The Good:
A very good, thoughtful article on the differences between the expensive, prestigious schools and less famous, cheaper schools.
Mainstream journalism is not dead yet: here is a very impressive article on white poverty.
Putin has one fatal flaw: he longs to be loved and can’t stand being disliked. Here is how Ukrainian and Byelorussian soccer fans are exploiting this issue of his.
A cutie-cute Windows ’95 backpack.
I won’t read Pollitt’s book on abortion (I don’t waste time reading books that tell me what I already agree with) but the review is great: “In other words, trying to be compassionate, to give anti-choicers the benefit of the doubt, has only resulted in progressives failing to make their own case. We’re dealing, Pollitt says, with “40 years of apologetic rhetoric, 40 years of searching for arguments that will support legal abortion while never, ever implying that it is an easy decision or a good thing,” and this has only gotten us stuck “making the same limited, defensive arguments again and again.”
“The earnings penalty for overweight (and underweight!) men isn’t due to simple discrimination. Men who become overweight as adults face no special career penalty. It’s only a problem for men who become overweight as teenagers.” Which means that there is no discrimination for overweight people on the job market. People who grow up in psychologically unhealthy, unstable environment are traumatized to the point where their job performance in adulthood suffers. Weight is nothing but a symptom here.
A hilarious list of idiotic things bosses often say. Which ones have you heard uttered aloud or implied?
I have never heard anti-Semitism being defined as “a form of collectivism, a subordination of the individual to the group” but it’s a very interesting definition. There is a lot here to work with.
“In many fields and for many positions — insurance claims clerks, executive secretaries, many human resources roles, and the people who supervise mechanics and installers — employers are growing much more inclined to try to replace workers who do not have bachelor’s degrees with employees who do.” If you ever meet any high-school graduates, you will understand that employers are doing the only thing they can reasonably do.
Truly fantastic advice for beginning teachers. Highly recommended.
And a great post with teaching advice for more seasoned educators.
Some very valuable observations on trickle-down feminism.
A great post denouncing scabs and scabbiness.
A brilliant put-down of the infamous “Foodies are Eating Mommies” article. I was going to write about this but the linked blogger did it better than I ever could. My only gripe with the post is the repeated use of the word “help” in the penultimate paragraph. Here is why.
The Bad:
I like Martha Nussbaum but I think I’m too young to understand what this essay is about. Maybe my older readers will appreciate but I’m just puzzled by this strange collection of words.
If anything could cure one of an envy for models, look at the artwork Dalí created with models’ bodies.
The post is good but the news it delivers is disappointing: I was really looking forward to seeing that movie but after this review, there is no way I’m coming near this film.
An extremely stupid article on feminism. The author obviously has absolutely nothing to say on the subject, so she decided to go on and on at length about not having much to say. For somebody who accuses a movement of triviality, this journalist is too eager to throw stones from her own glass house.
You’ve really got to be a total loser to plagiarize somebody’s online course. How do people live with themselves, knowing that they are so useless and pathetic that they can’t even design a silly online course on their own?
Has Germany found a new way to wage war on Europe?
God, there are some stupid young people in the world. Articles like these make me very appreciative of my students because I can’t even begin to imagine them being so pompous, verbose, and dim.
Facebook will try to compete with PayPal. Like anybody is stupid enough to give their bank account details to Facebook. Why not just withdraw the money and flush it down the toilet instead?
The Ugly:
If people are still wondering why I say that the climate-change movement has been hijacked by psychos, they need to read this article on what we can do to address climate change. Every suggestion on the list is a gem, but the following rises to level of plain scary: “After you’ve read about the crisis, let yourself feel grief. Don’t ignore your feelings, either through resignation or through forced optimism. Feel what you feel. Talk about your feelings with your family and friends.” It’s because of these crazies that the climate-change movement is achieving nothing. They are scaring normal people away. Please read the whole list before you argue. Pay careful attention to point 1.
