Posted on: July 16, 2008
We have a new essay below by our good friend David Haan, entitled Irony. Ironically, that’s not what it’s really about, except in a sort of indirect way. A very articulate bird told me that he got the idea for the piece from this review of Richard Sennett’s new book, The Craftsman.
Was the writer (Mr. Haan) pondering the art of being a bricoleur? Quite possibly. Was he thinking about improvising with and extending his bag of tricks, his toolbox of sorts? Probably. He may have zoomed in on this particular part of Scott McLemee’s interesting review:
“The notion of the bricoleur exerted a certain charm among the strenuously professionalizing, for it offered the gratifying prospect of imagining a tactile and worldly dimension to one’s intellectual activity.
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Posted on: July 16, 2008
Rumormongers have hypocritically insinuated that I make use of cheap irony. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I employ only the finest quality of irony, procured at great expense, its like not to be had discounted. In fact, I do not entrust supply to outside provisioners, but participâté at every stage of manufacture, from the selection of raw material (unalloyed, never scrap) through its refinement — forged under sublime pressure, even tempered, under controlled heat, by a process of my own invention. Despite all due precaution, irony can become corrupted, so the results of all this effort may well never see the light of day. Only the most resilient irony, without discernable imperfection, is suitable to any proper craft.
Nor do I use it sparingly. To be effective, irony must be thickly applied, preferably in many layers, and meticulously worked in to its foundation so as to become integral to the final product.…
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Posted on: March 4, 2008
We have a new essay from David Haan. A confrontation with the act of writing poetry, and the person or non-person of Shakespeare. Check out his stochastic bookmark blog for a look at his reading shelf.
For me, it really all began with Homer. Not Mr. Simpson. But the Homer. And his Iliad and Odyssey. Those were the two books that propelled me into more reading worlds than any other books. That was at age nine, and from there it was Bulfinch’s Mythology, and every mythological story I could get my hands on.
I don’t remember the exact year I first read Joseph Campbell, but I think I was eleven or twelve. Hero With a Thousand Faces, to start with. I was fascinated by the idea I had picked up back at age nine that so many cultures seemed to have similar myths and legends and that many of the same elements existed in many world religions.…
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