Reviews and News:
Shiraz in Shiraz: “It is easy to assume that Iran has never been a site of drunken revelries. Westerners imagine Iranians to be a homogenously pious and modest group, and so suppose that viticulture is wholly foreign to them. This image is not helped by recent legislative action; in January, the government banned the printing of the word ‘wine’ in all books as it deemed the beverage an element of a ‘Western cultural onslaught’. Yet suggesting that drinking is a quasi-blasphemous act obfuscates the fact that alcohol—and wine in particular—has been an inextricable part of Iranian culture and identity for millennia. Indeed, current estimates suggest that Iranians imbibe around 60m litres of alcohol a year despite the government crackdown. During the heady reign of the Pahlavis (1925-79) Iranians freely indulged in drinking as it was legally permissible to do so. While it is true that legislation was much more liberal before the Revolution than it is today (one need only take a glance at popular pre-Revolution Iranian cinema and advertisements of the era), the Pahlavi dynasty was far from the first to openly tolerate drinking. Indeed, the oldest-known traces of grape wine—found in the Zagros Mountains in western Iran—date back some 7,000 years.”
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About Schmidt author Louis Begley turns from social realism to action in two recent thrillers.
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A short history of “weird”: “Weird campaigns have spread to communities in more than a dozen states. What do they all have in common? The cities have fewer than 1 million people, but most are growing. Many are state capitals or county seats and most have a vibrant arts scene. They all seem to have a strong sense of what makes them unique…” Ahem.
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A. M. Juster reviews a rock-and-roll version of Beowulf: “I was caught off-guard—delightfully—by the first five minutes of the play, which begins with a panel of three aging academics discussing the original poem. The scene serves an important function in the play because it provides a substantial amount of basic information about Beowulf without being too obvious. It succeeds as entertainment because the academic discussion wickedly lampoons a range of academic pomposities, and the skilled physical humor of the actors enhances the satire. In particular, Anne Scurria, a thirty-six-year Trinity Rep veteran stole the scene—and continued to steal scenes in multiple roles throughout the show. When the academic panel ends, we enter the play within the play, and everything goes rapidly downhill. The script echoes the tones of campy burlesques that sometimes celebrate the end of mind-numbing corporate training seminars. We meet the dimwitted hipster Beowulf and the snarkier Hrothgar, who are backed up by a chorus of four female “warriors” who resemble strapping Cyndi Laupers in football pads and Goth makeup. We hear pulsing but mediocre rock, which at least drowns out such dull refrains as ‘Hey, it’s that guy,’ ‘It’s my body,’ and ‘That was death and then they died.’ There are only two breaks from musical dreariness: one song that incorporates Beowulf’s Old English lyrics and one clever parody of Broadway love songs sung by one of the Cyndi Laupers. By the time the play reverts to satirizing pompous professors, it is a relief.”
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17th century Flemish masterpiece discovered in museum storeroom: “The ‘important and beautiful’ painting by artist Jacob Jordaens – a pupil of Peter Paul Rubens – was previously unknown to art historians.”
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The Basrah Museum, housed in the former palace of Saddam Hussein, opens its doors (with the help of British troops and BP): “At an early stage, the Basra Provincial Council promised a $3m contribution but, because of budgetary problems, the funds were never provided. Most of the funding has been supplied by the UK-based Friends of Basrah Museum. The charity, founded by John Curtis, a former keeper at the British Museum, has raised nearly £500,000, largely through contributions from the oil company BP. The museum still lacks the funds to open fully. Alabeed has decided instead to launch the project piecemeal, beginning with a gallery dedicated to the history of the Basra region from around BC300 to the 19th century.”
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Aaron MacLean reviews Tristan Gooley’s How to Read Water: It’s “a very modern belief that knowledge exists for us to do something with. Gooley’s book is a decent compendium of tools and tricks pulled from a variety of different crafts, and even some lost arts—though, as I’m sure he would concede, there are much more detailed guides that focus individually on angling or sailing that one ought to consult before setting off. Where this book is a treasure is in its un-ironic display of joyful curiosity, and its serious pursuit of this curiosity to knowledge that is a pleasure in itself. The language in which nature constantly whispers won’t only tell you where you are, and how to get where you are going, but will also remind you that you have a place in something ancient, vast, and coherent.”
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A history of botanical illustration.
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Essay of the Day:
In Standpoint, Daniel Johnson argues there are three problems with philosophy today. The first is that “so much philosophy now takes the form of specialised, highly technical and often quite recondite commentary on other philosophers’ work”:
“This is hardly a novel phenomenon: in the 16th century Montaigne already complained of such learned obscurity: ‘There is more business in interpreting interpretations than in interpreting things, and more books on books than on any other subject: all we do is gloss each other.’ Even if the Scholastics had debated how many angels could dance on a pin-head, which in fact they never did, they could never have competed with the pointy-headed pointlessness of many present-day philosophical debates.
“The second caveat (‘Objection 2’) is that insofar as contemporary philosophy does come up with intelligible conclusions, they are frequently banal. Take, for example, On What Matters, the Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit’s two-volume magnum opus, published in 2011. His 1,400-odd pages are unusually clear and cogent; it was generally praised as a major work making original contributions to the whole field of present-day philosophical debate. Yet his answer to the question ‘What matters most?’ is underwhelming. In Volume One he writes: ‘What now matters most is that we rich people give up some of our luxuries, ceasing to overheat the Earth’s atmosphere, and taking care of this planet in other ways, so that it continues to support intelligent life.’ This seems to me to be not much better than a statement of today’s — probably ephemeral — conventional wisdom. Philosophers have no special insight into natural phenomena such as climate change; you don’t need to study ethics to renounce luxuries or take care of the planet. Volume Two concludes: ‘What matters most is that we avoid ending human history.’ This may be true; but apart from mad dictators or religious fanatics, such as the Supreme Leaders of North Korea and Iran, Kim Jong-un and Ayatollah Khameini, who on earth would disagree? If this is the best that philosophers can do to explain the meaning of life, the rest of us may well think that we can save ourselves the trouble of reading them.
“The third and final problem (‘Objection 3’) is contemporary philosophy’s tendency to undermine, rather than to underpin, Western civilization…”
This doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be studied. Philosophy, Johnson writes, still “teaches practical skills — to think, argue and write well, for example” and “is a good thing to study for its own sake. Philosophy is the cornerstone of high culture.”
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Image of the Day: Mount Taranaki
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Poem: Marly Youmans, “The Poet and the Golem”
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