Posted on: February 16, 2009
Alexis Wingate — The Mystery of Mysteries
To dissect Knut Hamsun’s Mysteries as one would an ordinary novel is impossible. This is a book in which nothing is quite as it seems to be, and the more closely the reader examines it or tries to make sense of it, the more inexplicable it becomes. At the core of the story is Johan Nagel, easily one of the most enigmatic characters in literary history. His arrival in a small Norwegian town in 1891, with no visible aim or purpose, is the first piece in a puzzle that doesn’t ever quite fit together. Moreover, we are left wondering, at the end, if it was actually meant to.
Hamsun’s initial description of Nagel paints a portrait of a rather ordinary individual:
“He was below average in height; his face was dark-complexioned, with deep brown eyes which had a strange expression, and a soft, rather feminine mouth.
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Posted on: February 16, 2009
A Line from Barbara Guest’s Roses
That air in life is important but may be less so in the arts interests me. But we are 60% water and worth $28.49 in bone, fat and chemicals so should we focus more on water and $’s and less on air. But you may respond the atmosphere that encases us is all air but this is not completely true since there is pollution and those little filaments we see when light shafts float into a room and illuminate the air. Then we see what we think is truly there. Of course this ignores the question of the further reaches of space where air may be solid and water may be a gas. Then we would have to understand plants differently since plants would have to adjust and worms and beetles too. Maybe there is some type of traveling incognito and mysterious communication that happens in the air, a space that, for all we know, is a proscenium arch theater?…
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Posted on: February 14, 2009
Charles Darwin. 1880
Much has been made recently of the fact that Lincoln and Darwin share a birthday. Two hundred years ago, this past Thursday. A new book talks about another thing they share. Their hatred of slavery. It sounds like a great read. Here’s a short excerpt:
Darwin’s Sacred Cause
How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution
By Adrian Desmond & James Moore
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 448 pp. $30
Feb. 15, 2008
Introduction
Unshackling Creation
Global brands don’t come much bigger than Charles Darwin. He is the grizzled grandfather peering from book jackets and billboards, from textbooks and TV — the sage on greeting cards, postage stamps and commemorative coins. Darwin’s head on British £10 notes radiates imperturbability, mocking those who would doubt his science. Hallow him or hoot at him, Darwin cannot be ignored. Atheists trumpet his ‘atheism’, liberals his ‘liberalism’, scientists his Darwinism, and fundamentalists expend great energy denouncing the lot.
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Posted on: February 13, 2009
Charles Darwin. 1868. Photo by Julia Margaret Cameron.
Just a tad late on this one. Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago, on February 12th. His revolutionary work lives on, despite opposition by the sadly misinformed, to put it gently.
A great link to the study of evolution is here. I think it is incumbent upon anyone who criticizes the theory to actually understand it first, and not to create endless strawmen to knock down. We only hurt ourselves and our own future when we refuse to confront its implications. Building from the foundation of this theory, we have the potential to advance many divergent tributaries of science, and perhaps unlock essential keys in the battle to fight a multitude of diseases. Dismissing the theory, running from it, hiding behind religious belief, we are far more likely to stay in a new Dark Age.…
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