A few choice tidbits gleaned from the blogosphere:
– Mr. Alicublog rides my hobbyhorse, even though he mounts it from the other side:
The thing that makes a piece of work worthwhile is the mystery, but that doesn’t mean an inspired fauve who doesn’t know what he’s doing can put it over without skills. (Usually.) The talented, trained people who get that thing on the stage or the page or the screen must be good with their tools, but they must also be working to realize the mystery, whether they would think to say so or, as with some hard-bitten old magicians, would rather portray themselves as clock-punchers trying to keep up their pay grade. You see the total absorption of great craftsmen at work: is it all for the money, do you think? Anyone who has worked on a production of any kind knows what it feels like when magic is being made–or failing to be made. Audiences know it too….
This is where ideologically-minded critics go wrong. They aren’t at all interested in the mystery. When I read their poli-sci reviews, I can see that they’re trying to assess the impact of the work in question–as if it were a social program or an economic stimulus package–on something they are pleased to call The Culture. In that sense, their work is indeed technical, and they often know their own grim metrics very well. But it has nothing to do with humility, or mystery, or art.
What he said.
– My favorite blogger-of-the-moment, Ms. in the wings, has posted “seventeen ways of looking for the beautiful.” Here are three:
1. As evident in the clean lines of modernist design or Renaissance counterpoint, I prefer the simple and austere to over-populated, messy masses.
2. Complexity is most intriguing when it juxtaposes the simple.
3. I prefer solving mysteries to being lectured by the head detective….
– Ms. Household Opera tries her hand at the I-am-ridiculous game:
George Herbert perhaps no, John Donne yes
John Milton no, Andrew Marvell yes
John Dryden no, Aphra Behn yes
Alexander Pope yes, Jonathan Swift very definitely yes
William Wordsworth no, Lord Byron yes….
Correct on all counts, I’d say.
– Lileks and I are watching the same early-morning TV shows:
Last night on “What’s My Line,” the guest was a young man who signed in as “Tom Eagleton.” Could it be? It was. His line was “District Attorney for St. Louis,” and he was 27. (The episode aired in 1957, I think.) Right from the Jack Webb line of lawmen, too–square head, flat hair, G-man stare, thin tie, a smile that was rare but genuine. He was followed by Mamie Van Doren, a breathy va-va-va-voomer who performed the odd facial alphabet of the 50s sex siren–the moue, the wink, the coquettish smile, the wide eyes, the teasing glance. And she ran through the sequence again and again, a performance completely disconnected from the questions. It was like watching a prototype Sexbot stuck in an programming loop. She really was from another era–a time when the sex stars had hips like oven doors, hair the color of astronaut suits, brains the size of ant thoraxes, and a life of giddy leisure that revolved around small, portable dogs, beefy Pepsodent morons, pink convertibles, and the purchase of ceramic cat statuary with long necks. A bratwurst to Paris Hilton’s Slim Jim….
– Mr. Something Old, Nothing New and I have the same favorite recording of Carmen.
– Finally, I’ll be blogrolling this shortly, but you need to read it now if you write a blog or are thinking of starting one. No exceptions. Now.