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The funny thing about Matt Taibbi's summary of Samuel Moyn’s new book — “Old People Suck and We Should Take Their Stuff" — is that it's 100% accurate. That is precisely what Moyn argues.
Looking at a painting is a welcome respite from scanning a screen. In that sense, this exercise is reactive: I labor in the small cottage industry of attention that has sprouted up in the cracks of the massive complex of distraction all around us. A phenomenological turn often occurs at times of intensive mediation, but the point is not simply to have our perceptions mirrored back to us. T. J. Clark has put the aim nicely: “When I am in front of a picture the thing I most want is to enter the picture’s world: it is the possibility of doing so that makes pictures worth looking at for me.” To look at a painting is also to exit our world for a while, and then to return to it cast in a different — distant — light. The time travel is often wonderful, and almost free.
I’m getting a start on my critical edition of Auden’s Nones, and reflecting that one of the chief pleasures of doing this work is the requirement that I own and consult the original Random House and Faber editions of the volumes. I’m amassing an interesting collection.
I understand that this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I find Alec Goldfarb’s Indian classical music on guitar fascinating. ♫
It would be difficult to overstress how much Jimmy Dorrell has meant, and will continue to mean, to Waco. May the Lord bless Jimmy in his retirement — though I doubt that he’ll be very retiring.
I've been reading too much on Instapaper. Saving articles for later is a powerful way to manage my time, but it produces a huge pile of content that I then feel obligated to work my way through.
Instapaper has the opposite effect on me. I save many articles there, and when I visit the site the first thing I do is delete the articles I am no longer interested in reading. Usually that’s more than half of the articles I’ve saved. (“Why did I think I wanted to read that?”) Very liberating. The key is not to visit Instapaper too often — twice a week is about right.
I've had a number of people ask me about this: A 12-Month Immersive Course in Humanities - by Ted Gioia. I’ll just say that my version would be, not 52 assignments in a year, but one assignment in a year. Pick one vital book and read it slowly. Pause to think. Re-read difficult passages. Take your time, and be willing to set it aside for a while. And remember what Auden said: “When one thinks of the attention that a great poem demands, there is something frivolous about the notion of spending every day with one. Masterpieces should be kept for High Holidays of the Spirit.”