How to cross the Sahara in the 14th century: “First of all, you will have to deal with a desert mafia.”
Ellen Ruppel Shell’s book The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change is “fundamentally crippled by a strong confirmation bias,” Eli Lehrer writes: “For example, at the core of the argument is the contention that the world of work is in trouble because ‘temporary and contract work and self-employment have grown faster than have permanent, full-time jobs,’ while there has been a ‘rise of contingent “gig” work.’ To be fair, many people assume this is true. But nearly all available data flatly contradicts this and many other of her assumptions as well. In particular, there’s little evidence that work is actually becoming less stable in the United States, that gig work is increasing, or that self-employment is becoming more common. The opposite appears to be the case.”
Speaking of work, are we doing too much to save or create manufacturing jobs in the United States? The story of a Wisconsin town “spending billions, seizing homes, and breaking state law to lure a Taiwanese company” is anecdotal evidence that we may be.
Da Vinci as scientist: “It is true that Leonardo discovered no law of physics, no anatomical feature is named for him, and his only foray into large-scale engineering works (an attempt to divert the River Arno from Pisa to reduce that city’s independence from Florence) ended in disaster. Had he not painted, or had his paintings been lost, the now-famous notebooks he kept of his studies, ideas, and inventions would probably have been confined to the footnotes of scholarly specialists. Against this, Isaacson enthuses over Leonardo’s multi-faceted brilliance, which he ascribes to his ability to see a profound puzzle behind what the vast majority of people take for granted—the blueness of the sky, for example. Leonardo was not a dilettante, exactly: no one whose anatomical interests led him to dissect 30 human corpses and innumerable animals—and produced such beautiful anatomical drawings that they stand as works of art as well—could possibly be called that. The fact that he did not publish his findings speaks to the purity of his motives; he was an example of brilliance without egotism.”
Carl Rollyson on Hilary Spurling’s Anthony Powell biography: “Overall, this biography seems a little complacent, too satisfied with Powell as a good man and great novelist. Spurling does little at the beginning to introduce her subject and to explain why his work is important—failing to acknowledge that novelists are not the major cultural figures they once were. Should her book be regarded as a biography deliberately aimed at a small readership? Perhaps in the United Kingdom, where Spurling’s book was first published last year, Powell’s work retains a large and lively audience. Surely the situation is different in the United States. To appreciate Spurling’s book fully, you would need to know a good deal about English society and have memories of, for example, who Malcolm Muggeridge was and why he became so successful on English and American television and then turned against his friend Powell. If you don’t know the history out of which Powell arises, you won’t appreciate that he was a great Tory, which makes his friendships with writers like George Orwell all the more fascinating. Spurling pretty much takes Powell and Orwell’s relationship for granted, imparting only a vague admiration for the conservative Powell as a man tolerant of a writer on the left.”
Bad news, everybody. New York Media is putting the content of New York magazine and websites like Vulture and The Cut behind a paywall. Now you’ll have to pay $5 a month to read about “Afrofuturism’s Queer Roots” or about how to “Fulfill Your Dream of Having Cardi B Insult You to Your Face on Netflix’s New Hip-Hop Show.” I guess that’s the price of finding stuff to talk about at Sunday brunch with the neighborhood moms while the nannies take the kids to the park.
Essay of the Day:
In Modern Age, Gerald Russello writes in praise of Cinema Paradiso:
“If you were Italian growing up in certain parts of the northeastern United States in the 1970s (such as Brooklyn, where I was raised), there were only one or two movies you had to know—The Godfather, of course (parts I and II only, please, not the later part III; the less said about that the better); maybe Rocky. But in 1988 another movie made it onto the required ethnic cinema list: Cinema Paradiso. The Godfather gave us a romanticized view of our kind in America and how we had “made it.” Even if we had a few bad apples in our (romanticized) family trees, the movie presented an ambivalent American experience and conflicted definition of “success” that was not inconsistent with our own. Cinema Paradiso was different. It showed us our (also romanticized) people back in the old country and what we left behind.”
Photo: Santa Maddalena
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