this and that

Thursday, March 19, 2009
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SWINE
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Again and again we are told by so-called experts in Washington that the bonuses of the chief executive officers on Wall Street are such an insignificant fraction of the total bailout that it is a waste of time discussing them. These gentlemen must be blind not to see that a million dollars is a million dollars; it may be small change to some, but they are a fortune to the rest of mankind who must work for a living. And I suspect the outrage is less about the bonuses themselves and more about the fact that the very same individuals who are responsible for the present crisis have the judgment and manners of greedy swine.
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C.G. Jung: "Even in our civilization, the people who form, psychologically speaking, the lowest stratum, live almost as unconsciously as primitive races."
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The words of an honest man don’t need definitions; but the commas of a crook should be carefully examined under a microscope.
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We are told by scientists that we are made of stardust, and it is the dust that survives.
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I knew I was going places when a number of Oriental carpet dealers wanted to hire my services as reviewer and translator of their books. These gentlemen are not the kind that would waste their money carelessly.
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It is men without honor who are the first to rise in defense of their honor.
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Friday, March 20, 2009
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ON A NUMBER OF THINGS
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Obama wants to negotiate with Iran. I suspect Iranians will not fall for his rhetoric as readily as those who voted for him. That's because they have their own brand of rhetoric; and when rhetoric meets rhetoric the result is bound to be a dead end.
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Talaat's blunder: left to their own devices, Armenians would have done a far more through job on themselves.
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While listening to the televised sermon of a bishop, I could not help thinking: “I don't believe a word he says, and I doubt if he does.”
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Bonus: What's a five-letter word that starts with a “b” that stands for bastard, and ends with an “s” that stands for swine?
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Armenian Ottomanism: alienating a fellow Armenian in the name of patriotism.
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Atheism: If an ant were to speak to me and say, “I don't believe in your existence,” would I step on it?
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Benefactors: Take away their money and what have you got? An empty suit, albeit an expensive one. Am I alienating benefactors? Hell no! What I say has as much effect on them as the fart of an ant.
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Saturday, March 21, 2009
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JOHN UPDIKE
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After COUPLES, I read everything he wrote, and he wrote a great deal, and he knew how to write -- fiction as well as criticism and poetry. He was an inspired craftsman. His nonfiction was as good as his fiction, which is not something that can be said about such contemporaries of his as Mailer, Bellow, and Roth. But somewhere along the line – it may have been after the second or third RABBIT – I gave up reading him.
Shortly before he died a few days ago I read a critical essay about him by a young American writer in whose last sentence Updike was dismissed as an “asshole.” (I later learned this critic had committed suicide.)
I am now reading Updike's TOWARD THE END OF TIME (1997), an autobiographical novel about old age that, as always with Updike, brims with sharp observations and verbal felicities. And now I am looking forward to reading his posthumous works – diaries, notebooks, correspondence, perhaps even an unfinished novel and several big biographies.
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Some random samples of Updike's descriptive skill:
“Girls with orange hair hanging like seaweed or loosely bound with gold barrettes like pirate treasure.”
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“A runty senior with a huge mane of black hair that for diving he did up in a hairband like a Greek girl.”
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“The first breath of adultery is the freest; after it, constraints aping marriage develop.”
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“An aluminum screen door with a misadjusted pneumatic attachment that snaps like lightning the first two-thirds of its arc and then closes the last third slow as a clock ticking.”
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