Early Works shows Alice Notley feeling her way past the dominant aesthetics of her period – she was a key figure in the downtown New York poetry scene before moving to Paris in 1992 – and discovering a distinct, feminist voice. The poems insist that a woman of honour should be prepared to die for ‘the right to frivolity’. Notley is ‘a girl Samson in a pink/prom dress’, ready to pull down the temples of the avant-garde.
Reading
Although Adam Elsheimer provided miniatures for private and privileged delectation, his work enjoyed an enormous influence, partly because of his close association with a great engraver, Hendrick Goudt, but also because his inventions possess a certain monumentality and indeed often grow larger in recollection.
Macaulay seems to have belonged to what revisionist historians now refer to as the Christian Enlightenment, a movement that stood apart from the more familiar Enlightenment of sceptical or deistic philosophes. The term ‘enlightened’ is used approvingly in Macaulay’s writings, but her radicalism – so daringly evident in political questions – did not extend to matters of religious belief.
In Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan’s first book, the choice presented to bisexual women – surrender to the world’s expectations and get with a man, or follow your desires and risk forfeiting power and ‘normality’ – is the central moral issue. There is never any real doubt that the protagonist, Ava, will eventually choose to ignore the world’s expectations. In The Happy Couple there’s more suspense, and more confusion.
The sheer force of the memories exacted an impressive precision and solidity in Coleman’s expression. And she must have felt the electricity of her novel, as she was writing it, in both directions: channelling the truth of an extraordinary experience, and at the same time satisfying a radical modernist aesthetic, turning the sane world upside down and making out of her ‘madness’ a new literature.
‘What do you do?’ a midwife asked as she helped me to the bathroom. We were in the postnatal ward for people who have had a bad time of it. ‘I’m a historian of ... all this,’ I answered, and gestured vaguely at the wreckage of the ward. Two and a half years on, I can say, expertly, continently: between the 16th and the 18th century, midwifery was transformed.
The good cop, bad cop routine of the digital age.
Ulysses is haunted by the story of its own composition. As Joyce famously put it, ‘I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.’ The annotators point out, however, that it is ‘very likely that Joyce never said this’.
The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 17 (Friday 25 August 2023)
Only the Greek junta in 1969 and Russia last year have left the European Convention on Human Rights – Russia went shortly before it was to be expelled for invading Ukraine. No democratic country has sought to do so.
Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 17 (Friday 25 August 2023)
J.L. Austin was fascinated by many details of language for their own sake, and in 1947 brought together a group of philosophy dons, mostly younger than himself, to pursue these investigations collectively. They met on Saturday mornings during term, and while this group brought to life Austin’s ideal of philosophy as a co-operative enterprise, he controlled the agenda and proceedings, as he had with the Martians during the war.
Voltaire regarded the short tale as a duel with the reader, and a form of complicity. He went out of his way to disparage the ‘littleness’ of the form, and to ridicule all fiction, as fables without a philosophy. But he also wanted to write stories, and to make storytelling respectable.
The main objection to Georges Seurat’s Nude with Blonde Hair – what makes it ‘one of the most puzzling works in the collection’ – is its ‘poor quality’. But the argument that it isn’t by Seurat – even when young and in a formative stage of his career, because Seurat never painted anything so bad – is circular. Félix Fénéon knew him. My bet is that it’s genuine.
Early Works shows Alice Notley feeling her way past the dominant aesthetics of her period – she was a key figure in the downtown New York poetry scene before moving to Paris in 1992 – and discovering a distinct, feminist voice. The poems insist that a woman of honour should be prepared to die for ‘the right to frivolity’. Notley is ‘a girl Samson in a pink/prom dress’, ready to pull down the temples of the avant-garde.
The point of highlighting the vertiginous degree of uncertainty is that we might not be making nearly as big a deal of climate change as we should. We are, as a result, tragically under-prepared for the possibility of really bad outcomes, yet at the same time far too confident in our level of preparation.
Henry Alfred Kissinger turned 100 on May 27th of this year. Once a teenage refugee from Nazi Germany, for many decades an adviser to presidents, and an avatar of American realpolitik, he’s managed to reach the century mark while still evidently retaining all his marbles. That those marbles remain hard and cold is no surprise. A couple of months after that hundredth birthday, he traveled to China, as he had first done secretly in 1971 when he was still President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser. There — in contrast to the tepid reception recently given to U.S. officials like Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry — Kissinger was welcomed with full honors by Chinese... Read more
This ↓↓↓ And this: It may not have been Biden’s first campaign ad, but it was well-placed. “The first ad that is part of the campaign is focused on the economy and seeks to contrast Biden’s record with former President Trump and the ‘MAGA agenda.’” The Hill reported Monday. These were placed all around Milwaukee, reports People: “Dark Brandon,” President Joe Biden‘s satirical alter-ego, is making a bold appearance on the day of the first 2024 Republican debate — not only on billboards in Milwaukee, where eight GOP candidates are set to take the stage on Wednesday evening, but in a digital ad on FoxNews.com. From midnight on Wednesday until 11:59 p.m., the internet meme-turned-campaign tool will have prime placement on Fox News’ website with a pro-choice ad touting Biden’s mission to defend abortion rights, one year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. “I think it fits both the president’s ethos of going everywhere and not writing off any voters,” Rob Flaherty, Biden’s 2024 deputy campaign manager, tells People.
by Gregory M. Mikkelson
Trends in human health have recently decoupled from GDP growth throughout the world. In other words, health improvement no longer tracks economic expansion. Meanwhile, environmental degradation remains firmly coupled to economic growth. As damages from economic growth mount globally, and as benefits fade, the case against further growth is stronger every day.
Within the USA, the case against economic growth is especially compelling, and not just because of the country’s massively disproportionate contribution to global ecological breakdown.
The post Work Less, Study More, and Forget About GDP appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Two thirds of Conservative voters also want the tactic currently being pushed by Rishi Sunak's party to be outlawed
I hit rock bottom earlier this year. I was sad, sick, alone, and seemingly out of options. But I’m happy to say that I’ve got a new lease on life. I’m happier, healthier, and more social for only $8,000 a month, with 6.4% APR financing.
Before, I would spend every night alone in my room. Now, I see my friends multiple times a week for only $89 down, with no additional cost due at signing, except tip.
In basic conversations, I used to have nothing to say. Now, catch me contributing movie opinions, show predictions, and $224 yearly MSRP to the manufacturers of the latest Woody Harrelson vehicle.
I’m just so grateful to be a qualified lessee. I can live my life on my terms and the terms of its indemnity clause. Each day almost feels like a gift.
I finally mustered the motivation for the gym and the capitalization for its monthly payment. Today, I’ve got abs and a loan that spans the entirety of my newly extended life.
NJ requires climate change education. How's it going?
The Lever team speaks with a former Hawaii state representative about the recent disaster in Maui and how the community aims to rebuild.
- by Aeon Video