Latest word from our lads with the electrodes, anatomised

One would have to cite the lurid intrigue commissioned by the British Crown over the remains of Roger Casement, as honourable precedent for the inextinguishable zeal of our pseudoscientists, for hooking us up to electrodes to monitor the responses of the anatomy to the ordeal of pornog-raphy. In the latest go-round in this endless misprision and misconstruction of sexuality, our sporting clinicians have come up with yet another positive proof of a false premise, that organic contingencies can explain anything. The New York Times, paper of unfail-ingly belated record in such matters, reports that the latest Rube Goldberg experiment has discovered bisexuality. And not a word about playlists?

Only in the most carnally morbid of cultures, lashed to an invasive evangelism relying wholly on a catechism of genital improbabilities, could our dim dialectic of sexuality draw the slightest motive. Ours being the only nuclear bastion of the crudest binary distinctions, our frenzy to divide humanity into no more than 2 cadres of sexual response is of the greatest international interest. Not that science, of even this frivolity, stands much chance against the depth of this policy, the nice people of Guernsey and of Andorra must be quaking in their boots to apprehend what effect this disturbing study might have on the deployment of our forces. 

This latest parody of empiricism is only likely to degrade the dignity of fact even further, where it is anathema in the first place. Who can suppose that our Michelle will be deterred in her crusade for compulsory conjugality, by further reports of its diversification? Voodoo is only invigorated by quackery, of which this meets every test. Nor, in her mortal struggle with Texas' crown prince of penal injection, is the tenuous distinction between love and death in her mind, likely to fare well.

Like you, I cringe at the prospect of the detailed publication of this evidence, for its digest of distractions to be assimilated in our dis-course. We have to be able to trust at least some of our stimuli - the green light, of ancient probity. May its glow never dim. 

Between strokes

                

                                           

something persists,

and all you know is

that you love to be

there

i   Thomas Pastyrczak

ii  Jakob Wiechmann

Subject to change on grounds of haberdashery

the power of haberdashery 
to adjust our expectations
of an occasional meeting
is oft-remarked by vastly
subtler authorities than we
can sometimes understand;


but we all know of the
change it can spontaneously
impart, even in absentia,
to the tone of our relations.






















no one would bat an eye to wear a sweater out in August, if it were conducive to his interests; nothing else would do.

                                     

                                                   

Saturday commute xxxvii: Reading with the abbé

  

  

  The courtiers were
  delightful, they
  were not snobs ..
  But they were pro-
  vincials. There was
  freedom of speech
  but no one to ex-
  change it with. In
  short, Lunéville 
  was not Versailles.

     




   Saint-Lambert behaved rather well.
   Having aroused this unwanted pas-
   sion, he did nothing to try and
   check it, he waited for it to die
   down again .. She only asked per-
   mission to go on loving and this
   Saint-Lambert graciously accorded.

Abbé Girard, quite the nicest of priests, who came here, asked for Voltaire Amoureux, so I said to Mme Costa what should I put comme dédicace. She said I think better put nothing or else when he is dead & they look at his books, he will be compromised. "You see you are such a beautiful young [sic] lady, it's not as though you were Mme de Pange." 


Can you wonder I like coming here!

                        

There will be more of

this writer, whose works

gave buoyant delight and

sweetly ribald relief to

the household of one's

childhood. She has been

grievously exploited, as

she gaily anticipated.

Let's meet her anew,

with this observation:

the volume she proposes

to inscribe is the most

necessary study of Vol-

taire which he did not

write, himself; and he

is lucky to get it.

                   But do we need such a thing?

                   Does a vine need a season of

                   nakedness?

Nancy Mitford

Voltaire in Love

Hamish Hamilton, 1957©

Nancy Mitford and

Heywood Hill

John Saumarez-Smith, editor

The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street

  Letters .., 1952-73

  NM to HH, 25 Oct 63

The Estate of Nancy Mitford, 2004©

Frances Lincoln, Ltd, 2004

ii Benjamin A. Huseby photography

   Bolshoi youth

Found not fishing, and lacking identification

From Melville,

in the large

book cited a-

bove, we hear

of loomings.

        

Now, when I say that I am
in the habit of going to
sea whenever I grow hazy
about the eyes .. I do 
not mean to have it in-
ferred that I ever go to
sea as a passenger.









v  Valéry Lorenzo

Dynamite news

        

  The President of 
  the United States 
  promises to become 
  a serious man, the 
  moment he leaves 
  Martha's Vineyard.


  Isn't that just
  delicious?

Suppose it were Friday ix: it's not as if you have to play golf

    So, Iago. You think a
    3 wood will give me
    enough loft to get 
    off this beach?


    The shore breeze
    will take care of
    the loft, sir. It's
    distance that you
    need, from this lie.












Possibly, it's not a bad idea to deal with that beach some other way.

Commuter traffic, Sneeden's Landing, Thursday

        

  Dire is the drill

  of August blogging

                               sumptuous the light

                               in which it plays.