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On the Ground
2007-10-19 21:50:00
Faithful Gracklog readers awaiting the long-deferred follow-up to this “benthegreen” post will have to wait a little longer. Benthegreen is a busy man, and has forgotten you. But in the meantime, please enjoy this excerpt from a letter by the one and only Irving Washington, to be printed in its entirety along with two others in the next issue of Grub Street Grackle: But what the devil—you may ask—why then this bothersome narrative at all? And well you ask. But it is not for me now to say why the Western Wind blows the dead leaves in its melancholy, hopeful way, whirling, tossing and drawing them on in a puppeteer’s parade through Forest City; nor what the blithe carp dream as they rush under the old bridge where I sit now watching; and neither is it mine to say what seeds of benefit and benediction may some day put forth their high, triumphant blossomings along the present lines. I only cut the ground as the stars guide me, and let what may fall.
More About: Ground , The G

Appeal
2007-10-18 17:39:00
If you’ve been reading the Grackle a while now, you’ve seen this before: But you may not have seen this or this. And you may not have known that these images along with many others by Lara Neri are for sale as posters and prints and other formats, and that profits from the sales of these are used to fund the Neris’ adoptions. They have just adopted their second child and will need to pay the agency in full in April, so please help if you can.
More About: Appeal

what I like about Russian Ark
2007-10-16 05:55:00
This weekend I had the chance to watch Russian Ark, for what I believe was the third time.  The movie, filmed as a single shot, is set entirely at the Hermitage Museum in Russia. It feels a little bit like “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.”  You follow two characters - crusty old Europe and the unseen man behind the camera - through rich scenes from Russia’s history.  As in the film based on Stoppard’s play, the two main speakers edge along the margins of the action, eavesdropping on the great.  Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they move from room to room, creating a sense of rambling, inexhaustible space, full of twists and surprises.  Time itself branches and shimmers in the halls and corridors of the Hermitage. You may not recognize all or any of the historical events alluded to.  It is in part a film about amnesia.  What you overhear in murmurs and whispers, though, may awake your curiosity about the sleepy, sprawling form that covers so...

I need a Jesuit
2007-10-16 04:25:00
I know it would be illegal to use pirated software to make changes to the documents created by my assistant editor (using a legal copy), which would save both of us time and me a lot of worrying about getting the issue together on time. But surely if we put our heads together we can come up with a good rationalization for it. If anyone reading this possesses exceptional powers of casuistry, please do comment with your thoughts. Convince me it’s okay and you could win a free subscription (or if you’re already subscribed, a tote).
More About: Suit , Jesuit

no wrong notes
2007-10-11 05:09:00
Immediately after quoting Thelonious Monk as having said “There are no wrong notes” on today’s Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor went on to read an outrageous and marginally-better-than-mediocre poem by marginally-better-than-mediocre poet Carl Dennis, in which Dennis supposes that the less-than-perfect choices we have made are a source of suffering to God, not (mark) on account of their being bad choices, but on account of their sealing off the possibility of a better life. Thus a life would be like a game of chess in which there are an enormous but finite number of possible series of moves, and every bad move diminishes the excellence of the whole game. The “practical god” of Carl Dennis would be as blissfully unaware of the finer games that could have been played as the amateur who plays them. For my part, I like to think that while there may be errors, even grievous, rebellious, and yes sinful ones, there are in life no wrong notes, and that ...
More About: Notes , Wrong

notes toward a funny picture
2007-10-07 00:26:00
This is just a concept. Maybe one of you with Photoshop skills could make it look not so completely crappy. philosophicles.
More About: Funny , Picture , Funny Picture , Notes

Befuddled Philosophy Student Says:
2007-09-25 22:58:00
It’s easy to make a ruckus in a philosophy seminar: all you have to do is ask obvious questions.
More About: Philosophy , Student