What are people even thinking when they concoct the followings sentences: “Old privilege attacking new privilege, which does nothing to help the underprivileged.” The same article contains the phrase: “The shackles of our corporate masters have been cast off for a few precious hours, and we’re going to make the most of it”, and I didn’t get a feeling the author was being entirely facetious. I should have known that an article called “Brunch-Shaming” would be stupid.
“Women’s life expectancy without men would rise to 130 years at least. PIV would be illegal too of course, as well as the initiation of any verbal or physical contact to women and girls or boy children, unless solicited by a woman for specific matters.” Yes, but 130 of life without PIV is complete torture for the absolute majority of women on this planet. Why should they be punished for the fantasies of a few strange folks?
Few things are creepier than the concept of “private prisons.” This is a practice that is so wrong it shames me we are tolerating it.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m one of your “older readers” and a retired physician, and Nussbaum’s article, to the extent that its various points can be discerned, is nonsense.
She claims that “I saw my appendix” during her colonscopy. The only objects visible through a colonoscopy tube are inside the colon. The appendix, being completely external to the large intestine except for the small attachment at its base, can’t possibly be seen during the procedure.
Her opinion that older people choose anesthesia to avoid significant pain during medical procedures because of “disgust and shame” at their aging bodies is about as loony as it gets. Perhaps her name translates into “Nut Tree” in German for a reason.
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“I’m one of your “older readers” and a retired physician, and Nussbaum’s article, to the extent that its various points can be discerned, is nonsense.”
– GOOD to know. I didn’t want to trash the piece because, who knows, it might make sense to people of her generation. But I’m glad to hear it doesn’t.
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Is… is that ‘women’s society utopia’ some kind of satirical piece? I really don’t know how to read it, it’s just too weird.
A feminist post mocking the stereotypical view that anti feminists have about feminism?
An anti-feminist post mocking (the idea they have of) feminism?
A serious separative feminist post?
Help!
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Your guess is as good as mine. I have a vague suspicion that the piece was written in earnest but I welcome any suggestion that it is ironic. I’ve heard people say all this completely seriously, so I’m not optimistic.
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Pretty sure it’s serious.
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I’m pretty sure the utopia piece is serious. It’s the same author who came up with the following gem:
Oddly, I find I have a lot more respect for this kind of throwback to hardcore 70’s militant feminism than the current mopy, whiny feministing/shakesville varieties.
I don’t agree with it at all, but it starts from premises and then expands on them rather than the willow-in-the-wind pathetic flimsy things that pass for feminists nowadays.
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Geesh, I come from a really, really right wing society and I made more progress with my identity as a person, rather than a lady or a girl in my lifetime than these feminists will make in several. They are way too easy on themselves. Don’t have enough masculine qualities to redeem themselves even a bit. And one does need to get hold of those actually, to correct the imbalance in one’s nature that comes from being treated as a gender not a person, in the first instance.
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I’m really curious if these folks would see as the mother of the year the woman who fed abortifacients to a kid in order to please her PIV sex partner. If they would as well, then the world is doomed.
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This article reminds of the famous radical feminist book “The SCUM Manifesto,” published by Valerie Solanas in 1968 (the same year she shot Andy Warhol). SCUM stood for “the Society for Cutting Up Men.”
Solanas clearly had mental problems, but her book was clearly satirical (as is this “UTOPIA” article, surely), and much more entertaining to read.
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I think I remember that blog from when I was researching feminist reactions to the sex workers’ rights movement. There’s a whole group of women bloggers who have apparently been through some serious crap in their lives and come to the conclusion that their experiences reflect the experiences of all women everywhere. Whenever I read something like this is turns out to have come from one of them.
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Thanks for the linkback! Retrospectively, you are right about the word “help”, I should rethink my vocabulary surrounding housework and ownership of these tasks.
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One of the best boss comments I received was this: in some official training materials, the company actually asserted that “It’s so easy we could train a monkey to do it!” Um…thanks.
