantem.

And long in another,

Hic finis Priami fatorum, hic exitus illum.

The answer I think was pretty full and convincing, considering that I have not looked into Virgil these fifty years. The cause, however, is properly yours; to your honor and sincerity, therefore, of which I have the highest opinion, I shall leave it to be defended against your opposers and mine, and here give you my apostolical benediction.

Datum Romae apud sanctam Mariam majorem die 19 Sept. Pontificatus nostri anno sexto.

A letter of thanks from M. de Voltaire to the Pope:

The features of your excellency are not better expressed on the medal you were so kind as to send me, than are the features of your mind in the letter which you honored me with: permit me to lay at your feet my sincerest acknowledgments: in points of literature, as well as in matters of more importance, your infallibility is not to be disputed: your excellency is much better versed in the Latin tongue than the Frenchman whom you condescended to correct: I am indeed astonished how you could so readily appeal to Virgil: the popes were always ranked amongst the most learned sovereigns, but amongst them I believe there never was one in whom so much learning and taste united.

Agnosco rerum dominos gentemque togatam.

If the Frenchman who found fault with the hic had known as much of Virgil as your excellency, he might have recollected a verse where hic is both long and short.

Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis.

I cannot help considering this verse as a happy presage of the favors conferred on me by your excellency. Thus might Rome cry out when Benedict XIV was raised to the papacy: with the utmost respect and gratitude I kiss your sacred feet.

Voltaire

Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète (Fanaticism, or Mohammed the Prophet), a play in five acts written by Voltaire in 1741, complete and unabridged translation by E. P. Dupont publishers (New York, 1901). [PDF]

Miss Piggy

No, not Sarah Palin!



...and today's NY Post front page:

Dark Areas

"It's very easy to sit here, in this room, and say 'racism is horrible'.

"But ask me the same thing if a Jamaican family moved next door with six children and they play reggae and rock music all day. Or if an estate agent comes to my house and tells me that because a Jamaican family has moved next door the value of my property has fallen through the floor. Ask me then!

"In all of us, in our children, and to maintain our comfort, our survival, if you scratch beneath the surface, many dark areas appear. Don't forget it."

(George Steiner, Telegraph)

A Writer's Life

After completing the novel, Uris discovered that the life of a writer is filled with frustration as well as triumph. Battle Cry was rejected by twelve publishers before finally seeing print and making the best-seller list.

(Kathleen Shine Cain, Leon Uris: A Critical Companion)

Don Abbondio

My couple of dozen readers can easily imagine what the poor man felt when he himself ran into the situation we have just described. The terror inspired by those hideous faces and ugly words, the threats of a great lord known never to threaten in vain, the sudden overthrow of a system of peaceful existence which had cost him so many years of study and patience, a predicament from which he could see no way out—all these troubled thoughts buzzed tumultuously together in Don Abbondio's bowed head as he walked along.

(Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed)

A Day of Hope

This happened in September, when in all Angola there was one person from Eastern Europe -- me.

(Ryszard Kapuscinski, Another Day of Life)

Angola, war-ravaged and impoverished but one of Africa's biggest oil producers, has its first parliamentary elections in 16 years today.

Two-thirds of Angolans live on $2 a day. The country remains toward the bottom end of the UN index that measures living standards and poverty, ranked 162 of 177 countries.

Ups and Downs

The Vancouver Sun:

At last -- a literary genius with a few kind words for journalists, instead of all those nasty people who call us hacks and muckrakers. Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez hailed journalism as the best profession in rare public comments in Monterrey, Mexico, this week. "There's no better job," said the 81-year-old who started out his career in newspapers. The author of the magical realism masterpieces One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera -- which was made into a film last year with Spanish star Javier Bardem -- described some of the ups and downs of the business. "We enjoy it when we find a jewel [of a story], but suffer like dogs when we see language used badly," said Garcia Marquez, who has lived in Mexico -- rather than his native Colombia -- for several decades. But wait. Garcia Marquez went on to lament the lack of time that modern journalists have to carry out their work. "When someone is under pressure, they don't have time to think, and the next day they say to themselves: 'It would have been better to do this.'" Well, that's true, but it sounds kind of depressing.

"It's better to write a book," he added. Thanks for the tip, Gabo.

Churnalism & Churnalists

Churnalism: bad journalism; journalists that churn out rewrites of press releases. [Journalism Glossary Wiki]

The Difference

You will see the difference between speculation and verification. You will see the difference between anonymity and accountability. And you will certainly see the difference between uncertain sourcing and certain sourcing. [Kelly McBride, Poynter]

And if you will not see the difference, you're blind.

How to Run a Newspaper

"Is that really your idea of how to run a newspaper?"

"I don't know how to run a newspaper, Mr Thatcher. I just try everything I can think of."



From the movie Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles.

Deprived People

And then they lost
the verse, divine verse and
lived in prose:

deprived people

without myth
or legend, without the sweets of
a mystic rose.

(Léon Bertoletti, Deprived People)

Smell of Ink

I buy a newspaper along my way. Sensational news. Little Lucienne's body has been found! Smell of ink, the paper crumbles between my fingers. The criminal has fled. The child was raped. They found her body, the fingers clawing at the mud. I roll the paper into a ball, my fingers clutching at the paper; smell of ink; my God how strongly things exist today.

(Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea)