Hail and Farewell
“My friends here esquivent the Bones for the more part,” wrote Samuel Beckett, “which means the bolus has gone home.” Anthony Lane explores an edition of letters full of prose that is “too deeply mired in private nudges and expostulations to be enjoyable.”
“Few writers have excelled him in the arts of second-guessing and self-dissatisfaction:” Adam Kirsch on James Agee, a longtime favorite around here (also a favorite of University Diary).
How far it is from Heaven to Hell? Jeff Sypeck leads us to a post by Richard Nokes, who had a math student read Paradise Lost and do the arithmetic.
“Do not do what I do,” Mark C. Taylor tells his students, “take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” Is he pointing out the knife in the back of academia, or twisting it? Also: read Natalia on new visions for the digital humanities, which are valiant, but probably too late already.
“If a gaffer gave one of his carpenters a saw and told him to hold it by the serrated edge you wouldn’t think that either the gaffer or the carpenter was much of a brainbox:” Mark Thwaite on dumb behavior and our financial crisis.
Okay, I’m a few days late: Happy Birthday, Strunk and White!
And finally: our sympathies to John McIntyre, the best word usage blogger on the internet, who has been let go from his job at the Baltimore Sun.
“It was, as they say in theatrical circles, a good run … “
