"And the Canon Rap Got Played" looks to be the story I'm reading a section of at Clemson University's Writers' Harvest on Wednesday, November 14 at 7 p.m.
It should be a weird time.
Alex Kudera’s award-winning novel, Fight for Your Long Day (Atticus Books), was drafted in a walk-in closet during a summer in Seoul, South Korea. Auggie’s Revenge (Beating Windward Press) is his second novel. His numerous short stories include “Frade Killed Ellen” (Dutch Kills Press), “Bombing from Above” (Heavy Feather Review), and “A Thanksgiving” (Eclectica Magazine).
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Sunday, November 4, 2012
peace and trade
Last week in the Foucault seminar, I was reminded of a bit of Montesquieu from my undergraduate days--before all my big plans fell apart and I graduated in seven semesters with the only degree I could hustle up under such hurried constraints (an English major).
Anyway, the reading for this coming week, the first three lectures in Foucault's The Birth of Biopolitics include his summation of Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795), a short accessible text I read in the first few years after I graduated. Foucault writes: "The guarantee of perpetual peace is therefore actually commercial globalization" (58).
That was enough to get me scurrying around the web for the bit of Montesquieu I had only imperfectly remembered, and I found it at this University of Chicago joint: "Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities."
Writing in 1748, Montesquieu goes on to note we can't expect the same peace from competing individuals within these trade-minded economies: "But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same manner unite individuals. We see that in countries [Holland] where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money."
He wrote that last bit 100 years before Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, and both Montesquieu paragraphs seem so relevant to today's world.
Anyway, the reading for this coming week, the first three lectures in Foucault's The Birth of Biopolitics include his summation of Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795), a short accessible text I read in the first few years after I graduated. Foucault writes: "The guarantee of perpetual peace is therefore actually commercial globalization" (58).
That was enough to get me scurrying around the web for the bit of Montesquieu I had only imperfectly remembered, and I found it at this University of Chicago joint: "Peace is the natural effect of trade. Two nations who traffic with each other become reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and thus their union is founded on their mutual necessities."
Writing in 1748, Montesquieu goes on to note we can't expect the same peace from competing individuals within these trade-minded economies: "But if the spirit of commerce unites nations, it does not in the same manner unite individuals. We see that in countries [Holland] where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues; the most trifling things, those which humanity would demand, are there done, or there given, only for money."
He wrote that last bit 100 years before Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, and both Montesquieu paragraphs seem so relevant to today's world.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
never, not, or no longer a toss up?
Nate Silver's Political Calculus, aka Five Thirty Eight, accumulates the data from polls far and wide, but in battleground states most of all, and insists that President Obama has an eighty percent chance of winning the election.
We'll see when we get there, and one thing I know for sure is that we're getting there soon. It seems like roughly half the country, or at least its voting citizens, will be upset with the outcome, but I still suspect a majority of us will also be relieved it's over.
We'll see when we get there, and one thing I know for sure is that we're getting there soon. It seems like roughly half the country, or at least its voting citizens, will be upset with the outcome, but I still suspect a majority of us will also be relieved it's over.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Dr. Seuss's Sandy
This came to me via a Shelf Awareness facebook share of a Bookish tumblr:
And then, after the storm swept through, journalist Bill Hangley and poet Pattie McCarthy shared these photographs from The Atlantic. Musician and bookseller Bill "Bile" Greene has also led me to some alarming images from lower Manhattan:
And then, after the storm swept through, journalist Bill Hangley and poet Pattie McCarthy shared these photographs from The Atlantic. Musician and bookseller Bill "Bile" Greene has also led me to some alarming images from lower Manhattan:
Stay as safe and warm as you can.
Friday, October 26, 2012
new issues, new horizons
The September/October print issue is out and about, sporting "A Scottish Dizzen," and much, much more! Thank you, Dr. Daniel Peaceman for everything you are doing in this transcontinental literary world.
In my own literary way, I've been living vicariously through The Paris Review's interview with the Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. If only all of our writing lives could be as charmed as his. Here's an excerpt from Calasso on a Kafka in his library:
And this is the first book that Kafka ever published, Betrachtung. There were eight hundred copies. In one of his letters, he mentions having gone to a bookshop to see if anyone had bought the book and realizing that, of the eleven copies sold, only one had been bought by someone other than him.
I hope everyone has a relaxing and healthy weekend.
In my own literary way, I've been living vicariously through The Paris Review's interview with the Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. If only all of our writing lives could be as charmed as his. Here's an excerpt from Calasso on a Kafka in his library:
And this is the first book that Kafka ever published, Betrachtung. There were eight hundred copies. In one of his letters, he mentions having gone to a bookshop to see if anyone had bought the book and realizing that, of the eleven copies sold, only one had been bought by someone other than him.
I hope everyone has a relaxing and healthy weekend.
Monday, October 22, 2012
toss up?
John Cassidy at The New Yorker, a magazine endorsing Barack Obama, seems to indicate that the race is as close as some recent polls indicate. His map still tilts toward an Obama victory and yet his writing acknowledges that some of the states leaning blue could very well wind up in the hands of Romney.
On the radio on the ride to Ohio, aside from NPR, whose experts both predict an Obama victory as at least 70 percent likely, almost all of the talk radio is unabashedly right wing to ostensibly neutral, that comes across as right wing when a Democrat (or this Democrat) is in charge.
Larry Kudlow, a bow-tie throwback money guy who will communicate in a friendly way with cohosts across the political aisle, seemed to be the only conservative acknowledging that the Obama victory is still the likely occurrence.
And then there is the conspiracy theory or legitimate questions surrounding Tagg Romney's purchase of voting machines that will be used in Ohio.
So it feels like everything is up in the air, which could be why the Utah paper endorses Obama and one in Florida that endorsed Obama in 2008 now swings to Romney.
PS--On topic, this sappy tribute to freedom, tattoos, and American nationalism caught my eye although it's a bit disturbing as to what it seems to imply about the intended audience (college students? all of us?).
On the radio on the ride to Ohio, aside from NPR, whose experts both predict an Obama victory as at least 70 percent likely, almost all of the talk radio is unabashedly right wing to ostensibly neutral, that comes across as right wing when a Democrat (or this Democrat) is in charge.
Larry Kudlow, a bow-tie throwback money guy who will communicate in a friendly way with cohosts across the political aisle, seemed to be the only conservative acknowledging that the Obama victory is still the likely occurrence.
And then there is the conspiracy theory or legitimate questions surrounding Tagg Romney's purchase of voting machines that will be used in Ohio.
So it feels like everything is up in the air, which could be why the Utah paper endorses Obama and one in Florida that endorsed Obama in 2008 now swings to Romney.
PS--On topic, this sappy tribute to freedom, tattoos, and American nationalism caught my eye although it's a bit disturbing as to what it seems to imply about the intended audience (college students? all of us?).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)