Archive for past blast
The Greeks and Us
Lately I’ve been beginning my mornings reading the Greek Tragedies. It has been a joy! Perhaps the biggest theme in the Aeschylus and Sophocles I’ve read so far: the pressure of justice upon children. I’ve been reminded of something I wrote on that topic awhile ago about more modern times:
Compared to how often parents denounce and disown their children, it is remarkably rare to see them do so in print. Why? Perhaps because, to anyone outside the writer’s particular family orbit, slagging one’s offspring utterly undermines one’s standing as a parent, and hence one’s authorial credibility, too. (The father of cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, Lionel Dahmer, saves his harsh judgments for himself.)
I can think of only one example in the genre: Famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s rejection of her first son, William Murray, after he became a born-again Christian. (This son was the “Murray” in the Supreme Court Case Murray v. Curlett in which the court banned prayer in United States schools.) O’Hair wrote: “One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times. He is beyond human forgiveness.”
Books by adult children attacking their parents, on the other hand, are everywhere. Parents, even if they are not dead, can’t fight back without bringing upon themselves righteous fury and dishonour. This genre, then, allows justice for those children among us who could never defend themselves before, but for the rest it provides a template for cowardice and disgrace that is tempting for a time. [4 June ’04]
Reading
Basil.CA entered its nineteenth year as of a couple weeks ago. The two little posts below convey the tone of the early years. (My interests seem to have stayed steady …)
9 July 02: “How comes it,” asks my man Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613 – 1670), “that our memories are good enough to retain even the minutest details of what has befallen us, but not to recollect how many times we have recounted them to the same person?” I know that my own friends wonder, often and out loud, why I never seem to notice that I’m repeating myself, so it is really pleasing to read that Mr. La Rochefoucauld and his salon-mates shared this particular cognitive deficit. I finally bought his Maxims last November, and the book might never leave my bathroom. The man’s skeptical appraisals of human vanity, self-love, envy, and romance are wry and perfect. “When it comes to love, the one who recovers first recovers best” — “En amour celui qui est guéri le premier est toujours le mieux guéri” — was a favourite in my old Buffalo days, not sure why. Today I am a businessman with many clients who are involved in financing and promoting various speculative ventures. It is a world in which, if skepticism is not always rewarded, then naivete is pretty much always punished. The following La Rochefoucauld maxim comes to mind most every day: “Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportation to our fears.” (It is no more sentimental in the original French: “Nous promettons selon nos espérances, et nous tenons selon nos craintes.”)
24 September 02: As my readers know: When I get into a funk, I read and read and read. Sometimes this improves my mood; it rarely damages it further; and, because I have a very expansive view of education, I believe it elevates my mind. The best experience is when my reading makes me laugh out loud, as a recent item did [link no longer active, alas!]. In a Canada.com story about Vancouver officials trying to close down three bars in the city’s downtown eastside neighborhood, we get this paragraph:
“The bathrooms are shooting galleries,” says one. “Cops are always here raiding the people for dope, drugs and hookers and shit,” speculates another.
The faux-journalistic use of the word “speculates” is so wittily Canadian that I will live to read another day.
Responsibility Project/ Father’s Day
This is an updated link to one of the greatest short videos I have ever seen. Love and pain and memory and family. Beautiful.
The video won the Silver Lion at Cannes. Ernie Schenk writes, “I did the story and co-wrote the screenplay with director Laurence Dunmore. Shot this in 2 days in Devore, California. Does anyone have any idea how cold it can get in the San Bernadino Mountains. My toes are still numb.” Here is more of Schenk’s fine work.