Reviews and News:
Letters from Vanity Fair: “Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau is not a name that trips lightly off the tongue, or, indeed, is widely known at all. This is a great pity. As this handsomely produced and, in all senses, weighty book proves, he was a traveller whose company can only be relished. His observations, here presented in letters home, are critical of what he finds distasteful and admiring of the congenial. He is sharp, witty and has an ear for a good story. What more could be asked of a companion? In 1826, the prince faced bankruptcy. A self-styled ‘parkomaniac’, he had ruined himself by trying to turn several square miles of sand and pine forest in Muskau in Silesia into English parkland. In the process, he had gone through his own patrimony and his wife’s dowry. Something drastic was called for and a dramatic scheme was decided on. He and his adored wife, his ‘precious and constant one’, would divorce. Once free, the prince would set off for England to find a new, rich wife, who would be brought back to Muskau to live in harmony with the old one. It would be a very original variation on the ménage à trois.”
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Jack Shafer reviews Gay Talese’s Voyeur’s Motel: “If hell is writing about another person who has watched hundreds of people having sex, Talese may have discovered Hades.”
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A history of drinking in Parliament: “In 1964, a newly elected Labour MP was put in charge of the House of Commons kitchen committee…His idea of selling off the House’s rather splendid wine cellar duly appalled some MPs, but was accepted as a useful money-making scheme. Only later did it emerge that he’d bought/ripped off a collection of the best bottles for himself at a bargain price, and that this was not untypical behaviour — because the Labour MP was Robert Maxwell.”
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Mencken at the conventions: “Although he was a legend by the time he covered the 1948 conventions, Mencken seemed happiest hanging out with the lowliest of the ink-stained wretches. ‘He never condescended to anyone, certainly not to professional newspapermen,’ noted Cooke, who attended the gatherings with Mencken. ‘He sat simply as an old reporter among equals.’ His wardrobe, Cooke mentioned, was often just as unpretentious. ‘On ceremonial occasions,’ Cooke wrote, ‘he dressed like a plumber got up for church.'”
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Philistine cemetery discovered: “The discovery of a large cemetery outside the walls of ancient Ashkelon, a major city of the Philistines between the 12th and 7th centuries B.C., is the first of its kind in the history of archaeological investigation in the region.”
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The difference between Philip K. Dick’s paranoia and his “divine madness”: “In February of 1974, Philip K. Dick was home recovering from dental surgery when, he said, he was suddenly touched by the divine. The doorbell rang, and when Dick opened the door he was stunned to see what he described as a ‘girl with black, black hair and large eyes very lovely and intense’ wearing a gold necklace with a Christian fish symbol. She was there to deliver a new batch of medications from the pharmacy. After the door shut, Dick was blinded by a flash of pink light and a series of visions ensued. First came images of abstract paintings, followed by philosophical ideas and then, sophisticated engineering blueprints. Dick believed the pink light was a spiritual force which had unlocked his consciousness, granting him access to esoteric knowledge.”
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Essay of the Day:
In Prospect, Roger Scruton looks at the conflict between “law and love” in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle:
“Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, which he began in 1848 and on which he worked over the next two decades, is a comprehensive re-working of Old Norse myths, as recounted in the Icelandic Eddas. In Wagner’s story, the Viking gods are situated in a German landscape, along with Siegfried, hero of the German medieval epic Nibelungenlied. The Ring Cycle is about the gods, but the gods as conceived by a modern artist, whose concern is to create a myth that will comprehend all the principles—moral, political and spiritual—by which the modern world is governed. It is a story of the gods for people who have no gods to believe in.
“That is why the Ring Cycle is of ever-increasing importance to music-lovers in our times. Its theme is the death of the gods, and what the gods have bequeathed to us, namely, the knowledge of, and longing for, the sacred. Until we recognise sacred moments, Wagner implies in this monumental work, we cannot live fully as free beings. These moments are the foundation of all our attempts to endow human life with significance. Despite the controversies that have surrounded this great work—its vast length, its dubious later associations with Nazi thought—it constantly grows on the collective imagination. It is not the answer to life in a post-religious world, but it asks the real questions, and shows us one fruitful way of confronting them.”
Read the rest.
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Image of the Day: European Balloon Festival
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Poem: Stéphane Mallarmé, “Sea Wind.” Translated by Tom Paulin
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