The Frankenfont Project, mixing up the letters of Mary Shelley’s text.
Shall We Rally for Free Speech?
I hesitate to say it, but I side with Limbaugh in the recent selective outrage. Perhaps the word “slut” is currently anathema, but haven’t several other female public figures been called the same or equivalent names without the outrage? With a hard-R-rated movie like Project X opening last week, are we really this disgusted at some hard words on a ugly topic?
The whole point of this is that a Georgetown law student and feminist activist claimed to need $3,000 of contraception to get her through school, and public taxes should provide it. Meg McDonnell describes the story as I remember it before the outcry:
Claiming that contraception coverage was financially crippling to students, like herself, Fluke ended her testimony by saying: “We refuse to pick between a quality education and our health and we resent that, in the 21st Century, anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make that choice simply because we are women.”
Fluke claimed the costs of contraception were steep, saying that roughly 40 percent of Georgetown women struggle with $3,000 contraception bills over the course of a three-year law school term. But many quickly debunked her claim, notably The Weekly Standard, who found that Target in DC sells generic birth control pills for $9/month to those who do not have insurance.
That sounds like typical, ridiculous political rhetoric that gets politicians and newspapers moving again, and I’m having a hard time believing it should not be ridiculed. No one wants to deny women contraception; some of us are fighting the idea that every healthy provision can be paid for with federal taxes by the good will of congress.
True Detective, by Max Allan Collins
[Detective] Miller stood planted there like one of the lions in front of the Art Institute, only meaner-looking. Also, the lions were bronzed and he was tarnished copper.
I discovered, after I had bought True Detective
All the Heller books are good. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s impossible to keep a series from becoming formulaic after a while. With the Heller books, you have a series where the same private eye somehow manages to be on the scene for almost every important murder in America between 1930 and 1970. Each one is plausible individually, but they stretch credibility in the aggregate.
But this first novel deserves a place all its own. Collins’s own contemplation of the hard-boiled genre led him to want to write a book that stretched the limits and broke the rules, not with malice but for a reason. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was an honorable man, trying to keep clean in a dirty world. Collins’s detective, Nate Heller, is a soiled man, trying to find a way to preserve some degree of integrity. He’s a tragic character, and True Detective is a genuine tragedy, with a plot that functions like the mechanism of a guillotine. Continue reading True Detective, by Max Allan Collins
New from Gene Edward Veith
Our friend Dr. Gene Edward Veith has a new book out, Family Vocation: God’s Calling in Marriage, Parenting, and Childhood.
I probably won’t be reviewing it myself, this subject being outside my sphere of expertise, but if you’re a normal person, you’re likely to find the book useful. Dr. Veith is a wise and godly man.
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (Anthology)
I just got in under the wire, acquiring Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe from Amazon. I went to link to it for this review, and discovered the Kindle version was not available. I puzzled over this, since the book is right here on my Kindle device now, and I knew I got it from Amazon. Turns out it’s one of those Overdrive books that got removed the other day. So you’ll have to either buy a paper copy, or go to Overdrive for the e-book.
What Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is, is an anthology, first published in the 1980s and expanded in 1999, of original Philip Marlowe stories written by current mystery writers. The contributors contributed their own Marlowe stories, and then added brief appreciations, telling how Chandler’s work had influenced their own.
The results are uneven, but entertaining. The authors all attempt to emulate Chandler’s style. Some do it better than others. The most interesting thing to notice, for me, was the personal indulgences several of them couldn’t seem to resist. Female writers (but not all of them) couldn’t help correcting Chandler’s portrayal of women, introducing the kind of female characters they wish Chandler had written about. A couple writers couldn’t resist injecting politics, something Chandler generally eschewed. “The Empty Sleeve,” by W. R. Philbrick, is interesting for having Philip Marlowe meet his own creator, Raymond Chandler, at a poker game. But he also injects, entirely gratuitously, a certain politician he doesn’t like in a sleazy role for which there’s no historical warrant I’m aware of. Roger L. Simon, still a liberal when the book was compiled, contributes a slashing indictment of the Hollywood Black List, “In the Jungle of Cities.” Continue reading Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe (Anthology)
In the spirit of Occam
I posted about this last night on Facebook, and I think it’s worth sharing here. It’s about writing. I’m not sure when it came to me, but I was looking at various pieces of writing, amateur, professional, and thinks-its-professional, and this thought came to me.
Amateur writers generally think that their thoughts are too simple, that they need to be dressed up for publication. Professional writers know that their thoughts are too complicated, and need to be simplified for publication.
Much of the problem, I think, for the amateur is insecurity. He contemplates the thoughts in his head, the thing he wants to say, and thinks, “I have to dress this baby up in his Sunday best, or people will laugh at him.”
But that Sunday best is likely to be stilted language, plus the biggest words the amateur knows (or thinks he knows).
The professional sets his ideas down, muddy and unkempt as they may be, and then takes a knife to them. He cuts away the unnecessary stuff, until all that is left are words that convey precisely the thoughts (or feelinsg) he intends to communicate.
Clarity. Focus. Economy. Those are the marks of the professional. Knowing what to take away is what separates the pros from the ams.
The Whole Story or Muddled Opinion?
This is funny, but I have to wonder if it shows more the problems of our cultural multiversity, each of us flailing around for a bit of real ground to stand on, than it does the whole news story as the advertisement suggests.
Andrew Breitbart: God Mend Thine Every Flaw
I’m shocked. Larry Solov writes, “Andrew [Breitbart] passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles.” Lord, have mercy.
I am Shackleton. Or Amundson. Somebody.
It came at last. It was originally predicted a couple days ago, but didn’t materialize, and suddenly last evening I looked at the Weather Channel page, and there it was—heavy, wet snow tonight, mixed with sleet.
And this morning, as I ungaraged Mrs. Hermanson and shifted her into four-wheel-drive, I knew the couple inches that had fallen overnight were already too heavy for my snow blower to handle. And that was before an expected day of additional snow and sleet, plus mild temperatures.
Tonight we had Sno-Cone snow, heavy as a shovelful of wet concrete. I attacked it with a push shovel, with the assistance of my neighbor (we share the driveway). She’s a couple decades younger than me. Eventually she gave it up, but she let me borrow her ergonomic snow shovel (example below).
Picture credit: Scott Catron.
I’ve always been suspicious of ergonomic snow shovels. New-fangled new age gimcracks. Hippy implements. No respect for tradition.
I’m a believer now. They reduce the perceived labor about 50%. Continue reading I am Shackleton. Or Amundson. Somebody.
Misreading Through Self-Centered Eyes
“It’s possible to read the Bible, study the Bible, and memorize large portions of the Bible, while missing the whole point of the Bible. It’s entirely possible, in other words, to read the stories and miss the Story,” writes Tullian Tchividjian.