Friday, March 23, 2012
What if every decent person in the USA went for a walk in a hoodie?
Maybe we could have a campaign to wear hoodies in walks until the states with STAND YOUR GROUND laws backed down.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Charles Dickens should have been in the title of this piece on Simon Morley
Monday, December 26, 2011 reposted 19 March 2012
Simon Morley's review of THE POWELL PAPERS in TLS 11 November 2011
My luck with the London TLS has been pretty erratic. They gave FLAWED TEXTS AND VERBAL ICONS to a Scottish versifier who had no idea at all what it was about. Then in 1997 there was ecstatic praise of the first volume of the biography by a man who had stolen the Hayford-Parker textual lists from our Norton MOBY-DICK years before. The 1997 review was for sale in all the book stores and news stands in London while we were there working in the British Library at Colindale, so it made for good ID. Later reviews have been pretty perfunctory. TLS gave THE POWELL PAPERS to a grad student, Simon Morley, who did not take time to read it, as his errors show. He was a Gloomy Gus who had absolutely no sense of fun. A reader of his review would gain no sense of its structure and never guess that the book contains much new material on topics such as Powell’s precipitating an American national re-evaluation of Dickens and pushing Herman Melville toward defining himself against Washington Irving. In one chapter, newly discovered documents show just how mercilessly, in the lack of international copyright, the Harpers exalted their cheap serialized Dickens while arguing that American writers like Melville must be sacrificed for the “public good.” The reader of the review would not guess that four pages of the book are devoted to a small comic masterpiece, Thomas Butler Gunn’s satire of Powell in his 1873 Paul Gower, the existence of which I discovered in 2008. There “Mr. Bowles” (a scatological pun Robert Browning also employed) is “an Englishman of whom there existed a curious tradition in the ranks of New York journalism: namely, that he had involuntarily set to Mr. Dickens for the portrait of Wilkins Micawber, or rather supplied the raw material for that immortal character.”
I had hoped reviewers would be entranced by the informative rogues’ gallery of an Index which features such figures as Augustus W. Clason, Jr., who beat the Scottish-born editor of the Herald with a dog whip; Valorous P. Coolidge, the Waterville, Maine, physician who murdered young Edward Mathews then took pay for performing the autopsy on him; David Russell Lee, the diminutive, febrile English-born reporter on theatre and law; and John Andrew Jackson Neafie, the carpenter turned actor who played Othello and toured with Forrest. Had he read this highly enjoyable Index, Morley, instead of referring to “the American novelist Thomas Gunn,” might have identified Thomas Butler Gunn rightly as belonging to the bustling cadre of British-born journalists and artists who flourished in late 19th-century Manhattan. Despite Morley’s gloomy report, I would like to recommend the sparkling Index and the rest of The Powell Papers as a tonic for the dark winter to come as well as an early contribution to the celebration of Dickens’s bicentennial?
Simon Morley's review of THE POWELL PAPERS in TLS 11 November 2011
My luck with the London TLS has been pretty erratic. They gave FLAWED TEXTS AND VERBAL ICONS to a Scottish versifier who had no idea at all what it was about. Then in 1997 there was ecstatic praise of the first volume of the biography by a man who had stolen the Hayford-Parker textual lists from our Norton MOBY-DICK years before. The 1997 review was for sale in all the book stores and news stands in London while we were there working in the British Library at Colindale, so it made for good ID. Later reviews have been pretty perfunctory. TLS gave THE POWELL PAPERS to a grad student, Simon Morley, who did not take time to read it, as his errors show. He was a Gloomy Gus who had absolutely no sense of fun. A reader of his review would gain no sense of its structure and never guess that the book contains much new material on topics such as Powell’s precipitating an American national re-evaluation of Dickens and pushing Herman Melville toward defining himself against Washington Irving. In one chapter, newly discovered documents show just how mercilessly, in the lack of international copyright, the Harpers exalted their cheap serialized Dickens while arguing that American writers like Melville must be sacrificed for the “public good.” The reader of the review would not guess that four pages of the book are devoted to a small comic masterpiece, Thomas Butler Gunn’s satire of Powell in his 1873 Paul Gower, the existence of which I discovered in 2008. There “Mr. Bowles” (a scatological pun Robert Browning also employed) is “an Englishman of whom there existed a curious tradition in the ranks of New York journalism: namely, that he had involuntarily set to Mr. Dickens for the portrait of Wilkins Micawber, or rather supplied the raw material for that immortal character.”
I had hoped reviewers would be entranced by the informative rogues’ gallery of an Index which features such figures as Augustus W. Clason, Jr., who beat the Scottish-born editor of the Herald with a dog whip; Valorous P. Coolidge, the Waterville, Maine, physician who murdered young Edward Mathews then took pay for performing the autopsy on him; David Russell Lee, the diminutive, febrile English-born reporter on theatre and law; and John Andrew Jackson Neafie, the carpenter turned actor who played Othello and toured with Forrest. Had he read this highly enjoyable Index, Morley, instead of referring to “the American novelist Thomas Gunn,” might have identified Thomas Butler Gunn rightly as belonging to the bustling cadre of British-born journalists and artists who flourished in late 19th-century Manhattan. Despite Morley’s gloomy report, I would like to recommend the sparkling Index and the rest of The Powell Papers as a tonic for the dark winter to come as well as an early contribution to the celebration of Dickens’s bicentennial?
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Another appeal to the Bandy family
Bandy Family of Perry, Tennessee 1830-1850
Notices on blogs like this one seem to produce results.
