Reviews and News:
Artists against Trump: “Here is a pitch-perfect sample of the elitist self-regard that contributed to Trump’s victory.”
* *
Anti-capitalist artist opens coffee shop to protest capitalism…by encouraging the free exchange of privately owned goods.
* *
In Israel, another artist also turns to political gimmick in a desperate attempt to garner attention for himself and his mediocre work.
* *
A history of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: “Rudolph was the creation of Robert L. May, who dreamed him up while working as an advertising copywriter for the great Chicago-based retail chain Montgomery Ward…May originally claimed that Rudolph was intended to cheer up his daughter in the face of her mother’s affliction with cancer, a poignant origin story whose ‘basic premise…seems to be untrue.'”
* *
The “austere intellectual beauty” of Helen Pinkerton’s Metaphysical Song.
* *
* *
Martin Amis is working on novel about Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin.
* *
Ten book suggestions from ISI, where all books are currently 50% off.
* *
Essay of the Day:
In Arion, Stephen Eide and Keith Whitaker explore the relationship between morality and gentlemanliness:
“Socrates was no gentleman, as even his keenest admirers would have to admit. He had unsavory companions, was a notorious mooch, and his wife and children lived in poverty while he indulged his passion for philosophy. In Xenophon’s Symposium, when asked what skill he takes most pride in, Socrates responds ‘pimping.’ Socrates’ outrageousness set him at odds with conventional Athenian society and would eventually lead to his being sentenced to death. One could even say that a conspiracy of gentlemen— Athenian fathers—was responsible for Socrates’ execution.
“And yet Xenophon’s Oeconomicus makes clear that Socrates had a deep interest in the gentleman as a moral possibility. The term in Greek is kalos kagathos, literally ‘beautiful (kalos) and (kai) good (agathos).’ There’s no true English equivalent, though 18th century British classicists began the tradition of rendering the term ‘gentleman,’ a usefully provocative translation which forces readers to compare how men of wealth and station of the ancient world differed from those of other times. The Oeconomicus ranks alongside Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier and Lord Chesterfield’s Letters Written to His Natural Son on Manners & Morals as among the most probing analyses of what it means to be a gentleman. All are now fairly obscure, thanks mostly to the tension between egalitarian mores and the elitist ideal of the gentleman. That’s a shame, because it’s impossible to reflect on the nature of moral perfection without exploring gentlemanliness. Dandies are beautiful, saints are good, but a gentleman is the whole package.”
* *
Image of the Day: Heroes’ Cross
* *
Poem: Bill Coyle, “A Treasury of Snow”
Get Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.