Theft
2007-09-23 04:38:00
I was shocked to discover this paragraph in a story by one Katherine Anne Porter last night: In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed from her and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she had meant to answer with; bitter alternatives and intolerable substitutes worse than nothing, and yet inescapable: the long patient suffering of dying friendships and the dark inexplicable death of love–all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in this landslide of remembered loss. For this passage, I am convinced, Miss “Porter” is indebted to that late epic poet whose praises I for one shall never tire of praising: Irving Washington. Consider ...
More About: Theft

Befuddled Philosophy
2007-09-18 15:04:00
I find the best way to comprehend Hegel is to read two copies of the book at once. Place one right side up, the other upside down, and stare at the area between them until you detect a synthesis.
More About: Philosophy

Befuddled Philosophy Student Says:
2007-09-16 18:37:00
The English language won’t be ready for philosophy until its poetry stands up in it. Until then, the English-speaking world can only repeat the story of Latin appropriation of Greek thought, more or less in the same words.
More About: Philosophy , Student

the ground that grounds
2007-09-15 06:23:00
Heidegger’s phrase “the ground that grounds” has often confused me. Is there a ground that does not ground? Yet how can the ground, if it is grounding, fail to ground? Nevertheless, not everyone is grounded, and even those who are can become groundless. This failure however is a human failure. Among creatures only mortals can fail to be grounded. Yet ground, even though perpetually grounding, appears as ground only when—as Alyosha experienced—man opens himself to the ground and turns toward the ground, accepting it as ground (rather than merely as the place over which he walks). The “ground that grounds,” then, is not the ground in its activity of grounding regardless of whether that activity is concealed or revealed, but rather the ground’s revealing appearance as ground in its grounding.
More About: Ground , Rounds , The G

Accidentally on Purpose
2007-09-06 18:54:00
My wife has been reading Richard Rorty’s “Contingency, irony, and solidarity”–not, you understand, by any preference for that sort of thing, but on account of a “Literary Criticism” assignment. As the nearest available victim, I have been subject to all her justifiably irritable recitations of the more outrageous passages. Yesterday, she read me this one: “To sum up, poetic, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or political progress results from the accidental coincidence of a private obsession with a public need.” Now as I understand Rorty’s case from hearing my wife talk about it, he considers it illegitimate to attempt to launch a refutation against his arguments because he declines to make an argument. All contest in writing, as he sees it, is a matter of competing vocabularies, rather than ideas. Paradoxically enough, I see this as a justification for writing against Rorty without having actually read him, because I need not...
More About: Purpose , Pose , Ally , Cide

An Allegory of Reading
2007-09-05 03:27:00
This passage is already reproduced elsewhere on this site, but it seems possible to me that some readers may not yet be aware of the famous Grub Street Grackle Moby Dick Marginalia Wiki, and so I am posting it here in conjunction with the remark that this description of a man’s response to a certain painting describes very nearly the thoughts and sensations I tend to experience when reading Martin Heidegger: Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its pur-pose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost t...
More About: Reading , Allegory

From the New Issue
2007-09-02 03:15:00
From “At the End of the Line,” a short story by Amos Johannes Hunt (yours truly) The stops and starts of the train are so softly punctuated with no one getting in or out of your car, that you hardly notice them. The unbroken movements of ostinato progression between stops at first set you on edge. Your troubled mind wants to continue arguing with itself, but has to work hard to keep above that pulsing, droning noise. At last, having been distracted by annoyance for several minutes, it forgets what it was arguing about and settles down somewhere beneath a thoughtless mental stratum. The rest of the ride is a long and somnolent passage in which nothing happens, like a conceptual poem composed entirely of the results of parsing a manual of agricultural statistics (”Noun participle preposition article noun: numeral / Noun participle preposition article adjective noun: numeral,” etc.). From “Burton’s Bones,” a little inquiry into three Tim Burton...
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One Half Price Books employee to another (as overheard this weekend)
2007-08-31 06:52:00
“The important thing in shelving books on Taoism is the space around the books.”
More About: Books , Weekend , Price , Employee , Half

The Ultra-Condensed Version of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
2007-08-27 21:32:00
Talking principle #1: “I’m a competent egoist.” Talking principle #2: “I’m an incompetent altruist.” [Talking principle #2 destroys himself.]
More About: Ultra , Conde , The U , Version , Atlas Shrugged

Did her some talking to the sun
2007-07-31 21:04:00
An NPR report yesterday afternoon suggested, as part of a series on climate and culture, that the famed hospitality of Crete is a consequence of the fine weather there. However, in the midst of that report, one Cretan interviewed claimed that the virtue of philotima (pure self-giving for the sake of whoever is before you) is an “inspiration.” Can these two claims stand together? Can something godly be communicated by the weather? Frequent Grackle contributor Emily Dickinson, who has been on intimate terms with the sun and other weatherlings for some time now, thinks so: I’ll tell you how the sun rose,— A ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran. The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, “That must have been the sun!” But how he set, I know not. There seemed a purple stile Which little yellow boys and girls Were climbing all the while Till when they reached the other side, A dominie i...
More About: Talking , Some

Dreamers
2007-07-30 18:22:00
I have been dreaming up stories about Hans Christian Andersen. A month ago, I dreamed that Hans played the piano as a child and liked to play loudly and was asked whether he knew any soft notes. Then last week, I dreamed that I was Andersen, that I had composed a poem in Attic Greek (which Andersen did not know well, any more than I do), and that Andersen/I was reciting it before a gathering of listeners who were well-trained in the language. Several people grumbled about the quality of the poem, and Andersen/I wept and said, “Yes, yes, it’s dreadful so far, I know that, but just wait, there are a few lines in here that are lovely.”
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Caring is Creepy
2007-07-26 22:34:00
There is this difference between urban and suburban life, between, say, Smalltown, Iowa and Washington, D.C.: the level of familiarity between strangers. In Smalltown, any man you meet on the street is liable to bid you good morning.  Even drivers passing each other on country roads will raise two fingers from the wheel in a casual wave. In D.C., there are no country roads: even the sidewalks are highways.  Pedestrians stride in straight lines, altering their courses only to pass someone going below the speed limit, or to give a wide berth to the nutcase.  So do I.  Their eyes are up, or down, or on their Blackberries, or obscured behind sunglasses.  So, often, are mine. But often also I will nod — after, of course, a series of split-second calculations to determine receptivity — or speak some pleasantry, and usually I am answered.  Sometimes, if a suitable opening is present –  a book, a t-shirt, an extraordinary hair color – I will transgres...
More About: Creepy , Cree

“Sink-Pisser!”
2007-07-25 02:18:00
Yesterday in D.C., I met a man who, to protect his privacy and because I don’t know his real name, I will call Elmer.  He was a fat man, dressed in green khakis and a polo shirt with small horizontal stripes.  He asked for change and I offered cigarettes instead.  The following conversation ensued. E: So, I come from C_____.  It’s much nicer there.  The hills, everything.  Just beautiful.  In tourist season it gets a little crowded.  Here, it’s crazy, crazy, people all the time. M: Yeah — I’m not a city kid myself.  I’m just getting used to having so many people around all the time. E: Yeah.  You know, it’s too bad though, it’s — you want to know what Big Brother is? M:  I – E: Big Brother.  It’s 1984.  All these surveillance cameras everywhere.  Traffic lights, everywhere. M: Yeah, that’s – E: And not just traffic lights.  I mean everywhere.  I mean restaurants, my apartment — bathro...
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Wondering
2007-07-09 18:55:00
where I’ve been? I’ve been very busy getting married. But now I’m back and soon I’ll be posting again. See you soon with some updates on the Irving Washington situation.
More About: Erin

Since then - ’tis Centuries - and yet
2007-06-25 21:06:00
How can anyone, especially someone seemingly attentive to meter, think that Emily Dickinson’s poem ”Because I could not Stop for Death” should included the line “Since then ’tis Centuries, and yet each”? It hurts my ears, Pete.
More About: Then