Also, that “Utopia” piece is insaaane. Upwards of half of the manifesto is plainly harmful and idiotic. And this coming from me, a person with relatively extreme political and social views. Absurd.
Good list of links this time, thanks Clarissa
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Thank you, the list is due to the new phone that is very good at collecting links.
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On the Appalachian article — but I thought you did not consider US poverty to be poverty?
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I am really getting tired of these Germany is dooooooooomed” article Americans are churning out every five seconds.
The national growth in the second quarter of 2014 was predicted to be 1.2%. Alas, it only rose by 0.8%. Mostly responsible for that is a slight decrease in imports and exports compared to the first quarter.
Now, anyone with half an idea about economics knows that these predictions are made way in advance and that certain political events cannot be accounted for when making these predictions. Political events like, oh, Putin going on a power trip and invading Ukraine for example. The logical conclusion for the much lower than expected growth is thus that the tension in the east has made businesspeople anxious, which in turn hampers trades.
People with half an idea about economics don’t seem to work for the Washington Post. Or the Huffington Post. Or the New York Times. Or pretty much any other major outlet in the US, which is why you read so many articles about how doooooooooomed Europe is.
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// I have never heard anti-Semitism being defined as “a form of collectivism, a subordination of the individual to the group” but it’s a very interesting definition.
I checked what else he wrote on Jews, immigration, etc. and found a link to an interesting post:
“The Suicide Bombers Among Us” by Theodore Dalrymple
http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_4_suicide_bombers.html
QUOTE
Muslims who reject the West are therefore engaged in a losing and impossible inner jihad, or struggle, to expunge everything that is not Muslim from their breasts. It can’t be done: for their technological and scientific dependence is necessarily also a cultural one. You can’t believe in a return to seventh-century Arabia as being all-sufficient for human requirements, and at the same time drive around in a brand-new red Mercedes, as one of the London bombers did shortly before his murderous suicide. An awareness of the contradiction must gnaw in even the dullest fundamentalist brain.
Furthermore, fundamentalists must be sufficiently self-aware to know that they will never be willing to forgo the appurtenances of Western life: the taste for them is too deeply implanted in their souls, too deeply a part of what they are as human beings, ever to be eradicated. It is possible to reject isolated aspects of modernity but not modernity itself. Whether they like it or not, Muslim fundamentalists are modern men—modern men trying, impossibly, to be something else.
They therefore have at least a nagging intimation that their chosen utopia is not really a utopia at all: that deep within themselves there exists something that makes it unachievable and even undesirable. How to persuade themselves and others that their lack of faith, their vacillation, is really the strongest possible faith? What more convincing evidence of faith could there be than to die for its sake? How can a person be really attached or attracted to rap music and cricket and Mercedes cars if he is prepared to blow himself up as a means of destroying the society that produces them? Death will be the end of the illicit attachment that he cannot entirely eliminate from his heart.
The two forms of jihad, the inner and the outer, the greater and the lesser, thus coalesce in one apocalyptic action. By means of suicide bombing, the bombers overcome moral impurities and religious doubts within themselves and, supposedly, strike an external blow for the propagation of the faith.
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Another link I found interesting was to the article from 2002 “Liberte, Egalite, Judeophobie – Why Le Pen is the least of France’s problems.” The 3rd page with sub-titles BENLADENISATION DES BANLIEUES and JUDEOPHOBIE was interesting.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/187bvgea.asp?page=3
What shocked me the most was:
“According to the literary scholar Eric Marty, one professor of literature at the University of Paris was unable to teach the works of Primo Levi (including the Auschwitz memoir If This Is a Man), because his Arab students booed him out of the classroom.”
Why weren’t those students sent out, expelled from the course, something?
