Footnotes from the Styx

    Everything falls in

    place, reasonably e-

    nough, but it is not

    so easy to be recon-

    ciled with the heel.

    

    It is not mortality,

    the unease. It's the

    irremediable inter-
    ference, a legacy un-
    severable, unspendab-
    le - ancestral folly.

House Speaker announces a better idea than playing fair

Revenge.

It's what the bigots

always mean when they

assert the protection

of small business, the

family rental property,

and the practice of a-

doring their god to the

intended, specific harm

of others. Speaker John

Boehner, third in line

to the Presidency of

the United States, is

today's mouthpiece for

the Heritage Foundation,

a wolf pack on K Street.

Who's tomorrow's? And

whose flesh will feed

that jackal's phony 

teeth?

The New York Times

November 4th, 2013

A word on workplace decency

If I were a stonemason, a craft

we've contemplated before in

this place, I'd naturally pray

for my government's protection

from the child-threatening ex-

tremists who hold such media-

driven power over society to-

day, that they'd only invade 

my shop floor with subversive

funny clothes and quinoa honey

smoothies. How could I buff a

slate or cut a block symmetric-

ally, in a shop besieged by so 

much chaos on two feet? For

a real guy to do real work, he

needs protection from the law.

What ever happened to the idea

of unit cohesion? It was good

enough for the Army, and what's

good for a gun should be good

for a chisel: a guy shouldn't

have to worry about being at-

tacked, all the time, and you

know they always get all sweaty.

The New York Times

November 3rd, 2013

Tom strikes again

Of course I don't mean the Oxonian

carillon, that I've been privileged

not to hear; and of course I do mean

the man of The Waste Land, which so

possessed this page at one time, a

strenuous experience, like all our

dearest won, tentatively suspended 
struggles for what he remembers as, 

life in accordance with the mind.

Yes, I mean the Tom of that poetry,

whom The New York Review has re-

discovered in an unpublished lec-

ture on the Elizabethan poet and

translator of Homer, Chapman. What

can be said, but that Mr Eliot has

cast another snare in our complais-

ant path, but that because he did,

we can take it seriously. 

Ted Cruz and I had the same college

education, and we attended similar

law schools. Too obviously, he went

there for answers, to learn their

seduction. I went there for ques-

tions, to share their embrace. The

reason for this posting is the gale

of spontaneous hugs in T.S. Eliot;

I don't know what to do with them,

but I don't deny, I need them.

Dante knew as well as Chapman and 

Dostoevski that man belongs to two 

worlds: that the human life when it 

is human, is a compromise and a con-

flict. It is an error to regard Dan-

te’s conception of love as romantic. 

.. But I do say that if you accept 

Christian problems then you should 

accept Christian conclusions. When 

I find a writer for whom clearly the 

Christian other world does not exist, 

or who has found another “other world,” 

then I will not judge him by Christian 

standards. But I say that Chapman and 

Donne and Dostoevski, and also James 

Joyce, accept Christian problems; they 

are operating with Christian categor-

ies; and that they are all infer-

ior to Dante because they do not draw 

Christian conclusions. This is I think 

the great distress of the modern world, 

that it is neither Christian nor defin-

itely something else.

It's inevitable to hear again in

these words an elegy for coheren-

cy, entirely in keeping with The

Waste Land. The demand is exactly

what can lead to a Ted Cruz, un-

less it rises from intelligence

disciplined by humbling error,

clobbered about enough on the

practice field and in tutorial,

to emerge by playing fair. And 

then the bracing invigoration of 

the untoward question surpasses

all intimidation. Is the mind 

a lesser gift than my fear, had

not been on my mind. Now the in-

convenient carillon has pitched

that very question, and why are

we so glad?

T.S. Eliot

A Neglected Aspect

  of Chapman

1924

The New York Review of Books

November 7, 2013©

Bastian van Gaalen

Saturday commute xcii: following the ground

Our meadow grasses licked our boots with frost, the seething soil rose earthy to our nostrils, a slant-ing light reflected from the silver as it melted.

Fiano gave way to Barolo.

I'm fine with the font

  

    not so sure

    about the

    punctuation

    

 I doubt if it ends. A blog
 posting sometimes prefig-
 ures, sometimes recalls an
 experience extruded by met-
 aphor. This morning Thorny,
 my English Cocker, exuber-
 ant to be feeling swell af-
 ter a long run in a frosty
 meadow, careened into my
 desk and demolished a clas-
 sic lamp from Artemide, one
 of two from the year of its
 release. A predecessor of
 his, Robbie, munched a first
 edition of Alexander Pope.

 Pillage doesn't have a la-
 tent punctuation, but among
 the options, the full stop
 is the last one imaginable.

 Still, the picture makes a
 point. It can be amusing.

        From the basement there emanated a great brou. Ha ha.
        'They're all there. Down below. Hear them romping a-
        round? They're prehistoric. Because, as I told you,
        to me, billiards ..'




















Raymond Queneau
Zazie dans le métro
Barbara Wright, translation
Penguin, 1960©

Same-old, same-old Curzon Street

  Violating my holiday from

  care, Heywood Hill wrote

  in to announce their new

  website, and I summarily

  offer the penalty of hot

  publicity in the same me-

  dium. We've visited them

  before from this address,

  but this time I leave it

  all up to John le Carré,

  in a well-recollected in-

  stance of intrusion upon

  a fellow's private time.

.. he solemnly set off for

Heywood Hill's bookshop in

Curzon Street, where he oc-

casionally contracted friend-

ly bargains with the prop-

rietor. On the way he became

even more irritable, and from

a call-box sought an appoint-

ment with his solicitor for

that afternoon.

"George, how can you be so vulgar?

Nobody divorces Ann. Send her flow-

ers and come to lunch."

This advice bucked him up and he

approached Heywood Hill with a mer-

ry heart only to walk slap into the

arms of Roddy Martindale emerging

from Trumper's after his weekly

haircut.

Martindale had no valid claim on

Smiley either professionally or

socially. He worked on the fleshy

side of the Foreign Office and his

job consisted of lunching visiting

dignitaries whom no one else would

have entertained in his woodshed ..

He affected buttonholes and pale

suits, and pretended on the flim-

siest grounds to an intimate famil-

iarity with the large back rooms 

of Whitehall.

With due regard for my shameless

fondness for Trumper's Portugal -

a happy evocation of another Age

in California - I credit the nov-

elist for a withering appreciation

of that very same fateful juxtapo-

sition we've all experienced, of

the sublime bookstore and the tem-

ple of vanity. Here was Tillman

Place, there Tiffany; here was

Scott Martin, opposite Wilkes.

This lent many a fanciful jaunt

the flatulence and bad company of

a supererogatory lunch, and not

a reader has lacked for Smiley's

regret of Martindale.

Hurrah for HH, as ever.

John le Carré

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Penguin Books, 1974©

Christie quits, desiring higher status

The office of the Governor

of New Jersey announced to-

day his retreat from thrust-

ing a celebration of bigotry

before voters in the Garden

State, and abandoning his

appeal to the State's high-

est court, to extend the

exile of same-sex couples 

to second-class status of 

citizenship. For this, he

expects forgetfulness, and

and he'll probably get it,

from himself.

Garden State Equality v. Dow