I’ve been reading Žižek and Heidegger lately. Žižek labels himself a Communist (politics), Lacanian (method), and Heideggerian (ontology), so I asked Claude and ChatGPT how I fared.
#politics #philosphy #ontology #method #zizek #blog #video #podcast #substack #introspection #extrospection #Wittgenstein #pluralism #perspective #biography #rovelli #being #relata #relationships #philosopher
A Nobel laureate’s tale of surviving Ceauşescu’s Romania.
Herta Müller’s The Village on the Edge of the World is a searing chronicle of resilience and humanity that offers a corrective to nostalgia for communism.
#HertaMüller #Romania #Ceausescu #Communism #Biography #Books
Recently started reading "The Cars: Let the Stories Be Told" by Bill Janovitz. Well written, he obviously did his research to put this together.
The early chapters on how the group came together is quite a ride through 70s folk & rock…it's wild to learn Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr first signed as a Crosby Stills & Nash-esque vocal-harmony group…
For Suede fans, a new book on Suede.
"As One is an intimate and candid biography of one of the UK’s biggest band’s during the unlikely second act of a career that spans four decades. It is a book that studies the band from close up and afar, written by award-winning author Rodge Glass, who has been granted unprecedented access to the band at home, on stage, backstage, in the studio, rehearsing and promoting over the past three years."
https://www.resident-music.com/product/glass-rodge-as-one-remaking-suede
Michael
King of PopことMichael Jacksonの突然の死が報じられたのはもう今からおよそ17年も前、2009年のことでした。日頃彼の音楽には私も親しんでいたので、これは大きな衝撃でした。この時Michaelは50歳でしたが、私もいつの間にか追い越してしまいました。
そのMichaelの伝記映画として、Jackson 5/Jacksonsのリードボーカルとして活躍する彼の幼少期から、ソロデビューしてトップスターとなるまでを描いた「Michael/マイケル」が先週から公開されていたので、遅ればせながら観に行ってきました。今回もIMAX Laserでの体験です。
あのMichaelを誰が演じるのかというのは最も気になるところですが、Michaelの実の甥にあたる、Jermaine Jacksonの息子であるJaafar Jacksonは、まるでそこに本人がいるかのように演じ切っていました。なんとなく本物には及ばない気はしたものの、ダンスのキレも良く、素晴らしかったと思います。また、幼少期のMichaelを演じたのはJuliano Valdiという子役ですが、彼の演技もなかなかのものだったのではないでしょうか。
撮影にはJacksonファミリーが実際に生活していたHayvenhurstの邸宅も使われたとのことで、さすがにCGのようですが、キリンがその庭を闊歩する様子には驚きました。また、ロバやチンパンジーのBubblesと共に暮らしていたエピソードは、彼の人となりや心情を効果的に描いていたように思います。
物語としては意外な展開で引っ張るタイプではなく、厳しく独裁的な父親との確執のようなものがあるくらいですが、彼の音楽を時系列に沿って色々聴くことができただけでもいい時間でした。映画館の、それもIMAXのいい音響で、あれだけの大音量でMichaelの楽曲を聴ける機会はなかなかありません。それだけでもMichaelファンとしては見ておくべき作品と言えるのではないでしょうか。
なお、すでに続編の製作が伝えられているようですが、実は私がMichaelをよく知っているのはちょうど本作で描かれているアルバム「BAD」までで、このあとNeverland Ranchに移ってからはどういう生涯を送ったのかよくわかっていなかったりします。しかし、その後複数の訴訟があり、結果的に無罪とはなりましたが逮捕・刑事裁判なども経験することとなり、辛く厳しいものだったのではないかと思います。映画でもそれらを避けて通ることはできないでしょうから、本作とはだいぶ後味の違うものになりそうで、私は今から見ることにあまり前向きな気持ちになれません。
#biography #michaelJackson #movie #music
Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "Cheaper By the Dozen" (1948) by Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
A truly charming and heartwarming book about the real-world efficiency experts Frank Gilbreth and his wife, Lillian Moller Gilbreth, plus their dozen children. It was written by two of the children (Frank Jr. and Ernestine).