QUOTE I liked
For anyone who inhabits Western culture, the Holocaust made that culture a much more painful place to inhabit–and for any reasonably moral person, greatly narrowed the range of acceptable political behavior. To be human is to wish it had never happened. (Those who deny that it did may be those who can’t bear to admit that it happened.) But it did. If there’s a will-to-anti-Semitism in Western culture–as there probably is–then the Arab style of Judeophobia, which is an anti-Semitism without the West’s complexes, offers a real redemptive project to those Westerners who are willing to embrace it. It can liberate guilty, decadent Europeans from a horrible moral albatross. What an antidepressant! Saying there was no such thing as the gas chambers is, of course, not respectable. But the same purpose can be served using what Leo Strauss called the reductio ad Hitlerum to cast the Jews as having committed crimes identical to the Nazis’. They must be identical, of course, so the work of self-delusion can be accomplished. We did one, the Jews did one. Now we’re even-steven.
You can see the attractive force in such an ideology. Author Alexandre Del Valle fears that anti-Semitism could also be a binding force, leading to a “convergence of totalitarianisms,” of Islamism and the Western anti-globalist left.
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Didn’t I say just recently that French academics are fleeing the country? The impossibility to impose any authority in the classroom is one reason.
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I have read a half of Theodore Dalrymple’s article so far and loved it extremely. Would be interesting to hear your opinion, if you read. There is a lot about gender roles too. 🙂
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Very good article. I agree completely that all of these attempts to find detailed the roots of the problem in the Koran are a total waste of time. This is so not about religion. Look at what the Russians did in 1917 because modernity was too painful. Look at what the Spaniards did in 1939 for the same reason. It’s so not about Islam.
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\\ Very good article.
I began searching that site for other articles by Theodore Dalrymple. Even when I haven’t agreed with his analysis of problems (f.e. in his article on domestic violence), it provided some interesting info and food for thought. A few sentences about the man [wiki]:
Anthony (A.M.) Daniels (born 11 October 1949), who generally uses the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, is an English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the east end of London. Before his retirement in 2005, he worked in City Hospital, Birmingham and Winson Green Prison in inner-city Birmingham, England.
I thought you would be interested in:
Everyone on the Couch
Today’s psychiatry undermines self-reliance and morality.
http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_4_otbie-psychiatry.html
Don’t Legalize Drugs
Advocates have almost convinced Americans that legalization will remove most of the evil that drugs inflict on society. Don’t believe them.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a1.html
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@el, that ‘don’t legalize drugs’ article is scary!!!!
“But the consumption of drugs has the effect of reducing men’s freedom by circumscribing the range of their interests. It impairs their ability to pursue more important human aims, such as raising a family and fulfilling civic obligations. Very often it impairs their ability to pursue gainful employment and promotes parasitism.”
Yes, you know video games have been limiting my contribution to society so I guess those ought to illegal for everyone too. Without contraception, I daresay I’d have completed the ‘more important’ human aim of raising a family instead of wasting my life having fun.
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“Yes, you know video games have been limiting my contribution to society so I guess those ought to illegal for everyone too. Without contraception, I daresay I’d have completed the ‘more important’ human aim of raising a family instead of wasting my life having fun.”
– Great comment. 🙂
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On the home page, I went to “Search the website:” and entered “Theodore Dalrymple” to get all the articles. His latest was kind of funny and curious:
The Reeducation of Dinesh D’Souza
Crime is not disease.
Reading the New York Times account this morning of the sentence passed on Dinesh D’Souza—the filmmaker, writer, and outspoken critic of President Obama—for violating the laws relating to campaign finance, I was horrified to read the following: “As part of his probation, Mr. D’Souza . . . will also be required to undergo therapeutic counseling.”
[…]
To enforce therapeutic counseling as “treatment” for a criminal act is a violation of the integrity of the human personality. There are worse violations no doubt, but it is the beginning of a descent down a slippery slope.
