Had lunch with a favorite English professor, one of America's leading Miltonists. In class, discussing Comus or Samson Agonistes or Paradise Lost, he'd start reading from the book, would close his eyes, his hands would slowly lower the book to the table, he'd recite as if in a trance, smiling adoringly, whole sections of the poems... which isn't what makes him a good scholar, but which I found extraordinarily impressive, the love as much as his memory.
He's 67 years old, he's a klutzy whale, he's a strictly observant Orthodox Jew, he's - I mean this as respectfully as possible - ridiculously, guilelessly, happy and optimistic. He laughs in childish surprise at ideas he'd never considered, genuinely delights at your thoughts as a child at a new toy. He asks me what I've been reading, what I've been listening to, what I've been writing, what I've been thinking about, and he's honestly eager to listen to my answers.
All conversations these days must negotiate The Clusterfuck. He asks, I answer, he gawks, you think what will happen, 15% unemployment, the forfeiture of tens of millions' vested retirement benefits, civil disorder, domestic terrorism, revolution in second and third world countries, global war over dwindling resources and....
Jesus Fucking Christ, he says, I hope you're not pridefully invested in your prophesy. Like Milton, I joked. Milton died poor, blind, miserable, alone, he said, and every generation falls in love with its own apocalypse and fails to achieve it, if only barely and not for lack of trying.
- This is related to any discussion about shame.
- This is related to any discussion about shame.
- This is related to any discussion about shame.
- The Obama Code.
- Dead Enders.
- Drum Machine.
- On the broken window fallacy of economic development.
- UK's Democrats suck too.
- Pastor Gerson is truly the most sanctimonious assclown on the planet.
- Happiest days of Pig-American lives.
- Happiest days of Pig-American lives.
- Bobby Jindal: America's Slumdog Millionaire.
- Moral degenerate.
- Briefly.
- Explain this.
- A question worth considering.
- The impoverishment of experience.
- Salvagepunk. Do.
- TEV reposts James Wood's list of best books since 1945, which I post solely to ask, when was the last time you even thought of Howard Nemerov or Amy Clampitt?
Amy Clampitt?
THE KINGFISHER
Born 66 years ago today