Rewatched About Schmidt, and it’s got to be one of the most perfect films about a wasted life. Hard to think of another that comes close.
Mary Bennett is the secret heroine of the novel, isn’t she?
The passing of Fredric Jameson got me to thinking about what it means to become a historical figure. His advisor, Eric Auerbach, died in 1957 at the age of 65, which was 67 years ago. Jameson will have been dead longer than he had been alive in 2115. How many of us will have been long forgotten?
I was so fortunate to have Fredric Jameson as one of my mentors. The world has lost one of its great minds and teachers.
Pedagogy could do with more rhetoric of uplift and transformation. They’re 18-22: they want to be better than they are now. Appealing to that desire can be meeting them where they are.
Honestly, still mad that we lost the gene that let us produce our own vitamin C. Now I have to drink rose hip tea like a rube.
I was always one of those people who thought getting angry when a kid asks “why?”was an injury to their sense of curiosity. But now that the six-year-old reflexively asks it regardless of what I say, I’ve reconsidered.
“Toads” by Philip Larkin Interesting now because in the poem, the pension system is assumed to be rock solid. “Ah, were I courageous enough To shout, Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that's the stuff That dreams are made on: For something sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too”
This is tonic to read as I pull my hair out over a proposal for book that is not entirely drafted yet.