Punishment is not therapy; crime is not disease. The Soviets thought that dissent was crime and crime was disease: therefore, with them, dissent was disease. We have not yet reached that point, but “therapy” for illegal campaign contributions is coming uncomfortably close to it.
http://www.city-journal.org/2014/eon0924td.html
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“To enforce therapeutic counseling as “treatment” for a criminal act is a violation of the integrity of the human personality. There are worse violations no doubt, but it is the beginning of a descent down a slippery slope.”
– Exactly. Besides, mandated therapy cannot possibly work. This is one of the reasons I feel horrified by all of those “intervention” TV shows where relatives of an addict get together to bully her or him into rehab. Such shows glorify gratuitous torture.
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OK, I am the one who can’t use site search. Here is a list of his 338 (!) articles (1994-2014) with sub-titles further explaining the topic.
http://www.city-journal.org/author_index.php?author=47
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The transition to modernity:
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/chapter-4-glorious-modernity.html
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That’s the corrosion that jihad tries to stop, the defection of the women toward that first-person singular. Most accounts of jihad take it easy on the gender dimension, but that is actually the most crucial line being drawn in this war.
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I think it’s great that finally this point is starting to be made.
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Loved this post:
Quote:
“What you’ve learned as “objective”–you’ve learned from the West. True objectivity must encompass flexibility to be functional. True objectivity introduces the liberation of adaptability. It knows itself to be unobtainable. It is universal not because it is you–it is universal because it is every form of you.
[…]
The ambiguity of the Qur’an is the clarity of the human soul. You are a book as well. The qur’an that is you has a moral conscience. You were written by God. This is intertexuality of the spirit, between yourself and what you are holding.”
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In the West, for at least 100 years, the shared belief is that there is no objectivity. 🙂
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There is something both sad and funny in Hamas using Haredi propaganda (against Haredi draft) for its own purposes. May be, it’ll stop some of those Haredi illustrators from continuing? (You can see the drawing in the article.)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4580045,00.html
In other news,
British parliament votes in favor of recognizing Palestine
[…]
Britain does not designate Palestine as a state, but says it could do so at any time if it believed it would help the long-running peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.
[…]
The vote is unlikely to shift official policy, as it is non-binding and would not force the British government to changes its diplomatic stance. It was designed instead to raise the political profile of the issue.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4580307,00.html
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The far-right Jobbik party took control of an industrial town in northeastern Hungary after an election campaign in which it promised to issue an ultimatum to the Roma minority – follow our rules or leave town.
[…]
He said he would crack down on crime and poverty on behalf of all residents, whatever their ethnic background.
Yet the programme on which Janiczak ran in the election is explicit in singling out the Roma community.
The manifesto, posted on the Jobbik Internet site next to a photograph of Janiczak, states: “We think there are two ways to solve the Gypsy question…The first one is based on peaceful consent, the second on radical exclusion.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/10/13/uk-hungary-farright-municipal-idUKKCN0I21WA20141013
What will happen with the Gypsies there in practice, in your eyes?
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In case you missed it, “After the Hungarian parliamentary elections on 6 April 2014, [Jobbik] polled 1,020,476 votes securing 20.54% making them Hungary’s third largest party in the National Assembly.” [wiki]
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Interesting:
A study conducted by Dr. Michal Shaul reveals that the haredi world’s development and increased power in the past 60 years was actually the result of the Holocaust. The data she compiled during her doctorate are now presented in a new book called “Beauty for Ashes.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4578665,00.html
EU mulls ‘blacklisting’ settlers convicted of crimes
European diplomats consider new measures in response to ‘high level of frustration’ over West Bank settlement enterprise.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4580646,00.html
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After what the EU allowed to happen in Ukraine, I’m not in any way interested in hearing about the EU officials’ frustrations and concerns. They should all crawl into a hole and die of shame.
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I thought about watching some good movies, and wanted to ask for recs. You said Hollywood movies were bad. Is “The Innocent” (1993 film) a good one? Is there some director who makes good films, and/or do you know names of good Russian / English movies?
