“You’d have to be a demented human being to look at a tiny baby and say, ‘You shouldn’t be alive, there’s too many of you,’ ”
Well, yes.
I agree 100%.
Wait – you’re talking about deer? Okay then. Them, too, I guess.
(For all I know the speaker would say the same about human beings. I’m just pointing out that it’s doubtful you’d find a sympathetically-presented quote like that about human beings, especially the preborn in the New Yorker)
Some random notes from recent magazine reads. Then I’m really and truly getting going with the real work of the day.
A review of a new book on the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. The review is less than 100% enthusiastic, but the point I found most thought-provoking was that the early efforts to decode the hieroglyphics stalled because of the assumption that the symbols must have esoteric, mystical meanings. Too complex for their own good, it seems. Also: assumptions should always be open for questioning. Knowledge and understanding doesn’t advance otherwise.
Moving on to the New York Review of Books.
Aha! That’s where I read the article on Lawrence. This one. It’s a review of an interesting-sounding book in which a feminist author seeks to rescue Lawrence from his misogynistic image. I’m thinking she’s not successful, but yes, this is where I learned of Sea and Sardinia.
And finally, in the category of: Why do they keep only making superhero movies, comic-book based movies and strained rom-coms when there are so many great stories out there?
Just two examples:
First, the story of Nancy Cunard, the shipping heiress (yes, that Cunard) who became a powerful patron of the work of Black writers and other artists. Sure, there’s a theme of white savior-hood running through this – which would be part of the point of exploring it – and it’s not all clean and neat with easy lessons, but it sure is fascinating. Racial issues and tensions in the context of 1920’s Paris, London and New York City, Harlem Renaissance, popular fascination with African art…
I’m linking this to the NYTimes instead of the NYRB since online, the latter is subscriber-only access.
Sidelined for the balance of the war, the prisoners of Yozgad turned their energies to killing time. Much of the pleasure of “The Confidence Men” comes from the bewildering pluck of these young men of the empire. Shell and starve them within an inch of their lives, force-march the survivors across Asia Minor and before you can sing “Rule, Britannia!” they have organized a debate society and started dress rehearsals for some light comic opera (title: “The Fair Maiden of Yozgad”). Of course, somewhere outside the frame of Fox’s tale, there are an awful lot of enlisted men from both armies detained in far less humane conditions. Unlike the chaps at Yozgad, they were probably not procuring local greyhounds for the P.O.W. hunt club.
On a lark, Jones made a Ouija board from polished iron and an inverted jar. The hardships of war and a wave of magical new technologies (the phonograph, radio, flight) had renewed public interest in telepathy and the paranormal. It was a “liminal era,” Fox writes, “poised at the nexus of the scientific and the spiritual.” Jones, who studied psychology at university and possessed an astounding visual memory, discovered that he could bamboozle his fellow officers, even blindfolded under close scrutiny. He found a perfect accomplice in C. W. Hill, a pilot of the Royal Flying Corps who had been raised on a Queensland ranch. Hill had been captured after his biplane was shot down in Egypt. Like Jones, he had a knack for secret codes and a willingness to risk his life for freedom. He also happened to be an accomplished stage conjurer.
Jones and Hill gradually ensorcelled the camp’s harsh Turkish commandant, placing him and two underlings under trembling obedience to a powerful ghost named “the Spook.” Speaking through the two prisoners and their Ouija board, the Spook promised to lead the men to a hoard of buried Armenian gold. (The recent genocide had resulted in a lot of buried wealth.) Jones and Hill planned for the Spook to guide the treasure hunters to the Mediterranean coast, where they could make their escape and possibly even turn over their captors to Allied forces in Cyprus. As it happened, things took a darker turn.
I mean….you’d watch that, wouldn’t you??
You know how, when you’re reading that story and you hit the faux pas that just turns into a big speed bump? I’m a veterinarian and when I read, “Unlike the chaps at Yozgad, they were probably not procuring local greyhounds for the P.O.W. hunt club.” I came to a full stop for almost 10 seconds. Greyhound? Greyhounds don’t hunt. Oh she means foxhounds.