from the Academy of American Poets, At the Common Table: Poems for Thanksgiving.
Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o’er Nineveh’s prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
from “The Pumpkin” by John Greenleaf Whittier
Author Charles J. Shields, whose book on Harper Lee was well-received last summer, wants to hear from you on your experiences with Kurt Vonnegut. “Now I’m beginning work on the first authorized biography–the first biography at all, actually–of Kurt Vonnegut. I’d like to hear from any of your readers about their experiences with Vonnegut, either personally or with his novels.”
Vonnegut is the author of A Man without a Country, Timequake, Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, and a few other books.
I asked Mr. Shields how he gained the opportunity to write Kurt Vonnegut’s first authorized biography. He replied:
Many years ago when I was a little boy wearing thick glasses, baggy pants, and Hush Puppy shoes, I realized I wasn’t the brightest star in the heavens, but I could compensate for that by being persistent. That’s really the story behind MOCKINGBIRD, which Harper Lee didn’t want me to write and tried to dissuade her friends from helping me with. But four years of research and hundreds of interviews produced a portrait of her. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s done in watercolors, not oils, but it will be valuable to biographers of hers who will come later.
Mr. Vonnegut turned me down at first, but when I pointed out the number of ways our lives connect—-we’re both Midwesterners; both humanists; he’s a veteran, so was my father; both men worked in public relations for large corporations—-I convinced him that I’m the guy for the job. He still remained skeptical for awhile, I think, but I kept up a regular stream of chat via phone and mail and I seem to have won him to my side. He’s a generous man, anyway. This biography will be the obverse of the one about Lee, in a sense. Vonnegut is an extrovert with many friends and a large body of work. His papers going back to the 1950s are on file at Indiana University. I was Philip Marlowe on the case of “Harper Lee, Recluse.” This time I get to be Boswell!
Is it worse to be accused of believing something false or to be accused of believing something evil? Christianity isn’t true? That’s so last-century. G.E. Veith writes, “It is one thing to oppose religion, but now we have arrived at the marks of dangerous religious bigotry: spreading sensationalistic lies, instigating fear in the public, and promoting paranoid conspiracy theories.”
This reminds me of a radio report I heard several weeks ago on a Christian outreach to a homosexual community. One young man said he felt uncomfortable with the group of Christians, because he sensed negativity from them. He had read the Bible, he said, and there’s no negativity in it.
As I brew some coffee to take to work this morning, let me pass on the news that roasting coffee beans at home is on the rise, according to this report from AP writer Brad Foss. He writes about coffee lovers who want the freshiest cup they can get, even if that means they have to buy the beans green and roast them over a gas grill at home.
It doesn’t require a lot of time, money or equipment to roast coffee beans at home — less than 10 minutes in an air popcorn popper does the trick — but enthusiasts devote plenty of each to the craft.
Home roasters congregate at Web sites such as coffeegeek.com, where they exchange techniques; they get together in person to sample, or “cup,” each other’s beans; and many maintain log books, where they record details such as the amount of time and heat applied to each batch they roast.
“Some guys are over the top,” said Dave Borton of Monroe, Wis., who has been roasting at home since January, belongs to an Internet-based bean buyers club and gives away about two pounds of freshly roasted beans every week to co-workers and members of his church. “My wife would tell you I am over the top.”
And I will tell you this is over the top for me, but in case you are interested in roasting your own beans, you can look for “countertop electric roasters” for $75-$500. Invite some friends over when you do it, and don’t complain if they want their drinks weaker than yours.
In today’s NY Times, author Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason; Letter to a Christian Nation):
By shying away from questioning people’s deeply felt beliefs, even the skeptics, Mr. Harris said, are providing safe harbor for ideas that are at best mistaken and at worst dangerous. “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” he said.
Dr. Steven Weinberg, who famously wrote toward the end of his 1977 book on cosmology, “The First Three Minutes,” that “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless,” went a step further: “Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”
True, it is “not merely a matter of lack of education,” though I wonder about the secularists so uneducated on faith matters. Why are these anti-religion activists content to broad-brush the world’s religions? Do they believe all atheists and secularists act the same, all in a clear-headed, beneficent manner? Have we forgotten the motives of the murderous leaders from the twentieth century? [via Books, Inq.]
Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. which owns the Fox Network (TV interview) and ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins (tasteless book), has announced the company is dropping O.J.’s book and television appearances.
“I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project,” said Rupert Murdoch. “We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.”
David Bauder, AP, writes, “For the publishing industry, the cancellation of ‘If I Did It’ was an astonishing end to a story like no other. Numerous books have been withdrawn over the years because of possible plagiarism, most recently Kaavya Viswanathan’s ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,’ but a book’s removal simply for objectionable content is virtually unheard of.”
Plan to give any literary or philologically related gifts this year? Things like umbrellas with author charicatures. Let us know about it, and feel free to assume a name in order to avoid spoiling your gift.
Glenn Lucke points out the NY Times article written by John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, on evangelicals. In fiction, Wilson says the evangelical is a dope. He continues, “A reader who moves from the fiction shelf to the stacks of reportage and commentary may experience cognitive dissonance. The evangelical buffoons who populate so many novels these days seem hardly capable of organizing a local witch-burning, yet their nonfictional counterparts are said to be on the verge of turning these United States into a theocracy.”
We’ve been Europe’s security blanket for six decades. We are Japan’s security blanket. We are South Korea’s. It’s been said that were it not for us, the French would be speaking German and the Germans would be speaking Russian. In 1938, the West decided it couldn’t be Czechoslovakia’s security blanket and sold out that country in Munich, Germany. The rest, as they say, is history.
This comes from Investor’s Business Daily by way of the Instapundit by way of Books, Inq.
Did you see Glenn Beck’s CNN Headline News show last Wednesday, “Exposed: The Extremist Agenda.” I believe it will air again this Sunday at 7:00 p.m. It’s on YouTube too. It doesn’t seem to be causing much of a stir, and as Benjamin Netanyahu says on the show, “It makes you understand how the `30s happened, because Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, is openly saying, while he denies the original Holocaust, he`s openly saying that he`s preparing another Holocaust to wipe Israel off the face of the earth with Iranian atomic bombs.”
The messages Beck collected are simply evil, but let me start with one that’s funny. From an investigative report on Iranian TV:
The Zionists are the largest shareholders of the world`s drink manufacturers. Coca-Cola, besides its clear continuous support of the Israeli government, had announced its willingness to invest billions of dollars to topple the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. . . . Take for example the Pepsi drink. You know what the name of Pepsi stands for? “Pay Each Penny Save Israel.”
Beck adds, “Coca-Cola wants to topple Iran. Obviously ridiculous. But the average Iranian citizen has no reason not to believe these claims.”
One analyst speculates this kind of wild propaganda comes in part from never having a free press. I guess Iranian Michael Moores run all the stations and newspapers. For my part, I don’t care for Pepsi, but if buying a few will help save Israel–well, I’ll consider it. Continue reading The Iranian Threat