Pod: Cast
2007-06-07 21:43:00
I have cast my pod to the wind, as They say. And in case for some reason you have not yet subscribed, you can download it here.
More About: Cast

Share the Love Contest
2007-06-06 18:19:00
Anxious to give something back to the Grub Street Grackle and its fine contributors? No, of course you aren’t. That’s why I’m here today with a bribe: the winner of this promotional contest will win a complete set of Volume I of the Grackle, a one-year subscription to the magazine, and $20 cash. Read more…
More About: Contest , Love , Share , Contes

Marie Boroff Makes My Day
2007-06-04 21:35:00
I’ve been listening to the Yale University iTunes Podcast for a while now, and I’ve found that though it does often feature some fairly boring and needlessly long lectures, it can occasionally give you some hefty thinking material. In a recent edition, Mari e Boroff delivers a convocation address, which I listened to this morning on my way to work. It’s addressed to students finishing graduate school (which I won’t be for a while yet), but it’s about a subject of perennial interest to me, what she calls “climbing up the glass mountain”–i.e. the tedious business of every day life, conceived as a progress toward a high destiny. Highlights: She quotes Yeats, Stevens, and Frost, and pulls out a solid poetic image or two of her own. “Do what only you can do, and leave the rest to fate.” And best of all, it’s only fifteen minutes long. So, if you’ve got the iTunes hookup, I suggest you give it a listen. It turned me ...

And Now
2007-06-04 03:01:00
It’s your monthly mahnamahna!

Sharks II Whalez
2007-06-02 00:24:00
by: Tony Hisgett Though it pains me to pass over the rich and ever-refreshed subject of sharks to speak of anything else at all, it seems important nevertheless that I wrest myself from the jaws of the predator at least long enough to draw your attention to the project which is transpiring in the hidden recesses of your favorite little-frequented website, the Grub Street Grackle:Read more…
More About: Hale

Terry Gilliam Tries to Change Your Mind
2007-06-01 08:17:00
If I told you that a boy of fifteen years left his home and went to live in a big city, without any plan but to become an actor in the theater there (for which it happens he was not suited), without any resources at all, and survived for two years, until he met his benefactor and was able to become the most celebrated author of his land, you might say that’s the sort of thing that happens in fairy tales, that in reality, boys like that end up dead or humiliated, compromised if not destroyed by heartless predators. But it happened to Hans Christian Andersen, who as a child seems to have been the archetypal dreamer, useless for any task yet believing his destiny to be great, the sort of personality that comes off very poorly in literature from the 19th century onward (Lord Jim, say, or the Great Gatsby, perhaps). As it turns out his destiny was great, though no one could have predicted it from the mediocre dramas he composed and recited to anyone who would listen. Has the wor...
More About: Change , Mind , Terry , Liam , Chang

Herman Chips In
2007-05-31 02:06:00
photo courtesy of Erik Charlton Feeling lethargic and dull? Have your ghastly flanks got you down? Here’s regular Grackle contributor Herm an Melville with a timely poem and a solution to your woes in a web exclusive, as Shark Week continues, only here on the famous Grub Street Gracklog: The Maldive Shark About the Shark, phlegmatical one, Pale sot of the Maldive sea, The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim, How alert in attendance be. From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw They have nothing of harm to dread, But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank Or before his Gorgonian head; Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth In white triple tiers of glittering gates, And there find a haven when peril’s abroad, An asylum in jaws of the Fates! They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey, Yet never partake of the treat– Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull, Pale ravener of horrible meat.
More About: Erma , Chips , Chip , Herman

More Sharks!
2007-05-30 03:55:00
A few links to further illustrate the fascinating ambiguous relationship between sharks and literature: Shark Bestseller Foul-Mouthed Shark Poetry and, actually unrelated to literature but more interesting than either of those links, Underwater Website