{"id":15906,"date":"2021-10-22T22:14:01","date_gmt":"2021-10-23T02:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15906"},"modified":"2021-11-08T17:48:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T22:48:28","slug":"a-fictional-lewis-milosz-in-california-and-blogroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15906","title":{"rendered":"A Fictional Lewis, Mi\u0142osz in California, and Blogroll"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gina Dalfonzo reviews Once Upon a Wardrobe<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the second book from author Patti Callahan with a fictional story that draws in many actual details of C.S. Lewis’s life and habitat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz<\/strong>, born in \u0160eteniai, Lithuania, 1911, spent 40 years in California before his death in 2004. Cynthia Haven has labored over a book on this great poet of last century and Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz: A California Life<\/em> released this month.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Nobel poet spent more time in California than any other place during his long 93-year life,” Haven writes. “He wrote poems about the California landscape, engaged with our culture, and taught generations of students at UC-Berkeley. Some of those students became eminent translators of his work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Zucker<\/strong><\/a> has written some pretty funny scripts, which cross the line too often for my taste. In Commentary<\/em>, he writes about an opinion he often hears from fans: “You couldn’t do that scene today.” (Via <\/em>Books inq<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humor happens when you go against <\/a>what\u2019s expected and surprise people with something they\u2019re not anticipating, like the New York Jets winning a game. But to find this surprise funny, people have to be willing to suppress the literal interpretations of jokes. In\u00a0Airplane!<\/em>, Lloyd Bridges\u2019s character tries to quit smoking, drinking, amphetamines, and sniffing glue. If his \u201caddictions\u201d were to be taken literally, there would be no laughs. Many of today\u2019s studio executives seem to believe that audiences can no longer look past the literal interpretations of jokes. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Dracula<\/strong>: How did Bram Stoker’s novel become a pop-fiction hit<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malcolm Muggeridge<\/a><\/strong>: “If it should prove to be the case that Western man has now rejected these origins of his civilization, persuading himself that he can be master of his own destiny, that he can shape his own life and chart his own future, then assuredly he and his way of life and all he has stood and stands for must infallibly perish.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To close, here are a few words plucked from Mi\u0142osz’s “City Without a Name<\/a>,” written in California, 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atrocious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.<\/p>

And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.<\/p>

If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.<\/p>

Like a\u00a0Noble Jan D\u0119bor\u00f3g<\/em>\u00a0in the Straszun’s secondhand-book shop, I am put to rest forever between two familiar names.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Photo: George Joe Restaurant, La Mesa, California, 1977, John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gina Dalfonzo reviews Once Upon a Wardrobe, the second book from author Patti Callahan with a fictional story that draws in many actual details of C.S. Lewis’s life and habitat. Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz, born in \u0160eteniai, Lithuania, 1911, spent 40 years in California before his death in 2004. Cynthia Haven has labored over a book on … Continue reading A Fictional Lewis, Mi\u0142osz in California, and Blogroll<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3,7,11],"tags":[3886,432,615,804],"class_list":["post-15906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-authors","category-blogs-social-media","category-fiction","category-poetry","tag-blogroll","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-czeslaw-milosz","tag-dracula"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brandywinebooks.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/George-Joe-Restaurant-California_grain.jpg?fit=930%2C380&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15906"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15913,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906\/revisions\/15913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}