This book was a massive best-seller back in its day. But as time passed, it went out of print and became forgotten, virtually unavailable for many years. I discovered it tucked onto a shelf at a rented vacation cabin on a lake in Maine. The shelves were all bookshelves; they were simply packed with old books, including many issues of Reader's Digest Condensed Classics. Cheaper By The Dozen is not great literature, I suppose. But it's a touching and entertaining window into a time now long gone.
Please do not mistake it for the modern movies of the same title, which have as little to do with the book as Eddie Murphy's "Doctor Dolittle" movies have to do with Hugh Lofting's beloved classic books for children.
The modern movies should be forgotten. The book, on the other hand, is still worth remembering and rereading.
I want to emphasize two things: this is an extremely •funny• book, and it is also, at the end, a deeply •moving• one. It's quite dated, I'll admit; at one point the parents do a "minstrel" show for their kids, which may well offend some modern sensibilities. But I see no malice in it. Remember, it was written in 1948 about events from the 1910s through the early 1920s. The world was different then.
I should note that Lillian Gilbreth, the mother of the family was a distinguished scientist in her own right. She's been honored by the Smithsonian Institution and was featured on a U.S. postage stamp.
The Gilbreths were a highly unusual family, and not just because of the size of it. The parents pioneered the field of efficiency studies, and taught (and learned) from their children in the process. In the process, they had all sorts of adventures, many of them EXTREMELY funny.
[Whenever the crowds gathered at some intersection where we were stopped by traffic, the inevitable question came sooner or later.
“How do you feed all those kids, Mister?”
Dad would ponder for a minute. Then, rearing back so those on the outskirts could hear, he’d say as if he had just thought it up:
“Well, they come cheaper by the dozen, you know.”
This was designed to bring down the house, and usually it did. Dad had a good sense of theater, and he’d try to time this apparent ad lib so that it would coincide with the change in traffic. While the peasantry was chuckling, the Pierce Arrow would buck away in clouds of gray smoke, while the professor up front rendered a few bars of Honk Honk Kadookah.
Leave ’em in stitches, that was us.]
As far as I know the book's back in physical print now, although you'd probably have to order it online. It's available as an ebook from the usual suspects, too.
Best of all, you can download the book for free (or read it online) on the Internet Archive!
https://archive.org/details/CheaperByTheDozen-English
There's also a sequel called "Belles On Their Toes", by the way.
And while I'm at it, there was a film version in 1950 which was much better than the modern versions. You can watch it free on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/_Kf4A2fgBSA?si=JkjcL-vCJyFnJEmN
Happy reading! 🤓📖
#Books #Bookstodon #humor #fiction #biography
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Book Review: John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit by James Traub
Author: James Traub
Title: John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit
Publication Info: New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, [2016]
Summary/Review:
John Quincy Adams is a man of contrasts. Born during the revolutionary era he’s essentially the first post-colonial American politician. Yet he’s oddly old fashioned, formal, and clings to the idea of a government without parties that only George Washington could make work. He’s flinty and economical in a way that reflects his home state of Massachusetts, but he actually lives much of his life abroad and in Washington.
From the age of 11 he was accompanying his father on diplomatic missions to Europe, and at 14 was working as an ambassadorial secretary and translator. He was elected to the Senate as a Federalist but his determination to following his own conscience earned him the enmity of his own party in New England. He was more successful as a diplomat with positions in Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom. He negotiated the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. President Monroe appoints him Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. The Monroe Doctrine, despite his name, is largely Adams’ idea.
All of this sets him up for the presidency. Not able to accomplish anything easily Adams is elected in a multi-candidate race that is decided by the House of Representatives and some notorious vote trading. Despite his efforts to rise above party politics, Adams’ single term is consumed by it, with partisan attacks by the Jackson faction preventing any major accomplishments. After losing in the Election of 1828, Adams doesn’t fade away into retirement but instead is elected to the House of Representatives.
