The Illustrious House of Ramires , by Eça de Queirós. A novel about an ineffectual nobleman writing an historical novel about his heroic ancestors. Queirós has been called the Portuguese Flaubert. Large Fees and How to Get Them : a book for the private use of physicians , by Albert V. Harmon, M.D. If you practice early 20th medicine and want large fees, this book is essential reading. If you don’t, there are still lessons in its amusing and unsentimental discussion of various topics, like in the chapter “The Bugbear of Ethics”, where Harmon advises “ethics in its place is a good thing...But there is such a thing as overdoing the ethical proposition”. Histrionics: Three Plays and Over All the Mountain Tops , by Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard once said “I despise actors, indeed I hate them, for they ally themselves at the least sign of danger with the audience and betray the author and completely identify with stupidity and feeble-mindedness. Actors are the destroyers and exte...
Great quote. How's Seattle? Have the Seahawks fans reached peaked buffoonery yet?
ReplyDeleteEver notice how Seahawk fans are big fans of themselves being Seahawk fans?
DeleteThey even give themselves credit for wins and their own number.
ReplyDeleteAlas, 'magic operations in the dream world' is how all manner of business is conducted today. I deal with such paranormal strategies at work by pretending to be a shaman in a collar and tie who consults the entrails of unpaid interns for bad omens.
ReplyDeleteI imagine if I visited the local lunatic asylum I would find it has the weird, ghostly atmosphere of a cube farm.
DeleteThe cube farm fosters the zombie rather than the wraith, but yes. I must attend a conference call in the dream-world to discuss how the magical operations of "social media" are going to boost our sales ..... hocus pocus on Main Street.
ReplyDeleteI find his use of the word "gnostic" in a way totally divorced from it's historical usage troubling. But by the way I stumbled upon a link that might be of interest "Eric Voegelin at 114 " http://speculumcriticum.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/eric-voegelin-at-114.html
ReplyDeleteTotally divorced? Replace 'Gnostic' and 'Gnosticism' with 'liberal' and 'liberalism' in the following passage:
Delete"Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know."