The Journals of Denton Welch

… this passage:

It is quite true that a general unwillingness to appreciate robs most people of their eyes, nose, mouth, ears, limbs. They are trunks of wood always repudiating; although they have already been deprived of all sense and movement.

… there is an odd connection between the people DW describes here and the lunatic fringe that would hang their fellow citizens in this country in this time… the rabble roused to illogical belief in conspiracies of evil being perpetrated against them…

… the character of Evie interests me… she was, essentially, a housekeeper and cook for DW… she lived with him and moved wherever he moved… he describes her as inhuman, by which i think he suggests that she is a remote or distant sort of character… what led her to be this sort of figure in a young and damaged man’s life?… what personal life did she have?… it seems we are never told…

… i read about the Essays of Elia, written by Charles Lamb… DW relished them in his youth (while convalescing from his accident?)… i find a copy on the internet, offered by the Library of Congress…

… as i am reading, i am listening to a marvelous set of cello suites performed by Marcus Wagner… Paul Torelier has composed one set… we have a set of Bach Cello suites performed by Tortelier in our music collection that i have listed to over and over and over again… its good music to be going in the background while you are reading, studying, editing photographs, writing…

An Attempt At Exhausting A Place In Paris, Georges Perec

… an endless catalog of comings and goings, anchored by the public buses moving through the scene with regularity and in various states of fullness… it is all surface, no depth, a clear cosmic churning of little consequence…

… i have finished reading An Attempt… i am glad it is short… i liked it… it is on to something important… i learn about the novel Life, A Users’s Manual, for which this may have been the prelude… Life is a much longer work, 600 plus pages apparently, all taking place in one location and at one time… i immediately wonder how it might compare to Joyce’s Ulysses, which takes place all on one day… am i remembering that correctly?

… i read the afterward by Marc Lowenthal… he surfaces a number of books that i might want to read…

  • The Man of the Crowd, Edgar Allen Poe
  • The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Caseres
  • Something Black, Jaques Roubaud
  • Lundi rue Christine, Apollinaire
  • An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, Daniel Spoerrie
  • L’Invention du monde, Olivier Rolin
  • The Journalist, Harry Mathew

… a long reading list, a new rabbit hole…

… time to go wandering…

Etel Adnan, Shifting the Silence, rejoiced by Maria Popova

Painting by Etel Adnan from Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure, Guggenheim Museum, 2021. (Photograph: Maria Popova)

… no secret, i am a big fan of Maria Popova… this post on Etel Adnan’s Shifting the Silence is a wonderful read… and now, i have added yet another book to my reading list… i need to carve out more reading time… i am having such fun with it…

The Limits of Liberal Science, Laura K. Field

Published in The Bulwark, November 04, 2021

a review by Laura K. Field of The Constitution of Knowledge, by Jonathan Rauch… the book is an argument for the supremacy of “liberal science” as arbiter of objective truth… Field broadly accepts the premise but objects to its, in her opinion, proposed hegemony of liberal science over all other ways of processing and assessing reality… she quotes “Rauch’s bold claim:”

You have to check your own claims and subject them to contestation from others; you have to tolerate the competing claims of others; you have to accept that your own certainty counts for nothing; you have to forswear claiming that your god, your experience, your intuition, or your group is epistemically privileged; you have to defend the exclusive legitimacy of liberal science even (in fact, especially) when you think it is wrong or unfair. (Page 91)

… and suggests the following rewrite:

You have to check your own claims and subject them to contestation from others; you have to tolerate the competing claims of others; you have to accept that even your own feelings of certainty are fallible; you have to honestly admit that you do believe your mode of engagement to be epistemically privileged (and be able to give reasons why), while at the same time sustaining a radical openness to counterarguments from any and all quarters, even (in fact, especially) when you think it is wrong or unfair.

… i like her proposed changes… it’s a statement of principal that i can and do live by, with varying degrees of success, like any fallible human being…

… i have several related thoughts…

… i remember Kellyanne Conway’s statement, “Facts don’t matter. What people believe matters.”… one of the greatest political truths ever spoken… much as i loath her politics and involvement in aiding and abetting 45, this one statement is both profound honesty and profound truth… i respect her for it… extended a bit further… at the end of the day, for most of us, any truth we claim certainty about is, at bottom, a belief founded on the work and ideas of others… nobody has time to completely investigate and verify all of the “truths” by which they lead their daily lives…

… the second thought flashing through my mind is about the story of Nosferatu as told by Werner Herzog in his movie Nosferatu the Vampyre… in his telling of the story, Nosferatu arrives to suck the blood of unfortunate citizens of Wismar Germany… he brings the plague with him… the heroine, Lucy, tries to persuade the scientific/technocratic authorities that Count Dracula is the problem… they dismiss her… she subsequently sacrifices herself to bring about his demise… the ultimate sacrifice which, unfortunately, is only a victory over the immediate pestilence… science and bureaucratic institutions are not up to the challenge… however, neither is purity and self sacrifice…