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\\ After what the EU allowed to happen in Ukraine, I’m not in any way interested in hearing about the EU officials’ frustrations and concerns.
Are you more open to criticism of the EU project now?
Beguiled by “Europe”
The E.U.’s supporters seem blind to its dangers and likely dissolution.
http://www.city-journal.org/2013/eon0305td.html
I was interested in his claim that
“We are building in Europe not a United States, I said, but a Yugoslavia. We shall be lucky to escape violence when it breaks apart.
I passed over the fact that Europe is, so far, the consequence of peace, and not its cause; that multilateral agreements between countries have always been possible without the erection of giant and corrupt bureaucratic apparatuses that weigh like a peine forte et dure on most Western European economies; that the maintenance of peace does not require or depend upon regulating the size of bananas sold in the marketplace; and that the notion that were it not for the European Union, there would be war, is inherently Germanophobic—because no one believes, for instance, that Estonia would otherwise attack Slovenia, or Portugal Slovakia.”
He also reviewed the book “A Doomed Marriage: Britain and Europe” by Daniel Hannan:
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0907td.html
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He once wrote a post about (two) university professors:
http://www.city-journal.org/2011/eon0627td.html
Don’t know if you would be interested in this author:
The Welsh Chekhov
The unjustly neglected Rhys Davies wrote about human frailty with compassion.
http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_1_otbie-rhys-davies.html
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Regarding Muslim immigrants in Europe, I feel I learned a lot from him:
“In France, the children of Muslim immigrants may not be as alienated from mainstream culture as are those in Britain; but the inflexibility of the French labor market results in a long-term unemployment that embitters them. In Britain, by contrast, relative economic success has not led to cultural integration: so you have riots in France and terrorism in Britain.
The solution (for which it may now be too late, despite post-London-bombing genuflections on the part of then–prime minister Tony Blair and then–chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown in the direction of the very national values they had done so much previously to undermine) would be a combination of French cultural robustness with British economic flexibility: something like the American ideal of the melting pot, in fact, which relied (and, to some degree, relies still) on a clear idea of what it means to be an American, combined with economic openness.
[…]
Aware of the polls on immigration, Brown’s Labour government has just taken some hesitant but sensible steps, putting aspiring British citizens on “probation” to show that they can speak English, pay taxes, and avoid jail before granting them citizenship. Britain and France, though, have never been very good at learning from each other: the Channel might as well be an ocean.”
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_otbie-immigrant_assimilation.html
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I agree that the American melting pot ideology was the world’s most brilliant system of immigrant adaptation. Unfortunately, my students are not even aware of the term any longer.
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http://pando.com/2014/10/15/a-tale-of-two-silicon-valleys-wage-theft-billionaires-and-the-rest-of-us/
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“and the degree of unequal justice today has reached cartoonish levels that were only supposed to happen in basket cases like Boris Yeltsin’s Russia.”
– I know the article is on a different subject but why Boris Yeltsin’s Russia and not Putin’s Russia? Why kick Yeltsin’s corpse when there is a much heavier defender of kangaroo courts than that operating right now?
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Liked:
British Freedom and Muslim Discipline
The real plight of Mrs. Blair’s clients
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2006-03-13td.html
That their parents aren’t deported from Britain after forcing girls to drop from school is scandalous and the real civil rights problem.
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Don’t know if it’s new:
Report: Islamic State group may have chemical weapons
New Israeli research supported by testimonies, photos and experts’ analysis suggests that the organization use chemical weapon against the Kurds in Kobani, Syria.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4580854,00.html
Something uplifting for a change:
Holocaust survivor finally graduates from high school
Henry Friedman, 86, was denied a diploma during World War II, but has now received one thanks to Seattle’s Kent School District.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4580722,00.html
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Badtux wrote about a case of Islamophobia in USA police, which led to Captain Fields’s demotion.
