August 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Le côté vernaculaire de ton dos: Istanbul. →
homotope:
“Istanbul, which straddles the border between Europe and Asia, is schizophrenic; it cannot make up its many minds about anything. It is either the last noisy city in Europe or the first quiet town in Asia.” - Anthony Weller
Istanbul.
…
Vivre est l’art d’harnacher ce qui nous entoure - mer, gens, livres, monuments - pour en faire une Oeuvre.
J’ajouterais...
Re: this is always worth thinking about.
I think that there’s a further point to be made here about responsive or sentimental norms: I know people who have become defensive when going through the invisible backpack exercise—and certainly I myself often have that reaction, even if unbidden—as if another’s asking one to acknowledge one’s privilege is the same as another’s asking one to apologize for who one is and...
2 tags
This is always worth thinking about.
feministthought:
stfuetiquetteblogs:
White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack
Able-Bodied Privilege
Christian Privilege
Daily Effects of Straight Priviliege
Heterosexual Privilege
The Male Privilege Checklist
Non-Trans Privilege Checklist
We Can’t Be Equal While…
WIN.
Even if you try to think about it a lot.
5 tags
July 2011
10 posts
Random thought, quarter to six:
Theme song for Song of Solomon’s Ruth Dead: “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”?
The Dictionary of Received Wisdom
I found this sapphire of a book in a Provincetown bookstore: an edition of Flaubert’s Dictionnaire des idées reçues, translated by (whom else?) Jacques Barzun. The satire is biting.
BOOK: Always too long, regardless of its subject.
Or:
YOUNG LADY: Utter these words with diffidence. All young ladies are pale, frail, and always pure. Prohibit, for their good, every kind of reading, all...
LOS CEREZOS: The Waves →
“Let us now crawl,” said Bernard, “under the canopy of the currant leaves, and tell stories. Let us inhabit the underworld. Let us take possession of our secret territory, which is lit by pendant currants like candelabra, shining red on one side, black on the other…This is our world, lit with…
I’m intrigued, although I’m not sure I agree that The Waves presents a truer, as you...
June 2011
22 posts
Asianists and Atticists.
Except for those who’ve spent some time in the Late Roman Republic, most people, I imagine, will be unfamiliar with the Asianist-Atticist stylistic debate. (A vivid summary appears in J. Duggan, C. Licinius Calvus’ Regimens for Sexual and Oratorical Self-Mastery (Classical Philology, 2001), 406-7. Get thee to a JSTORy.) The gist is that this debate was effectively one over...
Catching up on CanLit
A treat from Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel, which I was reading this afternoon in Toronto’s Philosopher’s Walk by my office building:
My shreds and remnants of years are scattered through it visibly in lamps and vases, the needle-point fire bench, the heavy oak chair from the Shipley place, the china cabinet and walnut sideboard from my father’s house. … If I am...
de nuptialibus
Okay, it’s the Monday after NYC Pride. Visiting a friend in Kingston, ON, I wasn’t there myself and enjoyed an entirely dry night—the wine stores close early on Sunday nights in moralistic Ontario—but some of you will just be sobering up from a grand fête, as well you should be. We have, after all, a lot to celebrate, particularly in New York. Meanwhile Toronto is just gearing up for...
Literature's Worst Dads.
In honour of father’s day, I think we can all celebrate our fathers all the more heartily by comparison to these foul characters—not that I would need the comparison heartily to celebrate my Dad.
1. Agamemnon, the Oresteia. No question about this accolade for that kudistos anax andrôn (“most honoured lord of men”): by all means go and fight a war “allotrias diai gynaikos” (“for the sake...
Howl.
No, not that way, Ginsberg fans.
I’ve subtitled this blog “Photography, Greek, queer thinking,” and there hasn’t been so much of the middle term. Here’s a little treat from the LSJ (now online at the thesaurus linguae graecae—this has been making my life so deliciously easy).
φθέγγομαι [phthengomai], Od.10.228: utter a sound or voice, esp. speak loud or clear...
power pussy says: My List of Notable Fictional... →
powerpussysays:
1. Hermione Granger (well, just about every female character in Harry Potter)
2. Veronica Mars
3. Daria
4. Scout (from To Kill a Mockingbird)
5. Lizzie Bennett (Pride and Prejudice) [also, Elinor Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility]
6. Eve (from All About Eve)
7. Grendel’s Mother (…
Wait. Eve—really? Anne Baxter’s character is looking for a power grab, sure....
3 tags
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
We’ve been having thunderstorms at night, sun by day. I love the summer thunderstorms, in part because I’m lucky enough that around here they never turn into nor typhoon nor tornado. And I love in particular the weird mottling of the sky against dark houses.
For the above photograph I metered off of the lamp-post, not wanting to overexpose the photograph. The problem then of course is...
2 tags
Spot the privilege.
A friend sent me this article from hip, silly Toronto website The Grid, and I read the following piece of tripe by Toronto journalist Paul Aguirre-Livingston:
“A new generation of twentysomething urban gays—my generation,” Aguirre-Livingston declares, “has the freedom to live exactly the way we want. We have our university degrees, homes and careers. In Toronto, we’ve abandoned...
A beginning, of a sort.
To those who know Greek and many who don’t this blog will be transparently Symposium-inspired. “Paidika” is a curious term, and one I quite enjoy for its nuance and playfulness, its complex references. From my Middle Liddell:
παιδικός, ή, όν [paidikos, e, on]- of, for or like a child, boyish; 2. playful, sportive; II. of or for a beloved youth; 2. as substantive, a darling,...