obiter scripta

Obiter Scripta, no. 59

By in obiter scripta No Comments

It is good to go to bed early in Winter, and tonight as we sleep our dreams take punctuation from the thudding of snowploughs as they roll and bluster up and down Route 4, shaking the house yet comforting our sleep: Someone takes care, the solitary captains in their great snowships breasting through vast whiteness, cleaving it sideways into gutter drifts. If we stir as they thump past, we watch revolving yellow lights flash through our windows and reflect on the ceiling. We roll over and fall back into protected sleep.

— Donald Hall, “Winter,” Seasons at Eagle Pond

We don’t get quite enough snow in Virginia to justify it, but I still enjoy the fantasy of having a four-wheel-drive vehicle to drive in the snow (or better yet, an all-wheel-drive Subaru — I love those little tanks). It’s a lingering urge from the days when my family owned a newspaper distributorship and we were often the first ones out breaking trails through a snowstorm. I remember the satisfying feeling of security and preparedness in a vehicle designed for snow, the pleasure of being alert and focused on overcoming the danger of slick roads. Alone in a vast sea of white, I never thought of myself as the captain of a snowship, but that’s a great image, as is that of snowplows as patrolling guardians making the roads safe for the rest of us as we sleep.

Obiter Scripta, no. 58

By in books, obiter scripta 2 Comments

The rest of the book was covered in graffiti like a boxcar parked too long outside the train yard: scribbles, circles, underlines, arrows, and rambling marginalia, all against a backdrop of pink highlighter swipes.

— Michael Perry, Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy

I’ve never understood why people do this to their books. I mean, strictly from a pragmatic point of view, wouldn’t it be easier and better to keep a notebook (or blog) for recording your thoughts as you make your way through a book, where you can annotate to your heart’s content? It’s the clutter that bothers me — the garish colors and illegible scrawls. It’s like trying to think after walking into a small, loud room. How can I profitably absorb anything with some Pink Highlighter Notation-bro braying at me the whole time? And how much space is there in the margins to record anything of substance anyway? It’s like having a Twitter feed scrolling alongside your reading. I’ve only ever used a red pen to make small brackets around a line or paragraph for future reference. My Darwinist attitude is, if I can’t remember why I bracketed this section, I probably didn’t have anything worthwhile to say about it anyway. And now that I’ve bought myself a Scanmarker for Christmas, I don’t even need to do that anymore. (It goes without saying, but people who dog-ear pages should be put in thumbscrews.)

Obiter Scripta, no. 57

By in books, obiter scripta No Comments

Copcot was making his way through Shotover forest, to the east of the city, on his way to mass at Horspath church on Christmas Day 1376, amusing himself by reading Aristotle as he went, as undergraduates do, when suddenly he was confronted by a wild boar. Scholar and beast eyed each other. Then, according to an account printed in 1876, “as quick as speech the taberdar thrust the volume, vellum, brass and all, into the animal’s throat, and then finished the business with the spear, whilst his opponent was digesting his classics.” An 1823 account gives the “touching climax” to the story: “‘Swallow that, if you can’ (cried the unarmed student thrusting his Aristotle down the boar’s throat). ‘Graecum est’, cried the boar, and expired, foaming at the mouth; for he found Aristotle (as many other throats had done and will do) too hard for him.”

— Andrew Gant, Christmas Carols: From Village Green to Church Choir

We’ve seen quite a few bears on our hikes, including a mom with her cubs. This convinces me that I should start carrying some Zizek and Habermas in my pack for protection.

Obiter Scripta, no. 56

By in books, obiter scripta No Comments

As it happened, publishers and booksellers were the shock troops in exploiting — and developing — a Christmas trade. And books were on the cutting edge of a commercial Christmas, making up more than half of the earliest items advertised as Christmas gifts…In fact, even before books were actually labeled as Christmas presents in the newspapers, they were being marketed for that purpose.

—Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of Our Most Cherished Holiday

That tone of strongly-implied disapproval runs throughout the book, a tedious Marxish archeological dig below the foundations of the holiday to unearth the telltale potsherds of paternalism, classism, nativism, and, worst of all, rapacious commercialism and inauthentic consumerism. What the materialist cynics never understand is that even amid humble, degraded origins, something noble and timeless can still shine through. Here, as with the ancient Icelandic tradition of jólabókaflóð, is a reminder of the sort of old-fashioned Christmas values we would all do well to resurrect.

Obiter Scripta, no. 55

By in books, foolosophy, obiter scripta No Comments

Cosima had committed herself to marriage with von Bülow when she was still in her teens and had been swept away by a concert in Berlin conducted by him. The concert program had included the first Berlin performance of Wagner’s Venusberg music from Tannhaüser. Von Bülow had proposed to her on the same night. Both of them were in love with Wagner and completely transported by his glorious music; one wonders who he was wooing and who she was accepting.

— Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche

In Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Albertine’s professed undying love for the Narrator and his intellect is explained as a result of those mornings when he had just shaved; it was his smooth skin she really loved, though she instinctively rationalized it as something more profound. How many times do these mischievous ghosts hover over our shoulders, redirecting our thoughts, diverting our feelings? How often do we focus on the figure rather than the background as the source of our happiness, only to feel disappointed or betrayed when that surrounding context changes? And yet, how many great things are nonetheless born of those humble parents Inattention and Error?

Obiter Scripta, no. 54

By in books, obiter scripta No Comments

I do not know if this is an emotion universally felt, but I have discovered that I am not alone in feeling what I have come to think of as “Sunday night triste,” a feeling of the blues that comes upon me dependably each Sunday, roughly at dusk. What does this tinge of sadness signify? Expectations disappointed? A yearning for a time now gone and not ever to be recaptured? Regret for the winding down of another week, during the course of which one achieved (yet again!) less than one had hoped? Sorrowful anticipation of still another week ahead? Or is it — simply and more persuasively — sadness at the passing of Sunday itself, one of life’s minor pleasures that is now once again no less than a full six days off?

— Joseph Epstein, “Observing the Sabbath,” Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life

Alone with our thoughts on a day of rest, it sometimes feels as if we’ve paused amid the eternal Heraclitean flow, watching the swirls and eddies rush past without acknowledging us, knowing it’s futile and foolish, but still halfheartedly wishing we could stand athwart the flux and plead, “stop.” Alternatively, perhaps it’s a variation of what John Koenig named “kenopsia.“

Obiter Scripta, no. 53

By in environment, obiter scripta No Comments

October is the month of painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight.

— Thoreau, “Autumnal Tints”

That’s probably the case in New England, but here in the mid-Atlantic region, it tends to be early November when the leaves reach their glorious peak. This week is traditionally very busy for us, and this year we entertained a visiting relative for a few days on top of it, so I feel as if a whole week of my favorite month of the year has zipped by before I could savor it. But today, the sun was bright, the temperature mild, the pine trees were laying down a golden carpet of dead needles, the breeze was nipping at the heels of the fallen leaves and herding them across the yard, and the air itself seemed to glow with a reddish-orange hue from the blazing treetops. A year ago this night, I was about to embark on a three-day hospital stay culminating in gallbladder surgery. Today, I’m just happy to be alive to enjoy this wonderful time of year.

Obiter Scripta, no. 52

By in language, obiter scripta No Comments

I had learned the phrase “obiter dicta” in my readings over the years — I especially remember Roger Kimball and Theodore Dalrymple using it — and thought it would make a good name for a continuing series of short posts. Recently, though, George Santayana introduced me to the phrase “obiter scripta,” which struck me as more apt given that I’m writing, not speaking, so I changed the title of the series. This is what happens when your knowledge of Latin consists of a smattering of words and phrases acquired secondhand. Maybe I need to crack some more books.

Obiter Scripta, no. 51

By in books, obiter scripta, writing No Comments

Although I’ve had some commercial and critical success with my books, I’ve never written a book at whose completion I felt that, like a gymnast making a perfect landing, I’ve nailed it, a perfect ten. Only a year or more later, when for one reason or another I might open the book and find a passage that pleases me, do I say to myself, “Not bad, not bad at all. I wasn’t stupid when I wrote that. How come I’m so stupid today?”

—Joseph Epstein, “The Perils of Prolificacy,” Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays

I feel that way all the time. Apparently I suffer from a type of writer’s farsightedness, where my opinion of my efforts grows in proportion to my temporal distance from it. Up close, I can only see wasted potential and disappointment. “I felt stupid when I wrote that. How come it looks so much smarter in retrospect?” Ah, hindsight — both the torment and the solace of an amateur writer.

Obiter Scripta, no. 50

By in antisocial networking, books, obiter scripta No Comments

What distinguishes the junk language of our day from the junk language of earlier days is that it is so quickly taken up by people who are supposed to — but of course don’t — know better: journalists, public figures, academics in high places with low tastes. Glimpsing a recent book about Henry James, I came across the phrase “James’s take on this question.” Henry James had a point of view, insights, observations, aperçus, a striking pensée or two, yet I am certain that he didn’t do “takes,” ever.

— Joseph Epstein, “Don’t Ask, Multitask,” Wind Sprints: Shorter Essays

I didn’t “lol,” but I did indeed laugh out loud to read this, given that it was written eighteen years ago. What would Epstein (or even more amusingly, Henry James) think now that “take” has become the preferred term in our attention-deficient age for referring to an expressed opinion, of either sentence-fragment or article-length, used by precisely the same culprits he named so accurately? There are many disgusting and enraging things about social media and its heaviest users, but this particular piece of overused argot is one that makes me wish I could delete other people’s accounts.

1 2 3 4 5 >»