I agree policemen must caltivate ties with the community they serve. However, do only I see a contradiction between
“Deputy Chief Alvin Webster, verified that the schedule of events did not include worship services, informed the mosque that they were not allowed to try to convert any of the officers to their faith during the event because as a matter of law and departmental policy it had to be a purely secular event and that officers would attend the actual worship services only at their own discretion, and the mosque agreed to those terms. ”
AND
“The members of the mosque who conducted the event were enthusiastic about their faith and did hand out literature detailing core points of their faith, but nobody reported attempts at conversion.”
?
I remember Jehovah’s Witnesses in Ukraine, who were ” enthusiastic about their faith and did hand out literature” after knocking on doors. How isn’t this an attempt at conversion?
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I don’t like this Badtux guy. I believe he is a racist idiot. Recently, there was yet another racist post by him. So I can’t take any of what he says seriously.
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Sounds extremely unpleasant:
Here’s where the neoliberals come to steal your water. […] water systems will be privatized and the prices will be raised to unaffordability for many Americans.
http://www.technologyasnature.com/swindle/
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Don’t remember if I ever mentioned. I haven’t read A.S. Byatt myself, but heard that “Possession” (1) is a good novel. Have you read this author? When I have time, I thought to try to read her “The Children’s Book” (2). It’s a very long novel of 896 pages (!). You once said you loved long books.
(1) Winner of England’s Booker Prize and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.
(2) Byatt’s overstuffed (Gorgeously stuffed? Or overstuffed? Critics were clearly split on Byatt’s latest offering.) latest wanders from Victorian 1895 through the end of WWI, alighting on subjects as diverse as puppetry, socialism, women’s suffrage and the Boer War, and suffers from an unaccountably large cast. The narrative centers on two deeply troubled families of the British artistic intelligentsia: the Fludds and the Wellwoods. Olive Wellwood, the matriarch, is an author of children’s books, and their darkness hints at hidden family miseries. The Fludds’ secrets are never completely exposed, but the suicidal fits of the father, a celebrated potter, and the disengaged sadness of the mother and children add up to a chilling family history. Byatt’s interest in these artists lies with the pain their work indirectly causes their loved ones and the darkness their creations conceal and reveal. The other strongest thread in the story is sex; though the characters’ social consciences tend toward the progressive, each of the characters’ liaisons are damaging, turning high-minded talk into sinister predation. The novel’s moments of magic and humanity, malignant as they may be, are too often interrupted by information dumps that show off Byatt’s extensive research. Buried somewhere in here is a fine novel. (Oct.)
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It all sounds good except for the romance and love story part. It is SO rare that anybody write even a half decent love story. I prefer to read books without them.
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\\ It all sounds good except for the romance and love story part.
“Possession” was recommended by a blogger, whose judgement I tended to trust. Of course, it doesn’t guarantee you would like it. Haven’t read it myself.
Have you read anything by E. M. Forster? I recommended “Howards End” in the past since I loved his writing style (based on Russian translation I read 🙂 ) and enjoyed the focus on the relationship between two sisters and on the different realities of different classes. You once said you like when authors reveal their ideological bias in asides, and Forster does it quite a lot. 🙂
However, there is not one feminist character in the story and, despite that, some women are able to find some sort of contentment and, may be, even happiness. Do you like only books with feminist female characters or with not-feminist-and-suffering-because-of-that characters? I don’t care either way, as long as the story sounds true to life. Loved and even admired certain traits in the sisters. For instance, their love of beauty, one could even say artistic sensitivity (they aren’t artists). Would be interesting to hear your opinion, if you read it.
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I like E. M. Forster. Howard’s End was boring but A Passage to India is a really great novel. I highly recommend it.
“Do you like only books with feminist female characters or with not-feminist-and-suffering-because-of-that characters?”
– This encapsulates pretty much all female characters ever. So yes, I prefer books where female characters appear. Although I have also enjoyed the all-male books of some Spanish writers. Those are books that explore extreme fragility, and I’m very interested in that. A man without women around is a man without society. If there is no society, then he is left completely alone with the terrifying world of brutal nature. I find that fascinating.
