An interview with Joyce Carol Oates, Nicholas Kristof's polemic op-ed in the NYT, Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil, and a round-up of this week's articles and essays.
Oates and Weil in the same essay?? Immediate subscribe.
"I’m particularly curious about William Hazlitt’s take on John Milton, so I bought The Spirit of Controversy and Other Essays. A lot of times I find I have these gaps in reading from not having studied literature in school, Hazlitt is mentioned so many times it’s time I take it on."
I feel this acutely; I always wanted to study Literature in school but at the time I foolishly believed that undergraduate studies were going to have some determining effect on the kind of job I had and the kind of person I was going to be. Anyway: I actually picked up "On the Pleasure of Hating" by Hazlitt not too long ago and need to get around to it. Irresistible title.
Thank you for the excellent read, all the links and fabulous photography. I didn’t expect to find next to Giovanni Bellini’s Ritratto del Doge Leonardo Loredan Kishin Shinoyama (篠山紀信)’s Momoe Yamaguchi (山口百恵)’s legendary portrait, but that’s the beauty of your posts. Here is a link to a Japanese site (one of the photographs in front of which Kishin - as he is often called here -answers to the interview is a photograph of Yukiō Mishima, quite the photograph itself!). Momoe Yamaguchi is a bit of everything, a legend, an idol, an actress through whose performances I discovered Junichiro Tanizaki’s novellas adapted to the screen, a woman who turned her back to the entertainment industry never to return, regret or answer interviews, and the wife of Tomokazu Miura, one of those actors who become more and more powerful with age):
Oates and Weil in the same essay?? Immediate subscribe.
"I’m particularly curious about William Hazlitt’s take on John Milton, so I bought The Spirit of Controversy and Other Essays. A lot of times I find I have these gaps in reading from not having studied literature in school, Hazlitt is mentioned so many times it’s time I take it on."
I feel this acutely; I always wanted to study Literature in school but at the time I foolishly believed that undergraduate studies were going to have some determining effect on the kind of job I had and the kind of person I was going to be. Anyway: I actually picked up "On the Pleasure of Hating" by Hazlitt not too long ago and need to get around to it. Irresistible title.
🤍 thank you! please circle back if you have a chance to read it, I would love to hear your thoughts… so far I am completely taken by him.
You should come see the Milton—Meeeel-ton—bust on my street.
Meeel-ton à Paris? Where? I want to come see it
Thank you for the excellent read, all the links and fabulous photography. I didn’t expect to find next to Giovanni Bellini’s Ritratto del Doge Leonardo Loredan Kishin Shinoyama (篠山紀信)’s Momoe Yamaguchi (山口百恵)’s legendary portrait, but that’s the beauty of your posts. Here is a link to a Japanese site (one of the photographs in front of which Kishin - as he is often called here -answers to the interview is a photograph of Yukiō Mishima, quite the photograph itself!). Momoe Yamaguchi is a bit of everything, a legend, an idol, an actress through whose performances I discovered Junichiro Tanizaki’s novellas adapted to the screen, a woman who turned her back to the entertainment industry never to return, regret or answer interviews, and the wife of Tomokazu Miura, one of those actors who become more and more powerful with age):
https://bunkyo.keizai.biz/photoflash/1332/
Thank you for all your suggestions and links, for the video and for being here writing on another sophisticated impulse.
Thanks so much for the link.