Does anyone know the parents of Annie Bandy [I think she was a Bandy] born in Perry Co. Tennessee 1823-1825 who became Annie Rogers or Rodgers and who in 1850 had living with her and her husband, John W. Rodgers or Rogers, a boy, George Bandy, 10; and also living with them Emily Cagle 10 and Nancy Cagle 40. When she and her husband, John W. Rogers or Rodgers, moved to Arkansas, they took young George Bandy with them; he was with them in 1860 in Franklin Arkansas.
Notices on blogs like this one seem to produce results.
Does anyone know the parents of Annie Bandy [I think she was a Bandy] born in Perry Co. Tennessee 1823-1825 who became Annie Rogers or Rodgers and who in 1850 had living with her and her husband, John W. Rodgers or Rogers, a boy, George Bandy, 10; and also living with them Emily Cagle 10 and Nancy Cagle 40. When she and her husband, John W. Rogers or Rodgers, moved to Arkansas, they took young George Bandy with them; he was with them in 1860 in Franklin Arkansas.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Dharun Revi and Marc Bousquet; the Spy-Cam and the Blog affiliated with the Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/censoring-mark-twains-ghost/30789
What follows is a note signed by "marcbousquet":
marcbousquet - January 5, 2011 at 12:17 pm
I for one welcome this edition–I wouldn’t describe this substitution as “censorship,” but more simply as “editing.” There’s room for lots of editions, especially in hypertext: one can provide dozens of different editions and toggle back and forth between them. I see no harm and much good in adding another edition to a work widely available in a variety of ways.
For perspective, consider the work of textual scholar Hershel Parker, whose romantic theory of editing has been applied under the imprimatur of many distinguished grant-funded projects. Believing that author’s revisions frequently represented pressured reconsiderations (concern about the public’s reaction, an editor, spouse or friend’s bad advice, etc), Parker often reversed authorial revision in an effort to reconstruct what he contended was the author’s inspired original intention. There were often many choices for Parker to revert to: multiple crossings out in a manuscript, multiple alterations in successive lifetime printings, etc: which was “right,” even by Parker’s loose standard? See Parker’s role in producing the text of the Library of America Melville edition, for example.
We give Parker millions to reconstruct what Melville would have published if his editor or friends hadn’t interfered. We happily watch performances of Shakespeare in altered or redacted language–there’s a whole essay in acting as translation here, even when the “original language” is used. We routinely expect the Supreme Court (ok, not this one!) to navigate “original language” for us. In the end, I think the best comparison to this kind of editorial work is translation: the editor is translating the work into a language in which aspects of the work can be better understood by some readers. As in all translations (and other editorial decisions, right down to typography), things are both lost and gained. Translation is additive; “censorship” is repressive.
End of quotation from marcbousquet.
That was last last year. We give Parker millions. I sacrificed myself on the Melville Project 1965-1968 for $9000 a year up to $9500 the next year (half the promised thousand) and $10,000!
What have we learned from the conviction of Dharun Ravi this week? Will reckless rough-riders of the Internet and the social media learn to discipline themselves on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, text messages, emails, and think twice about where they aim their webcams? Will the Chronicle of Higher Education think twice about what it is sponsoring? Dharun Ravi may, just may, go to jail.
Will the "Chronicle of Higher Education" ever be sorry it has been so very very trendy?
What follows is a note signed by "marcbousquet":
marcbousquet - January 5, 2011 at 12:17 pm
I for one welcome this edition–I wouldn’t describe this substitution as “censorship,” but more simply as “editing.” There’s room for lots of editions, especially in hypertext: one can provide dozens of different editions and toggle back and forth between them. I see no harm and much good in adding another edition to a work widely available in a variety of ways.
For perspective, consider the work of textual scholar Hershel Parker, whose romantic theory of editing has been applied under the imprimatur of many distinguished grant-funded projects. Believing that author’s revisions frequently represented pressured reconsiderations (concern about the public’s reaction, an editor, spouse or friend’s bad advice, etc), Parker often reversed authorial revision in an effort to reconstruct what he contended was the author’s inspired original intention. There were often many choices for Parker to revert to: multiple crossings out in a manuscript, multiple alterations in successive lifetime printings, etc: which was “right,” even by Parker’s loose standard? See Parker’s role in producing the text of the Library of America Melville edition, for example.
We give Parker millions to reconstruct what Melville would have published if his editor or friends hadn’t interfered. We happily watch performances of Shakespeare in altered or redacted language–there’s a whole essay in acting as translation here, even when the “original language” is used. We routinely expect the Supreme Court (ok, not this one!) to navigate “original language” for us. In the end, I think the best comparison to this kind of editorial work is translation: the editor is translating the work into a language in which aspects of the work can be better understood by some readers. As in all translations (and other editorial decisions, right down to typography), things are both lost and gained. Translation is additive; “censorship” is repressive.
End of quotation from marcbousquet.
That was last last year. We give Parker millions. I sacrificed myself on the Melville Project 1965-1968 for $9000 a year up to $9500 the next year (half the promised thousand) and $10,000!
What have we learned from the conviction of Dharun Ravi this week? Will reckless rough-riders of the Internet and the social media learn to discipline themselves on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, text messages, emails, and think twice about where they aim their webcams? Will the Chronicle of Higher Education think twice about what it is sponsoring? Dharun Ravi may, just may, go to jail.
Will the "Chronicle of Higher Education" ever be sorry it has been so very very trendy?
Robert Bales and William Calley
My first thought is that Robert Bales is not William Laws Calley.
My second thought is that maybe William Laws Calley was not William Laws Calley.
W managed not to go to Viet Nam and Obama was too young to go and neither one of them learned the lessons they should have learned.
Maybe we should have felt profoundest pity for Sergeant Calley while feeling all the emotions of horror and shame which we felt over the victims.
In 2012, it seems to me that any of us might have snapped after all that we should have learned from Viet Nam and after all that Bales had been subjected to.
How could we have let W get us into this and O keep us in it?
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