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\\ I like E. M. Forster. Howard’s End was boring but A Passage to India is a really great novel. I highly recommend it.
What about “A Room with a View”?
What have you liked except “A Passage to India”?
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Uri’s weekly column:
http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/
You recently said that my description of the situation is worse than of Western pro-Palestinians. I disagree (after hearing some of them on the net), but I can’t disagree with what Uri wrote about Israeli public opinion.
Btw, I perceived and still perceive the last operation in the way he described. If Palestinian country means worse wars, I am for maximum safety for me.
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Think you will be interested:
Why Aren’t Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.
Having experienced the workplace from both perspectives, they hold the key to its biases.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119239/transgender-people-can-explain-why-women-dont-advance-work
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Yes, I’ve read this article and I find it very problematic. I’m wary of using transgender people to prove points. Transgender people are not women who used to be men or men who used to be women. Their reality is a lot more complex and it is worng to define it in these terms.
“When he became Ben, however, he immediately noticed a difference in his everyday experience: “People who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect,” he says. He was more carefully listened to and his authority less frequently questioned. He stopped being interrupted in meetings. At one conference, another scientist said, “Ben gave a great seminar today—but then his work is so much better than his sister’s.” (The scientist didn’t know Ben and Barbara were the same person.)”
– We are pretending here that living as Barbara was not an extremely traumatic experience for Ben. But it was. He was forced to live a life that tortured him. Obviously, his memories of that life are not happy. After transitioning, he feels happier and more content with his way of being, so his presentations are better.
This simply isn’t a good way of approaching discussions on gender.
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Behind the Veil
An outbreak of militant Islam contained in a British medical school.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_7_30_02td.html
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Pent – up yearning for freedom, hah hah, very funny.
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He sees it as freedom but for crowds of people having a face and presenting it yo the world is not a freedom at all. I’ve heard many Western women sigh for a burka because they find it too hard to have an adult identity. And what about all the men who only manage to exist behind the veil of an avatar online? Having a face of one’s own is a responsibility and an effort.
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City journal? Hah. I’d rather read a diaper fetish porn picturebook on the subway train than admit to reading a publication that gives a platform for racist dunces like Victor David Hanson.
You sure know how to pick ’em, el!
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I have no idea who Victor David Hanson is, or what city journal’s reputation is. I stumbled on articles by THEODORE DALRYMPLE on that website via link from one blog, and saw that I could learn something new from him. (Which doesn’t mean I agree with his every word.)
If you know much better (free) sites, I am always glad to hear new recommendations and learn something new.
Clarissa, unfortunately, Commentary is not a free site. After reading a few articles, I lost ability to read even archives. 😦
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I’m reading the magazine on paper but I will do digests of the magazines I read in the future.
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http://pando.com/2014/10/16/the-war-nerd-nobody-could-have-predicted-islamic-states-retreat-from-kobane-except-me/
It is unbelievable to me that once you’ve attained that lofty position of ‘pundit’ on TV/newspapers, you never have to suffer any consequences for being wrong again and again, about everything.
And this guy has actually been homeless.
The War Nerd: Nobody could have predicted Islamic State’s retreat from Kobane (except me)
“If you consider the possibility that the US wasn’t trying to stop IS, at least not until domestic pressure built up on Obama after the first week of October 2014, then this makes a cold sort of imperial sense. The goal wasn’t to stop IS from taking Kobane. In fact, IS was supposed to take it; that would make the Turks happy, and the resulting horror pictures of the massacre that would ensue would shut up any domestic opposition to bombing the Hell out of Iraq, the theater the US really worries about. The strikes were meant as a show of fake good will, so to speak—kinetic good will that would send a lot of desert flying into the air without dislodging IS, and bleed IS a little in the process.”
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\\ I’m reading the magazine on paper but I will do digests of the magazines I read in the future.
Thanks!
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