Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Literary Matters

  • Hitch-22: A Memoir

    Well-written but dripping with envy and pusillanimity, Terry Eagleton's review exemplifies the Left's hatred of apostasy.  Another similarity with Islamism.

  • Hitchens’ Hubris

    Here.

  • On Hitchens and Death

    I just caught the last third of an interview of Christopher Hitchens by Charlie Rose.  He looks bad, the chemotherapy having done a nasty tonsorial number on him.  But his trademark intellectual incandescence appeared undiminished.  'Brilliant' is a word I don't toss around lightly, but Hitch is one to whom it unarguably applies. Public intellectuals of his caliber…

  • Stefan Zweig on Caissa’s Allure

    An old Hindu proverb has it that chess is an ocean in which a gnat may drink and an elephant bathe. Similarly pelagic is the literature of the game. Some of it is of high literary merit. An example follows for your delectation. Stefan Zweig, "The Royal Game" in The Royal Game and Other Stories,…

  • On Writing for Money

    From an NYT interview with Christopher Hitchens on the occasion of the publication of his memoir Hitch-22: Did you write the book for money? Of course, I do everything for money. Dr. Johnson is correct when he says that only a fool writes for anything but money. It would be useful to keep a diary,…

  • Writing as Religion

    Here is quotation by way of an addendum to my last post.  John Gardner, On Writers and Writing, Addison-Wesley, 1994, p. 227: What the writers I care most about do is to take fiction as the single most important thing in life after life itself — life itself being both their raw material and the object of…

  • Hic Rhodus, Hic Salta

    "Here is Rhodes, jump here."  From Aesop's Fables #209, "The Boastful Athlete."  A man who had been off in foreign lands, returns home.  He brags of his exploits.  He claims that in Rhodes he made a long jump the likes of which had never been seen.  A skeptical bystander calls him on his boast:  Here's your Rhodes,…

  • On Reading Philosophers For the Beauty of Their Prose

    To read a philosopher for the beauty of his prose alone is like ordering a delicacy in a world-class restaurant for its wonderful aroma and artful presentation — but then not eating it. I had that thought one morning while re-reading for the fifth time William James' magisterial essay, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.…

  • I’m Telling You All I Know

    The Website of Novelist, Short Story Writer & Poet William Michaelian.  A search for writing about Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel brought me to this site.  Couldn't find a copy in Border's the other day.  Moving from the Rs to the Ws, I noted the resurgence of Ayn Rand: several of her titles in new…

  • Aphorisms Good and Bad

    These, by Nicolas Gomez Davila, tr. Michael Gilleland, are good: With God there are only individuals. (I, 16) The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows. (I, 21) The authenticity of the feeling depends on the clarity of the thought. (I, 24) To refuse to wonder is the mark of the beast. (I, 25)…

  • John Gardner and Mannered Prose

    Over lunch yesterday I showed a writer friend the first page of John C. Gardner's Mickelsson's Ghosts (Vintage 1985).  I asked him whether the opening paragraphs made him want to read on.  He didn't answer that question, though his handing of the book back to me without a request to borrow it hinted in the…

  • John Gardner on Fiction and Philosophy

    John Gardner, On Writers and Writing, p. 225: . . . at their best, both fiction and philosophy do the same thing, only fiction does it better — though slower. Philosophy by essence is abstract, a sequence of general argument controlled in its profluence by either logic (in old-fashioned systematic philosophy) or emotional coherence (in…

  • The Reclusive J. D. Salinger Dies at 91

    Here. We who are obscure ought to be grateful for it.  It is wonderful to be able to walk down the street and be taken for an average schmuck.  A lttle recognition from a few high-quality individuals is all one needs.  Fame can be a curse.   The unhinged Mark David Chapman, animated by Holden Caulfield's animus against…

  • BlogWatch: Anecdotal Evidence

    From the masthead: A blog about the intersection of books and life.  By Patrick Kurp, Bellevue, Washington.  Excerpt from a recent post: I’m reading more than at almost any time in my life but spending less time reading online. The two facts have a common source – a festering impatience with shoddy writing. My literary…

  • A Death Poem for Year’s End

    As another year slips away, a year that saw the passing of John Updike, here is a fine poem of his to celebrate or mourn the waning days of ought-nine: Perfection Wasted And another regrettable thing about deathis the ceasing of your own brand of magic,which took a whole life to develop and market ——the…