http://thebeginningfarmer.com/getting-out-of-the-pig-business/ There was something truly strange and self-defeating and remarkable about T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame). Like many artists his relation to fame seems to have resembled his relationship to himself: he hated it, despised it, and was also fascinated by it and could not quite give up his quest to possess it on some kind […]
Tag Archives: writing
T.E. Lawrence and His Editors.
05-Feb-14Reading a fair amount of Plutarch recently, the lives of Timoleon, Aemilius Paulus, Pelopidas, and Marcellus. What a superb man. Below is very nearly a summa of the highest, deeds-oriented (as opposed to eloquence-oriented) Classicism. You can hear how much he shaped the writerly outlook on Montaigne fifteen centuries later – what a thought, that […]
On Artistic Discipline.
17-May-11From Carey’s Wallace’s essay on maintaining discipline as an artist. The most difficult of all tasks, for precisely the reason she indicates: There is no such thing, we discovered, as disciplining one corner of a life. There are only disciplined or undisciplined lives. So far I’ve kept to precisely the opposite pattern – bursts of […]
“Every Part Must Sing.”
30-Nov-10A friend spoke to me about writing polyphonic music – “It must come together, of course,” he said. “But also individually, every part must sing.” I keep the same principle in mind constantly when writing a novel, with its counterpoint plot lines. Here’s the Rolling Stones song “Shelter”, fascinatingly taken apart track by track. Fabulous […]
Dreams and Beasts.
01-Feb-10“Dreams and Beasts are two keys by which we are to find out the secrets of our own nature. All mystics use them. They are like comparative anatomy. They test objects; or we may say, that must be a good theory of the universe, that theory will bring a commanding claim to confidence, which explains […]
Christopher Hitchens, Flagellum Dei.
19-Dec-11Niamtougou I see no particular reason to call Christopher Hitchens a good person – anyone, as I have said, who leaves his wife when she is pregnant with their second child is safely distancing himself from all the more benign forms of respectability – but I must confess that despite the obvious – despite Greenwald’s pointing […]