It’s this last 16 years of his life where Adams flourishes. While opposed to slavery, Adams was not an abolitionist. But he leads the opposition to the gag rule preventing the reading of petitions against slavery on the grounds of free speech. As a result he becomes a hero to nascent abolition movement befriending leaders of the movement, and adopting their views, although believing that slavery would only be ended through war. In 1841 he defended the enslaved people in the Amistad case before the Supreme Court. Adams kept working and fighting to the end, suffering a massive stroke on the floor of the House in 1848, preceding his death.
The book is also interesting in detailing Adams’ obsessions and interests. Traub writes: ” Adams took up hobbies to the point of mania.” During his career Adams tried to introduce the metric system, a national university, and a system of astronomical observatories, with little success. He was more successful in directing the James Smitshon gift toward a museum and research institute. He also loved swimming in the Potomac each morning, on one occasion during his presidency coming close to drowning with only one assistant as a witness. He was also fascinated by the railroad, becoming an early adopter, even after surviving a deadly derailment in New Jersey.
This is a fascinating book in that if provides an insight into a period of American history I’m less familiar with. In fact it’s basically a history of the first 75 year of U.S. politics. Adams is a complex and often unlikable man. His family relationships are strained, with his wife Louisa seeming to be miserable most of the time from having to conform to the stern Adams way of life. Adams’ brothers and sons are also troubled by depression and alcoholism resulting from the overbearing expectations of the family’s ideals.
Favorite Passages:
In the years to come, Adams would discover that the solution to his life lay in politics. He had a gift not for avoiding the storms of partisanship, but for weathering them. – Chapter 9
Adams regarded the Bible not as infallible text but as a human narrative inspired by revelation—the greatest of all works of literature. He knew all the debates and did not wish to be distracted by them from the central message. He told George that it was unknowable, and unnecessary to know, whether Jesus was “a manifestation of almighty God” or simply his only son. – Chapter 14
(On the Monroe Doctrine) It is striking that so self-consciously moral and Christian a figure as Adams was prepared to excuse bellicose behavior in the name of national self-aggrandizement. For Adams, American destiny had a moral force of its own – Chapter 16
Tom’s slow downward spiral, and his ultimate humiliation, offers a pointed reminder of how very hard it was to be an Adams. The family lacked the wealth that served as a safety net for the less lucky or gifted or driven members of other prominent families. At the same time, a merely ordinary disposition, much less a tender one, could not survive the pressure of family expectations. John Quincy had been forged in the fires and emerged whole and hard; neither Charles nor Tom had proved so fortunate. John Quincy Adams had put his own children through the same thresher, and that generation, too, would see a terrible winnowing. – Chapter 17
THE MOST IMPORTANT JOBS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS HAD EVER held were ones to which he had been appointed by a president—minister to the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, and England; chief negotiator at Ghent; secretary of state. Of course he had sought electoral positions, but he had not shown much of a gift for attracting voters. He had lost his very first contest, for state assemblyman, and had been recalled as a US senator by a state legislature outraged at his stubborn independence. He did not like appealing to voters, did not believe he should have to, and was not good at it. And now he was living with the consequences. – Chapter 22
As the first president to have gone back to work after his tenure, Adams had given himself the opportunity, as none of his predecessors had, to benefit from a “sober second thought.” He had changed the meanings Americans attached to him. No longer the dynastic New Englander who represented an archaic Federalist America, Adams had become the dauntless standard-bearer of the very modern cause of abolitionism. At the same time, his rootedness in the republican principles of the founders also placed him on a pedestal in the national pantheon. Indeed, the very fact that he had not changed, that he had stood for principles when they were despised and lived to see them vindicated, offered the most powerful evidence of his greatness of character. – Chapter 36
Recommended books:
Rating: ****
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